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ellaa-writes · 8 months ago

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inspired by this, enjoy :) (unedited)

the bell above the door alerted you to someone entering you small little studio. It was right in the heart of downtown, use to be a bake shop. The smell of fresh bread still can be smelled if you pressed your nose up against the wall. You wiped at your furrowed brow, taking a step back to look at your latest painting. It was all wrong, you couldn't get the shading right. You abandoned your pallet and brush on the stool next to you, making sure you didn't have paint on your face as you walked to the front.

Usually Horace man's the front but he just stepped out for a smoke, leaving you alone in the studio for the next 15 mins. As you emerged from the back you looked around the small space. Not only do you sell original art work but you also sell local art work as well. It was hard to miss him, with the way he towered over everything around him. His back was turned to you and you thanked the heavens it was. You never hesitated to great someone before, your hands started to shake with nerves before you clenched them closed.

His back rippled before he turned his head back in your direction. You smiled quickly, rubbing the sweat from your palms onto your painters apron.

"Hi, sorry for the wait. Is there anything I could do for you.. Sir?" the sir came out hesitantly and nearly a whisper. His green eyes narrowed at you, taking in your form. They traveled down to your waist and back up, locking onto your own. His face softened as he flashed a smile.

"I'm in town for the weekend, thought I'd take a walk around before I saw a sign for an art studio. Do you run this place?" his voice had a thick accent but you were still able to understand him.

"Oh no, that would be Horace. He just stepped out for a minute. I just work in the back most of the time." you spoke lowly, coming around the counter to stand in front of him.

His eyes lit up at the full sight of you, your shoes were covered in many different colors on paint, fresh and old blending together. The warmth in his eyes shifted to something you couldn't quiet make out, but it did make the hairs on your arm stand straight as a small shudder rippled through your body.

"Could you tell me about this piece?" you had to step forward more has he was blocking the painting he was referring to. As it came into veiw and you could feel the heat radiating off his body the closer you got.

It was of the lake, with the mountains in the back. A soft glow from the stars bouncing off the calm waters. You painted in about 3 years ago, took you weeks too but mostly because it was mid December when you decided to trek out to the lakeshore. The black rocks surrounding the lake weren't kind to your feet those days.

"Um... sorry what was the question?" and this was exactly way you stayed in the back. You always struggled to communicate with others.

"The painting, is the artist still around?" he asked as his eyes scanned other paintings.

"Oh yes she is." you shifted from him, you need some distance to think properly. You walked over to a stack of painting, rummaging through them.

"Is it possible I could speak to... Her?" unbeknownst to you his eyes were trained in your backside. Watching as you bent over to look through the stack of painting before finding the one you were looking for.

"Sorry, speak to who?" you asked as you set the new painting next to the one he was looking at.

"The artist who made this." he pointed at the landscape in front of him.

"Oh, well. Your already speaking to her." you avoided his eyes as you looked over the twin paintings. "This one here" you pointed to the new one. "Was painted part summer, same area but different season." looking at the pink sky reflecting off of the water. You could still feel the warm breeze flowing around you.

"They are beautiful, the brush strokes ever so slight. Makes the water come alive." his voice was right behind you, you could feel his breath fanning against your ear as he leaned down to take a better look at them both.

"You have a real talent. How long have you been painting?" the bell dinged again as Horace came in, the slight smell of tobacco filling the space. You shoot him a glance as he takes in the giant.

"Sorry, didn't hear this damn bell. Been meaning to get it upgraded." Horace crossed the space and gave you a get back to work look.

"It was nice meeting you, uh-" you couldn't recall if he told you his name or not. "König, please call me König." his smile didn't quiet reach his eyes but it was big and gummy. You left the two men to make small talk. Horace was ways good at selling, even better at getting more than the asking price.

You focused back on your discarded painting. Standing back from it, looking at it like a lost map. The sound of low muffled voices wafted in, the sound of Horace too happy of a voice and the ding of the cash register. His footsteps entered into your space as he grabbed a packing box and slipped back out.

The chime of the door altering you to the departure of Mr. König.

After you finished up what you could, the sun setting behind the mountains. You gathered your belongings, slipping your purse over your shoulders.

"Horace?" you called out to the older man, and he rounded the corner to bid you far well. "Here" he reached out his hand, a small black card rested between his pointer and middle finger. "What's this?" you asked. Grabbing it and looking at the gold text.

Art Dealer

"Sold those two painting for well above the worth they are. Finally getting my moneys worth outta ya." Horace was a rough man, having taken over his father's operation begrudgingly.

"See you tomorrow!" you called out as he disappeared from view. The walk back to your small cottage wasn't far, and at this time of year the air before dusk was crisp.

You walked along the side walk, unknowingly being tailed by a sleek black car.

#cod mw2 #könig #konig #könig mw2 #konig mw2 #konig cod #könig cod #konig x reader #konig x you #könig x reader #Cod #Call of duty

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mostlysignssomeportents · 18 hours ago

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Chapter One of “Picks and Shovels” (Part 1)

Picks and Shovels is a new, standalone technothriller starring Marty Hench, my two-fisted, hard-fighting, tech-scam-busting forensic accountant. You can pre-order it on my latest Kickstarter, which features a brilliant audiobook read by Wil Wheaton.

My next novel is Picks and Shovels, out next month. It's tells the origin story of Martin Hench, my hard-charging, scambusting, high-tech forensic accountant, in a 1980s battle over the soul of a PC company:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels

I'm currently running a Kickstarter to pre-sell the book in every format: hardcover, DRM-free ebook, and an independently produced, fabulous DRM-free audiobook read by Wil Wheaton, who just nailed the delivery:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/picks-and-shovels-marty-hench-at-the-dawn-of-enshittification

Picks and Shovels opens with a long prologue that recounts Marty's misadventures as a failing computer science student at MIT, his love-affair with computers, and his first disastrous startup venture. It ends with him decamping to Silicon Valley with his roommate Art, a brilliant programmer, to seek their fortune.

Chapter one opens with Marty's first job, working for a weird PC company (there were so many weird PC companies back then!). I've posted Wil's audio reading of chapter one as a teaser for the Kickstarter:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGXz1mkAd2Q

(Here it is as an MP3 at the Internet Archive:)

https://ia600607.us.archive.org/5/items/picks-and-shovels-promo/audio.mp3

The audio is great, but I thought I'd also serialize the text of Chapter One here, in five or six chunks. If you enjoy this and want to pre-order the book, please consider backing the Kickstarter:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/picks-and-shovels-marty-hench-at-the-dawn-of-enshittification

Chapter One

Fidelity Computing was the most colorful PC company in Silicon Valley.

A Catholic priest, a Mormon bishop, and an Orthodox rabbi walk into a technology gold rush and start a computer company. The fact that it sounded like the setup for a nerdy joke about the mid-1980s was fantastic for their bottom line. Everyone who heard their story loved it.

As juicy as the story of Fidelity Computing was, they flew under most people’s radar for years, even as they built a wildly profitable technology empire through direct sales through faith groups. The first time most of us heard of them was in 1983, when Byte ran its cover story on Fidelity Computing, unearthing a parallel universe of technology that had grown up while no one was looking.

At first, I thought maybe they were doing something similar to Apple’s new Macintosh: like Apple, they made PCs (the Wise PC), an operating system (Wise DOS), and a whole line of monitors, disk drives, printers, and software.

Like the Mac, none of these things worked with anything else—you needed to buy everything from floppy disks to printer cables specially from them, because nothing anyone else made would work with their system.

And like the Mac, they sold mostly through word of mouth. The big difference was that Mac users were proud to call themselves a cult, while Fidelity Computing’s customers were literally a religion.

Long after Fidelity had been called to the Great Beyond, its most loyal customers gave it an afterlife, nursing their computers along, until the parts and supplies ran out. They’d have kept going even then, if there’d been any way to unlock their machines and use the same stuff the rest of the computing world relied on. But that wasn’t something Fidelity Computing would permit, even from beyond the grave.

I was summoned to Fidelity headquarters—in unfashionable Colma, far from the white-hot start-ups of Palo Alto, Mountain View, and, of course, Cupertino—by a friend of Art’s. Art had a lot more friends than me. I was a skipping stone, working as the part-time bookkeeper/accountant/CFO for half a dozen companies and never spending more than one or two days in the same office.

Art was hardly more stable than me—he switched start-ups all the time, working for as little as two months (and never for more than a year) before moving on. His bosses knew what they were getting: you hired Art Hellman to blaze into your company, take stock of your product plan, root out and correct all of its weak points, build core code libraries, and then move on. He was good enough and sufficiently in demand to command the right to behave this way, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. My view was, it was an extended celebration of his liberation from the legal villainy of Nick Cassidy III: having narrowly escaped a cage, he was determined never to be locked up again.

Art’s “engagements”—as he called them—earned him the respect and camaraderie of half the programmers and hardware engineers in the Valley. This, in spite of the fact that he was a public and ardent member of the Lavender Panthers, wore the badge on his lapel, went to the marches, and brought his boyfriend to all the places where his straight colleagues brought their girlfriends.

He’d come out to me less than a week after I arrived by the simple expedient of introducing the guy he was watching TV with in our living room as Lewis, his boyfriend. Lewis was a Chinese guy about our age, and his wardrobe—plain white tee, tight blue jeans, loafers—matched the new look Art had adopted since leaving Boston. Lewis had a neat, short haircut that matched Art’s new haircut, too.

To call the Art I’d known in Cambridge a slob would be an insult to the natty, fashion-conscious modern slob. He’d favored old band T-shirts with fraying armpit seams, too-big jeans that were either always sliding off his skinny hips or pulled up halfway to his nipples. In the summer, his sneakers had holes in the toes. In the winter, his boots were road-salt-crusted crystalline eruptions. His red curls were too chaotic for a white-boy ’fro and were more of a heap, and he often went days without shaving.

There were members of the Newbury Street Irregulars who were bigger slobs than Art, but they smelled. Art washed, but otherwise, he looked like a homeless person (or a hacker). His transformation to a neatly dressed, clean-shaven fellow with a twenty-five-dollar haircut that he actually used some sort of hairspray on was remarkable. I’d assumed it was about his new life as a grown-up living far from home and doing a real job. It turned out that wasn’t the reason at all.

“Oh,” I said. “That makes a lot of sense.” I shook Lewis’s hand. He laughed. I checked Art. He was playing it cool, but I could tell he was nervous. I remembered Lucille and how she listened, and what it felt like to be heard. I thought about Art, and the things he’d never been able to tell me.

There’d been a woman in the Irregulars who there were rumors about, and there were a pair of guys one floor down in Art’s building who held hands in the elevator, but as far as I knew up until that moment, I hadn’t really ever been introduced to a homosexual person. I didn’t know how I felt about it, but I did know how I wanted to feel about it.

So Art didn’t just get to know all kinds of geeks from his whistle-stop tour of Silicon Valley’s hottest new tech ventures. He was also plugged into this other network of people from the Lavender Panthers, and their boyfriends and girlfriends, and the people he knew from bars and clubs. He and Lewis lasted for a couple of months, and then there were a string of weekends where there was a new guy at the breakfast table, and then he settled down again for a while with Artemis, and then he hit a long dry spell.

I commiserated. I’d been having a dry spell for nearly the whole two years I’d been in California. The closest I came to romance was exchanging a letter with Lucille every couple of weeks—she was a fine pen pal, but that wasn’t really a substitute for a living, breathing woman in my life.

Art threw himself into his volunteer work, and he was only half joking when he said he did it to meet a better class of boys than you got at a club. Sometimes, there’d be a committee meeting in our living room and I’d hear about the congressional committee hearing on the “gay plague” and the new wave of especially vicious attacks. It was pretty much the only time I heard about that stuff—no one I worked with ever brought it up, unless it was to make a terrible joke.

It was Murf, one of the guys from those meetings, who told me that Fidelity Computing was looking for an accountant for a special project. He had stayed after the meeting and he and Art made a pot of coffee and sat down in front of Art’s Apple clone, a Franklin Ace 1200 that he’d scored six months ahead of its official release. After opening the lid to show Murf the interior, Art fired it up and put it through its paces.

I hovered over his shoulder, watching. I’d had a couple of chances to play with the 1200, and I wanted one more than anything in the world except for a girlfriend.

“Marty,” Art said, “Murf was telling me about a job I thought you might be good for.”

The Ace 1200 would have a list price of $2,200. I pulled up a chair.

Fidelity Computing’s business offices were attached to their warehouse, right next to their factory. It took up half of a business park in Colma, and I had to circle it twice to find a parking spot. I was five minutes late and flustered when I presented myself to the receptionist, a blond woman with a ten – years – out – of – date haircut and a modest cardigan over a sensible white shirt buttoned to the collar, ring on her finger.

“Hello,” I said. “I’m Marty Hench. I—uh—I’ve got a meeting with the Reverend Sirs.” That was what the executive assistant I’d spoken to on the phone had called them. It sounded weird when he said it. It sounded weirder when I said it.

The receptionist gave me a smile that only went as far as her lips. “Please have a seat,” she said. There were only three chairs in the little reception area, vinyl office chairs with worn wooden armrests. There weren’t any magazines, just glossy catalogs featuring the latest Fidelity Computing systems, accessories, consumables, and software. I browsed one, marveling at the parallel universe of computers in the strange, mauve color that denoted all Fidelity equipment, including the boxes, packaging, and, now that I was attuned to it, the accents and carpet in the small lobby. A side door opened and a young, efficient man in a kippah and wire-rim glasses called for me: “Mr. Hench?” I closed the catalog and returned it to the pile and stood. As I went to shake his hand, I realized that something had been nagging me about the catalog—there were no prices.

“I’m Shlomo,” the man said. “We spoke on the phone. Thank you for coming down. The Reverend Sirs are ready to see you now.”

He wore plain black slacks, hard black shiny shoes, and a white shirt with prayer-shawl tassels poking out of its tails. I followed him through a vast room filled with chest-high Steelcase cubicles finished in yellowing, chipped wood veneer, every scratch pitilessly lit by harsh overhead fluorescents. Most of the workers at the cubicles were women with headsets, speaking in hushed tones. The tops of their heads marked the interfaith delineators: a block of Orthodox headscarves, then a block of nuns’ black and white scarves (I learned to call them “veils” later), then the Mormons’ carefully coiffed, mostly blond dos.

“This way,” Shlomo said, passing through another door and into executive row. The mauve carpets were newer, the nap all swept in one direction. The walls were lined with framed certificates of appreciation, letters from religious and public officials (apparently, the church and state were not separate within the walls of Fidelity Computing), photos of groups of progressively larger groups of people ranked before progressively larger offices—the company history.

We walked all the way to the end of the hall, past closed doors with nameplates, to a corner conference room with a glass wall down one side, showing a partial view of a truck-loading dock behind half-closed vertical blinds. Seated at intervals around a large conference table were the Reverend Sirs themselves, each with his own yellow pad, pencil, and coffee cup.

Shlomo announced me: “Reverend Sirs, this is Marty Hench. Mr. Hench, these are Rabbi Yisrael Finkel, Bishop Leonard Clarke, and Father Marek Tarnowski.” He backed out of the door, leaving me standing, unsure if I should circle the table shaking hands, or take a seat, or—

“Please, sit,” Rabbi Finkel said. He was fiftyish, round-faced and bear-shaped with graying sidelocks and beard and a black suit and tie. His eyes were sharp behind horn-rimmed glasses. He gestured to a chair at the foot of the table.

I sat, then rose a little to undo the button of my sport coat. I hadn’t worn it since my second job interview, when I realized it was making the interviewers uncomfortable. It certainly made me uncomfortable. I fished out the little steno pad and stick pen I’d brought with me.

“Thank you for coming, Mr. Hench.” The rabbi had an orator’s voice, that big chest of his serving as a resonating chamber like a double bass.

“Of course,” I said. “Thanks for inviting me. It’s a fascinating company you have here.”

Bishop Clarke smiled at that. He was the best dressed of the three, in a well-cut business suit, his hair short, neat, side-parted. His smile was very white, and very wide. He was the youngest of the three—in his late thirties, I’d guess. “Thank you,” he said. “We know we’re very different from the other computer companies, and we like it that way. We like to think that we see something in computers—a potential—that other people have missed.”

Father Tarnowski scowled. He was cadaverously tall and thin, with the usual dog collar and jacket, and a heavy gold class ring. His half-rim glasses flashed. He was the oldest, maybe sixty, and had a sour look that I took for habitual. “He doesn’t want the press packet, Leonard,” he said. “Let’s get to the point.” He had a broad Chicago accent like a tough-guy gangster in The Untouchables.

Bishop Clarke’s smile blinked off and on for an instant and I was overcome with the sudden knowledge that these two men did not like each other at all, and that there was some kind of long-running argument simmering beneath the surface. “Thank you, Marek, of course. Mr. Hench’s time is valuable.” Father Tarnowski snorted softly at that and the bishop pretended he didn’t hear it, but I saw Rabbi Finkel grimace at his yellow pad.

“What can I help you Reverend Sirs with today?” Reverend Sirs came more easily now, didn’t feel ridiculous at all. The three of them gave the impression of being a quarter inch away from going for each other’s throats, and the formality was a way to keep tensions at a distance.

“We need a certain kind of accountant,” the rabbi said. He’d dated the top of his yellow pad and then circled the date. “A kind of accountant who understands the computer business. Who understands computers, on a technical level. It’s hard to find an accountant like that, believe it or not, even in Silicon Valley.” I didn’t point out that Colma wasn’t in Silicon Valley.

“Well,” I said, carefully. “I think I fit that bill. I’ve only got an associate’s degree in accounting, but I’m a kind of floating CFO for half a dozen companies and I’ve been doing night classes at UCSF Extension to get my bachelor’s. I did a year at MIT and built my own computer a few years back. I program pretty well in BASIC and Pascal and I’ve got a little C, and I’m a pretty darned good debugger, if I do say so myself.”

Bishop Clarke gave a small but audible sigh of relief. “You do indeed sound perfect, and I’m told that Shlomo spoke to your references and they were very enthusiastic about your diligence and . . . discretion.”

I’d given Shlomo a list of four clients I’d done extensive work with, but I hadn’t had “discretion” in mind when I selected them. It’s true that doing a company’s accounts made me privy to some sensitive information—like when two employees with the same job were getting paid very different salaries—but I got the feeling that wasn’t the kind of “discretion” the bishop had in mind.

“I’m pretty good at minding my own business,” I said, and then, “even when I’m being paid to mind someone else’s.” I liked that line, and made a mental note about it. Maybe someday I’d put it on my letterhead. Martin Hench: Confidential CPA.

The bishop favored me with a chuckle. The rabbi nodded thoughtfully. The priest scowled.

“That’s very good,” the bishop said. “What we’d like to discuss today is of a very sensitive nature, and I’m sure you’ll understand if we would like more than your good word to rely on.” He lifted his yellow pad, revealing a single page, grainily photocopied, and slid it over the table to me. “That’s our standard nondisclosure agreement,” he said. He slid a pen along to go with it.

I didn’t say anything. I’d signed a few NDAs, but only after I’d taken a contract. This was something different. I squinted at the page, which was a second- or third-generation copy and blurry in places. I started to read it. The bishop made a disgusted noise. I pretended I didn’t hear him.

I crossed out a few clauses and carefully lettered in an amendment. I initialed the changes and slid the paper back across the table to the bishop, and found the smile was gone from his face. All three of them were now giving me stern looks, wrath-of-God looks, the kind of looks that would make a twenty-one-year-old kid like me very nervous indeed. I felt the nerves rise and firmly pushed them down.

“Mr. Hench,” the bishop said, his tone low and serious, “is there some kind of problem?”

It pissed me off. I’d driven all the way to for-chrissakes Colma and these three weirdo God-botherers had ambushed me with their everything – and – the – kitchen – sink contract. I had plenty of work, and I didn’t need theirs, especially not if this was the way they wanted to deal. This had suddenly become a negotiation, and my old man had always told me the best negotiating position was a willingness to get up from the table. I was going to win this negotiation, one way or another.

“No problem,” I said.

“And yet you appear to have made alterations to our standard agreement.”

“I did,” I said. That’s not a problem for me, I didn’t say.

He gave me more of that stern eyeball-ray stuff. I let my negotiating leverage repel it. “Mr. Hench, our standard agreement can only be altered after review by our general counsel.”

“That sounds like a prudent policy,” I said, and met his stare.

He clucked his tongue. “I can get a fresh one,” he said. “This one is no good.”

I cocked my head. “I think it’d be better to get your general counsel, wouldn’t it?”

The three of them glared at me. I found I was enjoying myself. What’s more, I thought Rabbi Finkel might be suppressing a little smile, though the beard made it hard to tell.

“Let me see it,” he said, holding his hand out.

Bishop Clarke gave a minute shake of his head. The rabbi half rose, reached across the table, and slid it over to himself, holding it at arm’s length and adjusting his glasses. He picked up his pen and initialed next to my changes.

“Those should be fine,” he said, and slid it back to me. “Sign, please.”

“Yisrael,” Bishop Clarke said, an edge in his voice, “changes to the standard agreements need to be reviewed—”

“By our general counsel,” the rabbi finished, waving a dismissive gesture at him. “I know, I know. But these are fine. We should probably make the same changes to all our agreements. Meanwhile, we’ve all now had a demonstration that Mr. Hench is the kind of person who takes his promises seriously. Would you rather have someone who doesn’t read and signs his life away, or someone who makes sure he knows what he’s signing and agrees with it?”

Bishop Clarke’s smile came back, strained at the corners. “That’s an excellent point, Rabbi. Thank you for helping me understand your reasoning.” He collected the now-signed contract from me and tucked it back under his yellow pad.

“Now,” he said, “we can get down to the reason we asked you here today.”

Check out my Kickstarter to pre-order copies of my next novel, Picks and Shovels!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/09/the-reverend-sirs/#fidelity-computing/

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markrosewater · 21 days ago

Note

When you get questions about the likelihood of something happening again (for example different types of draft sets like conspiracy or commander legends) where they might not have sold as well as main sets but were still enjoyed by the community, you often say the likelihood is low. Do you mean it’s unlikely to happen again in general, or will just be a small percentage of future products going forward?

I understand not prioritizing these set styles in general if they don’t sell as well as main sets, but given their popularity and my own personal love of them it’s disappointing to think of them as going away entirely. Not every set will be a hit for everybody, which is fine, but a set having a smaller audience shouldn’t relegate it to the “don’t do again” pile. Maybe there’s a middle ground of every few years you release a new draft specific set at the volume of a single standard set with the expectation that it’ll sell out slower but would hole people over between releases like that?

Magic is a hungry monster. We will keep making more products, but there’s an ebb and flow to the type of product we make at any one moment in time.

Historically, the change cycles. The pendulum pushes in one direction, and eventually changes to a new direction, and so on. It ultimately returns to areas it was before, although updated with the latest design technology.

The current trend that is shaping things is Universes Beyond, but that’s just the hot thing of the moment. The pendulum, as always, will swing.

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pompomqt · 2 months ago

Text

Journey to the West Chapter 59

Welcome back to this week's chapter of Journey to the West with @journeythroughjourneytothewest. This week we get to continue our ongoing segment of Sun Wukong getting into trouble with members of the Bull Demon King Family. So let's get into it shall we?

So the gang is traveling along, and soon enough autumn once again comes along. However, it's feeling rather hot for this time of year, which- mood. The gang debates why this might be for a while, before Tripitaka finally just sends Monkey to ask one of the locals about it. So Monkey asks one of the locals to tell them where they are, and also if there is any particular reason for the extreme heat, you know- since global warming wasn't really a problem yet in the 7th century. And after the usual song and dance about how the disciples are so ugly and frightening, but Tripitaka's pretty boy face is enough to make up for, the random villager invites them inside for tea and exposition.

Turns out they are currently in the region known as The Mountain of Flames- aptly named after the on fire mountain that is right in the middle of their path westward. While Tripitaka is waiting for the latest bad news to finish sinking in, Monkey spots someone selling rice-puddings, and transforms one of his hairs into a coin to buy one. The rice pudding is super hot, so while Monkey tosses it from hand to hand like a hot potato while waiting for it to cool off, Monkey asks how they get any farming done under these conditions.

So the rice peddler tells them that there is an Immortal Iron-Fan who has a palm-leaf fan that can extinguish the fire with one wave, summon a breeze on the second, and on the third wave it summons rain. The times when the Immortal does this are when they can get all their farming done.

After hearing this Monkey goes back to Tripitaka and hands him the rice pudding to eat while he asks their current host where the Immortal Iron-fan lives. The villager tries to tell them that asking for the fan won't be easy, since they don't even have any offerings for the Immortal, but Monkey is insistent. So the villager tells him that they live on Jade Cloud Mountain in a cave called Palm-Leaf Cave, about 1450 miles away from here. Now that he has directions, Monkey decides to take the trip to ask for the fan. The villager tries to offer Monkey provisions for what will surely be a long and hard Journey, but Monkey just waves him off saying he's fine and takes off in a cloud somersault.

So Monkey fast travels to the mountain, but decides to gather some last minute information before going to the Immortal. Monkey spots a local wood cutter and asks for where the Palm-Leaf cave of Immortal Iron-Fan is. The Woodcutter doesn't quite know of an Immortal Iron-Fan, does he mean Princess Iron-Fan instead? You know- wife of the Bull Demon King?

Monkey, who has ran out of hope of previously being sworn brothers with the Bull Demon King getting him any special treatment in this family around the second time he had to fight a member- isn't overly pleased to hear this. Monkey isn't overly optimistic about his chances for negotiating for the fan, but decides to give a shot anyways.

So Monkey makes his way to the cave and bangs on the door, asking for the Bull Demon King to come out. Instead a young servant girl opens the door, so Monkey asks the girl to announce him to Princess Iron Fan. So she asks for his name to pass along to the Princess and Monkey tells her he's a priest from the land of the east called Sun Wukong. So the girl goes back inside and tells Princess Iron fan that a monk by the name of Sun Wukong is hear to ask to borrow the Palm-Leaf Fan.

Unsurprisingly, upon hearing this the Princess flies into a rage, and gets dressed in her armor before going out to meet him, weapons in hand. Unable to read the mood, Monkey politely greets her as 'sister in law', and tries the whole 'I had an alliance with the Bull Demon King five hundred years ago' spiel one more time. The Princess however doesn't care about any of that, what she wants to know is why Monkey got her son in trouble. Monkey tries to explain that RedBoy started it by trying to eat his master, and honestly he's in a much better position serving Guanyin now a days anyways, so really he did him a favor. However the Princess is still upset, since even though her son wasn't killed, she is still unable to even visit him now.

Monkey tries to suggest a compromise, if she loans him the fan, then after he puts out the fire he'll pay Guanyin a visit and bring RedBoy here so she can see how well he's doing herself, and he'll return the fan to her at the same time. Which I personally find a pretty fair offer, it's nice to see Monkey trying to work things out through negotiation rather then jumping straight to violence. However the Princess offers a compromise- he should instead just stand there and let her hack him up with her sword, and if he can endure it she'll lend him the fan- if not, well he'll be dead anyways and no longer her problem I guess.

Monkey is more then happy to agree to this new deal, and honestly, getting whacked a few times with a sword is probably easier for him then going all the way to Guanyin for a visit anyways. So Monkey just sticks out his head for the Princess to hit until she gets tired and tells her to have at it. So the Princess hits him about fifteen times, but doesn't accomplish anything, so she tries to flee, but Monkey insists she hand over the fan first. The Princess refuses, so Monkey pulls out his staff and the two begin to fight in earnest. The two fight until it starts getting late, and finally realizing that she'll never beat him, the Princess takes out her Palm-Leaf fan, and fans at Monkey, creating a gust of wind that blows him out of her hair.

Monkey is left blowing on this wind throughout the entire night, unable to stop or touch the ground, until he finally manages to catch onto a mountain and bring himself to a halt. And Monkey actually recognizes this mountain from a previous adventure. It's where he defeated the the other wind themed demon the Yellow Robed Demon with the help of Lingji. While he's already in the neighborhood, Monkey decides to visit Lingji to ask for directions back to where he came from. So Monkey goes to Lingji's place, and Lingji asks him if he's acquired the scriptures already. Monkey explains that there's been a slight hiccup in that plan, and that he was actually blown all the way here by Princess Iron fan.

When Monkey asks how far away he is from the Mountain of Flames, Lingji, explains that he is about fifty thousand miles away. Also that he is impressed that Monkey managed to stop when he did since the fan is capable of blowing people eighty four thousand miles. Monkey then asks if Lingji knows how they can overcome this trial, and Lingji explains that it's actually good fortune that Monkey ended up hear again. Because way back when, the Buddha had given Lingji two different items to deal with the Yellow Robed Demon, the first is the dragon staff, that they used on the Yellow Robed Demon. The second however is a Wind-Arresting Elixir that they hadn't needed to use back then, so he still has it. With the Elixir, the fan won't be able to work on Monkey, so Lingji helps sew the pellet into Monkey's collar before sending him on his way.

Monkey once again arrives at Princess Iron-Fan's doorstep, and once again bangs on the door demanding the fan. The Maid from earlier once again reports his presence to her boss, who is surprised he's back so soon, since if he should still be getting blown away by the fan right about now. This time she resolves to blow him away three or four times so that he won't be able to come back at all as she heads back out to meet him. When Monkey see's her, he once again asks to borrow the fan, and says he'll bring it back after he's done. The Princess however isn't having it, since it isn't even about the fan, not really, it's about her not being able to see her son anymore. So the Princess attacks, but this time when she gets tired of fighting and tries to blow Monkey away the fan doesn't work on him. Unsure what else to do, the Princess feel's and seals herself inside her cave.

Rather then banging on the door again, Monkey instead transforms into a tiny mole cricket and sneaks inside. And just in time to, since Princess Iron-Fan is currently calling for tea, which gives Monkey inspiration. So while the maid is pouring the Princess a cup of tea, Monkey takes the opportunity to dive into the tea. Once the Princess drinks the tea, and Monkey finds his way in the Princess's stomach, he decides to make his presence known to her. From inside of her, Monkey once again calls out to borrow the fan. The Princess is horrified and asks how he's inside her house since they locked the doors, but the maid points out that it's worse then that, he's not just in the house, he's inside her.

Monkey confirms to Princess Iron-Fan that he is indeed in her stomach right now, by punching her intestines and causing her unbearable pain. And Monkey keeps up the torture until Princess Iron-Fan finally gives in and begs for mercy, and agrees to loan him the fan. Princess Iron-Fan has one of the maids fetch the fan, once Monkey confirms it's there, he finally leaves through her mouth and transforms back into his usual form. Monkey then thanks her, before taking the fan and returning to Tripitaka and the others.

Tripitaka is delighted to see Monkey back, fan in hand. Monkey then explains his latest adventure and about how Immortal Iron-Fan is actually Princess Iron-Fan and the wife of the Bull Demon King. All caught up on current events, the group travels on-wards towards the mountain until it gets to hot for anyone but Monkey to go any further. So Monkey tells everyone to wait here for him while he goes to the mountain to extinguish the fire.

So Monkey goes to the mountain and fans the flames once, only for the flames to burn even hotter, he fans a second time only for it to become even more intense, and the third makes it even worse until the flames have increased a hundredfold. Seeing that this has not gone at all according to plan, Monkey retreats back to the others, and warns them to run since the fire is coming. After they have retreated to a safe distance, Tripitaka asks Monkey what happened. Monkey throws the fan away saying that he must have been tricked which causes Tripitaka to start crying again.

Monkey explains everything that happened to the others, and said that if he hadn't gotten away in time all his hair probably would have burned up. Pigsy asks why that is, since Monkey is usually pretty fire proof, but monkey explains that he has to prepare ahead of time with a fire repellent sign or magic to protect himself, but this time since he was expecting to put out the fire he wasn't prepared for it. For now though they have to decide what to do next since the fan was a bust.

Before they can get to deep into discussion however, the local mountain god stops by with some lunch and information. He tells them that the fan they have is indeed a fake, and for the real one they are going to have to talk to the Bull Demon King himself.

Current Sun Wukong Stats: Names/Titles: Monkey, The Stone Monkey, The Handsome Monkey King, Sun Wukong (Monkey awakened to the void), Bimawen (Banhorseplague), The Great Sage Equal To Heaven and Pilgrim Sun. Immortality: 5 + 94,000 years Weapon: The Compliant Golden Hooped Rod Abilities: 72 Transformations, Cloud-Somersault, Ability to transform his individual hairs, super strength, Ability to Summon Wind, Water restriction charm, and the ability to change into a huge war form, ability to duplicate his staff, ability to immobilize others, the ability to put others to sleep, and the Fiery eyes and Diamond Pupils, intimidating horses, churning large bodies of water, sleeplessness, seizing the wind, enhanced smell, discerning good and evil within a thousand miles, Spirit Summoning, lock picking, object transformation, distance reduction, vanishing in a flash of light, super healing, transforming others, Invisibility and Wind Resistance Demon Kill Count: 10 + Unknown Number of Minions Human Kill Count: 1039 God's Defeated: 23 + Unknown number Defeats: 7 Crime List: Robbery, Murder, Mass Murder, Arson, Theft, Coercion, Threatening a Government Official, Resisting Arrest, Assault, Forgery, Employee Theft, False Imprisonment, Impersonating a Government Official, Treason, attempted murder, failure to control or report a dangerous fire, desecrating a corpse, breaking and entering, trespassing, violating Tree Law, looting corpses, trading counterfeit goods, criminal threat, animal abuse, Assisting or Instigating Escape, Damage to Religious Property, contaminating a substance for human consumption, Identity Fraud, and Disorderly Conduct Cry Count: 9 + 3 fake cries Mountains Trapped Under: 4

Current Tang Sanzang stats: Names/Titles: River Float, Xuanzang, Tang Sanzang, Tripitaka and the Tang Monk Abilities: Curing Blindness, making branches point a certain direction (allegedly), reciting sutras, pretty privilege, memorization, Heart Sutra and Meditation. Cry Count: 31 Tight Fillet Spell Uses: 63 Paralyzed by fear: 6 Bandit Problems: 3 Kidnapped by demons: 9 Falling Off Horses: 10

Current Bai Long Ma Stats: Names/Titles: Bai Long Ma (White Dragon Horse), Prince of the Western Ocean, and third prince jade dragon of the dragon king Aorun Abilities: Transforming into a human, a water snake, and a horse, eating a horse in one bite, flight, Magic of Water Restriction, Singing, and Sword Dancing. Cry Count: 1 Crime List: Arson, and Grave Disobedience. Contributions to the plot: 3 Kidnapped by demons: 1

Current Zhu Wuneng Stats: Names/Titles: The Marshal of the Heavenly Reeds, Zhu Wuneng (Pig who is aware of ability), Zhu Ganglie, Pigsy, Idiot and Eight Rules. Weapon: Rake Abilities: 36 Transformations, parting water, fighting underwater, cloud soaring, size enhancement and CPR Demon Kill Count/Kill steals: 5 Kidnapped by Demons: 4 Human Kill Count: 1 Failed Flirtation/romances Attempts: 4 Cry Count: 2 Crime List: Sexual Harassment, Murder, Kidnapping, arson, defamation, Damage to Religious Property, contaminating a substance for human consumption, Identity Fraud, Theft and Forcible entry

Current Sha Wujing Stats: Names/Titles: The Curtain-Raising General, Sha Wujing (Sand Aware of Purity), Sandy and Sha Monk Weapon: Monster Taming Staff Abilities: Fighting underwater, Cloud soaring, and fetching water from a well. Demon Kill Count: 1 + Unknown number of minions. Kidnapped by Demons: 3 Human Kill Count: 1 Cry Count: 1 Crime List: Breaking a Crystal Cup, murder, desecration of a human corpse, Damage to Religious Property and contaminating a substance for human consumption

Previous - Masterpost - Next

#journey to the west #jttw read through #jttw #journeythroughjourneytothewest #sun wukong #tang sanzang #zhu wuneng #sha wujing #It's always fun to see more of the bull Demon King family #Since they are the closest thing we get to an overarching villain in this book I think

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detailtilted · 5 months ago

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NEW Enhanced Edition - CHICON 2009 - J2 Breakfast

youtube

Direct link to video. Link to YouTube channel. (13 videos available.)

My latest video is up. 82% of the footage came from the video AgtSpooky sent me. Her video was already on YouTube, but not properly credited to her. I used a few other sources that are credited in my video description.

This video won't look as good as my others, for reasons I've already explained in typically wordy fashion in another post, but I do think it's still quite an improvement versus what's previously been available on YouTube. There are, as usual, some funny moments! I hope you'll find it to be worth watching.

My next video will be the main J2 panel. This is when they first started doing completely combined panels instead of having a combination of solo and joint panels. My turnaround time on the next video will be much slower than it has been up to this point. This is both because the next video will be twice as long as most of my other videos, and also because I have some personal chaos (buying a house/selling a house/moving) that will eat into a lot of my spare time over the next month and a half.

I'll be even less active on Tumblr than usual while this is going on. Whatever spare time I manage to find will probably be dedicated toward video editing rather than social media. If you don't hear much from me over the next month or two, it's definitely not because I've lost interest in my project or the fandom.

Before/after comparison photos...

In addition to these images, there's a 32-second comparison video in this post (the same post I linked to above). The original videos had very heavy flashes which I reduced in the enhanced version, and a screen shot can't demonstrate how big of a difference that makes.

A recap for anyone not familiar with this project…

In December 2023, I started this project to enhance old convention videos. I'm upscaling the videos and making other visual improvements, adding extra content to clarify various references, and adding good color-coded subtitles so you can better understand the sometimes-chaotic audio.

My goal is to publish the best, most complete, and most watchable versions of these older convention panels yet seen, but this is only possible thanks to the fans who captured the footage in the first place and were generous enough to share it with other fans. My video descriptions on YouTube will always credit my sources.

If you have any old convention videos you'd be willing to contribute to this project, please message me! I can also be reached at [email protected]. Even if your videos are on YouTube, the original files, if you still have them, may upscale much better. If I can get them to upscale, I'd happily send the upscaled files back to you for your own collection whether I use them or not.

#J2 #jared padalecki #jensen ackles #jarpad #jackles #sam winchester #dean winchester #supernatural #spn family #spn #CHICON 2009 #supernatural convention #enhanced edition con video #Youtube

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montimer · 5 months ago

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Can I request goofy evil scientist!reader x joker headcanons?

Like the reader is still quite a beginner in being a villain and is not that good. More seen as a joke villain rather then a threat, they just mainly rob banks, steal stuff, the normal cartoony villain shenanigans. They also have a goofy evil laugh.

And I wanna see how the joker will think of that (idk how to phrase it)

Idk really, sorry (⁠ ⁠；⁠∀⁠；⁠)

Sure sure!

Joker x scientist!reader

Gn!reader, reader is a beginner villain

A new villain in gotham. A new pain in the butt for the police. And a new soon to be obsession for our prince of crime.

You are a beginner and for whatever reason you turned to the evil side, you want to make others suffer for it. And their wallets

You begin with simply robbery. Your weapon is either a gun or some toxin, maybe both.

Gotham didn't fail to notice how clumsy and new you were. The other villains just ignored you for the most part. But not him.

Back at the asylum, joker was watching the big tv from one of the rooms. Thats when he noticed you. You looked so different, so unique, so silly! Now you got his attention. The tv showed ur latest crime. And a clip too.

There you were, a bit far away from the camera. He almost got up from his seat to take a better look until- he heard ur laugh. It was so goofy but evil like. It made him crack up. His smile widened upon seeing you. He wanted to know you better, and more about you.

He randomly showed up at your crime. You think hes here to steal before you can. He tells you "You gotta catch me to earn these sweets" he waves the pearls in his hand. You run towards him and he giggles to himself as he watches you chase him.

"Hahahaha! You got this, keep up dear!" He just runs too fast, you can't catch up

You're getting annoyed and choose to stop in your track. "Ah whatever its just some pearls" you turn back to see what else to steal.

He stops too as he notices that you aren't chasing him anymore. He puffs and scolds you. You just ignore him until you hear something. O-oh. Its the cops

He motions his hands for you to run with him and in your hurry you decide to go with him.

Hardly but the two of you escape.

You pant as you stare up at him. "Y-you! Cuz of you i could barley focus, now we only got that stupid necklace.." you stare at it. He giggles as you angrily look up at him.

"You're so cute when your angry, i like ya sweets. Oh, heres your pretty lil necklace" before you could object he put the necklace full of pearls around you.

"Consider it a gift!"

Oh now your mad. "It was mine to begin with! Plus its not for wearing, this thing cost-" he put his fingers to your mouth to shush you up.

"Shhh, ofc its for wearing. You wouldn't sell a gift now would you?" You give him a tired look.

He smiles and pets your head.

"Good good. Well would you look at the time? I gotta slip! See you around!" He bows and waves as he runs to the other direction.

You just watch him until he disappears, he seemed to like that since he took one last look back. Oh well, maybe next time you'll succeed. Wait..did he said see you around? Oh god no

#the joker #joker #joker x reader #the joker x reader #the joker x gn reader #joker x gn reader #animated joker

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tomorrowusa · 3 months ago

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Trump is emo because he's claiming that Google search results make him look bad. Maybe this will encourage him to sell a new official (and overpriced) product: Trump Crying Towels®.

If you act like an asshole, make frequent threats against others, and promise to destroy American democracy, of course the search results for you will be negative. D'oh!

In his typical sore loser mode, Trump is promising to prosecute Google if he's put back in the Oval Office.

Donald Trump threatened on Friday to direct the justice department to pursue criminal charges against Google if he is elected president, claiming the company was unfairly displaying negative news articles about him but not his 2024 election opponent Kamala Harris. The complaint – the latest threat on the campaign trail from Trump to wield the power of the presidency in response to enemies real or perceived – came in an abrupt post on Truth Social. “It has been determined that Google has illegally used a system of only revealing and displaying bad stories about Donald J Trump, some made up for this purpose while, at the same time, only revealing good stories about Comrade Kamala Harris,” Trump said in the post.

Trump is trying to influence the refs. More precisely, he's trying to intimidate the refs.

There are already countless trolls (real and bots) and foreign agents of disinformation working on Trump's behalf. He won't be happy until every outlet of information stops reporting the truth about his depravity.

#donald trump #weird donald #maga #republicans #censorship #search engines #google #election 2024 #vote blue no matter who

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cowboysandcannolis · 4 months ago

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Ties that Bond-Chapter I

An afternoon that was meant to be spent on a blind date turns into a tryst, and perhaps more, with fellow sorcerer Kento Nanami…

“Trust me, Y/N. He’s a hell of a catch and he needs someone. Handsome, courteous, he’s exactly your type.”

Your pen twirled easily between your fingers as you sat beneath the shade of the awning at your local cafe, the summer sun searing the sidewalk a mere few feet away. Your other hand had a death grip on the cup filled with your iced latte, which threatened to slosh over the edge of the glass with each of your anxious movements.

Humming nervously, tapping your shoe upon the shaded concrete “I’m not so sure, Kara. You know my life is—complicated.” You winced as the words fell from your lips ineloquently. Your life was an injustice to the meaning of the word complicated.

“You always say that and yet I don’t know what’s so complicated about selling makeup, hell you travel for a living, what’s so difficult about that?”

Shit. That’s the latest in a long string of lies that you told your friend.

Kara had been a wonderful friend to you until the end of middle school. When you had disappeared entirely from your previous school without a trace, enrolled in another school, started a new life. It wasn’t until approximately five years later that you stood on a street corner when she grabbed you by the wrist and insisted you explain to her where you had just up and disappeared to. And she never let go.

Kara was one of the most stubborn people you knew, but that’s why she was one of your only friends that you spoke to regularly that didn’t share your lifestyle. She insisted on being apart of your life, no matter how much it irked you some days. You could easily put a stop to this, make her forget that you ever crossed paths and yet, you never did.

“Kara-“

“Listen, you don’t need to explain it to me, okay? Just give this a chance. Since I’ve gone to the trouble of arranging it. I swear I’ve arranged a date for the most stubborn person on earth. If I didn’t care for you I would have saved myself the trouble.”

“Right-you’re right…thank you.”

Just as she began to prattle on about the suitor that she had arranged for you your ears perked up, drawn to something unseen. Down the street, through the alley.

“Kara, I have to-“

“Oh, is he there? Okay. Have fun, be good! Tell me everything later!”

The phone fell silent as you rose from your seat, chair scraping the concrete behind you. You closed your eyes to concentrate. The din of minds, all in different states, some were upset, some were angry, some were thrilled, it was a never ending sea in all directions, hitting you like a tidal wave. Concentration dwindled that sea to a lake, a pool, a stream…a trickle until you found the solitary source that you were seeking.

A curse. One that moved with its own thoughts, its own constitution.

You moved like a sleepwalker, in a trance like state, fixated on your target. Eyes closed to hide the milky, emerald haze that overcame them with the activation of your technique, eyes did nothing for you anyway. Just as you would be about to bump against one passerby on the street, your feet would redirect with a jolt, bouncing off the cloud of their neural oscillation just in the nick of time. Like a pinball you make your way towards your target.

…

When your eyes opened once more, the green film fading away as you took stock of your surroundings, viscous purple liquid painted every surface in a ten foot radius, including your once shiny and pristine patent leather shoes. For all the wonders of your technique you could never count on cleanliness, curse brains would splatter without discretion.

Even a few pinpricks of purple managed to fleck your skirt, you pinched the bridge of your nose, sighing.

“I didn’t think a soiled pair of Mary Jane’s was enough to get you down, Y/N.” A familiar voice called from further down the alley, followed by the tell tale click clack of expensive loafers on cobblestones.

“Easy for you to say while wearing freshly polished loafers, Nanami.” As annoyed as you were about the state of your clothes you couldn’t be all too annoyed when in the presence of your favorite fellow sorcerer.

You turned on your heel, a particulate of curse brain squelching beneath your shoe in an unsettling manner, nonetheless you found yourself brushing your hair away from your face and offering a soft smile.

Peering at you over his green tinted glasses, hazel eyes glimmered with amusement at the spectacle you caused, liquidating what was once a level two curse.

“I see you have everything well under control here.”

“Did you think otherwise?” You scoffed, feigning hurt.

“Never. I simply couldn’t pass up on the chance to greet the one and only tolerable co-worker that I have.”

“Likewise. Shall we?”

“Let’s.”

In practiced form he offered you an arm, clad in his fine tan suit, you wove your arm with his and let him lead you out of the alleyway. It was a rare treat the two of you were in the same place at once, usually it occurred whilst your two schools were at odds, with very little time to catch up.

“Were you sent here on assignment? I wasn’t made aware that the curse was in the area.”

“Not at all, I am supposed to be free for the day but, alas, duty calls. You would think the signature would be a drop in the ocean in such a crowded place but…” You signed heavily, leaning on your fellow sorcerer just a tad, feeling deflated “Here I am, shoes soaked in goo.”

Nanami chuckled “Well if you are free for the day then no need pouting over a pair of ruined shoes, not like you have anywhere to be.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. Kara set me up to meet someone and now I am going to have to stand him up, poor thing. I was just going to be polite, but now there isn’t much I can do to explain to a non-sorcerer why I’m covered in purple goo.”

All at once the thick bicep that your hand laid upon tensed, a wave of intense emotions rolling off of him and crashing over you, a dizzying, intense feeling.

Lips suddenly hovered just above your ear startling you, still stricken by the sudden change.

“You say hell to all that and spend that afternoon with me and I’ll buy you a hundred pairs of shoes.”

The intensity of his voice and warm breath tickling your ear caused a shiver to run up your spine, your body betraying your mind before he even finished his proposition.

This would be far from the first tryst with Nanami Kento. Countless times over the years your paths would cross and you’d wind up falling into his bed, chanting his name like a ritual. It was animalistic, it was powerful and it made your mutual cursed energy spike off the charts.

The best part about Nanami that was after the deed was done, a time or two, he’d make you lunch, or dinner or whatever meal was appropriate at that time of day. He’d worship you, wait on you hand and foot if you’d let him and if you decided to stay for a day, a week, or forever. He’d let you. The wonderful, charming bastard.

The problem with infatuation was that it was addictive. Every time you’d stay longer, finding it increasingly difficult to leave each time. Domestic bliss was never an option for someone in your profession, much less two people in your profession. Someone would die, someone would leave. And yet, your mind was betrayed by your naive heart. You were as madly in love with this man as you were with the blonde boy at the rival school all those years ago.

“Kento…” You whispered, sounding so helpless as your skin grew oh so warm. The tone of your voice was enough permission for the blonde man to kiss your ear, and then your neck.

•

Green clouded over your vision as you gasped wildly to fill your lungs with enough oxygen to fuel the blazing fire within you. Your hands were bound over your head by Nanami’s spotted tie, wound expertly round one of the bed posts.

“Oh, Ken, oh Ken—!!” You cried out as the blond man’s head bobbed rhythmically between your thighs.

You let out a shuttering cry of pleasure, tears rolling down your face, as you neared your peak the electricity between you two surged, your feelings of all time pleasure forcing themselves onto him as well, causing him to whimper against your clit.

Your breasts heaved and skin cooled, letting your head roll back against the pillows as you stared lazily at the bonds above your head through an emerald haze. You felt incredible, unstoppable perhaps. Let any curse try its luck in this moment and see what happens.

A moment later large hands began to untie your bindings, you let your hands fall limp once they were free, closing your eyes and blindly nuzzling against his warm body.

“Let me draw you a bath, goddess.” Nanami whispered, pressing a kiss against your mused hair as he moved to do so.

“No, please. Just give me a moment to enjoy this…” He stilled, allowing you to nuzzle into the crook of his neck, just enjoying his scent, lulling you off to sleep.

You woke some time later to the smell of food cooking, a quick swipe of a hand over the sheets was enough to confirm that Nanami was gone and had been for some time. And yet, the blankets were tucked around you with such thought and care, your lips to quirked into a fond smile. Throwing on only your dress, with no additional undergarment, you padded out of the bedroom.

The blonde man was just pulling a meat thermometer from the oven, turning to wash it off in the sink as he caught your visage, a tiny smirk appearing on his lips.

“You’re awake. I was going to wake you in a few minutes when the cordon bleu was finished.” Nanami busied himself pouring a glass of wine, a favorite Cabernet of yours, you noticed by the label. He either had it on hand with you in mind or made a trip out to get it while you were asleep. Incredibly thoughtful, either way.

He placed the delicate glass of ruby liquid between your fingers, meeting your smoldering gaze with his hazel eyes, studying your expression. Honey brown most of the way around with green streaks throughout both eyes. A little detail that you always kept catalogued in your mind.

The hint was taken and he met your lips in a slow, open mouthed kiss, your hand that was not preoccupied with the glass slinging around his neck.

As his kitchen timer chimed from beside the oven Nanami pulled away, breathlessly, running a hand through his blonde locks. You had riled him up in a way that he wasn’t anticipating. “Y/N, the food is going to burn if you keep this up.”

Grasping the blonde’s sharp chin, forcing him to look down at you, a rare wide eyed, startled expression on his face.

“Let. It.” You commanded, kissing his lips once more, leaving a sharp, lingering bite of his bottom lip before pulling away.

The uncertainty in his face was gone in a millisecond, replaced with a predatory look. You loved it.

Strong arms encircled each of your thighs, lifting you up onto the cold marble counter. You were quick to carelessly discard your wine glass, sliding it across the surface so you could meet his fervent kisses with even more enthusiasm, grasping his face, pulling at his hair, tearing at his shirt.

“Ohhh, you are so bad.” Nanami hissed as you undoubtedly left deep, perhaps even bleeding, scratches with your fingernails on his back through his undershirt.

Nanami was quick to discard his trousers, as quick as he could be with you grabbing and kissing all over him like a bitch in heat.

Once freed from his trousers his cock bobbed intently, head a deep pink and marked with a bead of precum. You make a show of licking your lips like the cock-hungry vixen you were in that moment.

“Ohh no, I don’t trust you not to eat me alive right now with that look you’re giving me. Ass on the edge of the counter. Now.” The commanding tone caused you to smile, sliding right to the edge of the counter, pliant as he slid between your thighs, your knees on either side of his hips. You were quick to turn on him and lock your legs together behind his back, forcing the angle of entry that he was lining up to be sharper, undoubtedly deeper.

Nanami huffed in frustration but let your form of punishment be selfevident, pressing himself inside of you harshly with little warning. You hissed, wincing as he pushed relentlessly inside of you.

“That wouldn’t have happened if you let me do things my way.” He scolded, though he smirked and his tone softened, starting a slower, softer rhythm. “If you just do things my way, pet, I’ll treat you nice. You know I love to treat you nice.”

And you did like when Nanami was soft and worshipped you. However, on this night you were just too full of mischievous energy and just too dead set on challenging him. It had been awhile, you craved the blonde sorcerer putting you in your place.

You let Kento continue his ‘nice’ pace, head and torso lying back upon the cold countertop as he thrusted into you, he was clearly very content.

“See, pet?” The blonde soothed in a soft tone “When you don’t fight me things are so much-“ His hand traveled to caress your cheek and you took your opportunity to be naughty, biting at his thick index finger. Never enough to harm him but enough to give him a shock.

In a second his hand was encircling your throat, squeezing hard enough to cause bloodflow to slow and your mind to become hazy in the most lovely way. And the way he stared down at you so intently caused you to gush, you were sure he felt it.

“What did I just say?!” He boomed, putting more pressure on your throat and you fought back a grin.

“That’s it. If you can’t be good then I’ll treat you as such.”

At that he exited you, pulling hard on your hair, forcing you to arch your back uncomfortably, knees scraping the counter top as he forced you down onto the counter, stomach and breasts pressing against the cool material. He kept his menacing grip on your hair as he suddenly shoved himself inside you, moving at a punishing pace. You moaned, cheek squished against the counter as he used you punishingly.

As soon as he finished inside of you the harsh grip on your hair was released as he sighed breathlessly, pressing a kiss against the small of your back and rubbing a soothing circle with his big, warm palm.

“I’m sorry. But you ask for it.” His menacing tone long gone, play was over. You smiled, raising yourself up to look back at him. “Indeed I did.”

Just as Nanami began to clean up the utter mess you had made of the kitchen there came a heavy, frantic knocking at the front door of his apartment. Your eyes met his hazel ones, sharing a worried look before you hopped off the counter and fled into his bedroom.

“Break it up, break it up! Animals. You two are animals!”

The ohhh so familiar voice of Satoru Gojo echoed through Nanami’s apartment, causing you to groan from your place in the bedroom, rummaging through Nanami’s dresser to find something suitable to wear. You ended up with a white T shirt that was long enough to be sensible dress, though being careful to cover your breasts with crossed arms.

“Getting it on like National Geographic in here!”

Padding out of the bedroom in your makeshift nightgown, arms crossed in front of your chest, showing your dissatisfaction clearly. The white haired sorcerer was turned away from you, gesturing wildly at the spilled glass of red wine on the counter and the smoke rising from the oven that Nanami was frantically attending to. This may have been funny if you weren’t so angry at the interruption.

As your soft footfalls echoed on the floors Gojo whirled around, pointing an accusatory finger at you. Though by the quirk of his lip this was all fun and games for him.

“You! What do you think you’re doing to poor Nanami, killing him?!”

Letting out a heavy, irritated sigh you rubbed your tired eyes “Gojo, what are you doing here and why is what we’re doing of any consequence to you?”

“He’s being a pervert!” Nanami snapped from behind the oven, placing the baking sheet with its well done meal on top of the oven. A blue oven mitt incased his hand, which was rather adorable, you decided.

“No!!” Gojo shot back, making a dramatic show of crossing his long arms over his chest, pouting “I am highly offended that you would say such a thing!”

“Fine, then tell me you didn’t just hear and or see everything that just happened!”

“Here I am just trying to visit my old buddy Nanami and-“

“Ughh, Gojo!” You cried in irritation, eyes flashed a deep, pupil-less green as your irritation grew, the bickering men became silent abruptly, the air growing thick. Being a level one sorcerer you probably couldn’t succeed in popping Satoru Gojo’s head, not without a solid connection to each of his temples and his infinity off, but man, would he hate for you to attempt to do so.

“Okay, no need to go there. Got it. Put your angry eyes away, Y/N.” Gojo added hastily, pale palms raised high in surrender.

“I’m here to brief Nanami on a mission but hey, I’m no cockblocker-“

“-you literally were just being a cockblocker-“

“-So! I will graciously take this mission off of your hands because you are enjoying the company of a lady friend this weekend and I am not. Since that’s never happened in the history of the world before. Can I get a rousing round of ‘Thank you, Gojo!’?”

The white haired man threw out a hand towards his audience, your eyes slid over to Nanami, his to yours, sharing a look, absolutely unimpressed.

In the silence you even threw out a soft, fake cough that echoed off the walls of the apartment, Nanami’s lips twitched, fighting a laugh. Gojo’s shit eating smile came crashing down, a sight that warmed your heart.

“You’re both so mean. Honestly, you’re perfect for each other. Fine. Make the mission your little date. Don’t say I never tried to do anything for you!��

Gojo threw the manilla folder that contained the notes for the assignment onto the coffee table as he headed for the door.

“One more thing! Don’t forget to wrap it up. I tell my students that safe sex is very-“

With each word out of his mouth your eyes glowed a more intense shade of green and Gojo would swear he felt the slightest stirrings of a headache coming on, even with his Infinity.

“Yeah, okay, bye!” The door slammed shut behind him and you shook your head.

“He’s such an idiot. I don’t know how you survived attending the same high school.”

Scooping up the folder you flipped through the pages, sitting on the sofa to take it in. Nanami joined you a few moments later with a fresh glass of wine and a plate of only slightly singed food, setting both on the coffee table in front of you.

“What are we dealing with here?”

“Abandoned ritualistic site, estimated to be multiple grade one and two curses….Close to a popular footpath for tourists….On Okinawa. They’ve allotted five days on the island to eliminate the curses….”

“So what you’re implying is…we wipe out the site in one day and spend the remainder of the week on a paid vacation?….” Nanami proposed as you crawled into his lap, tossing the folded back onto the coffee table, a devious smile on your face.

“I love how you think.”

—————————————————————————-

Surprise, the next chapter is a (paid) vacation trip. What else would suit our sweet Nanami?

#jjk x reader #nanami kento/reader #nanami kento #nanami x you #nanami x reader #jjk

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directsellingnow · 1 month ago

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Business Coach & Mentor Shiv Arora के साथ टॉप लीडर्स के लिए Maharashtra में हुआ विशेष Training Session

Network Marketing Latest News: Maharashtra में Direct Selling Industry के टॉप लीडर्स के लिए एक महत्वपूर्ण Training Session आयोजित किया गया, जिसमें मुख्य वक्ता के रूप में प्रसिद्ध Business Coach और Mentor Mr. Shiv Arora ने अपनी उपस्थिति दर्ज कराई। इस कार्यक्रम में उनकी प्रेरणादायक चर्चाओं और गहन motivational talks ने प्रतिभागियों को न केवल प्रोत्साहित किया बल्कि उनकी प्रदर्शन क्षमता (performance)…

#directsellingnow #NetworkMarkeingAwards #Business Coach & Mentor Shiv Arora #Communication Skills #Direct selling Industry #Direct Selling News in Hindi #direct selling now #Direct Selling Now (DSN)#Effective Leadership Strategies #Goal Setting and Achievement #Network Marketing (MLM)#Network Marketing Latest News #Network Marketing Tips #Skill Development #Success In Direct Selling #Training Session with Shiv Arora #डायरेक्ट सेलिंग ताज़ा ख़बरें #नेटवर्क मार्केटिंग समाचार

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mariacallous · 5 months ago

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Nearly four years ago, the Department of Homeland Security stated for the first time that domestic violent extremists, rather than foreign terrorists, had become “the most persistent and lethal threat” to the United States. The F.B.I.’s director later told a congressional committee that the primary threat came from adherents to “some kind of white-supremacist-type ideology.” When Joe Biden took office, shortly after the attack on the Capitol, he directed staff to draft the first-ever “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism,” which promised “a comprehensive approach to addressing the threat while safeguarding bedrock American civil rights and civil liberties.” But, in the intervening time, have we become any safer? In a riveting narrative from this week’s issue, David D. Kirkpatrick explores:

The limits that law-enforcement agencies face in going after potential homegrown terrorists, and how a growing number of amateur investigators and vigilantes—who make use of the latest technology and operate without the “protections, training, or restraints that come with a badge”—have stepped into the void.

How far-right groups often operate as multilevel-marketing schemes, in which members are incentivized to sell branded materials to an ever-growing number of recruits, effectively paying for their operations by amassing new members—even those who aren’t yet “fashed out,” meaning fully fascist.

Why the F.B.I. is reluctant to categorize extremists with terms such as “far right” or “white nationalist,” using instead much broader categories such as “domestic violent extremism,” “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism,” and “anti-government or anti-authority violent extremism.”

The story of an operator with the code name Vincent Washington who infiltrated a white-nationalist organization called Patriot Front, and offered the trove of information he obtained to an online publication called Unicorn Riot, rather than to the police.

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hroscek · 5 months ago

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🛒Dottore shopping headcanons🧾

"Wouldn't it be funny if Dottore went to a grocery store?" - me 2 minutes before I started writing this

Another incredibly silly concept from me, your humble Dottore content deliverer. Not really an AU, but definitely taking massive liberties when it comes to stretching canon. Probably quite ooc as well.

Warnings: mention of death

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Dottore hadn't gone shopping in ages, not since he joined the Fatui. He never liked people and their mundane activities, preferring to stay inside working on his latest project. Groceries and food preparation had been delegated to his staff and the occasional segment as a punishment so he never really saw a need to even think about it.

That changed when he was sent on a covert mission to a wealthy mansion in Fontaine. His job was to infiltrate the household of a prominent scholar who posed a risk of uncovering the operation in Sumeru. The best way to do so was under the guise of being part of the staff. When he was satisfied his appearance was adequately concealed Dottore signed up for the only position that was available in such short notice: the kitchen inventory assistant.

As his new manager explained his job would be to handle the shopping and delivering of ingredients needed by the cooks. In his endless confidence Dottore almost burst out laughing when he heard his duties. "A delivery boy? Me? The 2nd of the eleven Fatui harbingers? This will be too easy" he thought to himself. Oh how wrong he was.

On his first day he set out for the local market with a shopping list in hand, his mind preoccupied with plans of ending his employer. His contemplation was cut short by the sheer loudness of the crowded market. Children wailed for their parents to buy them sweets, merchants bargained over every last coin and groups of people engaged in lively conversation. Any other extrovert person would find the scene quite endearing, a truly fine display of the friendly culture of Fontaine. But this is Dottore we're talking about so his hatred grew every second he was forced to be there.

The first item on his list was fish for the main course of lunch. He gathered whatever patience was left and walked to the first fish stall. Seeing the glossy eyes of the fish in their dozens unnerved him, despite the centuries spent working with cadavers. He was about to point to a fish he deemed adequate when an older lady kindly pointed out it's eyes had gone cloudy (how he managed to find the only week old fish in a city surrounded by water is anyone's guess). He awkwardly thanked her and left in a hurry without buying a fish. He's sure the cooks will figure something out.

Next he headed for the vegetable stand to look for tomatoes. Without bothering to check for quality he started loading the bag as quickly as he could, hoping to get it over with as soon as he could. The seller, clocking the poor guy as a newbie quoted nearly triple the fair price and Dottore paid without questioning or even thinking to haggle (it's a tomato, how much could it cost? 500 mora?)

Almost done with the grocery run (and his patience) Dottore scanned the flower stands looking for Marcottes. He circled the market around 3 times before a amused shopkeep asked what he was looking for. "ᴹᵃʳᶜᵒᵗᵗᵉˢ." he answered, hoping that the earth beneath him sunk and got him out of this hellish situation (awkward social interaction). The seller giggled "Sorry, no one's selling marcottes this week. There's a supply chain issue with the florists on strike, haven't you heard?" Dottore turned and nearly ran in the other direction without a second word, completely forgetting the mint he was also supposed to buy.

Utterly humiliated Dottore decided to ditch any plans of infiltrating quietly and stormed to the manor, killing the scholar and his family. He'll let someone else figure out the coverup. And so he returned to his dim laboratory, vowing never to go shopping again.

Pantalone still makes fun of him for the tomatoes to this day.

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Thanks for reading! Sorry for the lack of posts today, I'm working on a longer fanfiction so I haven't been able to focus on these shorter posts. Will try and finish it within the next day or so, but in the meanwhile enjoy whatever this is. Also you if you figure out what the dish he was shopping for was I'll write whatever topic of headcanon you want, just comment or send a message.

#my poor boy #he's so introverted someone please help him #dottore #genshin impact #il dottore #genshin dottore #fatui harbingers #fatui headcanon #dottore headcanon #genshin headcanon #tomato #headcanons

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insanityclause · 2 years ago

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EXCLUSIVE: Tom Hiddleston (Thor franchise) and Mark Hamill (Star Wars) are set to star in new Stephen King adaptation The Life Of Chuck, which will be a hot package at the upcoming Cannes market.

Doctor Sleep and The Haunting Of Hill House helmer Mike Flanagan is directing, scripting and producing for Intrepid Pictures alongside fellow producer Trevor Macy.

FilmNation will handle international sales with WME Independent handling domestic.

Based on the short story from King’s 2020 anthology If It Bleeds, The Life of Chuck is three separate stories linked to tell the biography of Charles Krantz in reverse, beginning with his death from a brain tumour at 39 and ending with his childhood in a supposedly haunted house.

The script, which was adapted prior to the WGA strike, has been in the works for several months with Hiddleston set to play the title character and Hamill joining for the role of Albie.

According to the production, the genre project will draw tonally from Stand By Me, The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile.

Golden Globe and Olivier winner Hiddleston is best known for Thor, Avengers and TV series The Night Manager, as well as stage projects such as Betrayal and Hamlet for Ken Branagh.

Hamill is best known for his portrayal of Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars movies and reprised his role in both the sequels as well as the second season of The Mandalorian and season one of The Book of Boba Fett. He recently appeared in Netflix’s Sandman and will star in Intrepid and Netflix’s House Of Usher, which will air later this year.

Stephen King, aka ‘The King Of Horror’, is among the all-time best-selling authors. Among his books and short stories to have been adapted into hit movies are Carrie, The Shining, Pet Sematary, It, Stand By Me, The Running Man, The Shawshank Redemption, and The Green Mile.

This is the latest project to join a bumper Cannes market slate for FilmNation. Also on the lineup are Amy Adams-Paul Rudd comedy The Invite, Dave Bautista action-thriller The Cooler, and Andrew Garfield project Voyagers, among others.

Hiddleston is represented by UTA (US), Hamilton Hodell (UK), and Johnson Shapiro Slewett & Kole; Hamill is represented by Gersh and Kleinberg Lange Cuddy & Carlo; Flanagan, Macy and Intrepid are represented by WME, with VanderKloot Law also representing Flanagan and Reder & Feig handling Macy.

#tom hiddleston #mark hamill #the life of chuck #stephen king

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waitmyturtles · 1 year ago

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THE MORNING AFTER: ONLY FRIENDS, EPISODE 6 ("DECIDING IN YOUR YOUTH / ON THE POLICY OF TRUTH") EDITION

In segment 2/4 of this latest episode of Only Friends, Boston let us know what year the show's mind is on.

Some stuff was percolating around this time, some of it majorly important, and other stuff important maybe only to someone like myself, a baby born in the 1980s and raised in the 1990s who happens to have a thing for 20th-century British electronic rock.

In February 1997, the infamous "The One With The Morning After" episode of Friends came out -- when Rachel discovers that Ross had slept with someone else when, "WE WERE ON A BREAK!"

In September 1997, Linda Tripp begins recording her conversations with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, about Lewinsky's affair with the U.S. president of the time, Bill Clinton.

In January 1998, the first public news of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal comes out.

And in 1998, one of my favorite songs ever, "Policy of Truth," is released by one of the greatest bands of all time, Depeche Mode (ya feel me, Sand?). I thought a lot about this song, about the meaning of truth in the hands of young folks, and I thought a LOT about politics, during this episode.

It's just time to pay the price / For not listening to advice / And deciding in your youth / On the policy of truth

Truth, Bill, Monica, cheating, Friends. It's a lot. To me, this episode dealt with politics, with the nature of what "truth" means, what truth means when it is created and/or revealed at a particular point in time, and how young people begin to learn about the correlation between truth and consequences in safe, unsafe, and enduring ways.

We meet Boston's dad, shown above. We see he's got a flavor about him. He's quite casual with his son ("Ton, you dipshit!"). He's borrowing help from his son's friend for campaign materials (ooookay, lol, where is your campaign manager), while smoochin' on a Scotch.

What are campaign materials? Campaign materials -- posters, mailers, policies, commercials, etc. -- are the selling of an image. A political campaign is not quite about truth. A political campaign is a selling of a story that candidates want voters to buy with their votes. It's reality....-ish. It's a kind of truth that is ultimately selective and marketed to a particular voting audience that will hopefully allow that candidate to win and gain power.

There was someone else playing a political game, until his game crumbled. Top was playing a political game.

Before Mew blew Top's shit UP (Mew would have made Linda Tripp proud, goddamn), Top thought his political game was selling. He thought his IMAGE was selling. He thought his secret about his sex with Boston, while him and Top had reset and were not officially boyfriends again ("we were on a break"), was safe.

We saw Top's true nature come out time and time again, to Boston, to Nick, to Sand. We saw his aggressiveness and his confidence, his assuredness about his success as a top-tier man, directed to everyone EXCEPT Mew, with whom Top had to play a different game -- a game of touch-and-go, a game of restraint, a game of change, and certainly a game of withholding and/or manipulating certain truths about himself (Top) in order to continue to win Mew's heart. Before the in-bed blow-up at the end of the episode, Top even planted a guilt trip on Mew -- digging into Mew's continued distrust of Top by asking Mew to PLEASE consider everything that Top had changed for Mew.

Someone else was called out for playing a dishonest political game. Boston calls out Ray for not being honest about his feelings for Mew. Boston says to Ray, as Ray looks on in shock, below:

In this scene, I realized something. The only person NOT playing a game of deception at this point is Boston. Boston -- while an absolute jerk and asshole -- KNOWS he is these things. He doesn't fight off allegations that he is "nasty." He knows what he likes. He is honest about how he acts. He is truthful to his feelings. He is a jerk -- but he doesn't lie. (Or at least, he hasn't lied, yet.) He happens to keep secrets and withhold truths, but he hasn't distorted his image to try to fool anyone -- the way that Top has, the way that Ray has. He is utterly direct about his intentions with Nick, and he leaves it up to Nick to deal with his (Boston's) brutal honesty.

(Before I unwind on Boston to bring together these thoughts on sex, politics, and truth, I want to note that we had two instances of advice from GROWN-UPS -- from the quartet's business professor, and from Sand's mom -- that playing with friendship, work, love, and business, can result in awkward consequences. Finally, we begin to see a creep of the grown-up Greek chorus offering its thoughts on the antics of this group of aloof students who are almost Seinfeld-ian in their disdain of how they may hurt each other, others, and even themselves with their behaviors. This group has decided right now, in its youth, on its policies of truth. And Seinfeld, along with Friends, was the aloof epitome of the 1990s.)

The reason why I interjected that thought on grown-ups and consequences here is that both Boston and Ray had different takes on "truth" in this episode than Top. Like I said: Top has an image that he had been selling to Mew until the very end of the episode.

Boston and Ray, on the other hand, have relationships with truth in which they are unaware of the consequences of their almost thoughtless honesty (and in Ray's case, his simultaneous dishonesty). What do I mean by that?

As I mentioned before: Boston isn't deceitful. He's just brutal. Boston is brutally honest about his feelings and intentions -- and he doesn't realize that people like Nick, or Gap (DRAKE) may interpret sex, and feelings that might come from or after sex, differently than him. And those different feelings, from different people, will almost always have consequences of a kind that Boston is clearly not prepared to deal with. The biological urge that many have to be close or clingy after sex? The implication that if you have sex with someone, that you might automatically be “dating”? The theory that maaaaannny people have that sex is a way INTO a relationship (and not the other way around)? All of these notions need communication. I posit that Boston’s been VERY clear in his communication that he is NOT into ANYTHING related to a relationship—but he’s not aware that others do not think like him, and that WILL have consequences for him.

Ray, in that drunk and high performance of a lifetime at YOLO (cc @liyazaki LOLLLLL), thinks that he's saving his friends with a round of truth-telling. By being so blind to the feelings of others -- and, really, to ignore the rights and privacy of others to deal with their own truths on their own time -- Ray BLASTS past any of consequences that he might face, and that his friends may face, as he reveals their secrets, one by one.

@lurkingshan noted in one of her meta posts yesterday that Mew punched Ray at the bar in part to control the release of the truth of Top cheating on Mew, to leave that little bit out, so that Mew could have his own "gotcha" moment later at home with Top.

You know what that was? That was politics, baby. That was a HELL of a power move, for Mew to literally PUNCH someone out of his way, so that Mew could clinch a win for himself -- vis à vis a brutal truth that very clearly hurt and impacted him, either through his love for Top, and/or through embarrassment for his own reputation, as Shan notes.

I'm gonna tie this ALL together in just a moment -- but I want to make one very last note about the truth and a character. Sand runs to Ray in the parking lot after Ray's blow-up. Sand admits his feelings to Ray. Ray pushes him away and gets behind the wheel. And Sand hops on his bike and follows Ray.

At this point in the series, I posit that Sand knows exactly what he is getting into. (I'm SMDH about it, but he knows what he's getting into, god fucking damn it, SAND, baka.)

He's NOT deceiving himself. He's being honest with his feelings, like Boston is -- but, unlike Boston, I believe Sand is very fully aware of the consequences that his feelings may lead him to face. Remember that Sand is not a part of the original aloof quartet. He's not one with the liars, like Cheum and Ray. He's not one with Boston, who doesn't think ahead. He's not one with Mew, who is insecure, conniving, and now potentially vengeful. Sand, the goddamn romantic, is caught beneath a landslide on a champagne supernova with his feelings, and will clearly ride them out, with intention. (I want to SHAKE HIS DAMN SHOULDERS, but anyway.) (GMMTV, why do you have to play First like this. I just finished Not Me. You took the anarchy outta my boy. Now he’s blubbering for another problematic dude. Can we just. Let. First. I dunno. Anyway.)

So.... whew. What of all of this?

I take this episode as one that says:

Truth is what you make of truth. Truth -- whether it's the presentable truth, the not-totally-complete truth, the whole and unedited truth, or in the words of Californians, your own truth -- will have consequences when it is revealed. And a huge part of maturity is in one's handling of those revelations when they are made.

When you are young, you don't have the benefit of years and years of time and life to recognize that your actions may have consequences, some that are fleeting, some that will last a lifetime. A huge point of one's young adulthood is how you are shaped by the consequences of your actions and your decisions -- and by seeing how your actions affect other people, either intentionally or unintentionally.

Sex and politics rarely, if ever, mix well. For Boston's dad.... what will be revealed about Boston is not gonna be good for his campaign. And Boston's own life may well be impacted for a good chunk of his lifetime.

But, more than anything else, this theme of politics that I saw in this episode reflected for me -- of course, as always -- a kind of ephemerality in this series. You know why?

Politics, unless it is INCREDIBLY corrupt, always has term limits. Unless you're Putin or Mugabe: power unto a leader, or a group of leaders, will almost always come to an end.

The image will fade. The rhetoric will wither out.

The politics will always change -- because people always change, ideas always change.

HOWEVER. The consequences of one's actions in politics may last a lifetime, or lifetimes. If you REALLY fuck up? You’ll be known for that for your life.

The OF quartet is heading into a dalliance between impermanence and permanence, as well as with consequences that their aloofness has not prepared them for, and it's bound to be devastating. Many of them tried to play games in this episode. Almost all of them are unaware that these games will have long-lasting effects. Some of them (like Nick and Sand) are still playing games. And these games, these risks, are bound to end in many of them ending up as losers.

The following rule is NOT ephemeral — it is a permanent truth: in politics, there will ALWAYS be losers. That is always the case, and will always be the case. There are going to be a lot of losers by the time this show ends.

(EPHEMERALITY SQUAD, HAPPY SUNDAY! Thanks for tagging me in your meta yesterday! @ranchthoughts @chickenstrangers @slayerkitty @twig-tea @clara-maybe-ontheroad @distant-screaming @lurkingshan @neuroticbookworm)

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