#Link Festival

[freshbeeth]

lives were destroyed

[splatoonusna]

Players from North America and Canada can now get the Grand Festival wristband from My Nintendo Rewards for 300 Platinum Points!

US - [Link] Canada - [Link]

[earlycuntsets]

"Article By Christina Fuoco-Karasinski

Normally a preppy college town baked in desert heat, Tempe, Arizona was bathed in darkness Friday night thanks to the black-clad denizens who descended upon Tempe Beach Park for My Chemical Romance’s tour kickoff. The band eschewed their black-and-white Black Parade uniforms for casual street clothing and tore through a ninety-minute set that focused primarily on 2006’s The Black Parade. However, the New Jersey-based band, playing as part of the two-day Circle K Tempe Music Festival, went back to their 2004 breathrough album Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge for its opening and closing numbers: impassioned versions of breakout hits “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” and “Helena,” respectively.

Frontman Gerard Way gains a little more confidence with each passing tour, and for this show he channeled the spirit of Mick Jagger: shimmying across the stage, stopping to wiggle his hips on a catwalk that projected into the mosh pit. During “This Is How I Disappear,” his bassist brother Mikey Way (wearing a fantastic T-shirt that announced, “Mikey Fuckin Way”) violently shook his head as Gerard encouraged the audience to raise their right hands.

“Thanks for coming out to the fucking rock show,” Gerard said while introducing “Dead!” “Are you all ready to die?” Luckily, nobody bit the dust before the band closed the show in mid-tour form. The group that began in garages in New Jersey has graduated to one of the top arena acts in the country, and its members wear it awfully well. The kids, as they say, are all right.``

photos mark peterman for rollingstone.com"

03/28/2008 tempe music festival tempe beach park tempe az

[juckalope]

Linktober Day 17 & 18 - Dragons x Shopkeeper 🏮

[demilypyro]

I'm streaming the SPLATOON 3 GRAND FESTIVAL with @inkie-heart

We're fighting for THE PRESENT. Come hang out!

https://twitch.tv/demilypyro

[blueskittlesart]

the master works discourse on twitter is killing me. none of these bitches understood the game or its characters AT ALL

[mochiobonio]

sidon taking his classmate aka his secret crush to go watch the fireworks with him ^^

[weareravershq]

REMA | Performing at Wireless Festival

[mobius-m-mobius]

#too soon NASA... too soon 😅🎄

[alyssims]

ღ Christmas trees🎄

⊰ Christmas tree 1 | Christmas tree 2 | Christmas tree 3 ⊱

⊰ Christmas tree 4 | Christmas tree 5 | Christmas tree 6 ⊱

⊰ Christmas tree 7 | Christmas tree 8 | Christmas tree 9* ⊱

[dontforgetukraine]

"It is our responsibility to categorically reject any attempts to excuse or rehabilitate the Russian war crimes being committed in Ukraine, and to ensure that the suffering of Russia’s victims is neither forgotten nor minimized — it’s the very least we can do for the tens of thousands of Ukrainians whose lives they stole and destroyed."

—Kate Tsurkan, Kyiv Independent Reporter

Source: Opinion: Russian soldiers in Ukraine are ‘ordinary guys’ who commit horrific war crimes

[theultracharmingladynoire]

(X)

[marlynnofmany]

A Feat of Minor Daring

(Related side project: Prank War!)

~~~

If you have to wait around for a client to bring you something to deliver, waiting on a landing pad with spectacular scenery is not a bad way to do it. Most of the rest of the crew was inside the ship — shuffling the boxes from our other client of the day, and doing any number of other mundane things — so it was just Paint and me enjoying the alien landscape. Their loss. 

I was appreciating the views, while Paint was really there for the smells. I kept pointing out particularly vivid splashes of color among the sea-anemone-shaped trees, while Paint caught whiffs of enticing things. 

“Ooh, what do you think that sharp scent is?” Paint asked when a cool breeze gusted past. She pulled her heat scarf closer. She was also wearing a heat sticker plastered to her scaly chest, which seemed like overkill to me, but I wasn’t a coldblooded lizard alien. I just had a sweater for the chill. 

“Your guess is better than mine,” I said, sniffing the air. “I’m going to go with ‘some sort of plant.’”

A cheerful jumble of musical notes chimed from the treeline where winged fauna hid among tentacle-branches. It sounded remarkably like several ringtones going off at the same time. I was about to ask Paint if she thought it was animals imitating tech, or maybe just a coincidence of evolution, when wild flapping heralded an explosion of feathers across the clearing. 

Colorful bird-things soared over us, their wings a riot of fiery shades and their bodies lined in speckled back feathers over bright blue scales. It was a glorious streak of color, and they sounded like a pile of phones all ringing at once. I had to grin at the sight. 

Paint just said, “I think they’re the source of the smell. How lovely.”

Then a straggler flapped out after the others, and I stopped grinning. 

It was trailing a plastic bag caught around its foot, just like the ones still causing trouble for animals on Earth. The poor thing must have been scavenging in town. By the time it collapsed halfway across the clearing, I was already moving, tugging my sweater off and sneaking up on the bird.

Paint squeaked, “What are you doing?”

“It needs help,” I said, keeping my voice low. The alien bird was breathing hard from the effort of fighting that much extra drag, and hopefully no additional problems. It hadn’t noticed me yet.

“Why is that your responsibility?” Paint hissed in concern. “It could bite you! You don’t even have scales, and you’re not wearing an exo suit! Why did you just take off your soft armor?”

“It’s not my responsibility,” I murmured. “But somebody’s got to.” I eased forward and took a long-legged jump to land with one foot squarely on the bag, then tackled the bird to wrap it in my sweater.

It, unsurprisingly, objected. And it was stronger than it looked.

“What are you doing??” Paint repeated. “You’ll get hurt!”

I fought to get a hand around the bird’s head and keep it from pecking me anywhere important while also holding its wings in. It did its level best to accomplish fight and flight at the same time. It even regurgitated a splash of food, which I managed to barely dodge. It smelled unpleasantly fishy.

But I got the bird’s head pinned down in a way that hopefully didn’t restrict its breathing, and I ended up crouched over the thing using my legs to keep its wings folded. My other hand was doing the important job of preventing it from wriggling free. That didn’t leave any hands for removing the bag.

“Paint! I need your claws!”

“What? No!” She sounded more than a little panicked.

“Just get the bag off its foot!” I said, jerking my head back to where the bag rustled behind me. “Then I’ll let it go!”

“That doesn’t look safe!” Paint insisted.

The bird bucked and thrashed. “It’s not going to get any safer! Come on, it needs help!”

Paint hissed a string of what were probably swear words as she darted forward and approached the talons. I couldn’t see what she was doing from my angle, but I heard the rustle of plastic. I wanted to ask how it was going and give pointers, maybe suggest stepping on the bag to hold it tight, though I didn’t know if that would help or not. I kept quiet.

“Got it!” Paint leapt back, holding up the torn bag in triumph.

“Great!” I said. “Does its leg look injured? Did the bag dig into it or cut off circulation as far as you can tell?”

Paint stepped forward gingerly, then shook her head. “No, the scales look fine.”

I let out a breath. “Extra great. Okay, stand back.”

Paint scampered over to stand by the ship, taking the bag with her, while I got my feet under me. In as smooth a motion as I could, I jumped sideways and rolled away, trailing my sweater. I would have preferred to stand and exit with dignity, but this was faster. Dignity wasn’t worth getting pecked in the knee.

In a whirlwind of feathers, the scaly bird scrambled into the sky. I sat up to watch it go. While I expected a dramatic arc into the distance, it only got as far as the biggest amoeba-tree. I worried that it was injured after all. Then I saw the cluster of tiny beaks that reached up as it landed.

I grinned all over again, watching the reunited family greet each other. A rustle of plastic told me Paint stood beside me. I looked up at her. “We did it.”

She watched the nest with wide eyes, clutching the bag. “We did. And it mattered.”

“It always matters.” I got to my feet with a wince, hoping that wasn’t going to be a bruise on my hip. “Thanks for helping. That was a deed well done.”

Paint was still staring. ���Do you think it will have enough food for all the hatchlings? After spitting some at you?”

A glance told me the bird was feeding its young in the time-honored vomity fashion. “I hope so,” I said. “Scavenging for more might lead to another trash adventure, though maybe this was a learning experience.”

Paint stood up straighter. “Let’s check the species database and see what it eats,” she said. “That smells a lot like the canned fish I’ve been saving. We can put it out where they’ll find it.”

“A fine plan,” I told her. “Let’s get cleaned up first so we don’t leave bird germs in the kitchen.”

We’d only taken a couple steps toward the ship before Eggskin met us at the door with concern on their scaly face. “Kavlae said there was some sort of commotion outside, and someone might be hurt?” They brandished the medscanner.

Before I could answer, Paint held up the crumpled plastic bag. “We saved a creature that was trapped in this!”

Eggskin cocked their head, clearly about to ask why, but Paint was still talking. She gave a dramatic recounting of the whole affair. Eggskin turned on the scanner and checked us both for contamination while she talked. Clear. (Whew.)

“…And now it’s safely up in the nest with its hatchlings, and it wouldn’t have made it up there if not for us, and they would have starved and died, and we saved all of them!” Paint said, waving the bag. “It always matters! Now where’s the can opener? I want to leave them some of my fish.”

Eggskin blinked. “Third drawer on the right, where it should be. Unless someone’s misplaced it again. Put that in the biohazard bin and wash your hands.”

“Got it, thanks!” Paint was gone in a rustle of plastic.

Eggskin looked up at me. “Is ‘pack bonding’ contagious?”

I laughed. “I couldn’t tell you. But it always matters. Would you mind keeping an eye on that nest over there while I go change clothes? I’ll wash my hands too.”

Eggskin sighed. “Please do.”

They stood outside the ship watching the distant family of scaly birds, wearing an expression like they were trying to figure something out. I smiled and left to get cleaned up. I’d check the species database afterward. Maybe I had some food they’d like too.

~~~

Did I mention the Prank War?

~~~

These are the ongoing backstory adventures of the main character from this book.

Shared early on Patreon! There’s even a free tier to get them on the same day as the rest of the world.

The sequel novel is in progress (and will include characters from these stories. I hadn’t thought all of them up when I wrote the first book, but they’re too much fun to leave out of the second).

[midnightclover]

Summon Night: Swordcraft Story (ATLUS, 2003)

[herewegobebe]

TAEMIN | HARD - 2023 K-Link Festival [Video Cr. x]

[huh-1260]

Festive gremlin

My Christmas profile picture