#OpenOffices

[crplpunkklavier]

thoughts on vongole, and kristoph as a dog owner

DISCLAIMER: i am not a professional in dog care nor training. i have had and trained a dog for many years now, but he is not a retriever. i've studied up on other breeds out of curiosity (and due diligence tbh). if anything i say here is factually wrong and you know more, feel free to reach out!

Kristoph: Ah, yes, she's surprisingly delicate, you know. Requires careful tending. But, she is my "best friend", as they say. Phoenix: "Best"...? Come on, now I'm starting to feel bad for you. Kristoph: Oh? Of course, she's known to bite if handled roughly. Phoenix: Y-Your rose bites? Kristoph: ...... I was speaking of the photo next to the rose. My retriever, Vongole. Cute, but feisty.

this is all we ever learn about vongole. am i going crazy about it? maybe. (also, after this line, phoenix thinks to himself, "every dog has its thorn..." as if that means literally anything. i love him so)

vongole is one of my favorite mysteries about kristoph. she is not at all relevant in aa4, and if she was only ever going to be in this tiny bit of flavor text (so easily missable too!) why put her in at all? was she going to play a bigger role in a later game that shu takumi never got to bless us with? i guess it's possible. that would lift vongole on the same level as those pesky black psyche locks. but either way, we have her here, and that means i get to overanalyze her :)

or more accurately, i get to overanalyze kristoph gavin on the basis that he has a dog who

is a retriever

is "surprisingly delicate"

requires careful tending

is his best friend, as they say

bites if handled roughly

hey. what the fuck does any of that mean, kris?

lets start with the breed. i've mentioned in a post before that many of us seem to have collectively decided that vongole is a golden retriever, which seems fitting, since those are famous blondes, just like the other gavins. however, "retriever" doesn't automatically mean golden retriever! there are a few other retriever breeds. you're probably familiar with labrador retrievers, for instance. i have a curly-coated retriever in my neighborhood who, you guessed it, has a charming curly coat, pitch black, and is a trained service dog!

we often see retrievers as service dogs, because they're pretty fit for the job. the name retriever comes from hunting though. while my own dog is more engaged in actually running ahead and killing prey himself (no i don't let him do that.), retrievers have been bred to go and, well, retrieve prey for the hunters. this of course means that you can also teach them to retrieve other stuff for you fairly easily. like meds, socks, blankets -- stuff a service dog would be helpful for.

apart from that, retrievers are also known to be good family dogs, because they're friendly, affectionate, loyal, and quick to trust. they're also very active, and pretty smart! there are minor differences between the various retriever breeds, but this much goes for all of them to some extent.

why in the world does kristoph have a dog?

i... just..... does he seem like a dog person to you?? i just.... i mean, he doesn't seem like a cat person to me either. or a plant person. maybe he doesn't seem like a person to me. i just really stumble over this sometimes, because it seems wild to me to think that kristoph gavin got himself a retriever just because he.... wanted a retriever?

the guy works what's pretty much an office job. his salary shouldn't be very high, as a defense attorney? but, well, he's implied to like high-profile cases, and he had the money to employ an assistant, so i don't think he's poor. he needs time and space for a retriever, though. vongole isn't a little shih tzu who's happy to just hang out on your lap all day. again, REALLY active. this is a dog who wants AT LEAST an hour of outside time a day. kristoph gavin doesn't even look like he's ever seen the sun. but ok.

one frankly hilarious route i've considered is that he wanted a dog for protection. klavier says he's been "living in fear" ever since zak gramarye disappeared on him, and then he panicked enough to straight up beat him to death the minute he saw him again seven years later. he's paranoid, he's spying on everyone involved. i think kristoph really was very scared. so maybe at some point he figured he'd get himself a dog that would protect him from assailants.

i say this is hilarious because..... a retriever is not the dog you want, man. like, yeah, she'll be loyal to you if she likes you. the problem is she is also really quick to like you, or the intruder in your house, or the guy coming to your office to kill you. if kris got a retriever because he wanted a guard dog, that was a fantastic bit of stupidity, and i personally love it for him.

another angle i like, one that makes him a little less stupid and a little more horrifying, is appearances.

But, she is my "best friend", as they say.

this line really does something to my brain. kristoph gavin talks like a law text book at the best of times, so the somewhat awkward wording of it isn't really what's bothering me. it's the fact that he said it at all. it's that very last part. the "as they say." because, yeah, sure, people say that. yeah yeah, man's best friend, we've all seen it.

and it just... seems so very kristoph to latch onto a truism about human beings, to make himself look like one. look at him! he's got a suit, he's got a job. he's totally on speaking terms with his brother. when the bar association voted to disbar phoenix, he was the only one who voted against that (one more thing i'd love to make a big post about one day lol), he has regular dinner with his good friend phoenix wright, he has an assitant, he has a law office. he probably has a car, because it's LA. he has a savings account. that's not, like, canon, but he does. of course he also has a dog. he's just a regular human guy! he likes poetry and the arts. his best friend is a dog, and more than that, a breed which is known for its gentleness, and for how great they are with..... children :)

let's all sit back and let that chill go down our spine for a sec.

kristoph got a retriever to prove something. kristoph got a retriever for the same reason that he made friends with vera misham before he tried to kill her.

remember what his prison cell looks like? with the books, the arm chair, the violin? he keeps up appearances, even after his arrest. of course he'd put up a framed picture of his beloved dog. like any normal human person would.

but did he treat her well?

well...... well.

here's the thing.

i don't think kristoph gavin is an animal abuser. i don't think he treated her badly. but that's a sliding scale, with dogs, and with most pets, isn't it? if i'm never outright mean or violent to my dog, that's great, but if i never give him enrichment, if i never learn to read his body language, if i never give him what he fundamentally needs as a certain animal of a certain breed, i'm still not treating him well. i'm not treating him right, i'm just not overtly torturing him.

back to kristoph. in this vein, i often think about what we hear of his interactions with young vera. one thing that particularly sticks out to me is how drew misham says that kristoph was one of the very few people who ever made her smile.

kristoph clearly has a way with children, to an extent. he knows to get her that stamp -- he actually understands her childish fascination with magic a little too well and gets her a present that she likes so much it thwarts his whole plan. keep in mind that vera was 12 -- when kristoph's younger brother was 12, kristoph was 19 already, old enough to consciously learn things about the 12-year-old in his household. he knows kids, and he gets through to them.

but never fully, does he? klavier figured out something was off about the way his brother came to his office. and even vera, despite smiling at kristoph so earnestly, despite really loving that stamp, despite being only 12, even vera was so horrified by that little twitch of the devil's hand. there was always something uncanny about kristoph.

why am i bringing that up? i'm not saying everyone who's good with children will be good with dogs, or the other way around. but there is common ground. you're dealing with a living thing that's smaller than you, dependent on you, and you're building a relationship that'll take a lot of calmness, understanding, and reassurance. kids often can't express themselves in ways adults would immediately understand, and neither can dogs.

and i think kristoph got about as far with vongole as he did with vera. i think vongole liked him fine. again, retrievers are quick to like people. he was there, he fed her, he probably gave up trying not to let her up on the couch. sure she liked him. but did she listen to him?

before i ever had a dog, my mom used to tell me that she thought the concept of dog training (the german word is Hundeschule, so literally "dog school") was stupid, that she'd had a dog as a kid, and that dog didn't have to know any tricks, it wasn't a circus animal! well, my mom was also bad with every pet we've ever had, and with all three of her kids. so.

look, it's important that your dog listens to you. i'm just saying. no, it doesn't have to know "circus tricks," although depending on the breed, it might have fun learning them! and it definitely just. it needs the basics. your dog needs to understand what "no" means, and your dog should come when called -- i know we're all tired of alpha terminology and it's constantly used wrong, but, genuinely, your dog needs to know that you're the leader of the pack. your dog needs that, it's good for the dog. turns out i was also using it wrong! this reblog explains what i meant to say better than i could. my point was that you have got to give your dog something, some form of structure. for the dog's own cognitive development, for you to work as a union, and last but not least to make sure you don't bring harm to the outside world!

and, yeah, this is absolutely the part where i think kristoph failed. because no, i don't think he was ever violent with her or anything, but i also don't think he would ever have the patience it takes for solid dog training.

why else does he, unprompted, bring up that she is "surprisingly" delicate, and requires "careful" tending? kris, did you not know? why are you surprised by how delicate a literal living thing is? did you accidentally step on her paw and she acted like it's the end of the world? yeah, they do that. did you come home late from the office one night and there was a pile of poop on your overturned laundry basket? hmm. if only something could be done about that.

the "bite if handled roughly" part is the last one i wanna talk about, because that also gave me a lot of trouble.

i mean... dogs bite. they do! mine bites. especially puppies are happy to play-bite, often into hands, and it's important to get that under control while they're young. this also loops us all the way back around to vongole being a retriever. remember, they're bred to carry stuff in their mouths. it is in this dog's dna to use her mouth for stuff.

this means she might be bite-happy in a very specific way. i've actually read multiple times that retriever bites are "soft", because again, they're just supposed to retrieve game when hunting, not kill it themselves. it's already dead, and a dog actually biting into it would make it yucky for humans to eat. retrievers are good at moderating bite strength for that.

but.... it doesn't sound like that's what kristoph is talking about, is it? she's known to bite if handled roughly. that sounds like she really bites. and of course she does. if handled roughly. hey, what the fuck does that mean, handled roughly? who's handling her roughly?

again, this doesn't necessarily scream animal abuse. as @mlmschemes, out of professional experience, has brought up, there are certain things that need to be done during a vet visit that dogs don't always love, especially if they aren't used to it, like nail trims, to state the easiest one. you might have to hold a dog down for that. and if that dog is trained and socialized like ass, yeah, she'll bite if handled roughly.

but, hey, don't worry. she's just feisty. :) cute but feisty, he says.

just like every fucking dog owner i've ever met in the neighborhood who has a half-rabid untrained menace that would probably tear my face from my skull if not for its stupid retractable leash.

anyway.

kristoph wants to be a dog owner because it's a fun normal human thing to do and makes him look non-threatening, well-adjusted, and generally likeable. but he sucks at dog training. nobody has ever fully believed the guy--fucking, even apollo IMMEDIATELY deserts him in court. kristoph lives a superficial life and vongole probably has zero trouble becoming the best friend of whoever gets her next.

just to bring this already embarrassingly long post to a point and an end, here's some quick tips from me for portraying vongole, and by extension kristoph dealing with her:

retrievers are affectionate, so vongole is probably a cuddler

kristoph probably has fur fucking everywhere. he comes into the office with a briefcase thats just filled with lint rollers

vongole knows exactly zero commands. if you have food in your hand, she will sit down, because sometimes that gets her things, and she will try to use it at every possible opportunity

if sitting down doesn't work, she will become more and more annoying. if my dog felt like i wasn't giving him enough attention, he used to walk up to my desk and nudge my forearm with his nose so strongly that my grip on my computer mouse would slip and i would fuck up whatever i was working on.

kristoph loses patience with her. it'd be interesting to write, because he'd want to save face if it happens in public, too. he can't yell at his dog there, that'd look bad. i imagine a lot of insistent leash tugging, a lot of ill-advised grabbing/holding her (here's where he probably gets bitten too), and a lot of smiling and laughing and being like "ohh, haha, she's just so feisty today, what's going on ooo she's so nice normally haha"

i doubt he played much with her? she probably had toys, but for kristoph to interact with them a lot.... you can play fetch with retrievers pretty well, because, once again, they're retrievers. and that's a pretty classic "look at me i'm a normal dog owner" thing to do, so he probably has some like, tennis balls and stuff that he'd throw for her. but that's probably it.

if you write vongole changing owners to klavier and/or apollo, please please please let her do a full 180. if you're going by what i've theorized here vis à vis kristoph, that dog is DESPERATE to learn. dogs want jobs and she would be SOOO happy to be trained.

forget that thing about old dogs and new tricks. my dog is 8 years old and i'm currently teaching him a new command, for funsies. it's working and he loves it. you can write vongole becoming a model citizen at any age. i implore you to.

[stabbyfoxandrew]

oh yes, of course. thank you docs.

[idiopathicsmile]

listen. do i, a freelance writer, enjoy refusing to pay for Microsoft Word, and all the complications this brings to my professional life? of course not, but at this point, it's the principle of the thing

[octoagentmiles]

Try list any Octo-Agents and think of an Episode you Think give them a Shining Moment

W O O F this took a while– I was thinking long and hard about this because there are SO MANY good moments and episodes 😅, and so many agents– it was difficult, but I’m happy with my answers 👀

Ranger Marsh’s Shine Episode is definitely The Monitor Lizards. I LOVE this episode, it’s one of my favourites in the whole series so far—not just because of the events in it, but as a concept. I LOVE the callback to the Great Swamp Search!! I watched the 2nd season blind, and seeing all these familiar faces was SUCH a fun surprise. It’s good for Ranger Marsh as a character, because it actually shows him doing his job as a Ranger, not as an Octo-Agent. It also reinforces the fact that he truly cares for and is friends with these creatures, even if they are invasive, and that he's willing to travel to check in on them. This is another episode that also proves (to me) that the writers know they’re dealing with an older audience for the show, and are more likely to delve into solid lore and continuity. This episode makes me really hopeful for more of that.

Natquik’s Shine Episode, WITHOUT QUESTION, is The Red Fox. Honestly I feel like I don’t need to explain why, but I will because I like talking ✨: Natquik is my favourite Octo-Agent, but overall we haven’t actually gotten that many episodes dedicated to him yet. The Red Fox gives us a close and personal look into what Natquik is like by himself (I love episodes where characters are alone 👀), how he deals with problems (by ignoring them until they get worse—which is interesting... *stares at Barnacles*...), and even hints toward his family, by showing us his family portraits, and leaving us wondering, “Where are they?” – There are so many moments I love in this episode, from when he first discovers the kits, decides to help them stay warm, rushes to protect Barnacles, to his bittersweet goodbye at the end. It’s all so perfect.

Tracker absolutely shines in The Missing Lake. Honestly, he shines a LOT in Above and Beyond, considering he never got his own episode in the main series, and was only in Operation Deep Freeze for two scenes. AnB has been really good to Tracker, and I’m so grateful they decided to make him an Agent. The Missing Lake sticks out to me the most, because for the most part he is by himself (and I’ve already mentioned my love for that <3), and unlike all his other episodes, we get to really see him be responsible and use his Polar Scout skills in action. He’s often portrayed as a follower, who just goes along with whatever he's told to do, but he takes charge twice in this episode: when he offers to help Rowan, and when he stays behind to save Buck. Love that for him.

Calico Jack. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh, Calico Jack....... I could talk forever about this funky old cat man. He doesn’t just shine, he GLOWS in every episode he’s in—but alas, for the sake of this post I will be focusing on The Harlequin Duck. I love the showing of his gentle parental instincts in this episode, and his singing; since we know he canonically has a theme song, that I headcanon he wrote himself. I think far too much, and often, about how he legit panicked when he realized the egg was missing. How his first instinct was to hide that fact from Captain Barnacles. He was terrified, having a full blown panic attack on screen. He apologizes to the mother duck with such genuine solace, and promises to get it back “On [his] honour as a pirate!” ...Which is extremely significant to me, considering Kwazii was the first character to EVER say the phrase: “On me honour as an Octonaut!” in The Flying Fish after Inkling’s book was lost – and of course as a final touch, I adore seeing him work with Pete to get the egg back. The way he tosses the egg in the air, fully trusting that Pete will catch it... they’re so in sync, just as pirate and parrot are meant to be ;)

Paani... I feel like there’s so much more to him than what we’ve seen so far, it almost feels unfair to assign him a “Shine Episode”. So, instead of highlighting a single episode, I’ll quickly talk about three that stick out (PS: you might sense a theme 🤣):

The Barnacle Geese - Uncle Paani. I like the “I’ll be my own uncle” joke, and the Edgar Allen Poe reference. I think Paani’s determination to help the chick (who doesn’t seem to want help) is nice to watch, and helps to prove his worthiness as an Agent—which is always fun considering his hesitance when Barnacles tried to recruit him in S1E1. In a way, this episode also makes Paani seem more like Barnacles. See my old post analyzing the show’s intro. (*Stares at the episode title* 👁️👁️)

The Arabian Camels - Take a shot of cocoa every time I mention my love for episodes where characters are forced to be by themselves. This one is especially interesting to me though, because we know that Paani was alone, for a very long time, before he met the Octonauts. He has no trouble working and getting by alone, and we get to see him exhibiting that, while being out of his element (a dry desert) at the same time; and that’s really cool.

The Lonely Frog - ...Y’know how they constantly make the Octonauts/Agents meet creatures with similar issues to them? Yeah. *Stares at the episode title.* *Stares at the end scene where he says “Kinda like when I met you guys!” before obnoxiously jumping into the lake, in response to Shellington+Peso saying “They never even knew each other existed before! [...] and now it’s like they’ve known each other all their lives!”* *STARES MORE AT THE EPISODE TITLE,,* *wonders how long Paani was actually alone before becoming an Agent...*

Pinto, where art thou? He wasn’t in S2 at all, which was a bit disappointing since we just saw him get an Octowatch in S1. I would’ve expected him to be pressing that button every chance he got, giving us a “Penguin who cried Octoalert” episode. But anyway,, The Curious Penguin is the PERFECT episode for Pinto. It shows his personality really well, and I love how his distractions and the things he learns and discovers help him to save the day in the end. I think Pinto (just like Kwazii) is a good portrayal of ADHD, and how he just needs to be in the right environment to succeed. Each time Pinto messes up or loses focus, isn’t because he was left alone and couldn’t be trusted—it’s because he was left alone and understimulated. So when he’s thrown into a sudden high-stakes situation, all of his focus hones in on the moment, and he’s able to save Dashi and Paani by himself.

AND, because you didn’t say it had to be an Above and Beyond moment, I want to throw some love at The Oarfish episode from the main series. In this episode, Pinto no longer views Peso as “less” than an Octonaut, and is so excited to watch him do his job—it’s really cute!! His impulsivity is once again a positive thing—granted, it seems to annoy Peso a little, but when you think about it he kinda saved the day by being impulsive. He sounded the Octoalert without permission, which let the captain know to come back before their radio signal cut out, and by being unafraid of the “monster” and swimming outside, he was able to discover what the problem was so that Peso could help. He did good.

Pearl.... I love Pearl a lot, but I can’t think of one specific episode that comes to mind for her. I love The Pupfish because it introduces Peri to AnB, and I love how he teaches her how to tie a knot, so she can save the algae (and Glen). I like The Bison episode because it’s interesting watching her not doing something with algae for once, and The Pink Glacier because her and Kwazii’s dynamic was something I didn’t know I needed, but now I want more of (/p).

Ryla. Possibly controversial opinion: I liked Ryla in The Caves of Sac Actun, more than I like her now in Above and Beyond. I know she’s only gotten 3 episodes so far, but she’s really missing something. Sac Actun gave us lore on her right off the bat: she’s old friends with Dashi, she’s a skilled cave explorer, she’s spunky, she’s purple. AnB hasn’t given us much yet. So far her only shtick is caves, and that’s getting a bit repetitive. Consider every moment she has in Sac Actun as her “Shining Moment”, because honestly that whole movie is a 10/10.

Koshi,,,, she hasn't gotten that much yet, but I'm gonna say The Longfin Eels is her Shine Episode. I like the way she narrates the whole episode, because it's very in-character. Plus we know she’s literally writing about this adventure in her diary as she's telling it, as if it were a mystery book. She reminds me of narrators from 1920s film noirs, and that’s cool. Also! Honorary mention of the scene when she gets her Octowatch: I loved that for her <3

Min is below the cut, because my answer for her includes some very heavy SEASON 5 SPOILERS, including SCREENSHOTS:

All of Min's appearances so far are dear to my heart. However, my favourite has to be her own introductory episode: The Giant Chinese Salamander.

The Rainforest Rescue is another amazing episode for Min—she’s a wonderful character on her own, of course—but I think we can all agree that she and Inkling are very adorable together (no matter how you interpret their relationship).

When Above and Beyond aired on Netflix, there was a lot of confusion around Min, from the younger audience and other fans who hadn’t seen S5. The Giant Chinese Salamander introduces Min with a 20-minute special; showing her in high-stakes action with Kwazii, bonding with the Octonauts, being an all-around Cool Person™, and a flashback of how she met Inkling when they were younger.

She saved his life. He was thrown far inland by a rough storm, and was trapped until she found him. I honestly headcanon that Min partially (if not outright) inspired Inkling to form the Octonauts, and this moment could have literally sealed the fate of EVERYTHING we know.

But! Until S5 comes out, that's all I've got to say~ 👋💝

[suspicious-pools-of-blood]

New writer problem unlocked: I have characters who code-switch between English and Turkish and I would like LibreOffice to stop marking all the Turkish words as being misspelled, but it turns out to do that I have to either manually set each section's language (do they even know how many times multilingual people can code-switch in a single sentence, seriously, we even do it in the middle of words sometimes) or switch keyboard layout every time to automatically induce a language switch (I love my Turkish Alt-Q keyboard and you can pry it out of my cold dead hands, I refuse to switch keyboard layouts when I can have a regular English keyboard with all the Turkish letters right there available for free without switching anything)

[retrocompmx]

Un día como hoy (13 de octubre) en la tecnología

El 13 de octubre del 2000, se libera el código fuente de OpenOffice, la versión abierta y libre de StarOffice, de Sun Microsystems #retrocomputingmx #openoffice

[moistvonlipwig]

also speaking of AUs and since you were curious about it earlier when i didn't have my computadora @all-seeing-ifer here's a basic outline of how my ats s4 cordelia-is-the-beast idea would go. there's more stuff with the other characters but this writeup is focused on the main beats of the cordelia & jasmine plot. amazingly enough this is indeed the short version!

a key aspect of this concept, and imo of any good ats s4 rewrite, is giving cordelia a voice. in this rewrite we are alerted to cordelia's possession at the end of "apocalypse nowish" (more on that in next bullet point). from then on we get to see scenes inside cordelia's head where she is interacting with jasmine (who isn't named jasmine yet obviously but for efficiency's sake let us call her that) and commenting on the goings-on around her.

one element that isn't strictly necessary for this idea to work is that connor is not romantically in love with either real cordelia or jasmine-possessed "cordelia"; instead, jasmine positions herself as a mother figure to connor & tells him how cordelia took care of him as a baby. i admit to finding the pseudo-incest aspect of s4 kind of utterly fascinating but while it's interesting to explore in fanfic i ultimately don't really think ats had anything especially interesting to say on the subject & frankly i think the story kind of coheres better if jasmine is a maternal figure instead. you can still have angel be jealous of their bond -- they were supposed to be a family together & now they're excluding him?? :[ < angel's sad face (w/ fangs because he is a vampire) -- and you can also deal more directly with connor's parental issues. plus it makes the jasmine/darla scene in "inside out" even more poignant.

so with this in mind, the cliffhanger at the end of "apocalypse nowish" is that "cordelia" is watching the rain of fire while connor sleeps and we see her slowly smile and then we zoom into her mind and see jasmine, still wearing cordelia's face, gloating to the real cordelia (who is like. tied up or something. in her mind. idk.) that none of her friends suspect a thing.

so basically: we know cordelia learned how to do basic astral projection in "birthday". we also are never shown what her demon half looks like. the idea is that, while cordelia herself is trapped in her own mind, she is able to astral-project her demon half to carry out various attempted interventions in jasmine's plans.

due to reasons [i can explain the reasons but it requires a lot of context lol], the beast cannot communicate using language, speech, writing, anything like that. it can gesture and give Significant Looks and that's it. so cordelia cannot convey to angel investigations anything that's going on, even though she sometimes tries.

prior to "calvary", it would seem to both the audience and the fang gang that the beast is evil and working for jasmine, as it always shows up at scenes of massacres (the eye of fire, wolfram & hart, the svear house). at these massacres, it often kneels by the dying people and appears to drain some kind of energy from them; in actuality this is cordelia taking the pain of the dying person which we know she can do qv "benediction". the beast also performs the ritual to blot out the sun which we later learn is because jasmine needs the sun to be shining in order to be born.

neither jasmine nor the beast manipulate the fang gang into removing angel's soul, they misinterpret things and do that all on their own. in this version though angel does not remember the beast at all. however, jasmine needs angel souled for her plan to work [again, due to reasons lol], so after the svear massacre, which cordelia begged jasmine not to go through with, cordelia in her beast form steals angel's soul. jasmine does not know it is cordelia controlling the beast but she knows the beast is trying to stop her, so she lets angel out of his cage so as to try to force the beast's hand to return angel's soul. she still kills lilah and this is how the audience learns the beast does not work for her -- the beast arrives at the hotel just a little too late to save lilah and the cliffhanger of "calvary" is jasmine taunting it that at this rate it'll never stop her.

jasmine maybe also absorbs lilah into the mindspace with her and cordelia as well? so as to prevent her from showing up as a wolfram & hart ghost and spilling the beans.

jasmine's pregnancy is just a virgin birth situation which impresses connor and he plans to be the best big brother ever. maybe it's even a metaphorical pregnancy?

previous 2 bullet points i still need to work on. anyway, wesley gets faith etc., they're not able to defeat angel or find his soul though.

angel lures cordelia's parents to her old apartment and kills them. then he calls up spike and inquires after xander. at this point, feeling both grief and guilt as well as hopelessness from jasmine insisting that her plan will be able to move forward with a soulless angel, just at a delayed pace, cordelia gives in and the beast shows up and returns angel's soul to him.

the beast takes angel on a little excursion to various places in their history which angel does not understand and at first he thinks the purpose is to make him feel bad because well it's angel what do you expect him to think. then the beast takes him to point dume and leads him into the water and has a little splash fight with him and angel relaxes and realizes the beast wanted to communicate that he was being forgiven for something. But What? he wonders.

at this point harmony shows up to talk to cordelia [she's also in the earlier part of the season but that's a story for the long version...] and she notices something is amiss. also around this time the fang gang have uncovered information that leads jasmine to realize that cordelia is the beast although she does not vocalize this. harmony realizes cordelia is possessed because her outfit is ugly, and when jasmine tries to stake her, the beast bursts in and spirits harmony away. jasmine gives a dramatic speech to the air where she reveals she knows the beast is cordelia. this is the cliffhanger ending of "orpheus" and also the point where the audience is let in on the truth about the beast as well.

jasmine leads the fang gang through a ritual to force the beast permanently back to its source body which would trap cordelia entirely under her control. the ritual works and jasmine leaves only for harmony to show up [after a battle with jasmine's servants] and be like hey guys cordelia is possessed.

after this s4 plays out more or less like the show does except that the demon species that the beast is part of is the same species that jasmine once ruled over and can pronounce her true name. so in order to defeat jasmine cordelia has to wake up and say her name out loud. darla comes to visit her in her sleep and tells her this. but if she does so then it would drain the rest of her energy and leave her in a coma potentially forever. she's like so wake me up already. she shows up at the hotel and says jasmine's name and falls back into a coma but this time it was on her own terms.

again this is the short version ._. if you can believe it...

[snufkinshat]

ah yes, G for Gbold, K for Kitalic and P for Punderline.

[pikachuinhightops]

We need social media to undergo the weird shit that happened with all the major open source projects

Big company gets tired of losing thousands of dollars maintaining something they can't charge for -> employees in that department create non profit -> nonprofit either takes over, buys, forks, or rebuilds project -> project is now better off

[reddragdiva]

huh, LibreOffice is going to year-based version numbers. This is from git master, compiled yesterday. The next release version will be 24.02.

[gillianthecat]

openoffice is a free word processor!

Thank you anon! This is very helpful. 🙏

Their website is openoffice.org

So now I know of two two options for free open source programs, this and LibreOffice. It looks like both branched off from the same open source roots about a decade ago, according to wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org. And both include the same suite of programs as MS Office, including a word processor (Writer) and a spreadsheet program (Calc), which are the ones I’m most interested in.

Here’s an article I found comparing the two: itsfoss.com/libreoffice-vs-openoffice/ (It’s just what showed up at the top of my search, so I make no claims about its accuracy.)

[cielhunternorwood]

It really kills the mood for writing for the laptop to crash for no reason, restart itself when starting back up in order to go right into an unnecessary windows update, and delaying the discovery that the back-up saves left out an entire page of writing.

Fuck Windows 10.

[crplpunkklavier]

holy SHIT libreoffice is good

[juuheizou]

hey! ^^ i really love hearing your thoughts on suzumutsu bc i feel like you understand their characters & dynamic so well, so i thought i'd ask a few random questions i've been thinking about, if u feel like sharing your thoughts on them. for one i've been wondering if animals would like/trust them bc honestly i can see both sides lol. juuzou clearly likes them and in the anime there was that cat in the zoo that liked him too but i can also see him constantly chasing after spooked stray cats... as for tooru i guess it'd depend on what we actually consider canon from whatever the hell his arc was💀 i've also been thinking about how they'd do with kids, like if they had to babysit or something lol. just awkward? terrible? surprisingly good? and finally, what do you think tooru's hobby would be? i can imagine juuzou with a bunch of different hobbies but i couldn't really think of anything for tooru... i think his character is a lot harder for me to understand than juuzou, maybe bc i'm autistic so i relate to juuzou way more lol😅 anyways sorry for this long ramble and hope u have a good day<3

NEVER apologize for sending me a long ramble about suzumutsu! I'm so flattered by the fact that you would want to hear (read? it just doesn't sound the same) me ramble about these things, and to say I do their characters and dynamic justice is probably the nicest, highest praise you could tell me about my suzumutsu ramblings, so thank you! My heart is exploding right now, and I hope I continue to do them justice with this rambling haha.

for one i've been wondering if animals would like/trust them bc honestly i can see both sides lol. juuzou clearly likes them and in the anime there was that cat in the zoo that liked him too but i can also see him constantly chasing after spooked stray cats...

That's a super valid point to bring up-- as someone who interacts with a critical mass of people who often like animals but don't know how to do right by them as my actual job, I have to admit I never even considered Suzuya being one of those people. That being said, maybe there is some bias involved because, like you, I relate really strongly to him myself, but part of why I never thought of it that way is he very easily clicks in my head as a fellow cat whisperer. Meaning someone who can even befriend the mean ones and soothe them when they're scared or hurt, with a strong intuition for when something isn't right. And I think being as blunt as he is at times, he would be the one telling people to stop chasing after spooked stray cats, probably with some vulgar word choices and his glare that can unsettle a Washuu into giving him what he wants. I do think that even though being perceptive of their subtle body language and understanding them enough for strays to let him pet them-- which he does habitually enough in :RE that some of Hanbee's last words to him in that omake where he gets sick are to please wash his hands after petting them, is intuitive, he took some trial and error to nail down the practical side of caring for animals. I have no doubt that he would have wanted a pet of his own from the day he learned that humans could not just be pets, but have them. His first was probably a stray he found and smuggled into his dorm as a teenager one day and he figured that having been one himself, he was an expert on what pets needed and how to care for them. He can't bring himself to hurt this precious little creature like Mama did with him, even as a reward, but he has the other things covered. Except he doesn't. He sneaks bits of his school meals back to it because he thinks that since that's what Mama sustained him on, all pets eat their owner's scraps. He's 16 with no job and only lunch money he pickpockets off of day students, so this cat is unvaccinated and has no veterinary care. He tries really hard to make it a warm, safe nest under his bed and the nicest collar he can make out of that he has around, but animals need more than that. It's just not a great situation, and he can tell his newly adopted stray isn't doing well but he doesn't want to let it go because he knows what no one else knows/believes yet about Tokage and for some reason he really doesn't want that fate for this cat. Within a couple of days, he finally confesses to Shinohara that he smuggled a cat into his room and now something really bad is happening with it, what does he do? He does end up having to relinquish the cat to a shelter-- he didn't fully grasp it at the time, but he never would have been able to offer it any quality of life under his bed at the Academy even if he did know how. Shinohara is there as his ride, for emotional support, and to make sure he actually does relinquish the cat. Frankly, he's shocked that Suzuya would care so much about a living thing. It break's Shinohara's heart seeing how devastated Suzuya is over losing the cat, but it also gives him an idea. He is an advocate for rehabilitating Suzuya after all, and now he's found something that can live and die and suffer and Suzuya isn't indifferent to it. It's pretty rare, since Suzuya can only leave the Academy with supervision and Shinohara is a busy investigator/teacher (my excuse for it only being a thing in my head and not in the series haha) but whenever the pieces fall into place, Suzuya gets to spend some time cleaning up after, feeding, grooming, and giving some human affection to the shelter cats, which also teaches him how to take care of them when he can one day get his own. As an adult, with that experience and his natural affinity for his feline friends, he is extremely good with them, and while I see them being his specialty, I think he's good with other animals too.

as for tooru i guess it'd depend on what we actually consider canon from whatever the hell his arc was?

OKAY everyone but anon and I, I promise I did not write this ask to myself, because anon, it is absolutely sending me how much this sounds like something I would say haha. I think the “we've known Tokage was killing animals since the original series, but what if it was Tokage AND Mutsuki now? not that it makes any pieces of anyone's story click into place or anything” thing doesn't make much sense and nothing makes me happier than compartmentalizing it straight into the garbage. Although you might think he is good at gaining their trust with how gentle and patient he is, I don't think Mutsuki is an animal lover per se and his nervousness around them makes them wary of him. I see him as a blank slate. He didn't grow up with any pets even before he became a ward of the CCG. He doesn't know much about animals, and he has a kind of respectful fear for what he doesn't know. He feels sad about and wants to help the poor animals in commercials and news stories suffering in bad conditions, and if he did have any idea about Tokage as a child (which, for this reason, I doubt) he would probably do something as reckless as getting into Torso's cab to try and help just one because that's just how he is about helping others. However, had he ever gotten the opportunity to be a good samaritan with an animal, he would have no idea how to handle the creature itself and probably be nervous to even touch it for fear that he will hurt it or it will just bite him without warning. However, once they grow close and Mutsuki starts hanging out at Suzuya's apartment, he does slowly come to like Suzuya's cats. It terrifies him when Suzuya teaches him that animals probably don't come up to him or let him pet them because they pick up on his fear. Once he realizes that he is the reason these little beasts that Suzuya adores don't like him, however, he gets really dedicated to learning as much as he can about how to win over a cat. It's actually good practice in controlling his reaction to fear, trying everything his research leads him to until finally, finally, the cats start coming to him for affection too. He's not as bad as he was before he met Suzuya, but to this day, though, he usually doesn't approach unfamiliar animals out of concern that he will bother them.

i've also been thinking about how they'd do with kids, like if they had to babysit or something lol. just awkward? terrible? surprisingly good?

Complete reversal of roles compared to animals. There are a lot of things that are great about Suzuya Juuzou, but patience, empathy, and discretion are not among those things. And those are pretty important when interacting with children. Plus, in a babysitting-type arrangement, he has a hard enough time taking care of himself on his own and believes sometimes to a fault in letting people of any age learn from making their own mistakes, so something will probably catch on fire. As if the experience wasn't already infernal enough without literal fire surrounding him and the hapless child he's been left in charge of. On the bright side, he is calm and competent in an emergency, so while his limited child-handling skills probably contributed to something being on fire or the kid getting a big scary gash across its head, he's in his element once the disaster is already happening. He'll control that bleeding head like a professional and probably distract the kid enough to get a laugh while they wait to be seen at urgent care. He'll put out that fire and teach himself how to repair the damage enough that it at least looks like it never happened. If you've ever seen the live action movie of “The Cat in the Hat,” that sums up Suzuya's skill set with kids pretty well. I also just don't see him liking or wanting to hang out with kids when he could be doing literally anything else. If someone was desperate enough to guilt and beg and annoy him into watching theirs, which if they did enough to sway Suzuya of all people, they probably deserve a hard time, I wouldn't put it past him to let the children watch a very age-inappropriate scary movie or just go through his most recent case file right before the parents came home. Not that he wants to harm the kids or blames them for the fact that he's stuck with them, but their psyche is acceptable collateral damage to him if it means their parents will never even consider him as a last resort again. Mutsuki, on the other hand, is both good with children and likes children, and he really cares about making every one he meets feel safe and loved and everything he wasn't at their age. Honestly, whenever I start scheming an AU that doesn't revolve around a certain vocation already and I need to give him a job other than ghoul investigator, teaching, counseling, and childcare are up there with my top choices for him because we know he cares deeply about helping and protecting others. Helping professions have their own unique rewards and challenges and while I think he would at least try helping anywhere he could, working with human(oid) children would have the challenges he could handle the best and the rewards that would keep him wanting to come back the most. In canonverse, if/when he has friends with kids, in addition to being good with them, we know he can be a bit of a pushover, so he would often get suckered into babysitting. Sometimes it goes so well he even questions if he really doesn't want his own kids. That said, as soon as an emergency goes down or his squeamish self ends up splattered in any bodily fluid or child-related mess, he immediately stops questioning it, and the first person he calls (second only if he has to call actual emergency services) is Suzuya. Although the latter might not be as good with children, he at least fills in the few but important strengths Mutsuki doesn't have mastered.

and finally, what do you think tooru's hobby would be? i can imagine juuzou with a bunch of different hobbies but i couldn't really think of anything for tooru... i think his character is a lot harder for me to understand than juuzou, maybe bc i'm autistic so i relate to juuzou way more lol?

It is hard, and in addition to some characters just clicking and being more relatable to certain people, I think it's also hard because he canonically gives so much time and energy and even puts himself in danger for others. I can actually see him neglecting to carve out nice things for himself, such as hobbies, in the manga. It's not just us, it's him! This is also the reason why these headcanons are, frankly, much more based on vibes than any panel, illustration, or omake I could even loosely tie them to. I think to keep from giving up on life as a whole, he needs an activity that makes him feel a glimmer of confidence, like he is good at something. Also, as much as he shies away from any eyes on him, appreciation for something he did secretly lights him up inside. Training with Suzuya is one thing that fills this need, but something that he does by himself that isn't career-related is cooking. We know from Shirazu that he can cook, but I think he also likes to. It's less about what he's cooking or who for, so much as it is that feeling of executing something with competence and having the people around him enjoy something he made so he knows it's good. Plus, it's hard to ruminate on your worries and frustrations and secrets when you're concentrating so hard on not burning something. He definitely strikes me as the type to stress-cook or stress-bake. He also strikes me as a journaler. I couldn't even begin to try justifying why with logic, but he just seems like the type. Trying to make beautiful aesthetic doodles would probably just make him think about how he's not good at drawing, but he would have a guilty pleasure for cute sticky notes, motivating stickers, nice pens, stuff like that to decorate and organize his cathartic writing about his day. Probably no one whose opinion matters would judge him for liking to make his journal look nice or thinking some little frog stickers are cute, but he feels paranoid about it and carefully hiding his journal with all his stationery and supplies and moving it to a new hiding place when he gets anxious that someone is going to find it is its own entirely separate hobby. Another reason why I think it's hard to see him with the same amount and variety of hobbies as Suzuya is I think he would find a couple of things to give him that sliver of “me time” and stick with them. Suzuya's reasons for doing a lot of what he does for fun are different from Mutsuki's, so for him, bouncing around between several things helps him keep it exciting and avoid boredom. Those things don't matter as much to Mutsuki, and what does matter to him is having something that makes him feel competent and/or helps him feel at ease, so actually diving into something new on the regular would do the opposite of fulfilling some of the things he needs in a hobby.

[druidx]

Found another nano-ism:

"bar man, I shall have a random dishonorable duke please." "excellent. if you would like to take a seat and I will commence the inevitable pun momentarily." "meh no need," said alexis. "I just want to have a drink of something alcoholic. you can hold the pun, ta." "oh" said the bartender sounding a little sad. "I’m sorry you don’t want to pun. it’s really very good, is on the house!"

What was the pun, past me? what was the pun!?

[rogue-bard]

Open Office or Libre Office question

In OpenOffice OR LibreOffice, is there a way to align the last line before a SOFT return left, even if the whole text stays justified (I know the way with the hard return)?

I really need both hard returns (<p> or enter) and soft returns (<br/> or shift+enter) in my document for different things, and the last line, on which a Softreturn will occur should not be spaced out to hell.

Here is a screenshot of what I'm struggling with:

I want the last line before the soft return to look like the last line before the hard return. That is to say, I want them both to be aligned left, while every other line stays justified.