#Toolbox Article

[chantireviews]

Zooming Your Way to a Great Book Launch: A Step-by-Step Guide to Virtual Book Launch Events

We are deep in the digital age Is your virtual book launch ready? In the digital age, a virtual book launch can be a highly effective way to celebrate and promote your new book. It offers an opportunity to reach a global audience, engage with readers in real-time, and create a buzz around your work–all from your own desk. Planning to host a virtual book launch but not sure where to start? So…

[galdetective]

"They put him in front of the bike rack, which makes like zero sense," says sophomore Kyle Stapling. "I can't put my bike there anymore because there's a giant metal bison in the way."

[sleeplesssmoll]

Vertin Headcannons

1) Sotheby asks Vertin for help when she's gathering ingredients and materials for her potions. Vertin is really experienced at finding things and catching them. From agile grasshoppers to the most elusive spider, Vertin is a pro.

Bonus: If there's something particularly special in their haul, Vertin will show it to her crew members, like a proud cat bringing back it's most recent hunt. Smoltin energy.

2) Vertin does a lot of sneaking around in the game. This makes me think she defaults to quieting her foot steps and moving like the tiniest sound will rock the Suitcase. The stealth is built in and she can't turn it off.

Bonus: She doesn't usually knock since she spent so much time alone in the Suitcase, but after nearly giving Sonetto a heart attack when she "snuck up on her like a ghost" (it wasn't on purpose. She's too nimble for her own good) she does try to remember. Except when Matilda is around. Sneaking up on her is fun. From the voicelines it sounds like she catches her off guard often but Matilda will scold her if she's prepared for the Timekeeper's antics.

3) If Druvis is sitting on a tree branch, Vertin will climb up to talk to her instead of asking her to come down. Druvis told her she doesn't mind coming down, but Vertin insists. Besides, she's great at climbing! Sometimes they don't say anything to one another and just watch the Wilderness together. From time to time, Mr. Apple will also accompany them.

4) Vertin pays attention to Sonetto's interests. Whenever her assistant lingers on an ad or article in the paper, she'll offer to take treat Sonetto to whatever it is or take her where she wants to go. This is based on her dreams and a few voicelines.

5) She likes Dr. Papper. While she prefers tea, whenever she's with Regulus they end up drinking it so now she associates it with happy, peaceful times. However, she can't drink it when she's alone because it reminds her she could be enjoying it with her favorite, obnoxious Pirate.

6) She knows she should put the leather coat and feather dress back in the closet but she's afraid she'll forget, which is absurd. She never forgets. She had them dry-cleaned before folding them up and putting them back on her desk. When asked why she responds "In case she comes back for them someday."

7) One time she was bitten(?) by one of Sotheby's Catus Cats. However, she didn't freak out and flail around because she was scared to hurt it. Instead, she endured while they carefully removed it. She assured a teary-eyed Sotheby she wasn't mad and it barely hurt but that made the crying worse.

8) She agreed to Sonetto's proposal of greeting each other il bacetto style, but then some of her crew started teasing her and jokingly said they should practice "Italian cheek kissing" too. Sonetto was not a fan of this idea. Vertin goes along with most of her crew's antics so why not?

9) Druvis is secretly working on a special wand that can compensate for Vertin's weak arcanum.

10) Vertin tries to make the Suitcase a Sanctuary for her crew in any way she can no matter how small. There are Forget-Me-Nots in the garden, visible from Druvis's favorite tree. She convinces X to give Regulus a toolbox so she can tinker with her projects. She assists Sotheby in her experiments and tries to procure the exotic ingredients she needs. Whenever she runs errands, she always returns with a snack for Sonetto, even if it's a single chocolate. Their funding isn't much, but she finds ways to make up for it.

11) Vertin takes on odd jobs. She meets new people, learns things, and makes extra cash on the side. However, now that her crew and her expenses are growing, she struggles to find a balance. She's used to doing most things on her own. The crew holds an intervention when they realize what's going on. Regulus "You're our boss not our dad!"

Vertin doesn’t quite understand what she means since she never had a dad but she gets the gist. Now everyone brings something to the Suitcase.

Bonus: Druvis rakes in the most money, Regulus brings in the least. Vertin manages to come back with things that aren't money but still useful like box of fresh fruit or spare parts they could use to improve the Suitcase.

12) Vertin didn't know what homesickness was until one day she woke up to silence. The same silence she thought she was used to by now.

And then she smelled something absolutely delicious. Rushing outside into the Wilderness she found the source.

Everyone was outside barbecuing. They let her sleep in since they figured she needed it. They ask her to join them, smiles all around.

She realizes this is what it meant to be "home."

[glass--beach]

when and how did you learn so much about music theory?

honestly i've been gradually accumulating theory knowledge wherever i can for like, 15 years now. i don't have any formal education in it aside from learning the basics in piano lessons as a kid and marching band in high school. no joke a lot of it really was some mix of wikipedia articles, youtube videos, and reddit threads, as well as just talking with people who know more than me. i also read academic music theory papers every now and then (not really gonna do much for a beginner but interesting for finding new ways of thinking). in the past couple years i learned a LOT from the book Twentieth Century Harmony by Vincent Persichetti but everyone i've recced it to said it's the dullest thing they ever read so ymmv

in terms of actually practically applying theory though the most important thing is always to just learn how to play songs you like and try to reverse engineer it. find out why certain chords or scales or grooves feel certain ways, and then steal those ideas for yourself. doing that over and over again will give you a diverse toolbox of musical devices - like line clichés, minor ivs, secondary dominants, tritone substitutions, altered dominants, to name a couple of devices i use ridiculously often - & whether you know the "real" theory terms or not simply recognizing the patterns and knowing how to apply them will get you very far. most people who have ever listened to music already understand some degree of musical structure intuitively, if you've ever made up a song to sing to your cat or whatever you've pulled from that. i guarantee most songwriters who "don't know theory" work in that way, nobody is completely winging it.

kind of went off topic from the original question there lol. the answer to "how" is that i'm a sick little freak and learning about theory is the only thing that brings me joy

[sturionic]

Your post "Activism is Not Cold-Calling" came across my dash. The point about building community to persuade makes a lot of sense to me.

You mentioned several trainings you've taken and taught as a volunteer labor organizer that discusses the specific nuts and bolts of it. I am wondering if there are resources you'd recommend for someone wanting to add tools to the toolbox. I'm not organizing labor; I'm a parent interested in improving equity in the local schools. But I think at least some of the strategies should transfer well, and I'd like to learn more.

Thanks.

Hi there! Your instinct is very, very correct: a lot of the organizing principles used in union drives transfer well to different forms of organizing. Things like structured organizing conversations and workplace mapping are incredibly useful skills.

Personally, I think the best comprehensive top-down view of effective organizing for a beginner is Jane McAlevey's works. Jane passed away this past summer. We really lost a true titan, an absolute force of nature; but she's left behind a wealth of invaluable materials - books, articles & other writings, interviews, speeches. The first few pages of No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age rewired my brain and made me think about organizing in a whole new way, and I've read that book practically to death, it's barely hanging on lol. You can find McAlevey's works here: https://janemcalevey.com/

Of course, McAlevey's oeuvre is very union-focused and goes deep. If you're just looking for some quicker concepts, Labor Notes has tons of study guides, handouts, and other bite-sized materials that explain organizing concepts. You can buy them on the site (support them if you can!), but they're mostly also pretty easy to find online, or modified versions other people have made. Labor Notes also runs regular online trainings which are excellent.

Lastly, I know you said you're not specifically doing union stuff, but on the off chance anyone reading this is interested in unionizing their workplace: check out Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee. You can contact EWOC directly and they will help you organize your workplace, and they also have their own excellent resources and run regular trainings. You can also get involved by becoming a trained organizer (like me!) and volunteering for them. (EWOC is, of course, American; if any other Canadians are reading this and interested in organizing, feel free to DM me and I can put you in touch with people.) EDIT: I'm seeing people in the notes of my post recommending IWW's materials, and they are so right! Look up "IWW Organizing Manual" and "IWW Organizing Basics." They are great & digestible reads, and IWW has many more resources on their site and archives. (If anyone else has resources to recommend, have at 'er!)

[sgiandubh]

What about Grandma then? In recent days, that Barbour issue has been discussed in several corners of this fandon, as you said. Well, the day before yesterday Garance was posting stories showing off his Barbour coats...Obviously those two also follow the topics discussed on Tumblr. 🤷‍♀️

Dear Garance Anon,

You will have to forgive me for the very, very late answer. I wanted to give it my full, undivided attention, because I believe we never spoke seriously about Mrs. Mariline Fiori, aka Garance Doré.

The short answer to your comment is 'oh, but we know they do, as we know they are not the only ones'. Unlike S&C, though, the McGrandmas might see us as a free, useful toolbox of sorts, where readily available ideas congregate. Remember they have deliberately calibrated their public couple personas on exactly what SC are unable and/or unwilling to give/show this fandom. To some extent, it works and, as any good Frenchwoman, Garance understood she was savvy to play the atout charme joker card. Which is exactly what she does - also, being French, she knows exactly what type of European public is instantly attracted to the Barbour reference: a public whose wallets she needs.

But as I just said, your post made me think about Mrs. Doré. Who is she, really? So, sorry, Anon, if I use you as a springboard for my musings.

She was, as I said, born Mariline Fiori, on May 1st (same day as JAMMF, LOL) 1977, in Ajaccio, Corsica's main town and birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte. Not a Corsican, though (same as Napoleon, LOL): Italian father, French/Algerian mom. People who left Algeria when it became independent, after the Evian Peace Accords, and whom the metropolitan French still call, to these day, 'pieds-noirs' (literally and quite derogatorily, 'black feet'). Her family's social status is, however, a bit unclear, as Mrs. Fiori successively played with her personal story in interviews, in what the French also sarcastically call 'des petits arrangements avec la vérité'/ a bit of tinkering with the truth.

In this 2019 interview to Elle UK, for example, her parents are described as owning a restaurant in Corsica (https://www.elle.com/uk/life-and-culture/a29758314/garance-dore-original-influencer/):

But in another 2013 interview to The Talks, her mother was a shrink (https://the-talks.com/interview/garance-dore/):

Also, for the sake of clarity:

Oh, well: different country, different crowd/market, different agenda and perhaps older and wiser when talking to Elle UK, you would think?

Not necessarily and still a divisive figure for the international press/blogosphere. People did not appreciate her frequent flying and luxury travels during COVID, for example, along with her 'white, bourgeois woman entitlement'. Both in New Zealand...

(Source: https://www.ensemblemagazine.co.nz/articles/garance-dore-new-zealand - I think you should read the entire article, as it is absolutely enlightening, also something I wouldn't go polemic about, you make up your own mind, really).

...and in France, where they apparently are not very fond of her 'cult of personality' approach to social media, to say the least:

(Source: https://www.madmoizelle.com/a-t-on-vraiment-besoin-de-preter-attention-aux-conseils-antivax-des-influenceuses-1145916 Non Francophones could use Google Translate, but considerably lose in doing so the ferocity of the writing - but then, again, the French press is particularly sarcastic & ferocious, when set against someone or something. I love them to bits.)

The translation is clear, and I deliberately did not insist on the political stance of the article, whose title gives a straightforward idea: 'Do we really have to pay attention to the influencers' antivax advice?':

'This influencer cannot singlehandedly convert a part of her fans to antivaxing, via Instagram, but this comforts those who already thought so and keeps them even more hooked. This is because Instagram is a social media whose model heavily relies on shared affinities, meaning that it congregates likeminded people and creates bubble phenomena, of which GD is a good example.

GD, who built an empire around her handle which she turned into a brand and transformed her own lifestyle into her best product might very well turn her cult of personality into an economic model. Many celebrities already do so and are perfectly entitled to. But in her case, we are not talking about sending a birthday personalized cameo, we are talking about dispensing health advice during a pandemic.'

Truly, Ha-wa-wee 2.0 sounds like kindergarten compared to the above and never made it so far and wide in the international press. But hey, don't we know, double standard is the law of this land.

But to cut the story short, because it's 5 AM in here and we'd be talking about Mrs. McGrandma until tomorrow evening, do we really imagine someone so well versed in the ways and means of social media not following Tumblr?

Yeah, thought so, too.

[contemplatingoutlander]

In August [2020], the Senate Intelligence Committee reported in exhaustive detail how Russia sowed division in the United States and sought to meddle in the 2016 election in favor of Donald Trump. Immediately, Republicans and Democrats battled over whether the Trump campaign had engaged in a “criminal conspiracy” with Russia, or “collusion,” or “cooperation,” or established “ties”—or whether, as the White House claimed, Trump was the victim of a massive liberal conspiracy. Years after 2016, Russian election interference continues to reap dividends for Moscow by turning American against American.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is particularly adept at psychological warfare because he has been practicing it for decades. He learned the art of destabilizing his opponents from the Stasi, East Germany’s secret police. Russia now uses the same techniques. However, it not only targets individuals; it torments entire countries. [...] The East German secret police developed a method known as "Zersetzung" or “decomposition” to stamp out rebellion without the use of overt force. The idea was to chip away at a dissident’s sanity so that he would lose the will to resist, or in the words of a Stasi guide, “[provoke] and [enforce] internal conflicts and contradictions within hostile-negative forces that fragment, paralyze, disorganize, and isolate” the opponent. The first step in a campaign was to identify the target’s weak spots—health, family, finances—then strike them over and over. [...] In recent years, Russia has reportedly used the methods of decomposition against individual journalists and diplomats. Putin’s real innovation has been to weaponize "Zersetzung" against countries. [...] Russia seeks to weaken a foreign adversary from the inside, paralyzing its ability to resist. It partners with a range of allies, such as oligarchs and journalists, and uses a diverse toolbox, including propaganda and cyber attacks. Moscow begins by locating the target country’s weakest point, whether it’s an ethnic, religious, or partisan cleavage. Then Russia manufactures a sense of distrust to destroy the social contract. Whereas the Stasi might break into a man’s apartment in the middle of the night and turn on his electric razor—just to freak him out—Moscow uses hackers and trolls to propagate conspiracy theories and cultivate a skepticism of authority.  

___________________ For related articles, a NYT reader (who commented on a recent NYT article) provided information about the above Atlantic article and also recommended these articles:

How Putin’s oligarchs funneled millions into GOP campaigns [Dallas Morning News] Russia’s State TV Calls Trump Their ‘Agent’ [The Daily Beast] Russian Operative Said ‘We Made America Great’ After Trump’s Win [Bloomberg] Russia Funded Facebook and Twitter Investments Through Kushner Investors [The Guardian]

[an-spideog]

Hi! I saw your post before and I thought it was very kind of you to have the time and patience to offer your knowledge and help!

I'm finding I'm plodding through Irish fairly okay. However, there is one thing I cannot seem to wrap my head around - and that's When to use séimhiú or urú.

I'm not sure if this is just something that will come with time and continuous exposure, or if there are some basic rules I could be made aware of to help with knowing when to use these? Any advice or tips would be greatly appreciated.

Thank-you again!

Hi, this is a great question, and a really common one for learners too, I wrote a post about Initial Mutations (Séimhiú and Urú) a long time ago on another website but I've got to update it at some point. The main thing I would recommend is to think of Séimhiú and Urú as like tools in a toolbox, they're just changes that can be applied in certain situations, and those situations don't necessarily have a link. So for example, lots of prepositions apply séimhiú (do, ó, de, ar), but also some verb tenses take séimhiú (past, conditional), but also in certain cases and genders nouns cause and take séimhiú (an bhean mhór - the big woman) and so on. There's a lot of different situations. This isn't to say that there aren't rules, but I think the rules are better learned in relation to those individual things, e.g:

I'm learning the preposition ar and I see that it lenites (séimhiú) nouns after it - "ar Sheán" (on Seán), and with the singular article (ar an) it eclipses (urú) - "ar an mbord" (on the table).* Trying to group all the different situations together doesn't tend to help with learning because they're so disparate, it'd be like trying to learn "When does english add -s to the end of a word" and looking at "Cat -> cats" and "See -> sees". You will also definitely get more used to these changes with exposure, so like some people starting out forget whether "ní" eclipses or lenites and will say "ní mbeidh" or things like that, but as you hear and read more of the language you just notice when it sounds wrong and "ní bheidh" will be the obvious choice. tl;dr - I'd recommend learning the mutations that relate to particular situations as you learn about those situations, so when you're learning about a tense or a preposition or some grammatical feature, look for the mutations. Rather than learning the mutations and trying to note down every situation all together.

*footnote: This was just an example but the mutations with prepositions are different in different dialects, so you get ar an mbord in munster but ar an bhord in ulster

[dragonsbluee]

Arts organizations are a vital part of Palestinian resistance and an excellent place to begin learning about Palestinian culture, heritage and storytelling.

Freedom Theatre

Established in 2006 and conceptualized during the first Intifada as the Care and Learning program in the Jenin Refugee Camp.

Ways to donate here

Their volunteer page

The Voices Magazine, a youth magazine created by young people in the Jenin Refugee Camp and Jenin City.

The Cultural Intifada

A direct response to the unlawful arrest of Mustafa Sheta, producer of Freedom Theatre.

They have 14 demands as part of their cultural and artistic movement.

Encouraging performance protests.

Provide a creative toolbox of creative and practical resources.

Artists on the Frontline

Artists working for social and political change.

MAYDAY project for "artist-led citizen journalism"

Other Resources

Since I'm Canadian:

Palestinian-Canadian Academics and Artists Network

"advocates and advances academic research and artistic expressions on Palestine".

Tons of excellent articles, books, podcasts and interviews

Also read from Turtle Island to Gaza and look up Theatre Artists for Palestinian Voices, an ad hoc (for this) collective (no current website).

So many of us here are artists, and there are unique ways that we can use our skills/abilities to contribute. Use this post as a starting point to learn more and get involved where you can.

[beautifulpersonpeach]

Hi BPP,

I'm convinced Billboard has a spilt personality for real because how do you write an article about it being difficult to produce big stars right now, turm around a do a hit job on K-pop and Jimin specifically in order to quash his chances for any American noms and awards

***

Hi @ejassy

Lol Billboard doesn't have a split personality, you're just not really listening to all they're saying.

(Brian is something of a twat sometimes but even he has his moments)

Billboard's problem is not that it's difficult to produce big stars right now, it's that (1) the big stars that are being produced are doing so outside the legacy framework and direct influence of the American rainmakers - the American labels and middlemen who would demand their cut, and instead it's fans of various artists who can influence which artists rise to the top; and (2) that the big artists that are being produced (by fan engagement) are increasingly non-white, non-American, and non-English-speaking.

That's their conundrum.

It's a problem they've had since 2018 when BTS out of nowhere showed up in the top 10 on the Hot 100 with Fake Love after it not just went viral, but was sustained on the charts driven by demand from American pop listeners (this was the time many members of the Bey hive joined the ARMY fandom and BTS caught on with the pop-listener 'gp' in huge numbers). Since then, every award-season article Billboard has published (since 2019) has had the same tone as the one published yesterday, with each year Billboard getting more overt in their disdain, and the quiet part of what they actually mean to say, getting louder.

I've been writing on this blog for over a year about BTS, k-pop, fandoms, and the music industry, and if there's one thing I suggest people take from it, it's this: it's important to understand that everything about BTS represents a world in which the industry gatekeepers as they're currently structured, are rendered obsolete.

It's why the Korean music establishment had a similar reaction to BTS from 2013 - 2017. BTS should not have been as successful as they became, they didn't come from a Big 3 company with all their industry connections as most successful groups did, they didn't have the backing of an American conglomerate as more recent breakout groups like Fifty Fifty did, they didn't have the typical visuals, sound, vocals, styling, etc that the most popular and successful groups did.

All they had was their hunger, their talent, their hopes, and their pride, with Bang PD using every bit of streetsmarts he had to navigate the cutthroat competitive environment in the industry. And the fandom quickly realized, as early as 2014, that they could not possibly operate like every other k-pop fandom if they wanted BTS to ever have a fair chance.

It wasn't until BTS became too big to ignore both inside and outside Korea, that the Korean music establishment start giving them their dues. Personally, I expect the same pattern for Western recognition. BTS was well on pace to deliver on that promise in 2020 with their MOTS tour - it was planned to be bigger than Taylor Swift's tour is today, back then. It was rumoured to be bigger than anything anyone, even Beyonce, had done till that point.

...but we all know what happened. Dynamite was a huge hit but in comparison to what could've been, it was a pitiable substitute.

Cue the English trilogy and Grammy attempts, snubs, and hiatus. Now there's a vacuum left by BTS, that most k-pop groups are trying to use to establish themselves with the same toolbox ARMYs and Western stans are using, while leveraging BTS's reputation, and the American middlemen are watching to see which groups are most compatible for them to partner with so they too can get in on the action and not get left behind.

Because the reality is that the landscape has changed. Fan engagement is not going away and will have to become a key consideration for creating 'big stars'. Everybody recognizes this. Not everybody likes it, not everybody accepts it, but everyone understands that this is now how the cookie crumbles, and that BTS and ARMY are a big reason this is now the status quo.

And the fact is this has earned the group and fandom, more enemies than friends.

Jimin, by virtue of being a BTS member, is not exempt.

Like I said before, there are many types of people in fandom spaces and everyone has their own reasons for being here. Some trivial, some not. But anybody who actually considers themselves an ARMY should take the time to understand what it means to be a fan of BTS. In my opinion.

[saltineofswing]

Hello! I'm the person that made the rant post about my dislike on the lack of natural dichotomy of the Pyramids and Traveler since the introduction of the Veil that turned into a whole thing. You mentioned a lack of pulp in your reblog and it's stuck with me since then. I wasn't familiar with the term and did some research on it, but I still don't think I get what it is. I tried looking it up but a lot of articles and videos I could find explain the history of pulp and its influences in modern day sci-fi but not necessarily what it is, especially in a way that would give me context to better understand your reblog. If it's not too much trouble, can you explain a little more what the "pulp" is that destiny is lacking?

I’d be happy to try and give you a little more insight into what I feel are important tenets of pulp as a genre/concept! I decided this might be a good opportunity to talk a little about it generally because I am really feeling its absence generally in the past couple years, so I included some historical backing which you’re probably already familiar with – hope that’s OK.

I did a little digging personally, for some good places to familiarize oneself with the basics of pulp as a concept and/or genre. It was nice to re-affirm some info that I’ve felt secure in holding as true without a ton of evidentiary support, and I also learned some cool new stuff as well! I think a good place to start would be to link to the TV Tropes page about pulp magazines, which does a pretty good job of explaining the origins and foundational aspects of the concept in a way that is easy to digest. It also has a lot of examples available to peruse. I also found this cool article on the golden age of pulps, which is an interesting read.

This got long, so below the cut!

To reiterate, the original ‘pulp’ terminology and vibe comes from early/mid-20th century magazines, which were cheap and easy ways to access genre fiction and action/adventure stories before comics, paperback novels, and TV/movies were really on the scene. Pulp magazines spanned a very wide array of genres, but because of a lack of appreciation for the medium, a majority of pulp magazines and aspects of what I would consider to be pulp as a genre have been allowed to fall into obscurity. There are places where I feel it is particularly obvious, especially the superhero genre (don’t get me started we’ll be here all week) but also in fantasy and science fiction – a term which was, in fact, coined by Hugo Gernsback, an editor for pulp magazine Amazing Stories.

They were cheap to make, cheap to buy, and easy to serialize; they could be really schlocky, crass, and unpolished. They could also be fucking incredible! The Shadow is a good example of an early pulp property with screaming highs and frankly peat-bog lows. Lovecraft published a lot of what is considered to be his ‘best work’ in Weird Tales! Conan the Barbarian, too! They kind of came out of the gate with a somewhat negative connotation associated with ‘low-brow’ forms of literature like dime novels, but where other magazines of the time tended to incorporate non-fiction articles and photography, pulp mags tended to be fiction stories only – short stories, or longer stories split into serialized chapters. Early on, not many of them had art, though with the advent of comic books that changed (you could argue that books like Creepy and Eerie are direct offspring of early pulp mags). Similar to what Weekly Shonen Jump does with manga.

If you think of a genre as a toolbox, pulp is a box full of tools that function fine alone, but excel at assisting the function of other toolboxes. I would almost liken ‘pulp’ to the concept of ‘camp’, which are also two concepts that can and do overlap with a high degree of synergy. Pulp has its own foundational attributes that are distinct from camp – for example, camp is gay relies a lot more on its self-awareness, at being able to wink at the viewer or participant, and telling you ‘yeah, we know it, but isn’t it fun?’ Pulp, on the other hand, is the (no pun intended) straight man counterpart to this aesthetic sensibility; pulp is at its best when it is being completely earnest. The quippy lines and dramatic proclamations are meant to be taken on their face. Nowadays it’s the kind of stuff that memes are made of – ‘That Wizard Came From The Moon’, ‘I don’t have time to explain why I don’t have time to explain’, ‘Whether we wanted it or not, we’ve stepped into a war with the Cabal on Mars’. Saying shit that has no explanation with your whole chest. Trying to be cool on purpose, the ultimate cringe move.

Nowadays I think that this kind of thing has mostly died out of modern media, but the counter-motion is still prevalent in mainstream superhero movies. A good example is the ‘Would you have preferred ~YeLlOw SpAnDeX~’ line from the OG X-Men movie. Hey dickhead! The yellow spandex is cool if you, the guy making the movie, believes its cool! Crucially, while a lot of modern superhero stuff is quippy and irreverent, it often uses these tropes in a self-aware or cynical manner – afraid of being earnest, committing the aforementioned cardinal sin of trying to look cool on purpose.

(God damn it, I’m talking about superheroes again. Sorry. Before I get back on task this is why I loved the recent Moon Knight run so much; Jed MacKay is NOT afraid to have the characters say some absolutely batshit thing but it comes off as so, so cool. And yes, a little cheesy.)

And then, where modern sci-fi typically has an ultra-detailed explanation on-hand, I think a lot of early pulp stuff just… didn’t. Ask a sci-fi property for an explanation on, oh I don’t know, ‘where did these super-humanoid sapient machine warriors come from’ and it will likely have a molecule-deep explanation of how those unnamed machine people were created. Ask a fantasy property for an explanation on the same and it might say, ‘no’. It’s not that a pulp-leaning property won’t give you the answer to that question… it just might not have it. The ‘why is it/how is it’ is not as important as the ‘what is it’ and ‘how is it relevant’; a writer had a limited amount of page real estate, as multiple features were typically crammed into a single magazine. Even if a feature was serialized, much like television episodes (before the binge trend), one had to keep information digestible, and not too reliant on a prior or later edition that a reader might never see.

Explanations tended to be in service of an emotional beat, or to a theme, versus as a grounding agent to immerse a reader in the world. For the record I don’t necessarily think of either method as being better or worse, and heavy worldbuilding can still utilize pulp as a veneer or filter to engage audience expectations in different ways. Pulp stuff relies a lot on suspension of disbelief without utilizing a rigid lore-based framework to – though, you know, your story/setting still has to have its own internal logical consistency.

(I feel that it is important to note, as a partial consequence of the time period in which these magazines were being made, and when pulp fiction was most heavily consumed, xenophobia and racism are also heavily present in pulp works. I think everybody knows at this point about how much Lovecraft sucked but it’s a valuable example of how a lot of ‘fear of the unknown’ in that time was transliterated into ‘fear of the different’, in general but especially relating to genre fiction. If you decide to explore material in this genre, in this time period, be forewarned! Some of it was pretty glaring!)

So, let me tie some of this stuff to my previous statements about Destiny. I think that Destiny is an excellent example of how pulp tropes, aesthetic, and genre conventions can be used to enhance and streamline a setting… and how stripping too much pulp away can have a detrimental impact on the depth of a narrative.

The original narrative and worldbuilding of Destiny drew very heavily on pulp aesthetics to create a foundation, both in its appearance and its lore. The ‘Golden Age of Science Fiction’ was a period of time in the mid-20th century that sort of transitioned sci-fi out of pulp magazines and into its own thing, but the foundational structure of science fiction at this time was still heavily pulp-influenced. I think this is very well-represented by the portrayal of Venus as a ‘garden’ (jungle) world, very lush and with sulfurous and sometimes acidic rains. Before advancements in astronomical technology went and fucked everything up for us writers, Venus’s opaque cloud-covered atmosphere was impenetrable enough that there could be anything under there – and a popular portrayal of Venus was a muggy, humid, rain-heavy world that sometimes also included lush jungles. In Bradbury’s short story The Long Rain (WHICH ran in Planet Stories, a pulp mag, by the way!) this portrayal is a central obstacle to the narrative; it’s also used in Heinlein’s novel Space Cadet.

The color scheme that Destiny uses for Venus also matches a common color scheme for Venus in this era – see this cover for Fantastic Adventures. Visually, I think that this comparison between the postcard that went out with the D1 limited/collector’s edition and this Planet Stories cover for The Golden Amazons of Venus demonstrates the influence, at least regarding terrain and biome.

In fact, I think that you can see from this Eververse postcard – which could have been peeled off of any era-appropriate paperback novel – that the influence goes bone-deep. Destiny even refers to humanity’s halcyon age as ‘The Golden Age’.

(Below: Is this image from Destiny dev, or a science fiction paperback from the 60s? Who knows! I know. It’s Destiny.)

In the modern era of Destiny storytelling, though the visual elements of the universe remain largely rigid relative to this early framework, the pulp underpinning of the narrative has been largely left behind. The original game’s story, and the stories of subsequent DLCs, felt very pulp-inspired – this ranged from ‘sort of effective’, like in House of Wolves, to ‘game-savingly effective’, like in The Taken King. Pulp lends itself to straightforward conceptual executions, and brisk narratives, because of its roots as short-form literature. The narrative of D1 was simple and to the point; Light good, Dark bad, humanity is in the shit, think you can kill a god? The surrounding world scaffold was rich but not deep. As I like to say, sometimes a river can be wide but shallow. This is not a commentary on its quality – something can be good but not complex, and IMO, sophistication is not necessarily synonymous with complexity. Destiny managed to pull off a trick that many high-quality pulp stories employ: it made the river look deeper than it was. This is the whole reason that Lovecraft’s oeuvre has the staying power it has: other writers got to play in the space because it felt very deep, even though the stories themselves were fairly straightforward.

I also don’t mean to say or accidentally imply that ‘morally grey storytelling cannot exist within pulp stories’, because that would probably get me torn apart; that’s just not the kind of straightforward foundation that the original Destiny was built on. ‘It is what you see, but what you see could be anything’, you know? The problem that began to muddy the waters in the Destiny narrative is that they started to say, ‘You know, actually, it ISN’T what you see’.

Tentpole narrative additions to the Destiny 2 game employ varying levels of pulp. As I said in the other post, the Hive have a potent pulp influence built into their foundational coding, and so subsequent portrayals of the Hive as a main antagonist have higher degrees of pulp genre naturally present in the narrative – it’s hard to separate the two of them. Shadowkeep and The Dark Below draw strongly on the ‘sword and sorcery’ convention, a subgenre of fantasy that is a heavy (perhaps 1:1) blend of fantasy and pulp; think Conan, or Elric of Melniboné (who, hey! Showed up in a novella feature, in an issue of Science Fantasy magazine, named… THE DREAMING CITY). The Witch Queen leaned away from pure sword and sorcery and more towards noir/detective pulp – though, I think, TWQ is a good example of the pulp slippage in its narrative, resulting in some more bland moments and things that feel ham-fisted in a bad way. Part of it, I think, is the need to make these expansions ‘long’ and complicated without making the player feel like they’re slogging; in a more pulp-forward TWQ narrative, the reveal that Savathûn is actually NOT evil-aligned and is a potential ally would come much earlier in the story, and the central mystery would be MORE about ‘what the fuck is she trying to do/prevent’, leading to the Witness reveal as the centerpiece of the finale and the ‘solution’ to the central mystery.

The decision to start retroactively appending more complex connections between disparate pieces of content naturally leads to a reduction of pulp prominence, in my opinion. If you imagine Destiny as a vessel that is mainly full of three component liquids – Fantasy, Sci-Fi, and Pulp – you can say that adding more of one genre pushes out another to make room. You can always pour more of one genre in to re-balance, but in response to increasing levels of sci-fi the narrative seems reticent to reintroduce pulp back into the mix, instead favoring fantasy. But another problem is that once you take it out, Pulp is really hard to put back; once you solidify and unionize world-lore, every subsequent retcon risks diluting and destabilizing that world-lore until a) nobody cares about it anymore and b) it stops being mutable at all, and becomes sludge.

The lore behind the existence of the Exo was originally very pulp, with no real explanations given for exactly what they were and where they came from, and how they attained sapience. Early hints that Cayde and a few other Exo having once been human didn’t preclude other Exo from having other origins – for example, implications that Exo war-frames eventually achieved sapience as a result of the ‘Deep Stone Crypt’, and that they were originally simple AI-equipped warriors designed and overseen by Rasputin to minimize human casualties. This early mystique around the origins of the Exo is classically pulp: we don’t need to know how the hyper-advanced robots were made, we just need to know what they are, why they are relevant to the story. It allows You, The Player, to engage with it at whatever level you want. In a game where You, The Player, are also being asked to step into the role of You, The Protagonist, this is beneficial to engagement for people (like me!) who like to think too much about the backstory of the your-name-here protagonist on-screen. It is also beneficial to not distracting the player with conflicting information, or accidentally contradicting previously-established lore.

Enter Big-Head Bray. The Beyond Light-era explanation of why Exo were created and how they were made is a retroactive nuclear strike on the Exo lore; it strips away a lot of flexibility and thematic richness from the concept of the Exo, shoehorns them into a single narrow use case, and directly conflicts with early-game Exo lore implying their connections to Rasputin (which they then had to go back and hastily shoehorn back in later) or existence as war machines for the Collapse. If D1 lore is wide but shallow, the D2 lore is narrow but deep. Just because something has a lot of ‘depth’, I.E. many layers to traverse before you reach foundational bedrock, it doesn’t make it good.

Same thing with the Fallen. Season of Plunder felt to me like an attempt to reintroduce pulp genre back into the setting, but it fell flat because of two reasons: it didn’t really want to be pulp, and it was more concerned with its tethers to the science-fantasy exterior world than it was with creating its own cohesive narrative. Why was Mithrax doing evil pirate shit when he was young? Because he comes from a race of fucking evil space pirates! It Does Not Need To Be More Complex Than That! But the exculpation of pulp from the D2 narrative means that if Mithrax doesn’t have a good enough reason, WRT the larger narrative, it would be a glaringly obvious plot hole. By Plunder, Destiny had already undertaken the task of filling out the Eliksni lore with sympathetic science-fantasy excuses for why they were trying to exterminate humankind – the more earnest, pulp-forward explanation would just be that desperate, hurt, suffering people will do desperate things, hurt people, and may perpetuate the cycle of suffering.

Oy. There’s a lot you COULD get into. How the Destiny macro-narrative seems to be decaying the rigidity of good and evil in its original lore vs. how the micro-narrative is obsessed with trying to recapture that good/evil dichotomy in order to give players a reason to like the main characters. How the determination to connect and explain everything has resulted in a general flattening of the background lore, and the subsequent trivialization of many things the game included in earlier iterations of the narrative/lore. How the narrative has basically nothing to do with the Vex because they wrote themselves into a corner by trying to explain them too much while simultaneously not altering the foundational lore of the race, meaning there were too many things they can no longer do without retconning again.

Overall, I guess I will just end by saying that many of the things that Destiny is CURRENTLY doing, feels like the game is straining to rip the part of it out which proudly asks its audience not to think too hard about sweeping, dramatic statements that built a lot of the things people love about the game’s setting and narrative… and in doing so, is just ripping itself to pieces.

[chantireviews]

Making Character Introductions Memorable from the Desk of Editorial Assistant Scott Taylor

Think of Characters like Speed Dating Is he actually cute? Who is This Guy and Why Should I Care? Writers often fall in love with our characters before their names ever appear on a page. They’re charming, intimidating, scrappy, and clever. Most of all, they matter to us. But how do you get the reader to agree that this brainchild of yours is worth checking out? Like all good first impressions,…

[greenyvertekins]

Presenting my first fanfic in 17 years. Just a fluffy little story about Sonic and Tails during the rainy season in the Mystic Ruins. This is the first part. I might continue it.

Please note that no part of this is intended to come-off as romantic in nature. SonTails really isn't my thing. I view them as brothers.

"Remind me to look up the weather forecast before we go shopping" If one stood by the Mystic Ruins train station during this one rainy day, they'd have seen a cerulean Hedgehog and a golden orange Fox with two tails running through the deluge carrying numerous shopping bags. The Hedgehog kept a decent lead but the Fox was not far behind, each of them kicking-up moisture from the drenched ground with every step. Barely a minute had passed when they reached the sole building apart from the station for miles around - A laboratory with two levels. Electricity-generating mechanisms swirled in a small brick pool, providing the only sound other than the pitter-patter of incessant rain. There was a dome covering one half of the building with a small circular platform atop it, an apparatus for holding a telescope being its only feature. The rest of the upper level was taken by a small house with a chimney and a single window. Sonic and Tails stepped through the lower door to the hangar, Sonic immediately dashing off to the bathroom to grab towels for him and his friend. Both were drenched head to foot. "Brrrrrr!" said Sonic as he took each of his quills in his hands and twisted them to wring-out the rainwater they had absorbed. He shook his entire body to rid himself of residual moisture. "That was sort of refreshing in a way" he added, dabbing his body with his towel. "I thought you didn't like water?" Tails asked curiously, mimicking Sonic in shaking himself off. His fur immediately became bushy, his twin tails looking no different to a pair of white-tipped orange feather dusters. Sonic tried not to laugh at the sight. "Rain is....tolerable I guess. But miss me with a lake or swimming pool. Totally not my thing" "Here" Tails said, holding his hand out for the towel, his own tucked under his other arm. "I'll dump these in the laundry basket. Can you go light the fire in the upstairs lounge Sonic?" "Sure thing!" ~ ~ ~

A single strike of the ferrous rod and a blaze of orange and red erupted within the fireplace. Feeling the warmth rush over him, Sonic outstretched his palms to dry his gloves and warm his soaked hands. The heat was soothing and most welcome after the deluge he had been subjected to outside.

"Hey, come over here Tails! The fire feels great!" "Not right now" the Fox child replied from the lab, fishing around in his toolbox now having put away the shopping. "The Tornado seems to have a blocked fuel line" "You're gonna catch your death of cold if you don't dry-off fully 'lil bro!"

The young Fox just shrugged and continued looking in the toolbox. Sonic gave a sigh. "Very well. I'm gonna continue reading my current book. Already reached chapter 12 y'know"

Tails just gave a nod in response, evidently having found the tool he had been looking for.

He sat on the couch and reached for the book on the coffee table titled "RUN ON THE EARTH", turning to the page where a bookmark had been inserted. Reading during the rainy season was one of his favourite pasttimes and was generally preferable to running outside in the pouring rain. Having torrential rain pelt his eyes when moving at superspeed was not a pleasant experience.

Crossing one leg atop the other, he placed the book atop them and traced the text with a finger in order to find the place he had left off on.

~ ~ ~

About an hour and a half had passed. Tails was underneath the Tornado on his wheeled mechanic's creeper, tinkering away. Sonic was fully invested in a chapter about the water Kingdom of Soleanna and was fascinated by its article about the Festival of the Sun, a national ceremony. Though he hadn't visited this place before, viewing the photos of the canals, the castle town and the dancers beneath the fireworks felt oddly reminiscient. It was a bizarre feeling, one he couldn't quite put his finger on.

All of a sudden, Tails sneezed from under the biplane.

“Bless you” said Sonic without looking up from his book, largely consumed by this strange feeling of familiarity.

“Thanks Son…A-tishoo!”

The Hedgehog glanced up from the page he was reading with mild concern to see the young Fox had emerged from beneath the Tornado on his creeper and was sniffling and rubbing his nose with his fist, eyes scrunched tightly.

“You ok little bro?” Sonic enquired, one eye ridge raised. “I hope you're not coming down with a cold”

“Just a tickle” Tails replied, sniffling harshly. If Sonic didn’t know any better, he’d swear he could see the cub’s nose streaming slightly. He got up from the couch and approached him, looking a tad worried.

“Here. Use my handkerchief” he said kindly, putting the book down, getting up from the sofa and walking towards Tails whilst pulling the white fabric from the inside of his glove cuff. He always kept a clean one on him due to his hay fever and had many to spare after the events of a previous adventure. The azure Hedgehog gently wiped his little nose, pressing more tightly when his breath suddenly began to hitch.

“Heh…he…heshoo!”

Sonic grimaced slightly, quickly turning to a sympathetic smile as Tails sniffed, eyes teary. He sounded quite congested.

“I’be sorry Sodic *Sniffle* I don’t doe why I’be suddenly sdeezig like dis”

“No worries” he replied gently. “Just blow your nose. You really sound like you need to“

The little Fox obliged, producing a surprisingly loud honk as Sonic wiped his nose thoroughly.

“There you go” he said as he removed the handkerchief and tossed it onto the wet towels in the laundry basket. He removed one of his gloves and placed a bare palm on his forehead, brushing the trio of bangs to the side as Tails blinked confusedly. Though the surrounding fur was still damp, the Hedgehog could easily feel considerable heat emanating from his brow.

“Hmmm…. you feel a little too warm." Sonic mused, one brow furrowed. "Why, I do think you’re coming down with a cold Mr. Prower” he remarked in a lighthearted imitation of an upper class gentleman, putting his glove back on and guiding Tails to the sofa.

"You need to rest. Lie down here and I'll make some tea" The Hedgehog grabbed both of their empty mugs and took them to the kitchenette.

"I can't get sick right now! I have things that need working on!" Tails exclaimed, sniffling lightly.

"Bud. Your health is your priority. Not your inventions." the Hedgehog replied firmly though not unkindly as he walked from the kitchenette to the cupboard, kneeling and taking a small folded throw blanket from the bottom shelf and a box of tissues from atop the drawer. He wrapped the young Fox in it, leaving only his head out. He placed the tissues on the coffee table beside the globe.

"They'll still be there when you're better" The sick cub gave an annoyed growl under his breath as Sonic walked back to the kitchenette and filled the kettle with water. "I said you'd catch your death of cold if you didn't dry off completely" the Hedgehog muttered darkly as he placed the kettle on the lit stove, attention focused of fixing-up some hot drinks for him and his friend. He placed a tea bag in his own green mug and a thick slice of lemon, half a teaspoon of ground ginger and a tablespoon of honey in Tails' mug. The young Fox pouted, holding his throw blanket tighter to his body. Before he could do anything else, he felt the tickling sensation in his nose and sneezed again. "Gesundheit" remarked Sonic, glancing over to the sofa as Tails plucked a tissue from the box and wiped his nose with it. "*Sniff* Thanks"

Sonic placed the two mugs on the tray and carried it into the lounge. He placed it atop the coffee table and handed Tails his mug. "Here you go. It's lemon, honey and ginger. It'll help with that cold" The Fox took a sniff of the hot drink. Though his nose was very much stuffed-up and he couldn't really smell any of it. Taking a precautionary sip (Since Sonic was certainly not a wiz in the kitchen. As previous experiences had taught him), he could at least detect the spiciness of the ginger on his tongue. He took a gulp and was soothed by the sweet yet spicy hot liquid as it went down and warmed his chest. "Dis is really gudd" "I'm glad you like it" the blue Hedgehog replied with a smile as he took a sip of his own tea, Spagonia's finest blend with a bit of milk and two spoonfuls of sugar. Just the way he liked it.

"That drink always makes me feel better when I'm under the weather" Sonic added, taking another sip of his tea and savouring the flavor.

~ ~ ~ TBC.

[tomorrowusa]

[P]ressuring Ukraine to accept an agreement against its will would have serious global consequences. Russia would conclude that aggressive warfare should remain in its geopolitical toolbox. After a few years have passed and it has regained its military strength, it might double down and assert new territorial claims in Europe and Eurasia as it continues to stir up conflicts in Africa and elsewhere.

Moreover, an unjust peace would fuel hatred, resentment, and revanchist tendencies in Ukrainian society, hampering reconstruction and reconciliation, while Russian society would once again be spared from having to engage in sorely needed self-reflection. At the same time, tensions in Europe and around the world would remain high, undercutting global economic development efforts as well as international cooperation on other crucial issues.

More broadly, Russian disregard for international law would cast serious doubt on the viability of the twenty-first-century rules-based international order. If a nuclear-armed permanent member of the UN Security Council can invade a sovereign country and unilaterally annex its territories, the existing order will have failed its biggest test.

– Pekka Haavisto, foreign minister of Finland from 2019 to 2023, writing at Project Syndicate. (archived)

The only reasonable lasting outcome of this conflict is for Russia's invasion to be a failure. Russia broke already existing treaties and agreements with its invasion. Only a mental defective believes that Russia would abide by any new "negotiated" agreement that leaves Russia in control of vast swatches of Ukraine.

One of the many agreements which Putin broke is the United Nations Charter. In his article Mr. Haavisto referenced Article 51 of the UN Charter.

Russia has used its veto at the Security Council to prevent any direct UN action against its aggression. So the "inherent right of individual or collective self-defence" of Ukraine with support of its allies continues – and should continue.

When a conflict is not settled justly and judiciously then the possibility of a subsequent conflict greatly increases. The mess at the end of World War I eventually led to World War II.

If you want long term peace and respect for international law, then support Ukraine in its just fight against an imperialist and genocidal neighbor.

[dailyanarchistposts]

Chapter 8. The Future

Recommended Reading

CrimethInc., Recipes for Disaster: An Anarchist Cookbook, Olympia: CrimethInc. Workers’ Collective, 2005; and Expect Resistance, Salem: CrimethInc. Workers’ Collective 2008.

Kuwasi Balagoon, A Soldier’s Story: Writings by a Revolutionary New Afrikan Anarchist, Montreal: Kersplebedeb, 2001.

Ann Hansen, Direct Action: Memoirs of an Urban Guerrilla, Toronto: Between the Lines, 2002.

Lorenzo Komboa Ervin, Anarchism and the Black Revolution, 2nd edition online at Infoshop.org, 1993.

Emma Goldman, Living My Life, New York: Knopf, 1931.

Richard Kempton, Provo: Amsterdam’s Anarchist Revolt, Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 2007.

Bommi Baumann (trans. Helene Ellenbogen & Wayne Parker), How It All Began: A Personal Account of a West German Urban Guerrilla, Vancouver: Pulp Press, 1977.

Trapese Collective, ed. Do It Yourself: a handbook for changing our world, London: Pluto Press, 2007.

Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, Outlaw Woman: A Memoir of the War Years 1960–1975, San Francisco: City Lights, 2001.

A.G. Schwarz and Void Network, We Are an Image from the Future: The Greek Uprising of December 2008, Oakland: AK Press 2009.

Isy Morgenmuffel and Paul Sharkey (eds.), Beating Fascism: Anarchist anti-fascism in theory and practice, London: Kate Sharpley Library, 2005.

Call (Appel in the original French, an anonymous manifesto with no publication information given)

The article, or zine, or book that you are going to write, to share your experiences with the world and expand our collective toolbox...

[layce2015]

Supernatural (Dean Winchester x Female!Reader)

Shadow

Masterlist

Dean stops the car across the street and the three of us get out, all of us dressed as employees for the alarm system company. Dean gets a toolbox from the trunk of the car, and we proceed towards the apartment. "All right, boys. This is the place." I said as I push back a loose strand of hair out of my face.

"You know, I’ve gotta say Dad and me did just fine without these stupid costumes. I feel like a high school drama dork." Dean grumbles then he smiles and looks over at Sam. "What was that play that you did? What was it – Our Town. Yeah, you were good, it was cute." He jokes and Sam sighs.

"Look, you wanna pull this off or not?" He asked.

"I’m just sayin’, these outfits cost hard-earned money, okay?" Dean said.

"Whose?" Sam asked. "Ours. You think credit card fraud is easy?" Dean asked and I shake my head. "You know, if you're that worried about money, you could always ask me. I've still got some cash, from my inheritance, left." I said and Dean shakes his head.

"No I couldn't do that. That's your money." Dean said.

"Well, offer still stands." I said as we approach the apartment.

"Thanks for lettin’ us look around." Sam said to the landlady as we enter the room. "Well, the police said they were done with the place, so…." She said as her and Sam move further into the room. Dean shuts the apartment door after us and I notice the chain on the door is broken then point it out to Dean, who nods.

We follow Sam and the landlady to the living room, where we see spots of blood covering the carpet. "You guys said you were with the alarm company?" The lady asked us. "That’s right." Dean replied.

"Well, no offense, but your alarm’s about as useful as boobs on a man." She said and I snort out a laugh while Dean and Sam exchange a look. "Well, that’s why we’re here. To see what went wrong and stop it from happening again." I said to her.

"Now, ma’am, you found the body?" Sam asked her.

"Yeah." She replied

 "Right after it happened?" I asked.

"No. Few days later. Meredith’s work called—she hadn’t shown up. I knocked on the door. That’s when I noticed the smell." The landlady replied.

"Any windows open? Any sign of break-in?" Dean asked. "No, windows were locked, front door was bolted. Chain was on the door, we had to cut it just to get in." She replied and I nod, that explains why the chain was broken. "And the alarm was still on?" Dean asked her. "Like I said, bang-up job your company’s doin’." She remarks.

"You see any overturned furniture, broken glass, signs of struggle?" I asked he landlady and she shakes her head. "Everything was in perfect condition—except Meredith." She replied.

"And what condition was Meredith in?" Sam asked her. "Meredith was all over. In pieces. The guy who killed her must have been some kind of a whackjob. But I tell you, if I didn’t know any better, I’d have said a wild animal did it." She said and Dean looks over at me and Sam.

"Ma’am, do you mind if we take some time? Give this place a once-over?" Sam asked her. "Oh, well, go right ahead. Knock yourself out." She said and she walks out of the room

Dean then opens his toolbox and removes the EMF meter. "So, a killer walks in and out of the apartment—no weapons, no prints, nothin’." Dean said. "I’m tellin’ ya, the minute I found that article, I knew this was our kind of gig." I said as the EMF meter beeps frantically. "I think I agree with you." Dean said.

"So, you talked to the cops?" Sam asked as Dean walks around the room and I follow him. "Uh, yeah. I spoke to Amy, a, uh, charming, perky officer of the law." He said and I could see he had a smile on his face.

"Yeah? What’d you find out?" Sam asked him.

"Well, she’s a Sagittarius. She loves tequila, I mean—wow. Oh, and she’s got this little tattoo—" he started to say, dreamily, then I turn around and flick his ear.

"Ow!" He said as he looks over at me. "Come back to Earth, loverboy." I said and he rolls his eyes and said. "Anyway, nothin’ we don’t already know. Except for one thing they’re keepin’ out of the papers." 

"What's that?" I asked him. "Meredith’s heart was missing." He replied and Sam and I look at him.

"Her heart?" We said, stunned. "Yeah. Her heart." Dean said.

"So, what do you think did it to her?" Sam asked him. "Well, the landlady said it looked like an animal attack. Maybe it was—werewolf?" Dean suggested and I shake my head.

"No, no werewolf, the lunar cycle’s not right. Plus, if it was a creature, it would’ve left some kind of trace. It’s probably a spirit." I said while Dean observes the blood on the carpet.

"See if you can find any masking tape around." Dean said to us and Sam looks through the toolbox and hands the tape to Dean.

Dean uses the masking tape to connect each pool of blood. When he is done, the pieces of tape form an unusual symbol. "Ever see that symbol before?" Sam asked us. "Never." Dean said just as I said. "No."

"Me neither." Sam said and we exchange a look.

That night, we were at a bar when Sam and I find an empty table and sit down. Sam takes out his father’s journal and leafs through the pages when Dean sits down across from us. "I talked to the bartender." He said.

"Did you get anything?" Sam asked.

"Besides her number?" I added and Dean gives me an offended look. "(Y/n), I’m a professional. I’m offended that you would think that." Dean said, offended but Sam and I give him a knowing look.

"All right, yeah." He chuckles and holds up a napkin with the bartender’s phone number on it. "You mind doin’ a little bit of thinking with your upstairs brain, Dean?" Sam asked him and I chuckle as I shake my head. "Huh? Look, there’s nothing to find out. I mean, Meredith worked here, she waited tables, everyone here was her friend. Everybody said she was normal. She didn’t do or say anything weird before she died, so—what about that symbol, you guys find anything?" Dean asked.

"Nope, nothing." I said as Sam shakes his head.

"It wasn’t in Dad’s journal or in any of the usual books. We just have to dig a little deeper, I guess." Sam said.

"Well, there was a first victim, right? Before Meredith?" Dean asked and I nod and started to pull out a newspaper clipping. "Yeah. His name was Ben Swardstrom." I said as I hand the clipping to Dean. "Last month he was found mutilated in his town house. Same deal—the door was locked, the alarm was on." I said as Dean reads it over.

"Is there any connection between the two of them?" Dean asked. "Not that we can tell—I mean, not yet, at least." I said.

"Ben was a banker, Meredith was a waitress. They never met, never knew anyone in common—they were practically from different worlds." Sam said.

"So, to recap, the only successful intel we’ve scored so far is the bartender’s phone number." Dean said as he smirks. I roll my eyes and shake my head as I turn to Sam, who seems to notice something at the other side of the room.

"What?" I asked him as Sam gets up and begins walking away. "Sam?" Dean and I said, confused, and we see walking to another table, where a young woman with short blonde hair is seated with her back to him. The girl turns and smiles at Sam and the two began to talk and I look over at Dean. "Do you know that girl?" I asked him. "No." Dean said and we began to walk over to them.

"Well, they’re not here right now, but what about you, Meg? I thought you were goin’ to California." Sam said to the girl, Meg as he called her, just as Dean and I come up behind Sam. "Oh, I did. I came, I saw, I conquered. Oh, and I met what’s-his-name, something Michael Murray at a bar." She said.

"Who?" Sam asked, confused.

"Oh, it doesn’t matter. Anyway, the whole scene got old, so I’m living here for a while." Meg said and Dean clears his throat loudly, but he is ignored.

"You’re from Chicago?" Sam asked her. "No, Massachusetts—Andover. Gosh, Sam, what are the odds we’d run into each other?" She said and Sam smiles. "Yeah, I know, I thought I’d never see you again." He said. "Well, I’m glad you were wrong." She said and Sam nods.

Dean clears his throat again, louder this time, and Meg turns to Dean. "Dude, cover your mouth." She said and I look up at Sam. "Sam, are you gonna...?" I asked and Sam nods.

"Yeah, um, I’m sorry, Meg. This is, uh—this is my brother, Dean and my best friend, (y/n)." Sam said while Meg looks surprised. "This is Dean?" She asked and Dean smiles. "Yeah." Sam said.

"So, you’ve heard of me?" Dean asked her. "Oh, yeah. I’ve heard of you. Nice—the way you treat your brother like luggage." She said, hateful, and Dean and I look at her, confused.

"Sorry?" Dean said. "Why don’t you let him do what he wants to do? Stop dragging him over God’s green earth." She spat and Sam places a hand on her shoulder. "Meg, it’s all right." He said and the four of us look around quietly, while I whistle lowly.

"Okay, awkward. We're gonna get a drink now." I said as I take Dean's arm and lead him away as he gives Sam a puzzled look.

"Who the hell was she?" Dean asked Sam as we walk out of the bar minutes later. "I don’t really know. I only met her once. Meeting up with her again? I don’t know, guys, it’s weird." Sam said.

"And what was she saying? I treat you like luggage? What, were you bitchin’ about me to some chick?" Dean asked him, angrily.

"Look, I’m sorry, Dean. It was when we had that huge fight when I was in that bus stop in Indiana. But that’s not important, just listen—" Sam starts to explain but Dean talks over him.

"Well, is there any truth to what she’s saying? I mean, am I keeping you against your will, Sam?" He asked, angrily. "No, of course not. Now, would you listen?" Sam said, exasperated. "What?" Dean growls.

"I think there’s somethin’ strange going on here, guys." Sam said. "Yeah, tell me about it. She wasn’t even that into me." Dean said and I sighed. "Oh dear God." I groaned as Sam said. "No, man, I mean like our kind of strange. Like, maybe even a lead."

"Why do you say that?" I asked him. "I met Meg weeks ago, literally on the side of the road. And now, I run into her in some random Chicago bar? I mean, the same bar where a waitress was slaughtered by something supernatural? You guys don’t think that’s a little weird?" Sam asked.

"I don’t know, random coincidence. It happens." Dean said as I shrug. "Yeah, it happens, but not to us. Look, I could be wrong, I’m just sayin’ that there’s something about this girl that I can’t quite put my finger on." Sam said while Dean smirks.

"Well, I bet you’d like to. I mean, maybe she’s not a suspect, maybe you’ve got a thing for her, huh?" Dean said and Sam rolls his eyes and laughs. "Maybe you’re thinkin’ a little too much with your upstairs brain, huh?" Dean said as he points to his head and grins.

"I really need to get some female friends." I grumbled as Sam starts to become serious again.

"Do me a favor. Check and see if there’s really a Meg Masters from Andover, Massachusetts, and see if you can’t dig anything up on that symbol on Meredith’s floor." Sam said.

"What are you gonna do?" I asked him. "I’m gonna watch Meg." Sam said and Dean starts to laugh. "Yeah, you are." He said.

"I just wanna see what’s what. Better safe than sorry." Sam said as Dean continues to laugh. "All right, you little pervert." Dean laughs. "Dude." Sam said, exasperated, and I sigh and grab Dean's arm. "We'll get right on it, Sam. C'mon, horndog." I said as I drag Dean away and we cross the street and leave Sam.

Back at the motel, Dean was on the computer, researching Meg, and I was looking through some books about the symbol on Meredith's floor. Dean picks up his cell phone and dials a number then puts it on speaker.

"Hey." Sam answers. "Let me guess. You’re lurkin’ outside that poor girl’s apartment, aren’t you?" Dean asked. "No." Sam said, defensively, but we wait for another response.

"Yes." Sam said and I chuckle.

"You’ve got a funny way of showin’ your affection." I said and Dean laughs.

"Did you guys find anything on her or what?" Sam asked, annoyed, as Dean and I share a laugh. "Sorry, man, she checks out. There is a Meg Masters in the Andover phonebook. I even pulled up her high school photo. Now, look, why don’t you go knock on her door and, uh, invite her to a poetry reading, or whatever it is you do, huh?" Dean said to him.

"What about the symbol? Any luck?" Sam asked, ignoring Dean's comment. "Yeah, that we did have some luck with. It’s, uh—turns out it’s Zoroastrian. Very, very old school, like two thousand years before Christ. It’s a sigil for a Daeva." Dean said.

"What’s a Daeva?" Sam asked. "It translates to demon of darkness. Zoroastrian demons, and they’re savage, animalistic, you know, nasty attitudes—kind of like demonic pit bulls." I said.

"Anyway, here’s the thing—these Daevas, they have to be summoned, conjured." Dean explains.

"So, someone’s controlling it?" Sam asked.

"Yeah, that’s what we're sayin’. And, from what we gather, it’s pretty risky business, too. These suckers tend to bite the hand that feeds them. And, uh, the arms, and torsos." I said.

"So, what do they look like?" Sam asked. "Well, nobody knows, but nobody’s seen ‘em for a couple of millennia. I mean, summoning a demon that ancient? Someone really knows their stuff. I think we’ve got a major player in town." Dean said then he smirks and says. "Now, why don’t you go give that girl a private strip-o-gram?" 

"Bite me." Sam spat and I snorted.

"No, bite her. Don’t leave teeth marks, though—" Dean said until I hear Sam hanging up. "Sam? Are you—?" Dean asked just as he hears the dial tone then hangs up his own phone.

“You just have to tease your brother, don’t ya?” I asked him. “Hey I’m just giving him advice on how to get a girl, I’m a pro at this.” Dean said and I laugh at this.

“Yeah, and look where that got ya?” I replied. "Hey, I got that bartender's number." He said and I chuckled. "Yeah, and I'm sure you did it without even trying." I said and he scoffs.

"Oh, you think you can flirt better?" Dean asked me and I look up at him. "C'mon, princess...show me what you got." He said and then a small smile forms on my lips. Dean raises a curious eyebrow at me and I give him my best seductive smile.

I slowly get up from the chair, not taking my eyes off of him, and start to walk towards him, while he gives me a confused but intrigued look. "You know...I noticed you staring at me across the bar. And if you're looking for a sign..." I said, in a very sultry voice, and I lean in real close to his face, almost nose to nose.

"...this is it." I said, softly, and I noticed his eyes never left mine and his breathing was quick and shallow. I smiled as I leaned into his ear and whispered. "How's that for flirting, handsome?" 

I kiss his cheek then stand back up and walk towards the restroom, adding a little sway to my hips.

*3rd Person POV*

Dean's heart was racing as she walked closer to him. She was giving him this look, a very sexy look that he's never seen on her face before, then she starts to lean towards him. His breath hitched in his chest but he tried to play it cool.

"You know...I noticed you staring at me across the bar. And if you're looking for a sign..." She said, in a very sultry voice, which made his heart skip a beat. Then she leans in real close to his face, he could feel her breath on his face. "...this is it." She said, softly.

It took every fiber of his being for him to not pull her in his lap and roughly kiss her once she said those words. This was starting to drive him wild.

She smiled at him again then leans into his ear and whispered. "How's that for flirting, handsome?" She kisses his cheek then pulls away from him, leaving him stunned.

She walks towards the bathroom, swaying her hips as she does this, then enters the room and shuts the door. She's gonna be the death of me... Dean thought as he calms himself down.