#May out here planning to steal his hypothetical wife

[mushroom-for-art]

Another movie au silly XD probably takes place after the incident, imma be real I feel like they've done some kind of drugs or girls night just hits different one of the two! Anywhos @oogaboogaspookyman ur boi is getting to enjoy girls night good for him, this one's more dialogue heavy

Girls Night and Serious Questions

May's tail swayed and swished softly as she rested comfortably on some cushions on the floor of her actors' room leaning back against a beanbag for back support. The pink strawberry scented face mask was cool on her skin as were the cucumber slices on her eyes as she exhaled peacefully with some quiet background music for ambience. She raised a hand carefully, taking a cucumber slice from a bowl and putting it in her mouth, crunching it with satisfaction.

"I don't think you're meant to eat the slices off your face May."

The monochromatic two commented, he was also wearing a face mask. It was blue and blueberry scented with cucumber slices over his eyes, he was also lounging comfortably, tail swaying in contentment.

"I know that's why I sliced extras," her voice was sing song like as she carefully rattled the bowl for him to hear, "you know you wanna crunchy crunch on a cucumbee~" He snorted a soft laugh but reach out clumsily finding the bowl and taking a slice happily popping it in his mouth with a grin as she lightly gasped to herself, "He got the cucumberrr."

"Yes he dooo~"

The other two singsonged back and sighed.

"Gosh this is nice, and you say you and Matt try to do this once a week?"

"Yup, sometimes we make little fruit salads with slices and chunks of all kinds of fruits. God it's so good, unfortunately I didn't have any fruit in so we got cucumber masks and unhealthy snacks. Peak girls night material." the other two snorted in soft laughter.

"Girls night Girls night."

He playfully chanted before settling back into a comfortable quiet.

"So, I heard your manager had a baby?"

He queried too curious not too.

"Yup, indeed she did."

"I heard she had it naturally?"

"Al dente indeed yea, no cloning, didn't know that could happen."

He hummed softly in agreement.

"What does that mean for you then?"

"Uh, my manager is more busy than usual and I'm probably gonna have to babysit I guess."

He made a soft ah sound as he chewed the inside of his mouth.

"Does it bother you?"

"What you mean?"

"Well, you and your manager have a complicated uh relation to one another."

"Yea she's cloned from me."

"And she had a baby, does that mean you could too?"

May went quiet and thoughtful before clumsily stretching a leg to try to kick or at least nudge the other two.

"Why? Wanting to get me pregnant or something ya dork, you're an absolute pervert." Her voice was entirely playful and jokey.

"Hey!"

He reached to nudge her back.

"That is slander my good woman I hope you have a good lawyer that is not why I was asking!"

His tone was mostly mock offended easy in nature as they continued to lightly kick and nudge the other with May giggling softly.

"I just meant like, is that something you could see happening for you down the line?"

"Girl time really unlocking the deep personal questions, what is girls night if not for crimes and personal stuff I guess." May laughed softly before humming in thought, "I dunno, I don't, think about my future a lot, but I can't really see myself with a kid personally I'm not responsible enough for that."

"You take care of Matt don't you."

He joked playfully as she mock gasped in joke offense at him being right.

"Yes but that's differentt, he's my optional pest whereas a baby is full time pest." the two snorted out loud giggling and kicking his feet a bit at May referring to her hypothetical child as a pest.

"You're so mean to your babyyy."

He joked as she laughed.

"Fuck them kids."

He snorted a laugh as she started to giggle.

"Fuck them kids."

He repeated, laughing to himself at the absurdity.

"What about you huh, babies on your bucket list? I can see you settling down eventually with a lovely woman," she nudged him playfully with her foot, "you two could make a cute little baby."

"You two?? Me and who??"

He asked, completely baffled.

"Your wife!" she boldly started giggling as he made more confused noises.

"What wife?? Where is this wife?? Show me this woman?"

He playfully demanded as she laughed and giggled harder.

"I dunno! She's somewhere! You'll find her and you'll luuuuuuv herrrr. And I can make jokes about stealing your pretty wife."

"You can't have her, she's mine."

"I could seduce her from you."

"Is that why you picture me with a wife so you can steal her from me?"

"Yes."

He playfully kicked at her laughing at her weirdness.

"You are so bizarre!"

She laughed as well saying, "I knowww, Its just me getting you back for stealing my drinks, you're a horrid little coffee thief I'm a horrid little wife stealer." He snorted loudly, absolutely howling and hollering as he kicked his leg into the floor.

"THAT IS IN NO WAY EQUAL EXCHANGE YOU CRETIN?!?!"

"YES IT IS BITCH!" She yelled laughter in her voice as he cackled.

"You are positively insane."

"Thank youuu," She snickered.

"Not a compliment!"

"I'm taking it as one you fuck!" She laughed as he let out a laugh like exhale as he ate a cucumber slice before asking.

"So, if I got a husband you'd steal my husband because I drank your drinks."

"Hmmmmmm….I dunnoooo….cause like…" She moved her hand limping her wrist, "but also like it depends. How hots your husband." He made a confused sound.

"What the hell are you on about? I heard you move but I can't remember."

"Oh yea." She laughed at her mistake, "so like, girls."

He made a hum of agreement bringing his hands to his stomach.

"Yea, girls."

"I like girls."

"..oh.."

She didn't catch his disappointed tone, "but also sometimes like, boys."

"Oh? So like, both?"

His tone slightly intrigued.

"Sometimes? I don't know like attraction and orientation hard, I flip flop a bit because I'm not sure, I go yea I like both, then I go ages without like feeling attracted to guys so hm maybe just girls but then ohoho a cute guy so like 80% of the time I'm like woman and 20% I'm like but that dude though, ya know?"

"Hm, I understand what you're saying, yes. Have you, seen any attractive guys in a while?"

She made a noise humming for a while her tone going strange saying, "I mean yea but it's whatever." She made a pft sound waving off her hand, her tail thumping the floor softly, "You thirsty? I'm thirsty, imma make milkshakes, you want milkshake?"

He chuckled to himself as he lifted a cucumber from his eye to watch her hurry past him, smiling a bit to himself. He could push and tease about it as he could tell she was embarrassed, but, then he might not get a milkshake.

"Yea I'll have the one you're having."

"You can have your fucking own!" He snorted softly.

[myemuisemo]

I might have run in circles making noises of triumph and dismay at the revelations of chapter XII, "Death on the Moor," of The Hound of the Baskervilles in this week's Letters from Watson. This puts me in solidarity with the original readers of the first serialized version, right?

Registry of schoolmasters

Genealogists provide some evidence that there was some sort of tracking of schoolmasters and certified teachers in 19th century England here. The early 1880s would have been an excellent time to start a school, as the Elementary Education Act of 1880 had made school attendance compulsory for young children (roughly ages 5-12). Local communities were being pushed to have schools where previously this had not been required.

Stapleton and Laura Lyons having a relationship

That came out of nowhere, presumably due to Watson's blind spots. He had previously referred to Stapleton as sometimes acting as Sir Charles Baskerville's "almoner" (delegated distributor of alms), which I guess covered Stapleton visiting Laura Lyons. Holmes and his young assistant presumably observed a great deal more by lurking.

Laura Lyons' position, as a married-but-estranged woman, in correspondingly intimately with a (presumed single) man is louche. (Damn it, it fits Watson's perceived looseness in her features. Ick.) However, her life at this point is a whole heap of loucheness. The runaway marriage, her choice of an artist (not of her own class) as a husband, the subsequent estrangement, and her taking up a skilled trade each individually would have prevented her from being received at Sir Charles Baskerville's dinner table. What's one more thing?

It's most likely that her neighbors in Coombe Tracey don't know her past: she's simply a polite, tidy neighbor.

Were she to divorce, she could re-marry at a registrar's office.

But Stapleton has a wife!

He's thereby a complete cad. I guessed this one solely because "sibling is a spouse" seemed like a good Gothic trope to invoke.

Jack Stapleton has no grounds for divorcing Beryl, as she's carefully not committing adultery with Sir Henry. If Jack has both been intimate with Laura Lyons (unproven) and has been physically violent with Beryl, she might be able to divorce him. But that's pretty iffy. She may be stuck with him unless someone can push him into the mire.

Well, that explains the second boot.

The first boot stolen was brand new and thus didn't carry Sir Henry's scent. How did Stapleton figure it out quickly enough to steal a second, used boot? Did he have the dog along, just staying at a hotel with his sister/wife? Did he sniff it himself? Did he go back to Devon, test the dog, and then return?

And why on earth did he bring Beryl with him? It seems like the less she knew of his plans, the better.

But why, Holmes? Why?

Unless we're to assume that Stapleton randomly villains around the country -- which, given his caddish treatment of both Beryl and Laura, is not out of the question -- there's got to be some reason he'd train a ghastly hound to kill Baskervilles.

Inheritance is a reason that's been mentioned before. If he were ahead of Charles or Henry, he wouldn't need to kill anyone -- just show up and prove his claim. The only people behind Sir Henry are the distant old cousin, already exonerated, and the hypothetical offspring of "but he died without heirs" Rodger Baskerville. Or is he counting on Sir Henry leaving his estate to a butterfly sanctuary?

Regardless, I'm so glad to see Holmes! His explanations to Watson about deceiving him are the worst sort of nonsense, but he's apparently learned a great deal while everyone was busy pulling wool over Watson's eyes.

[bnhaven]

Dad Snipe AU (because I can)

Okay, listen. Just...just give me a second to explain myself, okay? Great, thanks. 

So I love parental All Might stories, and stories where Aizawa becomes a dadzawa for his problem child (which leads to Present Mic also becoming a paternal figure for Izuku, which is a blessed idea), and all of those. But you know what I love even more?

If all of that happens, but Izuku’s dad is actually Snipe. Yes, Snipe. 

Let me explain the story in my head, because it’s a doozy.

-So, to start, let me explain how I got the idea. It’s simple, really- canon hasn’t given me a reason not to get the idea. I mean, we’ve yet to find out Snipe’s real name, so it’s fair game to call him Hisashi Midoriya until Horikoshi himself rips this idea out of my cold, hopefully not dead hands. 

-We also never see his face, and the dreadlocks could either 1. Be a wig or 2. Just be his hair, but the blue-ish shade is what caused the darker coloration for Izuku’s hair. Who knows anymore, the world these heroes live in is a really weird one.

-Now, Snipe may not breathe fire, but shhh. Maybe Inko was lying to the doctor or something, because if she said, “My husband can control the trajectory of any and all of the bullets he shoots”, well, that could’ve given away the identity of her husband! Maybe the Midoriya family doesn’t want to broadcast who Hisashi is.

-Also, having a father with such a Quirk could explain why Izuku is Quirkless (or, in this case, potentially ‘Quirkless’). It’s not like Inko would just let little Izuku play with a gun to see if he could shoot as well as his dad, or anything! So boom, the little joint test is enough, brush it aside, Dad!Snipe explanation over.

Got it? Great! Now, onto the bullshit story idea I came up with, or as I like to call it:

How Snipe Accidentally Ghosted his Family for a Decade, because He is Too Goddamn Dumb Sometimes.

Buckle up folks, and hold your horses a little tighter, because we’re going for a ride.

-So Snipe goes to Texas when Izuku is just a small boy, just barely a toddler. He’s really serious about his whole cowboy aesthetic, and pulls an All Might by working abroad for what he plans to be a few years, but might become five or six if he finds a good agency to work with in the meanwhile.

-Lo and behold, he does!! Nice, nice, Snipe relays the message to his dear wife Inko, lets her know that he’ll be gone for a while- but it’s okay, he plans to call her every chance he gets, make sure she’s doing well with their little boy, and life will be good.

-Things, uh...don’t go as planned.

-Snipe blames it all on a snake. A goddamn snake that decided to hide in his goddamn boot. There was a snake in his boot, what was he expected to do?

Probably not throwing his phone at the thing, breaking it, but uh...Snipe panicked. A lot.

-No problem, right? He’s a Pro Hero, he makes plenty of money, he can just get a new phone, plug in his old number, and all of that stuff. Easy as can be.

-Haha...no. 

-Because Snipe is a fool. A fool who can’t remember any of his passwords for his phone, or the answers to any backup questions. 

-He’s a great hero, he’s excellent at marksmanship...but the man just can’t remember these things to save his life.

-He can’t even remember his wife’s phone number to call her about it (and beg for the passwords because he just can not manage to recall them)

-Snipe is just glad that Inko is the one who set up his bank accounts so he’d automatically send money to their shared account, or else he’d feel awful.

-Figuring that the best thing to do in this situation is to just keep on truckin’ along, Snipe continues working at the Texas agency until it’s time for him to head back home.

But the fun doesn’t stop here, because…

-By the time Snipe yeehaws his way back to Japan, that man realizes that he can’t even recall what his address was. 

-He ends up working at Yuuei, because he was aimlessly wandering around, trying to find Musutafu.

-By the time Nedzu finds him, he’s so embarrassed that he just...can’t bring himself to admit that he forgot literally everything he needed to get back to his house.

-The conversation for the job starts a little like this…

Nedzu: Why were you wandering around Yuuei for over forty minutes?

Snipe, unwilling to admit that he couldn’t remember if he had to go east or west to reach his house: I saw a little doggie. Very cute.

Nedzu: That was probably me, but I digress.

(For the record, Snipe had to go south to start his route home…)

-Some good news: After working at Yuuei for a few years, he finally sees his boy again!!

-Some bad news: it's the USJ attack

-Snipe bursts into the USJ, sees that green haired silhouette and just knows it is his boy, even if it’s been somewhere around a decade since he saw his little sprout and his boy is now stronger and taller.

Snipe, seeing Shigaraki about to hit his child: Villain, you just yeed your last haw 

Snipe: shoots Shigaraki in the hand.

-After USJ, we have more fun, with some lovely dialogue I came up with like:

Snipe, sitting with Aizawa: So, hypothetically of course, if I was to say something like, I don’t know… ‘You’re in charge of my long lost child, who I couldn’t get in contact with ‘cause I couldn’t remember mah wife’s phone number’...how would you recommend starting the conversation with him?

Aizawa, mummified, tired, and already realizing that this child is the problem childTM: I need a drink.

Snipe, a fool: Are...are ya sure I should start off with that?

-Despite this totally hypothetical conversation, it isn’t until finals that Snipe brings it up. 

-Nedzu pits Snipe against Izuku and Todoroki, and it’s beautiful.

-Snipe pulls an ‘I am your father’ moment like in Star Wars, both Izuku and Todoroki promptly flip their shit.

Snipe: Izuku, I am your father.

Izuku: I thought you were dead!

Todoroki: I thought you were All Might’s child!

-Needless to say, the fight ends quickly, because Izuku goes a little feral. 

Izuku, pinning Snipe to the ground: What excuse do you have for ghosting mom for years, huh?

Snipe, sobbing: I forgot my phone number!

-Izuku drags Snipe back to the house once finals are over. 

-Inko...isn’t even surprised when she hears what happened.

-She just sighs and goes, “Do I need to tattoo my number onto you, Hisashi?”

-Snipe wonders if it’s worth the potential security risk, he doesn’t want her getting tracked down and hurt after all.

-There’s a long conversation about microchipping Snipe, so if he disappears again, Izuku can just hunt him down and drag him back home again.

-And voila! Snipe is reunited with his family, the dad fluff can commence.

Snipe: I’mma give him a gun.

Inko, tired: At least he’ll be hurting others instead of himself for once.

-1-A is horrified.

Their precious green bean, wielding a gun?!?!?!?

-It’s made worse when he’s a natural at it, just going feral and having fun with his dad.

-Finally, because I promised more parental figures along with actual, biological Snipe, please consider:

-All Might getting upset because Snipe is stealing ‘his boy’.

Aizawa, trying to be reasonable: All Might, Midoriya is literally Snipe’s child.

All Might, petulantly: But...but he’s my boy.

-For extra humor, make Aizawa also feel like the problem child is his problem child for extra parental jealousy.

-Need more chaos??? Yamada thought he and Aizawa were adopting Izuku for some reason.

Don’t ask how Yamada came to this conclusion, but he is heartbroken when he finds out his almost completed adoption forms were for nothing.

Yamada, sadly: I thought Inko was his older sister...and he didn’t even have a dad!

-Just...Izuku having a dumbass dad and the other potential dads being put off by the realization that Snipe, Snipe, gets actual Dad Rights but somehow lost contact for like...10 entire years.

-Okay rant over, bye.

[comradelionheart]

This is where I feel safest.

In the blueness of this site, held in comfort as if under my blanket of soft fur.

No one here will ever know who I am or the people I speak of. No one can find me here. I have a questionable habit of running off to avoid being witnessed when I fail or am in pain, and this is where I run to. It is luckily not a boy this time. Well, it’s sort of that too, but not predominantly.

I haven’t shut G out this time. When I thought I’d lost my shot at the job I deleted my WhatsApp and all other social media, and refused to surface until I was willing to face people again. This isn’t unlike when I graduated college uncertain of what to do with life next and just... vanished. I’d a pretty promising presence on Facebook that could potentially have introduced him and I sooner, but I guess life unravels at its own pace and nothing can force it to go sooner or slower. I’ve grown rather accepting of failures because I have unfortunately grown accustomed to them. It’s almost like I expect to meet with resistance or failure each time something nearly works out and in this case I can’t say I willed it upon myself. I literally tested positive for TB. Which is amusing since those are my ex’s initials, and is yet another TB which seems to be hampering my progress. 

Dry humour is what I’m best at if I’m being my authentic self. I must unfortunately smile and wave because I’m a woman and need to be likeable to get anywhere in my line of work. That isn’t to say I’m a sociopath or hate people. I just wish I didn’t have to pretend to be interested in their lives and feign amusement at their not so novel ideas. Pretty sure I’ve not so novel ideas too, but I don’t need to be indulged for the sake of my (not) fragile ego. Anyhow.

I applied for this job early in the year and didn't expect to hear from them (because the first few years of my work life had me flailing and coping with depression instead of steering my career, and I know I shouldn’t grudge her for this but I do). But I did hear from them. And everything went through. Including 3 rounds of aptitude tests and a personal interview (which I thought I bombed but didn't somehow). Until I tested positive on a skin patch test for TB. Why do these stupid standard sets of tests get prescribed world over? Honestly, if I’m ever supreme leader of anywhere I will ban standardised tests. Not in the way that I say medicine is a sham, not at all, but in the way that WE LIVE IN THE THIRD WORLD AND WILL OF COURSE HAVE TAKEN THE BCG OR HAVE BEEN EXPOSED TO THE BACTERIA AT SOME POINT BUT IT’S NOT NECESSARILY EVER GOING TO BE ACTIVE SO USE A BETTER AND MORE CONTEXT SPECIFIC TEST INSTEAD OF GIVING ME ANXIETY AND EXISTENTIAL CRISES LIKE THESE, JFC. 😭😭😭

But I’ve taken the other test and that’s also got the drawback of being unable to differentiate between inert and active TB. So I took an HRCT scan. I’m so sick of running around hospitals, there’s a literal virus in the air. But Monday is when I’ll know the medical verdict. And then there’s the whole security check process. I hate when this happens but I’ve lost so much time to grief, I simply cannot sit around moping any longer. 

Earlier this year I interviewed with the **. I was given a verbal confirmation and had a text message implying an offer was made to me, because I received an acknowledgement to my acceptance of an offer. If I was the person I was in 2014, I’d have kicked up a fuss and made sure that offer was honoured, but 2021 me knows that working with bosses who go back on their word slyly and cave to nepotism usually need their cocks sucked. And I’m not only incapable of that, but have also dealt with enough workplace harassment elsewhere to be adamant about a brand at the risk of my mental health. But really, he can go suck it because I have confirmation from staff that he is EVERYTHING I read him to be. I’m not intuitive or anything, I just read people very well because I was hurt so bad by them (repeatedly since childhood) that reading people became a thing I did for survival. My sharp instincts serve me well, but are a trauma response. I am very self aware too, yes.

I then interviewed and got through an NGO that was willing to pay me 24L. I turned it down because the founders were running around like headless chicken with their inability to distinguish PR from Marketing Comms (me) from Marketing for business development. I know I was being paid a lot of money, but I will not kill myself performing all three functions while being acknowledged for just the one on my offer letter. I’ve learned to value my labour capacity and assert myself in the economic and political spheres. 

Personally though? I sometimes still think I’m a romantic pushover.

But this is about work because I need to weep a little before being calm about how this year has treated me. Especially since I’m maintaining a cool demeanour in public and literally hate sharing things I’m burdened with. Idk man, it makes me feel vulnerable and I don’t like feeling like I’ll get a knife twisted in the spot that's most sore. I AM SCREAMING BECAUSE I HAVE LET G WITNESS ME IN PAIN THIS TIME INSTEAD OF RUNNING AWAY and will someday file copyright over An Enduring Romantic because that’s very honestly me. But ofc it isn’t going to be the legal Copyright, just the sham notice like the one I’d sent him to up his Instagram game. Or he could just operate my Twitter and I’ll run his gram. It’ll even feel natural.

Sometime around May an environmental journal asked me to come on board. Work from the office at the height of the pandemic with no travel compensation and very little money. I turned them down. Then came II**. Which I again turned down because they wouldn’t pay market rate for skills I’ve perfected in 4 years just because they wanted 8 years experience on paper for my quotation. I will do a lot for causes I love, but I also really enjoy being paid fairly and acknowledged for the value I bring to the table.

Then came the start up in Del. Which I turned down because the uncle running it in his wife’s name expected 24*7 labour availability for 12L with no health insurance.

The latest in my list of things I’ve turned down is the ** Gov. Which I can obviously go back to since my reason for turning it down was another job, but 14 days of leave all year? 7 day work week if needed? Hell no. I enjoy having labour rights. But also when I told the dude I’d be reporting to if I accepted that I cant accept due to covid concerns his reaction was “sure, send me an email so we can start looking for someone else immediately.” Like.... we just had a second wave, what if something was wrong? I wouldn’t risk losing my job because they expect work even if I were hypothetically coughing up blood. So best not to touch with a bargepole. Now I’m less sad, but also really hope the TB results are negative. This job I want and have said yes to ticks off all of the boxes in my head and I will truly be disappointed if I lose it to disease paranoia despite being completely suited and picked for the role 😞

Just to be on the safer side, I have taken one last shot at achieving my goal of ‘learn how political systems work so you know what you’re talking about first hand in that PhD.’ I hope my Plan A works out instead, though.

Since I’ve brought him up in this, it will be interesting to note that a year ago I did the erstwhile unthinkable act of cutting a friend of for attempting to steal a man I love. A year ago to the date, literally. Funny how this year is more calm, but I was maxed out on endorphins from him last year. Until this March even, if I’m being truthful. I don’t regret cutting her off.She crossed a vvvv red line. ALL my other friends are celebrating. They detested her. 

Another thing that happened last year was me letting him know that I only get hotter with time, but along with this work drama I have also had a run in with intense grief which I thought was a mood disorder (because it was intense, I mentioned?), cholesterol, thyroid, sugar addiction and now, le TB (PLEASE BE A FALSE POSITIVE YESU KRISTU HALP). So needless to say, I haven’t been most fabulous and undergone my physical transformation and these mental health struggles (are getting better now) strapped me to my couch along with the pandemic and its many lockdowns. I have also not studied for the GRE because I’m stimulus seeking via social media and fear of sucking at math has kept me locked in place. I still have a lot to work through on this front and would really like to make his cover right too, but my creativity isn't working and I keep fucking it up. I am not as spectacular as I was last year. The separation has also weathered my dazzle out a little and while I’m living with it, I still have small waves of sadness that show up once in a while.

I might have also accidentally flirted with someone into falling for me. It was all fun and games and for my pride, but now I’ve to gently let them down since I’ve cold feet and am chicken. Because I’m as emotionally unavailable as a streetlamp. Is this why they call me a Gurgaoni fuckboi?

[ultimaa]

About Shingeki no Kyojin 125 - Theories and ramblings.

Annie and her New Year's resolutions.

More than one we looked forward to Annie's return and I am deeply glad that our favorite blondie has already left her glass prison, but why has Annie returned? What are your purposes? Well, she makes it clear in her conversation with Hitch: go back to her father. We know that Annie appreciates her father more than anyone in the world; if she had to do all the atrocities she did to return to her father, she would do it again. It's not that Annie is bad, but, as Nietzsche said: “Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil.” Human nature is like that, and Annie knows that she has committed unforgivable sins. She is not proud, but she will not punish herself. SnK's world is cruel, but if there is something that represents love and kindness, it is family: Eren swore to avenge his mother; Mikasa lost her parents, but found similar figures in the Jaegers; Armin lost his grandfather; Reiner wanted to become a warrior for his father to return to his mother; Connie, who lost his family because of Zeke, is willing to sacrifice Falco, a poor child, to recover his mother... Annie's motivation is deeply human and reminds me of John Marston, protagonist of Red Dead Redemption. John had only one goal: to hunt his old friends, who were outlaws, so that the Government would return him to his family. If Abigail and Jack, his wife and son, had been killed, what would have happened to John? We will never know, but when John is killed by government agents, his son Jack takes revenge a few years later, continuing the cycle of violence and death. In the end, John... loses, because his son has become a criminal.

If Mr. Leonhardt dies, something I see very possible under the circumstances, what will happen to Annie? Her great goal has vanished. Nothing makes sense anymore. If even the most sacred and beloved has died, what should Annie do? We meet like this with someone whose life has no direction. Someone who has lost beauty in a devastated and corrupted world. It is the seed of nihilism. Isayama is not characterized by fulfilling the dreams of his protagonists, not in the way that the viewer wants: yes, Armin reaches the sea, but what does this mean? It is the beginning of the end. The human being needs to cling to dreams, turn his back on reality to continue existing in it; however... What happens when nothing makes sense anymore? It is absurd, it is hopeless. It is something that could knock the strongest. According to Albert Camus, someone who has lost the meaning of his life has only three options: suicide, clinging to God or... continuing in the absurd, rebelling against it, turning life into an act of rebellion against nonsense. So, in the hypothetical case of his father dying, what should Annie do? Should he act like Jack Marston and continue the violence? I do not think so. Annie doesn't enjoy killing. Her face witnessing Marco's death is good proof of that. Annie must find a new purpose: end the violence, with that barbaric world that takes away what you love. Understand that she has lost everything, but not everything is lost. While something is at stage, we must continue fighting. In Red Dead Redemption II, Arthur Morgan knows his end is near; the love of his life has left and Dutch, the man who gave him a home and a direction, has become a mad and heartless man. However, not everything is lost. He can still save some (including John Marston and his family, as RDR II is a prequel to the first game) and he succeeds. Arthur finishes his story as a redeemed character; he, who had spent his entire life killing, lying and stealing, ends up redeeming himself. However, Arthur Morgan was not seeking self-redemption, but a future for others. It's something we can apply to Annie. His final role cannot consist in returning with his father and being happy. We know Isayama: God is more likely to come down to Earth.

Connie, Falco and a decisive meeting.

And if Annie can aspire to redemption, Connie is willing to morally condemn himself. Come on, we all know that Falco is not meant to be titan food. Connie, in addition to the prankster par excellence with Sasha, is a character with a story as tragic as any other: he lost everything, but the possibility of recovering his mother gives him hope. But sacrifice Falco? Is Connie able to do something like that? I do not think so. Connie is human; Anger and revenge are very human things, but so is understanding. Connie will abandon his plan sooner or later, when he accepts that, beyond the vessel of one of Titan's powers, Falco is just a child. A child, like his siblings. A child who is not guilty. A boy who, like him, has lost his brother and his friends. Taking into account that Connie, along with Sasha, cried when they faced Reiner during the Return to Shigansina, we must understand that he is a sensitive and empathetic character, blinded by anger and the possibility of recovering a loved one. Armin and Gabi go in search of them, but will their intervention be necessary? Mikasa warns Armin that they won't be able to reach Connie; indeed, I don't think they reach it. Armin, Gabi, Hanji, Levi, Magath, Pieck, Connie and Falco are more likely to meet. Remember that, because when it happens I will come to brag hehehe. What if they meet? The cocktail would be fantastic. They may be Paradise's last hope. Also, I want to see the reunion of Falco and Gabi; because they are very cute and deserve it. How much do we bet that Gabi ends up crying like a baby while hugging Falco? And with that confession at the last minute, I wouldn't be surprised if Isayama felt romantic and gave us a kiss between them. Imagine the faces of adults. I may be delirious, but if it happens... here I will be, again, with ‘I told you so’.

On the other hand, such a reunion can return hope to Armin. Levi, who is the strongest soldier of all time, the Messi of Paradise (yes, I had to make the comparison sorry CR7), is alive; fatally wounded, but alive. In addition, Hanji, who represents leadership, is also fine. With these two pieces again on the chess board, it is possible to trace the game. In addition, Hanji and Levi's encounter with Magath and Pieck constitutes a point of union between Erdia and Marley. In the end, it seems that yhe idea of Eren as the final and unifying enemy of humanity begins to make sense, even if he has not proposed it. After all, if you can't with your enemy... join him against something much worse.

Jean and Mikasa: replacements.

While we know that the commander and the eternal captain are alive, Jean and Mikasa believe otherwise. Well, if I were one of these two, I could only think one thing: WE'RE FUCKED. Fortunately, Isayama has wanted these two to receive the fatal (and false) news. It's not by chance. Nothing is. We know Jean Kirstein and Mikasa Ackerman well; I could say that we have grown up with them. Jean, a guy who started out as an arrogant bastard and who soon revealed his impressive leadership ability; Mikasa, a woman with a force only inferior to Captain Levi. Well, here I go: Jean must take over from Hanji and Mikasa from Levi. We have seen a practically shattered Jean, almost subjected to Folch; However, Mikasa, despite her situation, remains more or less well, keeping a level head. Don't get me wrong: she's pretty screwed, but she seems better than Jean now. During the battle of Trost there is a critical moment: the gas is running out and everyone is going to die. Then Mikasa arrived and, far from being blocked by Eren's supposed death, he tried to motivate them in her own way, you know: I am strong, much stronger than you. We already know that Mikasa is a woman of few words, but her message was enough to encourage Jean and the others. Yes, the current Mikasa is not the Mikasa of ninety chapters ago, but her character has reached a key point: she has to take the reins, think for herself. Only they can stop Folch and handle the situation in Shigansina. Their characters need it. Hanji is a leader, yes, but Jean has much more potential; Mikasa is not Levi, but she is an Ackerman, the only one capable of fighting, and in these four years she has been able to perfect her skill. If these two start working well together, they can be a lethal and decisive combo.

Louise and the scarf.

Well, if a scarf is not in your closet on a cold winter day it may not mean anything important: it may be in the washing machine, with the other clothes. However, Mikasa Ackerman's scarf is not just any scarf, but it contains crucial values ​​and stories for her... and for Eren. The scarf has taken a very important role during the last arc and has now disappeared, Louise has taken it. And it's normal, because Mikasa is her idol. Well, we all know what meanings the scarf has, which represents positive values ​​in a world like Shingeki no Kyojin. The scarf has no place in the current situation; everyone is hopeless and crestfallen, dejected and defeated. And when will the scarf return? I have read the following theory out there: Eren will find Louise's unrecognizable corpse and believe it is Mikasa, recovering the scarf and feeling like real shit. Yes, that would be a possibility of fulfilling what our boy said in chapter 50. The scarf will return when the barbarity ceases, when that beauty returns, in the words of Mikasa, who lives in a cruel world. And we know that it will return due to the first panel of chapter 1 of the manga, Eren's mysterious dream.

I'm sorry if I have grammatical mistakes: English is not my mother tongue.

[smilingformoney]

It Lives Beneath Diamond Scene: Let Parker Drive You Home

You: Sure. I’d love a ride. Parker: Great! I mean… uh, good. Right this way. 

Parker leads you over to a green four-door jeep parked behind the station. You pause as he opens the passenger door for you. Parker: Something wrong? You: No. I was just expecting a cop car. Parker: I figured we should just take mine. I’m off the clock in about twenty minutes anyway. 

You: In that case… -What’re you doing after work? +Romance

Parker: Depends who’s asking. You: Hypothetically, a curious citizen… who might be interested in getting a cup of coffee later. Parker: Hypothetically, that sounds nice. Unfortunately, I’ve got a mountain of paperwork to climb this particular evening. Raincheck? You: I’ll hold you to that. 

-Thanks again for the ride.

Parker: No problem. Gotta say though, I’m not used to having passengers sit next to me. You: Would it make you more comfortable if I sat in the back? I could yell about wanting a lawyer and everything. Parker: That’s quite alright. Just promise you won’t try to punch me out and steal my gun. 

Parker starts the car, then pulls out of the small parking lot and onto Lakeview Boulevard. Parker: So… How are you holding up? You: Okay, I guess. All things considered. Parker: What happened on the boat, with Kyle… That’s rough. I’m sorry you had to see that. You: Me too… I guess you probably see stuff like that all the time, huh? Parker: Less than you might thing. Pine Springs is a pretty peaceful place. You: Other than what happened with Ned’s wife, you mean. Parker: Well, yes, but that was-- You: An accident? Right. Parker brakes behind a trick and turns to look at you, expression troubled. Parker: You think they’re connected. You: You think they’re not? Parker: They’re both strange, that’s for sure, but I don’t know if I see the connection. Parker: A woman wanders off with no explanation in the middle of the night. Then, two years later, a kid gets drunk and falls off a boat. You: That’s not how it happened. Parker: So how did it happen? What did you see down there, [Name]? 

You: Parker… -I saw a monster.

Parker: What do you mean a monster? You: I mean it looked like a living skeleton. With burning eyes. And claws. You: You think I’m making it up, don’t you? Parker: I… I think you were in a terrible situation, and maybe you were-- You: Seeing things. Yeah, that’s the same thing your boss said. 

-You wouldn’t believe me.

Parker: I might. Why don’t you try me? You: Because I barely believe me. What I saw… it didn’t make any sense. Parker: Hey, people see some crazy things when they’re scared. You: Yeah… according to your boss I hallucinated the whole thing. 

Parker frowns and returns his gaze to the road as traffic begins to move again. Parker: Try not to be too hard on Abe. Pine Springs isn’t like the big city. We don’t really get serious crimes here. You: Or maybe everyone just goes out of their way to ignore them. Parker: Look… Abe’s got a good heart. He’s been like a father to me. 

You: So… -Kelley raised you?

Parker: Pretty much. My parents were… Not good to me when I was a kid. Parker: I didn’t know what to do with all that hurt, so I took it out on other people. I could’ve ended up in juvie, or worse, if Abe hadn’t stepped in. You: I’m so sorry you went through that. Parker: It’s in the past now. As soon as I turned eighteen, I cut off contact with my parents for good. Parker: Abe showed me that I could have a better life, that I deserved a better life. He’s the reason I became a cop. Parker: I wanted to help people the way Abe helped me. I still do… 

-You believe me?

Parker: I don’t know what I believe. You: But you don’t believe Kyle’s death was a random accident, either. Parker stares out the windshield, silent. You: And you don’t think what I saw was a hallucination. Do you? 

Parker turns the car off Lakeview and heads down a side street. Parker: Listen, I don’t know about… ghosts or monsters or whatever. But I’ve seen my share of strange things around here. You: Really? Like what? Parker: Well, about a year ago, I was out camping on the beach. By myself, of course, because that’s always a smart idea… Parker: I heard this noise outside my tent in the middle of the night. Something… splashing. Parker: I figured it was just an animal, so I tried to ignore it, but it kept getting louder… closer… and then I heard footsteps. You: Uh oh… Parker: They went all the way around the tent, like it was trying to find a way in. When it started scratching at the flap-- You: Oh my god! Parker: Yup. I thought I was gonna have a heart attack. You: What did you do? Parker: I yelled something in my best Officer Tough Guy voice. I don’t even remember what. You: …And? Parker: And that was it. Whatever it was just… disappeared, or took off. 

You: So… -What was it?

Parker: No idea. It definitely wasn’t a dream, because I was wide awake after that. You: Did it leave tracks or anything? Parker: Yeah. Hoof prints. Going into the water. You: No way… Parker: I figured it must have been some kind of sick deer or something. Rabid, maybe. 

-What did you do?

Parker: I ran to my car and spent the rest of the night inside with the doors locked. You: Bravely cowering? Parker: Of course. You: So what happened after that? Parker: When the sun came up, I canvassed the scene for evidence, but all I found were tracks going into the water. Parker: Needless to say, I packed everything up and got out of there.

Parker turns onto the road leading toward your grandpa’s house. You: This has to all be related. There’s something out there, in the lake. Parker: I don’t know… You: Do you have a better explanation? Parker: No, I don’t, but that doesn’t mean the answer is the boogeyman. Parker: I’m a cop. I need more to go on than ghost stories and hunches. You: Even when they’re your own? Parker: Especially then. Parker: I guess that means someone should go talk to Ned again… You: I was thinking the same thing. Parker: Whoa, I didn’t mean you! You: I can’t just sit around while people are dying, Parker. I need to do something! Parker pulls up outside your grandpa’s house and turns off the engine. Parker: Look, I can’t exactly stop you if you’re not doing anything illegal, but if you’re planning to visit Ned… Just be careful, okay? 

You: (I should say…) -Worried about me? +Romance

Parker: I’m a cop. It’s my job to worry. You: Aw. Is that the only reason? Parker: Well, I am still on the clock. It wouldn’t be appropriate to flirt. You: No. It wouldn’t. Parker: But then… Your eyes meet over the console… Parker: My shift is almost over… 

-I’ll be careful.

Parker: Thanks. And let me know what Ned says. You: I thought the case was closed? Parker: Call it professional curiosity. You: Meaning… Parker: Meaning there are now two strange deaths that may or may not be related, and that bothers me. Parker: But contrary to what you see on TV, police officers aren’t all detectives. And even detectives don’t get to pick their cases. Parker: So yeah, if Ned tells you anything more substantive than a ghost story, I’d like to hear-- 

Suddenly the radio squawks, making you and Parker jump! Dispatch: Code twelve on Hobbes and Maple. Nearest unit, please respond, over. Parker sighs and speaks into the radio. Parker: Hey Lou, this is Parker. I can take that code twelve, over. Parker: I’m sorry, I gotta go. You: Well, it is a code twelve. Parker: You have no idea what that means, do you? You: Bank robbery? Parker: Try broken traffic light. You: Sounds exciting. Parker: On Hobbes Street on a weekday? At brunch? You: Well gosh, when you put it like that… You climb out of the car and shut the door. Parker rolls down the passenger side window. Parker: You look good, by the way. Been meaning to tell you. You: Yeah right, I look like a drowned rat. Parker: Naw, half-drowned at most. Parker: Listen, if you need to get in touch with me… You: Call 9-1-1? Parker: Uh… no? That’s the exact opposite of what you should do. I was gonna give you my number. You: Even better. MC +5 You: Thanks again for the ride. Talking about all this… it helps. Parker +5 Parker: That it does. See you around, [Name]. You exchange phone numbers, then step back as Parker winks, revs the engine, and dramatically peels out. You: See ya…

[lhs3020b]

The Fugitive Worlds, by Bob Shaw

The Fugitive Worlds is the last novel in the Land/Overland trilogy. Since I’ve commented on the other two, here are my thoughts. And beware! here there (may) be Ropes! possbly even intersecting ones!

OVERVIEW

It's two generations or so after the Migration from Land. If you squint, society on Overland may have improved - apparently it has got a bit more meritocratic, there certainly has been some progress on gender issues, and this time the novel doesn't open with a random peasant being dragged off to be executed on some noble's arbitrary whim. Technology and infrastructure are changing - Cassyll Maraquine's industrial empire seems to be overseeing a pivot toward a metal-and-steam based economy, and in fact they seem to be in the early stages of an industrial revolution. On the plus side, this presumably means Overland isn't faced with another ptertha crisis in the near future, though a cynic may wonder if they've just swapped one environmental crisis for another one in a few centuries' time, when the seas start rising and the deserts begin to expand. But not to fear - there's every chance that the whole of society will be swept away by cataclysm long before that ominous possibility can occur!

You see, change is afoot in Overland's domain. Because, to the consternation of everyone except the government (who remain supremely complacent), a fourth planet has suddenly appeared in their star system. Attempts are made to bring this to the attention of the queen; unfortunately she's utterly fixated on a demented scheme to extend her reign back to Land itself.

At the opening of the novel, Toller Maraquine II, grandson of the star of the first two books, is discontent. As Cassyll's son, he could have had a life of wealth, privilege and social influence. Instead he spends his time mooning after his supposedly-heroic grandfather - yes, the same one who managed to simply forget that his first wife existed! Toller II, unfortunately, has inherited his grandfather's impetuousness and basic lack of any common sense. He's certainly not a monster, but he is an idiot. This is shown in the book's opening scenes, where he falls blindly in love with the Countess Vantara, despite the fact that she's an obvious schemer and bully.

Seeking to impress Vantara, Toller involves himself with the planned re-expansion onto Land. This swiftly gets disrupted, though, by the appearance of an expanding crystalline disk, growing across the zero-g datum plane that exists between the two twinned planets. The disk's rapid expansion cuts off travel between Land and Overland - it expands beyond the region of breathable air where the two planets' atmospheres meet - and to make matters worse, the Countess vanishes while trying to traverse said region! Oh no! Toller, of course, immediately resolves that he must go and rescue her. (She has treated him with nothing except derision and contempt by this point, and he of course fails to read the very obvious message in there.)

The predictable result of this is that Toller gets himself and his crew abducted by aliens, because of course the people of Land and Overland are actually currently bystanders in someone else's plans. Fortunately for Toller, the Dussarrans show no interest in probing him. Unfortunately for him, the expanding crystalline disk is actually a complex machine intended to relocate Dussarra itself away from the galaxy they all currently live in.

You see, the aliens believe that they are imminently threatened - their researchers have found evidence pointing to a collision between so-called "Ropes" somewhere astronomically nearby. (Ropes appear to be similar to the class of hypothetical topological defects that we call "cosmic strings" - fortunately for us, there's no evidence that cosmic strings actually exist in our universe.) This collision, they believe, will have produced an explosion somewhere between a gamma ray burst and a cosmological phase change. They fear that a wave of destruction is currently zooming toward them, at or close to the speed of light. If they are right, there is certainly no chance of Dussarra surviving it, hence their decision to begin relocating their planet.

Unfortunately there's a smaller problem. The Xa, the relocation engine they're constructing across the datum plane? When activated, it will destroy Land and Overland. The Dussarrans may be about to finish what the ptertha started around fifty years previously - the complete destruction of all civilisation on either Land or Overland!

A LEVER TO MOVE THE WORLD

Before we go any further, I'll give the Dussarrans credit for one thing: whatever their other faults, at least they're willing to think big. They are, after all, trying to address the Rope problem at source. If it were us in their situation ... well, half the newspapers would insist that Ropes don't exist, another third would claim they're leftist conspiracies to steal our precious body fluids, the remaining handful would write something mealy-mouthed about how Ropes might exist but maybe we shouldn't "overreact" for fear of a "pro-Rope" backlash. Centrists would call for a grand bargain with the Ropes - they can toast only HALF the planet in return for a top-up pupil premium on private school fees! Youtube user MagaCrypto2024 will tell you to invest your life savings in their newly-minted RopeCoin ("if it's golden enough for the quantum vacuum, it's gold enough for YOU!") and then a Tory would take 52% of the vote on a platform about how Ropes are great beacuse they'll eradicate the benefits claimants. 10 seconds after that, the shockwave demolishes the entire planet, and of course no-one ever admits that perhaps, just perhaps, they may have got it a bit wrong.

I'll say it again, whatever their other faults, at least Dussarra has managed to react to the crisis, and their behaviour isn't completely-insane.

That said, the Dussarrans' solution does suck.

Apparently the Xa requires weightlessness and a large supply of free oxygen to grow. It's not really clear why the Dussarrans couldn't have simply built a large bubble, say at one of their Lagrange points, pumped that full of air, and grew their Xa in there. There is a suggestion that the planetary alignment between Land and Overland is important too, the book does flip-flop this a bit too. Anyway we're left with the impression that the Dussarrans didn't have a lot of choice in where they built the Xa and they do genuinely believe that they are fleeing a cosmologically-apocalyptic event. Also, it's a plot point that Dussarra isn't an ideologically-coherent monolith; in fact the plan faces substantial internal dissent, and this actually boils over into something as close as the Dussarrans can have to a civil war. This is doubly-significant as the Dussarrans' telepathy also stops them from fighting each other in the usual manner - bluntly, when someone dies nearby, the telepathic backlash is utterly-paralysing to any exposed Dussarran. Killing someone yourself would thus be near-impossible for a Dussarran, though as is common in Shaw novels, the Dussarran elite has found a way to do an end-run around this problem. (Non-lethal weapons don't have the same paralysing impact!)

On a slight tangent, one interesting twist in "The Fugitive Worlds" is that Toller and co are basically NPCs in the Dussarrans' story, and they don't realise it.

The place, I think, where the Dussarrans' scheme becomes morally-unacceptable is their failure to evacuate Land and Overland. The population of Dussarra is at least thirty million - that's their capital city alone! - and in fact is implied to be in the billions. They're a modern industrial society with modern technology, after all. By contrast, even if the Landers have been breeding like bunnies for the last two generations, the population of Overland still can't be more than a few hundred thousand at absolute most. My guess is that a more plausible number would be more like 50-75,000. Perhaps 250,000 if you stretch it (a low death rate and every family putting out 4, 5 or 6+ kids could just about get you there in this timescale).

The Dussarrans have remote teleportation tech, and the denouement shows that said tech can reach anywhere on Overland, even at a distance of millions of miles. In principle, they could remove everyone from Overland, and given the vast difference in population, they could certainly accomodate a few thousand more people on Dussarra. The point I'm making here is that an evacuation was possible; there was no technological, infrastructural or economic barrier that would have precluded it. Granted the Overlanders probably would have reacted badly to being hoovered off their homeworld - who wouldn't? - but, they're not 100% immune to reason either. As Divvidiv's interations with Toller show, Overlanders are capable of understanding the Rope problem, especially when telepathy is used to help said understanding along.

(Also, for that matter, there was nothing to stop the Dussarran government from trying to open diplomatic relations with Queen Dasseene's regime, and maybe saying "Uh, guys, sorry to be a nuisance but we've got some news you might want to hear about...")

Under normal circumstances, of course, abducting everyone off of their own homeworld would be bad. It's still not great, even in context. But, the Dussarrans do have genuine reason to believe that The End Of All Things is barrelling toward them at nearly speed of light. When the Rope-intersection event lights up Land/Overland's skies, we can reasonably assume that it will destroy both of those planets too. In fact, Divvidiv confirms this possibility in as many words. Relocating everyone to Dussarra, then using the Xa and the Land/Overland binary to relocate the planet somewhere safe would, in context, strike me as a morally-defensible solution to the crisis. While it would be sad to lose Land and Overland, it would at least allow both societies to survive.

(The question of Farland is never addressed in this. As far as we can tell, the Farlanders are on their own during this particular cosmological emergency.)

Perhaps unfortunately for everyone, Dussarra's leadership have apparently decided to pull a Thanos instead. Why they skipped over the obvious non-genocidal solution is never directly addressed, though there are hints. The Dussarran leadership patronisingly describes Overlanders as "Primitives" - it's implied that their racism is a factor in their failure to do anything for their new neighbours. Also, thinking about it, the callousness is thematically-consistent with the rest of the series. Throughout this trilogy we see leaders making decisions that are at-best based on expediency alone - witness how quick King Prad was to abandon Ro-Atabri in the first book - or sometimes, decisions are based actively on malice and spite (see the Sgt Gnapperl subplot from the second book). From that point of view, the behaviour of Director Zunnunun and the Dussarran authorities is not particularly-unusual.

The scheme also ends up entirely-backfiring. You see, the wrong planet gets displaced. Ooops.

We never learn the fate of Land or Dussarra for an absolute fact; Toller's post-event speculations are bleak, but the narrative may imply that Dussarra at least could have survived. (The Dussarran rebels return there after the confrontation on Overland - I don't think they would have done that if they thought that their Xa-disrupting box was going to destroy their homeworld in the process!) I'm less optimistic for Land - the planet is probably toast - but that said, there is no "on-screen" death and what happened during the Xa's activation was definitely 100% Off The Rails, so who knows? I suppose it's at least possible that Land could have survived the Xa's activation.

One does wonder how it would cope with the abrupt removal of Overland's tides, though.

That said, Overland seems to experience weirdly few direct consequences for its displacement. The main effect is an abrupt change in the sky, followed later by the confusing discovery that Pi no longer exactly equals 3, but instead is somehow closer to 3.14. There are no storms or earthquakes - it's not clear how the tidal relaxation of Overland's crust had no geological consequences at all. The only thing I can think of is that perhaps the new solar tides are exactly equal to the ones Overland previously experienced?

Oh yes, I mentioned "solar" tides, didn't I? This is because the last few pages of "The Fugitive Worlds" are even more head-bending then they sound. While the galaxies and daylight stars and comets and meteors all vanish, and the number of stars in the sky decline sharply, the Overlanders are surprised to discover that they have a lot more planetary neighbours that they did even hours ago. In the course of one night of observations, Cassyll and Bartan find five distinct planets, and quickly postulate that more could exist. The cream coloured gas giant with the big ring catches their attention, and they're confused about how to count the binary between the blue planet and it's one-quarter-sized greyish companion? moon? neighbour?

Yes, a cream-coloured gas giant with a prominent ring system, Pi quite possibly equal to 3.141592654..., a blue planet with a greyish moon that's about one quarter its diameter ... hmmm, I wonder where Overland could have gone? Such a mystery, no possible clues, amirite? Oh yes, the blue one is described as being quite bright, so apparently Overland's new orbit is fairly near to it. Given how relatively-empty Overland is, you do does find yourself wondering just how long before their heavily-populated new neighbour decides that they're next on the menu for Manifest Destiny...

(Just in case anyone's confused about what the ending implies, the descriptions suggest that Overland has been displaced not only out of its own universe, but into our solar system. The cream-coloured ringed planet is clearly Saturn, and the blue/grey binary is the Earth-Moon system. The five planets Cassyll and Bartan find are presumably most of the ones from classical antiquity - Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the Earth-Moon system. Presumably they missed out Mercury, but in fairness its closeness to the Sun makes it the hardest of the classical planets to observe, so this is reasonable. But needless to say, this ending does come firmly out of the left field.)

BUT WHAT OF THE PEOPLE?

In terms of characterisation this novel continues the threads of the previous two. Shaw does do a good job of painting believable people - their flaws, errors and misjudgements are all very human. No-one does anything that real people wouldn't, or haven't. Toller's hero-worshipping his wife-amnesiac grandfather (have I mentioned the airbrushing that Fera Rivoo got halfway through the first book?) is believable. People do behave like this, idolising idiots and putting others on pedestals. His infatuation with Vantara is depressingly-believable too. People fall for people they shouldn't all the time. This sort of meltdown is arguably one side of the romantic coin, after all.

Vantara - well, there are plenty of status-obsessed bullies out there who are also secretly cowards. She's the monarchical version of every bad middle manager you've ever met. One of the book's subplots is how she gradually falls from Toller's esteem, though it takes until the denouement before he finally sees her for what she is. Also, interestingly, the romance plot gets subverted at this point. Toller manages to find someone else, someone who is both a better person and who will hopefully balance his more self-destructive tendencies with basic common sense.

Also, Vantara's entire career basically hangs off of the fact that a close relative is also the Queen. With Queen Dasseene's health in sharp decline and a clear suggestion that her reign will soon end, one suspects that Vantara's star will go down with her. Also this won't be helped by the fact that Vantara was physically there, on the field with the Dussarran rebels' Xa-disrupting box and she did - not a lot? It was almost the end of Overland, and heroic deeds were notable largely by their absence on her part.

The Dussarrans feel less real. That said, Divvidiv's combination of complacency, careerism and partly-sublimated guilt at the necks he knows he's stepping on in his job - yes, it does feel consistent with your average out-of-their-depth middle manager. We see less of Director Zunnunun and we know of the Palace of Numbers only indirectly, but their general superiosity and smugness are consistent with what I know of senior-management-as-a-group. However, Dussarra does remain slightly out-of-focus even in the second half of the book, when Toller and co are literally stood on it.

Cassyll and Bartan pop up every now and then in the narrative, but they're not so directly-involved. They're mainly there to try to explain events to the Queen, who is clearly severely ill and also severely in denial about being ill.

Another niggle aboout this book is that it carries on dropping plot threads, much like the other two. What happened to the people the Queen sent to Land? Did Dussarra survive? What happened to the rebels? Was the Rope-intersection really real? We never get clear answers or, in some cases, any answers at all. It almost feels like this novel was intended as a sequel-hook for a fourth book, or perhaps some new trilogy, but said trilogy never arrived. Honestly, that might be for the best. (Do we really want to read a novel about Overland being plowed up for luxury executive mansions while the surviving population are herded off to reservations, or all die from the flu or other imported terrestrial diseases? Given the Kolcorronian monarchy's behaviour in the first book, being on the wrong end of a colonial expansion would have a certain bleak irony, but it wouldn't be fun to read.)

So again, like the previous two, this one is a page-turner. It's hard to put down. But like the previous two, it suffers from dropped plot-threads and perhaps also a few too many out-of-the-left-field WTF? moments. That said, I did enjoy re-reading it, and I can see why it made such an impression on younger!me all the way back in the 1990s, when I first read this trilogy.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

BUT WHILE DEMAND SHAPED LIKE A WELL IS ALMOST A NECESSARY CONDITION FOR A GOOD PART OF WESTERN HISTORY, AS IN A SECRET SOCIETY, NOTHING THAT HAPPENS WITHIN THE BUILDING SHOULD BE TOLD TO OUTSIDERS

The fact that startups need less money means founders will increasingly have the upper hand over investors. And pay especially close attention whenever an idea is good. Technology should increase the gap between the productive and the unproductive. Working to implement one idea gives you more ideas. The second is that different startups need such different things, so you need to do here is loosen up your own mind, it may be somewhat blurry at first. Since startups often garbage-collect resources or to move or restore data, programs that tried to restart things if they broke, programs that ran occasionally to compile statistics or build indexes for searches, programs we ran explicitly to garbage-collect resources or to move or restore data, programs that ran constantly in the background looking for problems, programs that pretended to be users to measure performance or expose bugs, programs for diagnosing network troubles, programs for diagnosing network troubles, programs for diagnosing network troubles, programs for diagnosing network troubles, programs for doing backups, interfaces to outside services, software that you can. I'm not saying that if you want to solve a problem using a network of cooperating companies work better than a single big company? Well, that is all too obvious. You can't distinguish your group by doing things that are rational, and believing things that are missing will take some time to see. And more specifically, is it always partly his wife's fault? Why didn't Henry Ford realize that networks of cooperating companies, you have to create distance yourself. And that's where the money is.

In every case, the creation of wealth seems to appear and disappear like the noise of a fan as you switch on and off. Meaning everyone within this world was low-res version 1, it's clear you can't reproduce that either. In a feudal society, there are some kinds of piracy. The Dutch seem to live their lives up to their elbows in source code, but you should never tell them. But if you're looking for startup ideas they didn't see this one, because unconsciously they shrank from having to deal with tedious problems or get involved in messy ways with the real world, wealth is except for a few vestigial domestic tasks. Plus if you find an unmet need of your own case. In 1989 some clever researchers tracked the eye movements of radiologists as they scanned chest images for signs of lung cancer. Facebook were even supposed to be an illusion. That's a big change. Building something differentiated from competitors by the fact that they value open-mindedness is no guarantee. Venture capital is a business where occasional big successes generate hundredfold returns. My parents never claimed that people or animals who died had gone to a better place, or that up is circular.

Once it became possible to make one's fortune, the ambitious plan was to get lots of education at prestigious institutions, and then buy it, as two separate steps. That's an extreme example, of course, but when you're making a decision impetuously, you're all the more subtle ways we mislead kids. Then for each ask, might this be true? I've written elsewhere, by using Lisp, which many people still consider a research language, we could make the Viaweb editor behave more like desktop software. Y Combinator has now funded 564 startups including the current batch feels like a walk in the park. The investors who invested when you had no money were taking more risk, and are entitled to higher returns. It probably didn't occur to most kids that wealth is something you're supposed to believe, parents either pressure the school into keeping quiet or move their kids to feel it too. You can, so you need to learn to watch from a distance. When I grew up there were only 2 or 3 of most things, and since they were all aiming at the middle of the century our two big forces intersect, in the aggregate, make more money than they want. The phrase seemed almost grammatically ill-formed. Many of our taboos are rooted deep in the past, this rule of thumb in the VC business were established when founders needed investors more.

The second reason we tend to be far better than everyone else. The ultimate way to get wealth is by stealing it. Web pages are just good enough. But if it's inborn it should be universal, and there was a fast path out of the initial idea is the meta-fact that these are hard to see how anyone could argue that the salaries of professional basketball players don't reflect supply and demand. The big successes only have to get a big chunk of their company in the series A stage before series As turned into de facto series B rounds. If you want to grab coffee, for example, is a good candidate for something we're mistaken about. Those helped get it started, but now that the reaction is self-sustaining what drives it is the people. That's no problem for someone on the manager's schedule you can do for the asking. I have no trouble imagining that one person could be 100 times as productive as another. England. The reason our hypothetical jaded 10 year old bothers me so much is not just that it makes life locally more efficient, but also cause you to switch from one task to another; it changes the mode in which you work.

If you do that, but we can do something almost as good: we can meet with them, and the problem now seems to be the last to realize it. Off, quiet. That may not have been a good startup idea. Why wouldn't young professionals make lots of money. Ideally, no one got far enough to ask that. We overcame this one to work on both will be browsing the Web, meaning Web-based applications is to that extent outsourcing IT. Only if it's fun. Unfair, they cry, when one sibling gets more than another. There are only two things you have to do it yourself. For example, anyone reasonably smart can probably get to an edge of programming e. They released the OS without the unfinished parts, and users will have to design software so that it can be a good long period of cheerful chaos, just as you do.

Fashion doesn't seem like fashion to someone in the grip of it. Individualism has gone, never to return. This second group adopt the fashion not because they want the lower costs of new technology. But among the many other things I was ignorant of was how much debris there already was in my head. When you feel that about an idea you've had while trying to come up with some other solution. It's no coincidence that Microsoft and Facebook both got started in January. If someone made x we'd buy it in a second.

Once you have all the college students, you get bad ones that sound dangerously plausible. Piracy is effectively the lowest tier of price discrimination. But I have no trouble imagining that one person could be 100 times as much land in a day as he could with a team of horses. I'm slightly less likely to start something ambitious in the morning. Change happened mostly by itself in the computer business. Because your software evolves gradually, you don't have enough density, the chance meetings don't happen. Yes, because they get the wrong answers on tests. If we don't see corresponding variation in income. This is why some software costs more to run on Windows, and deliver software running on Unix direct to users through the browser. To someone in their twenties today, this wouldn't seem worth naming. They were what Shakespeare called rude mechanicals.

Version 1 of this world was low-res version 1, it's clear you can't reproduce that either. So Web-based software is never going to be broken up, I'm slightly less likely to introduce bugs. What happens now with the Super Bowl used to happen every night. General Foods, General Motors. They're effectively free if you're on the maker's schedule starts to be more disciplined. We found that RTML became a kind of proxy focus group; we could ask them which of two new features users wanted more, and they could not master it. This is just as true today, though few of us create wealth directly for ourselves except for a few vestigial domestic tasks. His skills are simply much more valuable.

Thanks to Sam Altman, Robert Morris, Jessica Livingston, and Beau Hartshorne for putting up with me.

[howlinwolfwb]

WILL WE SEE A MARRIAGE BETWEEN JON AND SANSA IN GAME OF THRONES?

And will the pairing that a lot of fans already want be the one that we all need?

A few book readers speculated that a political marriage between Jon Snow and Sansa Stark would be not only possible, but the best thing for House Stark, and maybe even for each other. However, the idea of any kind of match between them was a quiet cult theory, until season 6 of Game Of Thrones, which set Twitter and Tumblr on fire with the idea of the “Jonsa” romance ship. In this article, I’m going to go through as many reasons as I have discovered for this potential pairing, the foreshadowing that a lot of people might have overlooked, and why readers and viewers should think twice before completely dismissing the idea.

As I am starting with the books, I’ll go ahead and start at the very beginning, before the books were written. In George R. R. Martin’s outline for the series, he had a love triangle in the works, between Jon, Tyrion, and Arya. Even before the first book was finished, he had plans for Jon to wed a Stark cousin. The outline states on the subject:

“Arya will be more forgiving... until she realizes, with terror, that she has fallen in love with Jon, who is not only her half-brother but a man of the Night's Watch, sworn to celibacy. Their passion will continue to torment Jon and Arya throughout the trilogy, until the secret of Jon's true parentage is finally revealed in the last book.”

Given what I am about to lay out in this article, there seems to be a strong chance of GRRM having kept the cousin love triangle, but switched at least the sister, if not the other man (Jon/Tyrion[Littlefinger]/Sansa).

Jon and Sansa began their stories, and left Winterfell, with very similar ideas and worldviews, despite their differing personalities. Both were not just young, heady, and optimistic; both believed in the songs they were sung to as children, but in the heroes the songs described. Both had fantasies of a quieter life and family that, conspicuously, left each other out, and synchronized perfectly with each other.

I would need to steal her if I wanted her love, but she might give me children. I might someday hold a son of my own blood in my arms. A son was something Jon Snow had never dared dream of, since he decided to live his life on the Wall. I could name him Robb. Val would want to keep her sister’s son, but we could foster him at Winterfell, and Gilly’s boy as well. Sam would never need to tell his lie. We’d find a place for Gilly too, and Sam could come visit her once a year or so. Mance’s son and Craster’s would grow up brothers, as I once did with Robb. He wanted it, Jon knew then. He wanted it as much as he had ever wanted anything. I have always wanted it, he thought, guiltily. - A Storm Of Swords - Jon XII

This is a fantasy Jon had, ostensibly about Val, the Wildling sister of Mance Rayder’s wife, whom Jon was infatuated with, at the time. However, she does not feature at all after a cursory mention of stealing her away. He fantasized much more about the hypothetical family than her, and both that fact, and his fantasy-family makeup, is very telling, in three ways. 1.  This fantasy is a direct and near-perfect recreation of the Stark household that he remembers, with him as the new Neddish patriarch. 2. He is not fantasizing about a Wildling girl who walks through Walker territory like it ain’t no thang, or a warrior girl, or a highborn princess, or even a platinum-haired nude dragon queen. He is fantasizing about Val as a mother, and more importantly, as not only the mother he knew (Catelyn), but how he wished Catelyn to be. 3. Most women that we read about in aSoIaF or watch in GoT do not share this fantasy; Westerosi girls tend to be action girls. The only female character who had any kind of similar fantasy, let alone one that synchronizes nearly perfectly to Jon’s, is Sansa:

She pictured the two of them sitting together in a garden with puppies in their laps, or listening to a singer strum upon a lute while they floated down the Mander on a pleasure barge. If I give him sons, he may come to love me. She would name them Eddard and Brandon and Rickon, and raise them all to be as valiant as Ser Loras. And to hate Lannisters, too. In Sansa’s dreams, her children looked just like the brothers she had lost. Sometimes there was even a girl who looked like Arya. - A Storm Of Swords - Sansa

Although they fantasized about different people ostensibly (Jon-Val; Sansa-Willas/Loras Tyrell), both fantasies complete the other, and tell very similar stories about each of them. Both think that love is an addendum to marriage, and something that needs to be worked on. They both disregard the personalities of their interest for what they remember of their mother and father. They both recreate their dead and missing siblings, with exceptions. Robb, Arya, Bran and Rickon are noted, as well as even a Ned. The only figures missing are themselves and each other.

What makes this so extremely notable is not just that the fantasies click perfectly together. It’s not even that Jon’s always wanted exactly this, even from the start, when he dared not wish for his own family. What makes this truly meaningful, is that there is only one girl in all of Westeros who knows what growing up in Winterfell was like, and who wants the same thing as him, and is not yearning for adventure, vengeance, a throne, or power, let alone above this desire.

Just as Sansa is the only person who fits the bill for Jon, Jon is the only man who has lived up perfectly to Sansa’s fantasies and dreams of heroic knights in shining armor.

“Sweet one,” her father said gently, “listen to me. When you’re old enough, I will make you a match with a high lord who’s worthy of you, someone brave and gentle and strong. This match with Joffrey was a terrible mistake. That boy is no Prince Aemon, you must believe me.” - A Game Of Thrones - Sansa

Curiously, although Prince Aemon Targaryen is a historical character in the Ice & Fire/Thrones universe, Prince Aemon is also the role Jon would take in childhood mock jousts with Robb; judge for yourself if that’s a coincidence.

“I’m Prince Aemon the Dragonknight,” Jon would call out, and Robb would shout back, “Well, I’m Florian the Fool.” -A Storm of Swords – Jon XII

(Sidenote - foreshadowing with other foreshadowing: if you think about it, Robb literally died a fool. He got himself, and Cat, killed for love, when he could've married the Frey girl, gotten safe passage from the Freys, and marched towards Kings Landing to avenge his father and rescue Sansa. But we all know what he was thinking with instead of his brain…)

Jon is by every and all accounts the valiant and heroic knight Sansa wished and pined for, as a dreamy 11-year-old girl. Before I continue, I have to add that the men of the Night’s Watch are often referred to as The Black Knights.

Jon has all of the qualities of the kind of man Ned described to her, as well as all of the qualities of the kind of man she’d always wanted; both as a young, wistful girl dreaming of Aemon the Dragonknight making Queen Naerys his lady love, and the shattered, hardened, and disaffected woman she’s grown to become. She has discarded her fairy tales, because she has realized, through firsthand experience, that those fairytales are not nearly as pretty as they sound. The fairytales are horrifying; they are soaked in the blood and tears of the events and people they describe. Jon is the only character who can fulfill both the dreams and fantasies of 11-year-old Sansa, and the disillusioned young woman who’s never until now known a true hero. No other character in either aSoIaF or GoT can do the same:

Frog-faced Lord Slynt sat at the end of the council table wearing a black velvet doublet and a shiny cloth-of-gold cape, nodding with approval every time the king pronounced a sentence. Sansa stared hard at his ugly face, remembering how he had thrown down her father for Ser Ilyn to behead, wishing she could hurt him, wishing that some hero would throw him down and cut off his head. But a voice inside her whispered, There are no heroes, and she remembered what Lord Petyr had said to her, here in this very hall. "Life is not a song, sweetling," he'd told her. "You may learn that one day to your sorrow." In life, the monsters win, she told herself, and now it was the Hound's voice she heard, a cold rasp, metal on stone. "Save yourself some pain, girl, and give him what he wants." - A Game Of Thrones - Sansa VI

That he did, albeit with poor grace, crossing his arms, scowling, and ignoring the naked steel in his lord commander's hands. Jon slid the oilcloth down his bastard sword, watching the play of morning light across the ripples, thinking how easily the blade would slide through skin and fat and sinew to part Slynt's ugly head from his body. All of a man's crimes were wiped away when he took the black, and all of his allegiances as well, yet he found it hard to think of Janos Slynt as a brother. There is blood between us. This man helped slay my father and did his best to have me killed as well. - A Dance With Dragons - Jon II

Not long after, in the same chapter, Jon does the deed:

Emmett kicked his legs out from under him. Dolorous Edd planted a foot on his back to keep him on his knees as Emmett shoved the block beneath his head. "This will go easier if you stay still," Jon Snow promised him. "Move to avoid the cut, and you will still die, but your dying will be uglier. Stretch out your neck, my lord." The pale morning sunlight ran up and down his blade as Jon clasped the hilt of the bastard sword with both hands and raised it high. "If you have any last words, now is the time to speak them," he said, expecting one last curse.

Janos Slynt twisted his neck around to stare up at him. "Please, my lord. Mercy. I'll … I'll go, I will, I …"

No, thought Jon. You closed that door. Longclaw descended.

Their geographic and psychological journeys are near-perfect mirrors of each other. Sansa heads south while Jon goes north. Sansa becomes Lady Lannister, then a bastard (an identity at least partially crafted on her ideas of Jon); then, in the show, Lady Bolton, and finally the Lady of Winterfell. Jon, meanwhile, goes from Bastard, to Jon Stark (in Robb’s will, which Jon hasn’t seen or heard about), to Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, and in the show, finally, King in the North. Both have to pretend they want nothing to do with their previous lives (Sansa as a prisoner in KL, and Jon with the Wildlings). Both have to essentially fake it to make it, as Sansa tries to actively forget she is not Alayne Stone, and Jon is tempted to stay with the Wildlings. Through all of this, they both try to cling to certain things. Even after abandoning their childhood idealisms to make hard choices, and even through the processes of grieving for their family, as well as trying to become different people, they both have always held notions of justice, fairness, and even compassion close to their hearts and minds.

Also, out of all the surviving Starks, only Sansa sensed Jon’s death:

“There was ice underfoot, and broken stones just waiting to turn an ankle, and the wind was howling fiercely. It sounds like a wolf, thought Sansa. A ghost wolf, as big as mountains.” - A Feast For Crows - Sansa’s final chapter

As soon as news of Jon’s parentage comes out in the North, his claim to Winterfell will be, at the very least, heavily debated among and contested by the Northern lords. Although half Stark, he is not the son of Eddard, but of Lyanna. On top of that, he has a Targaryen father. Seeing as the Mad King killed Ned’s father Rickard Stark, and Ned's brother Brandon. The Northern lords will have no loyalty to a Targaryen. Jon/Sansa would be both an excellent twist of the kind that aSoIaF/Got are known for, and mutually beneficial for the both. Their marriage would secure Jon’s claim to the North, unite the North as it needs to be for the War for the Dawn, and secures the safety and place at Winterfell for both. Also, as she says in the books, “No one will ever marry me for love.” It’s a sad truth, but a truth nonetheless; every and all other Lords would want to marry her for her claim to Winterfell. Jon, though, would never force Sansa to marry anyone. He knows what she’s been through. He cares for her, and would never hurt her in any way. Sansa knows this, and it might just be what will drive her to suggest they marry. Jon needs a Queen either way, to keep the Stark bloodline going. I will even go so far as to say this: I think that the northern lords will want to make Sansa their Queen after they find out about Jon’s parentage, in which case, same thing; she’ll need to keep the Stark bloodline going. Add to that him being a Targaryen, and she a Stark, they would literally be uniting not only the North, but the South too. Soon, every person in the whole of at least Westeros will find out about the Night’s King and the White Walkers. It is this exact moment that the North will need stability, and hope. A union between Sansa and Jon would give the northerners nothing less or other than that. Jon is a great commander. He is brave, and honorable, and he will do all he can to keep Sansa and all the northerners safe. He’ll fight for them. The prospect, the reassurance, and after the battle is over and the war is won, Winterfell and the North will be rebuilt, by its people with the support and help of their King and Queen. Everything points to their union. The prospect, the reassurance, that after the battle is over, after the war is won, Winterfell, the North will be rebuilt, by its people with the support and help of their King and Queen. Everything that points to a good resolution for the stories of Ice & Fire, and Thrones, points to their union.

Even on Thrones, David Benioff and Dan Weiss have planted an insane amount of seeds for Jonsa. Not only for a political union, but in season 6 set the internet on fire with gooey Jonsa romantic tension, with gems such as this moment, from s6e5 (The Door):

Jon: New dress? Sansa: I made it myself, do you like it? Jon: Yeah, well, it’s—I like the wolf bit.

Brothers awkwardly fumbling for words to compliment their half-sister’s dress? Not something you see everyday. This scene was unnecessary, but D&D included it, I’ll allege for a reason. I'm not necessarily saying that Jon is in love with Sansa here, but the tension between them and their interactions are very awkward, and not how they should be between two people who think they are brother and sister. Also, this is not something a brother says to a sister in danger:

Jon: I won’t ever let him touch you again. I’ll protect you. I promise. (From s6e9 - Battle Of The Bastards)

Again, a bizarre choice of words, if Jonsa is not a component of the story. Brothers say things like “ I will never let him hurt you again”, or “tell me where he is”.  Let’s not forget most of their scenes have them speaking while being surrounded by warm candle light and with soft focus; quite a romantic atmosphere for two SIBLINGS. The way their scenes were shot, do not only mirror Ned’s and Cat’s, but also Robb’s and Talisa’s. I find it hard to believe D&D wrote and shot their scenes the way they did accidentally. They wanted to do one of either two things: either set Twitter and Tumblr on fire with Sophie and Kit’s chemistry; or, subtly, put this notion into our heads, have us talk about it, and speculate. Whichever they did, it obviously worked, thus introducing us to the idea, and actually preparing us for it.

PS I thought that @castaliareed and @fedonciadale  would be interested in this meta; I hope it’s good for a 1st.

[fictionalinfinity]

A Fantastic Adventure - Kings Cage AU Part 4

previous / next

this really isnt thaaat great sorry

WHITE FIRE, ARCHEON

Maven crossed the floor of the throne room heatedly, not willing to believe the intel given to him by the spy he had located in the Rift. He had already chosen not to acknowledge the notion of the Rift being a kingdom. This, though, this was just too unbelievable.

Mare was dead?

That was not a part of his plan. His wife, Iris, widened her eyes in shock. “The Red girl from the palace?” Iris asked, and the spy nodded.

“They buried the body this morning, Your Highness. I witnessed it myself,” the spy, Therese, replied. Therese was a Storm, born with the ability to control the weather, and Maven had placed her specifically, hoping that she would be able to befriend Mare.

“If I may, Your Majesty, I also heard Tiberias speak with General Farley,” Therese began, and Maven gestured for her to continue, eager to hear news about his brother. “They are organizing another attempt to steal from the air fleet in Delphie.”

Maven was surprised to hear that they were taking another stab at it. After their first attempt, almost two years ago, security had been tightened. They had certainly put their air fleet to good use in the past few months. “Understood. You are dismissed Lady Torres.”

As Therese left, a single guard entered, giving a short but formal nod of his head as he acknowledged Maven. “Her Royal Highness is needed. If you would come with me, Ma’am.” Iris nodded and stood from her throne on the dias and bid him farewell. Together, Iris and the guard exited, and Maven was left to think of how to propose a counter attack that would help take down the Scarlet Guard.

MARE

THE MIDDLE WORLD

“I could always just jump us to where the are,” Shade said for the fifth time in the past fifteen minutes.

“I already answered you, Shade. You said so yourself that using our abilities drains us. My answer is still no,” I sighed exasperatedly, sick and tired of his whining. “If you’re bored, then just find a way to entertain yourself.”

“Tell me something about Clara,” Shade said, making me freeze for a moment.

“I don’t know too much about her. Gisa dotes over her more than anyone else, that’s for sure. She’s got tiny little brown curls, almost like yours, and her cheeks get all rosy when she cries or laughs. She always cries when I hold her, though. Even vomited on me, once. I couldn’t get the smell out of my hair for days,” I laugh, thinking of how flustered and angry I must have looked. Cal just wouldn’t let me forget about it either.

Shade bursts into a fit of laughter. “You’re serious? I think you might just be the worst aunt ever.” I give him a playful shove, mumbling ‘rude’ under my breath as I try to hide my grin. It went on like that for a little while. Me, telling him what I knew of Clara, and Shade, telling me how terrible of an aunt I am and laughing. It was nice. I missed this.

The sun was just now beginning to rise, and now that I could see out farther, I knew we still had a long way to go. The sun shines through the trees, lighting up the hill we are climbing. I can hear water to the east of us, with birds chirping up above us. No twigs have snapped underneath our feet, but I can only guess it is because we aren’t really walking through a forest, instead, resting in a grave.

Shade and I lapse into another round of silence, both of us thinking about what we’ll do when we’ve reached the Guard’s location. Ideas fly through my mind, each one crazier than the last, but I dismiss almost all of them. One that seems to stand out though, is can we talk to someone who is on the brink of death?

I ponder it for a few moments. Hypothetically, it could work. If Shade jumped me out of my body, than what would happen if we tried to talk to someone in the same situation. It wouldn’t be much help if they died, though, unable to carry on our message. If they were near a healer, though? It could work.

I say Shade’s name at the exact time he says mine. “You go first,” he says, nodding at me.

“So, I was thinking… what if we could talk to someone on the brink of death?” I suggest as I watch Shade’s eyes widen.

“That...could work,” he smiles at me before continuing with his idea. “I was thinking of something similar, but what if we could write a note on a piece of paper? I don’t know if they’d see it, but it’s worth a shot,” he shrugs as I nod.

“We could try out both, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll think of something else. There’s got to be something that works,” I say firmly, trying to reassure myself. Shade mumbles something in agreement, but even I can see the doubt in his eyes. He’s been stuck here almost a year. Even I would have lost hope by then. But we mustn’t.

We’ll get back to our family again, even if it’s the last thing we ever do.

tags: @chaoslaborantin   want to be tagged? just ask!

[toldnews-blog]

New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/world/why-some-japanese-pensioners-want-to-go-to-jail/

Why some Japanese pensioners want to go to jail

Japan is in the grip of an elderly crime wave – the proportion of crimes committed by people over the age of 65 has been steadily increasing for 20 years. The BBC’s Ed Butler asks why.

At a halfway house in Hiroshima – for criminals who are being released from jail back into the community – 69-year-old Toshio Takata tells me he broke the law because he was poor. He wanted somewhere to live free of charge, even if it was behind bars.

“I reached pension age and then I ran out of money. So it occurred to me – perhaps I could live for free if I lived in jail,” he says.

“So I took a bicycle and rode it to the police station and told the guy there: ‘Look, I took this.'”

The plan worked. This was Toshio’s first offence, committed when he was 62, but Japanese courts treat petty theft seriously, so it was enough to get him a one-year sentence.

Small, slender, and with a tendency to giggle, Toshio looks nothing like a habitual criminal, much less someone who’d threaten women with knives. But after he was released from his first sentence, that’s exactly what he did.

“I went to a park and just threatened them. I wasn’t intending to do any harm. I just showed the knife to them hoping one of them would call the police. One did.”

Image caption Toshio displays his own drawings in his cell

Altogether, Toshio has spent half of the last eight years in jail.

I ask him if he likes being in prison, and he points out an additional financial upside – his pension continues to be paid even while he’s inside.

“It’s not that I like it but I can stay there for free,” he says. “And when I get out I have saved some money. So it is not that painful.”

Toshio represents a striking trend in Japanese crime. In a remarkably law-abiding society, a rapidly growing proportion of crimes is carried about by over-65s. In 1997 this age group accounted for about one in 20 convictions but 20 years later the figure had grown to more than one in five – a rate that far outstrips the growth of the over-65s as a proportion of the population (though they now make up more than a quarter of the total).

And like Toshio, many of these elderly lawbreakers are repeat offenders. Of the 2,500 over-65s convicted in 2016, more than a third had more than five previous convictions.

Another example is Keiko (not her real name). Seventy years old, small, and neatly presented, she also tells me that it was poverty that was her undoing.

“I couldn’t get along with my husband. I had nowhere to live and no place to stay. So it became my only choice: to steal,” she says. “Even women in their 80s who can’t properly walk are committing crime. It’s because they can’t find food, money.”

We spoke some months ago in an ex-offender’s hostel. I’ve been told she’s since been re-arrested, and is now serving another jail-term for shoplifting.

Find out more

Japan’s Elderly Crime Wave can be heard on Assignment on the BBC World Service from Thursday 31 January – click here for transmission times

Or listen now online

Theft, principally shoplifting, is overwhelmingly the biggest crime committed by elderly offenders. They mostly steal food worth less than 3,000 yen (£20) from a shop they visit regularly.

Michael Newman, an Australian-born demographer with the Tokyo-based research house, Custom Products Research Group points out that the “measly” basic state pension in Japan is very hard to live on.

In a paper published in 2016 he calculates that the costs of rent, food and healthcare alone will leave recipients in debt if they have no other income – and that’s before they’ve paid for heating or clothes. In the past it was traditional for children to look after their parents, but in the provinces a lack of economic opportunities has led many younger people to move away, leaving their parents to fend for themselves.

“The pensioners don’t want to be a burden to their children, and feel that if they can’t survive on the state pension then pretty much the only way not to be a burden is to shuffle themselves away into prison,” he says.

The repeat offending is a way “to get back into prison” where there are three square meals a day and no bills, he says.

“It’s almost as though you’re rolled out, so you roll yourself back in.”

Newman points out that suicide is also becoming more common among the elderly – another way for them to fulfil what he they may regard as “their duty to bow out”.

The director of “With Hiroshima”, the rehabilitation centre where I met Toshio Takata, also thinks changes in Japanese families have contributed to the elderly crime wave, but he emphasises the psychological consequences not the financial ones.

“Ultimately the relationship among people has changed. People have become more isolated. They don’t find a place to be in this society. They cannot put up with their loneliness,” says Kanichi Yamada, an 85-year-old who as a child was pulled out of the rubble of his home when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

“Among the elderly who commit crimes a number have this turning point in their middle life. There is some trigger. They lose a wife or children and they just can’t cope with that… Usually people don’t commit crime if they have people to look after them and provide them with support.”

Toshio’s story about being driven to crime as a result of poverty is just an “excuse”, Kanichi Yamada suggests. The core of the problem is his loneliness. And one factor that may have prompted him to reoffend, he speculates, was the promise of company in jail.

It’s true that Toshio is alone in the world. His parents are dead, and he has lost contact with two older brothers, who don’t answer his calls. He has also lost contact with his two ex-wives, both of whom he divorced, and his three children.

Image caption Toshio is a keen painter

I ask him if he thinks things would have turned out differently if he’d had a wife and family. He says they would.

“If they had been around to support me I wouldn’t have done this,” he says.

Michael Newman has watched as the Japanese government has expanded prison capacity, and recruited additional female prison guards (the number of elderly women criminals is rising particularly fast, though from a low base). He’s also noted the steeply rising bill for medical treatment of people in prison.

There have been other changes too, as I see for myself at a prison in Fuchu, outside Tokyo, where nearly a third of the inmates are now over 60.

There’s a lot of marching inside Japanese prisons – marching and shouting. But here the military drill seems to be getting harder to enforce. I see a couple of grey-haired inmates at the back of one platoon struggling to keep up. One is on crutches.

“We have had to improve the facilities here,” Masatsugu Yazawa, the prison’s head of education tells me. “We’ve put in handrails, special toilets. There are classes for older offenders.”

He takes me to watch one of them. It begins with a karaoke rendition of a popular song, The Reason I was Born, all about the meaning of life. The inmates are encouraged to sing along. Some look quite moved.

“We sing to show them that the real life is outside prison, and that happiness is there,” Yazawa says. “But still they think the life in prison is better and many come back.”

Michael Newman argues that it would be far better – and much cheaper – to look after the elderly without the expense of court proceedings and incarceration.

“We actually costed a model to build an industrial complex retirement village where people would forfeit half their pension but get free food, free board and healthcare and so on, and get to play karaoke or gate-ball with the other residents and have a relative amount of freedom. It would cost way less than what the government’s spending at the moment,” he says.

But he also suggests that the tendency for Japanese courts to hand down custodial sentences for petty theft “is slightly bizarre, in terms of the punishment actually fitting the crime”.

“The theft of a 200-yen (£1.40) sandwich could lead to an 8.4m-yen (£580,000) tax bill to provide for a two-year sentence,” he writes in his 2016 report.

That may be a hypothetical example, but I met one elderly jailbird whose experience was almost identical. He’d been given a two-year jail term for only his second offence: stealing a bottle of peppers worth £2.50.

And I heard from Morio Mochizuki, who provides security for some 3,000 retail outlets in Japan, that if anything the courts are getting tougher on shoplifters.

“Even if they only stole one piece of bread,” says Masayuki Sho of Japan’s Prison Service, “it was decided at trial that it is appropriate for them to go to prison, therefore we need to teach them the way: how to live in society without committing crime.”

I don’t know whether the prison service has taught Toshio Takata this lesson, but when I ask him if he is already planning his next crime, he denies it.

“No, actually this is it,” he says.

“I don’t want to do this again, and I will soon be 70 and I will be old and frail the next time. I won’t do that again.”

You may also be interested in:

Megumi was a baby when her parents separated and her father disappeared from her life. But years later her mother told her he wanted to reconnect. Megumi began to see Yamada regularly. She thinks he is her father, and that Yamada is his real name – but this is a lie.

Read: I hire a man to pretend to be my daughter’s dad – and she doesn’t know

Join the conversation – find us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter.

[ecotone99]

[HM] Lively Debates- A series of faux discussions that escalate into absurdity

Join us for spirited debate on the most important issues of our time, in a series we’re calling Lively Discussions**. As Christopher Hitchens used to say: “Debate is what separates us from the savage beast. Along with leaf blowers.” No argument from us there!** Today’s discussion is all about the best Star Wars character of all time. Edwin and Steven will be debating: “Jango Fett versus Jek Porkins.” STEVEN: Let me begin by welcoming back my esteemed partner in discourse, Edwin. As always, I look forward to being enlightened and enriched after hearing your opinions on this matter. However, for me there is no question that Jek Porkins is the superior Star Wars character. As a Rebel X-Wing Star Fighter he not only fights on the morally just side, but heroically gives his life for the cause. While not widely celebrated, his role in helping steal the technical readouts to the Death Star cannot be overlooked. Characters like him are what make Star Wars worth watching. EDWIN: Steven, my dear friend and godfather of my first, second and fifth child, it is beyond a pleasure to be in your presence once again. I sit here now basking in the light of what will surely prove to a beautiful, illuminating discourse that I believe will not only help us uncover verité, but also allow us both growth as individuals. Of course, I must open by insisting you drop the notion of equating character worth with morality. The richest characters in cinematic history are not fairy tale character of pure virtue, but instead complex individuals colored with shades of grey. So while Jek is certainly on the side of good, he lacks the depth and arc of a morally-agnostic bounty hunter simply trying to raise a son. Jango is multi-faceted and we are all the richer for it. STEVEN: Edwin, wise and thoughtful scholar. Your knowledge on most any topic is so expansive, that if committed to parchment and stretched across the heavens it would blot out the sun. Plunging us into a darkness so intellectually vast, global agricultural production perhaps never recovers. I couldn’t agree more that morality is not the sole metric a character should be judged on. I must question though, if you paid attention to my argument carefully enough. As stated, but now repeated, Jek isn’t just a hero in thought but in action. His efforts to steal the Death Star plans, an objective he heroically gives his life for have seismic implications on the plot of not just Star wars but specifically the original trilogy. Which as we know is the most critically acclaimed series of Star Wars movies in history. Meanwhile Jango, regrettably toils in futility in the prequels. Which as we all know is a series of movies and characters most people would rather forget. EDWIN: Steven. Your words of praise not only touch my heart, they touch my mind, and they touch parts of myself that are not appropriate to discuss in such an educational setting. You are truly the Babe Ruth of Socratic discourse. Which is why it pains me that today’s arguments are so painfully simplistic. First you pile all your hopes onto the pack beast of morality. And now that it has proved to be a feeble animal, you have moved onto it’s brother: utility. Your arguments about Jek are not defending Jek, but simply his proximity to much more interesting characters. It’s ludicrous. To help you understand what I mean, let’s try to imagine a completely hypothetical marriage. Say Zteven and Zamantha are a married couple of many years. Then suppose that Zteven is so poor at lovemaking that the only way Zamantha is able to bring herself to completion is by closing her eyes and imagining previous encounters she has had with his much more handsome friend Zedwin. Now would you say Zteven is the better lover simply because he is more integral to the marriage? You clearly would not. STEVEN: Edwin, unparalleled genius of our time, thought leader of a generation and father figure to me both intellectually and possibly paternally. While I don’t agree with your arguments, I appreciate your use of a hypothetical example. It reminds me of another hypothetical that perfectly exhibits Jek’s superiority. Say if you will a certain man named Zedwin loves to enjoy a cigarette after coitus. Now imagine a brave, noble hero, much like Jek stumbling upon this reality while watching Zedwin in his own bedroom with his beloved, but sadly misguided wife. But instead of announcing his presence, he bides his time, learning when these rendezvous occur and remaining out of sight. Then, as Zedwin is distracted Zteven steals his cigarette pack and poisons it with traces of cyanide. Not killing immediately but gradually over time. Yes, Zteven wants to watch it happen slowly. Because this is what happens to the morally ambiguous Jango’s of the world. They do not get the hero’s death of the Jek’s. Sometimes they are beheaded in battle. Other times they die in bed by their mistresses side, for all the world to see how repugnant a character they truly were. Oh, how much better our stories will be when all the Jango’s are finally gone. EDWIN: Steven, it would take a million monkeys typing at a million typewriters for a million years for them to come up with a single sentence that matches the wit and ferocity of your intellect. And from what Zamantha tells me, it would take Zteven equally as long to learn how to please a woman. It is a bit odd, your claim of admiring a man like Jek, who we can both at least agree had the nobility of character to commit his treason against the empire in full view of the galaxy, while you sit and skulk in the shadows. Attempting to patch up a broken marriage with poisons and deceptions. Jango would never attempt such a cowardly deed, he chose instead to go nobly to his end in battle against his equal, Ben Kenobi. That is why to prove my point, I have decided to smoke this entire pack of coward-tampered cigarettes altogether at once. Goodbye old friend. And goodbye Zamantha, you were the only woman I ever truly loved. Thrice. In the same night. While her husband hid in the closet. Thinking we were completely unaware of his presence. STEVEN: Wise and noble Edwin. Your intelligence is unmatched. Your eloquence, boundless. Your silver tongue, platinum. As always, your rousing thoughts stir us from the intellectual malaise that is everyday life. So with all my heart and soul I say to you sir, may you rot in the deepest, darkest bowels of hell. Being flogged for all eternity in a fiery pit, beside Jango himself. Ok folks, that concludes this round of Lively Discussions. Who do you think won? Tweet @NOTPORNDOTCOM with #Jango or #Jek to let us know! More Lively Debates: https://notporn.com/penne-vs-fusili-1af513452bac

submitted by /u/Dance_pirate [link] [comments] via Blogger http://bit.ly/2UFbgGt