#and I think they should be persecuted as well as the company

[xxstarlight-lifexx]

Some quotes I have from people speaking out against KOSA, please reblog, tag people, cross-post on other platforms, and share with everyone you can, all quotes are fair use <3

“This law is a scam, created with the express purpose of persecuting LGBTQ+ people and silencing victims of abuse. That is the only possible outcome of these kinds of bills.

Oppose them on principle. Be skeptical whenever they are even brought-up.

This isn’t about safety—it is a takeover of THE major avenue to disseminate information in the modern world. It is more than censorship, it defines the avenues that thought may even take.

It will lead to identity verification companies like Clear or ID.me getting more of people’s private data and guaranteed, exclusive government contracts for surveillance and data collection, in violation of the spirit of the 4th Amendment, if not the letter.

It is also an absolute certainty that conservatives in positions of authority will use this program to persecute LGBTQ+ people, with the force of the State, under the guise of protecting children from pornography and "grooming". It has been an explicit misdirection tactic the right has invented to poison debate on trans rights issues and the (unconnected) growing evidence of sexual impropriety among the powerful, particularly conservatives.

Furthermore, I and most others will not abide by this law, if it is passed, and will take whatever actions necessary to safeguard our personal information via VPN, encryption, onion networking, etc., regardless of their permissibility.”

“This is a violation of basic rights on the Internet. Whatever happened to Freedom of Speech? Or are we just gonna ignore a literal Amendment in favor of “protecting the American children" while many of those children are the ones against this??”

“having full privacy on the internet may have saved my life growing up. don’t take away kid’s privacy, there’s already perfectly reasonable ways for parents to monitor kids.”

“I think that people have a right to privacy online, especially children. This doesn't seem like a bill that would actually protect children from anything, it would just make important resources more difficult to access, increase censorship online, and increase surveillance, all of which I oppose.”

“There are three things you never give out on the internet for your safety. 1) Name, 2) Face, and 3) Home. This bill guarantees that all three will be easily available to those who wish to hurt the children this bill falsely claims to protect. If you actually care about children, stop this bill. Listen to what those of us that actually use the internet are telling you. Children and adults deserve a private, anonymous space to be.”

“i'm a queer teen and i know full well the importance online spaces have in supporting lgbtq+ youth, especially ones who don't have supportive environments in person. censorship doesn't actually erase the information, it just makes it harder to access.”

“I’m writing to urge you to reject the Kids Online Safety Act, a misguided bill that would put vulnerable young people at risk.

KOSA would fail to address the root issues related to kid’s safety online. Instead, it would endanger some of the most vulnerable people in our society while undermining human rights and children’s privacy. The bill would result in widespread internet censorship by pressuring platforms to use incredibly broad “content filters” and giving state Attorneys General the power to decide what content kids should and shouldn’t have access to online. This power could be abused in a number of ways and be politicized to censor information and resources.

KOSA would also likely lead to the greater surveillance of children online by requiring platforms to gather data to verify user identity.

There is a way to protect kids and all people online from egregious data abuse and harmful content targeting: passing a strong Federal data privacy law that prevents tech companies from collecting so much sensitive data about all of us in the first place, and gives individuals the ability to sue companies that misuse their data.

KOSA, although well-meaning, must not move forward. Please protect privacy and stop the spread of censorship online by opposing KOSA.”

“Censorship doesn't keep kids safe. Censorship does not save abused children. Censorship does not save queer children. Censorship will not save any of us. Freedom for us all. Freedom for the internet. This shit cannot stand.”

“This bill is a massive overreach on civil liberties and freedom of speech in particular. It should not be within the government's purview to determine what content is acceptable, no matter which party is in power.”

“As we all know, the major threats to American children today are books, bathrooms, and the Internet.

Not getting shot in their own schools or attacked on their own streets.

Since graduating from the public school system in 2007, I haven't seen anything from elected officials to contradict this.”

“KOSA is a censorship bill in sheep’s clothing. It would erode Americans’ rights to privacy, especially that of vulnerable and marginalized Americans, and gather information about the whereabouts and identities of the children it play-acts at “protecting”.”

“This is a ridiculous law

KOSA is a giant bill that is pretending to be about child safety, but is actually overreaching government censorship. It is a violation of free speech and the 1st amendment.

This bill would require that internet users upload their government ID to access any site, and state attorney generals could sue to remove any site that contains content deemed "harmful" to children. The government will be able to censor ANYTHING - such as abortion info, LGBTQ+ resources, and any content relating to protesting or organizing. They will also be able to ID you if you search for any of these topics. This is the opposite of a free internet!”

“The law is pretty much just a trojan horse for censorship.”

“frankly i dont want to be put on a list the gov has of every queer person who opposes their anti-lgbt laws”

“I care about actually helping people instead of making a bill that is going to kill any ability for anyone to get help. That is going to be used to police anyone who disagrees with the absolute mess everything is right now. The conservative morals don’t allow for anyone not white, cuz, straight, or male; and I won’t have that enforced on the fucking public forum.”

[merlot-and-chardonnay]

A Lark Among the Wolves and Dragons: Chapter 13

Chapter 12.5

Just so there's no confusion, when the reader and company arrive at King's Landing, Viserys is married to Alicent, and Alicent would be 5 or 6 months pregnant with Aegon at this point in time.

"I should have Caraxes burn those pointy eared bastards for their insolence," Daemon sneers once on the saddle. "Don't you dare," you scold, "the elves are already persecuted enough as it is for because of the shape of their ears. You'll only contribute to lessening their numbers."

"They had us bound, and were willing to kill a defenseless woman and her child, along with the girl. Why would you defend them?"

"Don't speak of things you know nothing of," you snap, "they have their reasons for being the way they are. Not that you would understand, you've never been in their position. You don't know what they've been through."

Daemon gave you a confused look, like this concept was completely foreign to him.

"I forget how overly kind you can be sometimes," he admits, "take care that someone doesn't take advantage of it someday." "Yeah, SOMEone," you mutter sarcastically, thinking about the irony of the situation. Daemon didn't seem to pick up on that cue.

"What did you even say to them?" the prince asks.

"...I bluffed," you decide to tell him, "I let them believe your death would be avenged should they strike you down."

Daemon chuckled a bit; knowing his brother, it would never have come to that. "A clever little Lark you are-" "Just so we're clear, I didn't do this for you," you interrupt, "I did it so they would spare Aemma and Ciri."

Daemon glared at you, but decided to accept it as he would've done anything to protect his daughter as well.

"You alright, Ciri?" you ask the girl, to which she nods; Ciri had started to wonder if some the elves of that group once lived in Cintra before her grandmother had sent soldiers to drive them out and put their heads on spikes. The guilt was gnawing at her at this point as she had lived her whole life in a castle before this, blissfully unaware of her grandmother's hatred of this race and the harm it had caused.

As the dragon took off into the skies, the elves became smaller until they disappeared from view. Although you were feeling relief that you and the girls were spared the fate of arrows through your chests and heads, you could still feel your heart race for what was to come in King's Landing.

Before long the land began to disappear and was replace by a vast expanse of water. The Continent was behind you now. The next time you saw land again would on the shores of Westeros.

--------------time skip to King's Landing-----------------

"So what is King's Landing like?" Ciri asks as they got closer to land. "Have you ever been to Novigrad Ciri?" you ask her.

"No," the girl shakes her head. "Well, we'd better off there then this den of vipers," you say to her, "just stick close to me when we get to the Red Keep. And let me do the talking."

Ciri was about to protest, but then Caraxes dipped down across Blackwater Bay and the came up over the buildings of King's Landing.

Ciri looked down in awe, as people from down below stared up at the sight before them; while it wasn't uncommon to see a dragon flying over the city, it had been a while since anyone in King's Landing had seen Caraxes flying over.

The dragon passes over the Red Keep and finally makes it to the Dragon pit.

Once Caraxes landed, Daemon dismounted, helping you down, followed by Ciri. The Dragon Keepers arrive and greet the prince, some looking at you and Ciri rather strangely, especially when they saw Aemma in your arms with her silver blonde hair being the most striking thing about her.

"Good to be back, isn't it?" Daemon says as he places a hand on your back and leads you to the keep.

"Yeah, certainly is," you mutter, keeping Aemma close you, "the stench of shit could be smelled even before we made it to Blackwater Bay. Sure prefer that to the smell of fresh snow and freshly brewed ale at Kaer Morhen."

Before Daemon could retaliate, Ser Harrold Westerling approached, two guards at each side, "His Grace awaits in the throne room," he announces, looking at you to see the babe in your arms, "gods be good," mutters before addressing the prince further, "this way."

You, Daemon, and Ciri follow, but the guards stop Ciri. "The girl is with me," you tell them. The guards look to Daemon, who nods in approval, and they lower their defenses.

"Does any of this feel familiar to you?" you whisper to Ciri.

"In some ways," Ciri admits, remembering the castle she grew up in back in Cintra, "we didn't have a dragon pit though. And it wasn't quite as warm there as it is here."

"Remember what I said before," you say to the girl, "whatever is about to be said, you can't refute it. For Aemma's sake, Ciri. Do you understand?" "I...think so," Ciri says, having a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach about what was going to happen.

Inside the Throne Room sat King Viserys on the Iron Throne; by his side was Otto and on his other side, to your surprise, was Alicent who was dressed in red. You take notice of the young Hightower woman's swollen stomach.

Next to Alicent was Rhaenyra, who seemed relieved the moment she saw you.

Accompanying were others members of the Small Council: Grand Maester Mellos, Lord Corlys, and Lord Lyonel.

You keep your gaze down, having taken notice of the rather hard and intense look you were receiving from Otto; Alicent too was looking at you rather crossly, but not to the extent that her father was giving.

Daemon was first to approach, "Your Grace," he greets with a light bow.

Viserys said nothing, but turned his gaze to you, or more specifically to Aemma, "so it is true," the king speaks, "you fathered a child with my daughter's bard."

"You sound surprised," Daemon notices.

"Not at all," Viserys refutes, seemingly out of contempt, "I had only hoped that if the day came that you were to bring your offspring to court, it would've been with your lady wife and not some..." he looks at you, slowly recanting what he was about to say, "paramour."  

Daemon scoffed a little at that, "I'm not even sure a child could grow in such hostile environs." "Have you ever even tried?" Viserys glares at his brother before turning you, "you, step forward."

You were hesitant to do as he said. "The king has given you a command," Otto states with authority and rather impatiently. "Yes, I heard him," you snap, before recanting, "I mean, of course, your Grace. I will do just that at once."

You take a few steps forward. Viserys stands up and approaches you. "Let me take a look," he says. You pulls the shawl back a bit so the king could take a good look at his niece. "The resemblance is uncanny," Viserys states, "it would be impossible to refute. Has she been given a name?"

"...her name is Aemma, your Grace," you say. Viserys' eyes widen at this, and some of the lords exchange looks as well.

"You named her after the late Queen?" "I may not have known her as well as you have," you tell him, "but her death, the way it was carried out, I must admit, left a considerable impact on me. I thought by naming my daughter thus, it would keep her memory alive."

No one had noticed, but Rhaenyra felt a tear about to slip out, but she fought it back and kept her composure.

Viserys too was internally moved by this, the guilt of losing his wife slowly coming back, but as king he too had to keep his semi-stoic composure for the sake of his image.    

Alicent approaches, standing by the king's side "It is a good name," she states, "a good name for a strong girl, especially one who's been through so much already before she was even born. The both of you in fact."

You look up expectedly at the king, "Ah yes, we all heard what happened shortly thereafter," he explains, "I can't imagine what it must have felt, being abducted against your will and forced on by a horde of lecherous sell swords. Whatever could the likes of them want with a woman with child?"

"Clearly, brother, they meant to turn my child into one of them," Daemon speaks up.

"Well then," Corlys speaks up, "we can thank the gods that the prince has brought the Lady (y/n) and her daughter back safely."

Ciri's eyes widen by this. She knew this was all a lie, that you weren't taken against your will, and the witchers certainly never forced themselves on you. Especially not Geralt, who had cared for both you and Aemma since you came to the witchers' keep all those months ago. She wanted to refute it, tell the entire council that none of those things was true, but she also knew if did, then the king and council would accuse you of lying just to gain sympathy.

So the girl had no choice but to keep her mouth shut.

"Brought back safely indeed," Otto scoffs, "that is if she even was taken against her will at all." "You dare question the integrity of Lady (y/n)'s account?" Daemon glares at the Hand. "The lady has yet to even give account at all," Otto points out.

Viserys turned to you, "what say you?" he asks, "is what my brother said about your sudden departure true?"

You look down, not wanting to lie, but knowing telling the truth would only ostracize Aemma even more so then she could possibly be, "I was taken to Kaer Morhen when Aemma was maybe five months growing in my womb," you say, "I...I remained there for the remainder of my pregnancy and after I gave birth to her. There was a sorceress there who helped me during my labors and the witchers, they....they..."

You feel the tears well up, threatening to spill, not from having to lie, but also from the fact that you were taken indeed taken against your will, just not by Geralt and his brethren.

You start to sniffle thinking about it.

"Do you believe her now," Daemon steps up, placing a comforting hand on your back, "she is clearly in distress from this whole ordeal, there is no need to put her through it any further."

"Even if this account is indeed true, how are we to know of the true father of the child that lays in her arms," Otto scoffs, "For all we know, she may not have even been with child when she was taken, and one of those...butchers could've planted their seed inside her and the child is a product of their vile acts."

"That is not likely, Lord Hand," you wipe your tears away, glaring at Otto whom you knew was well aware that Aemma is Daemon's child, "it is known on the Continent that witchers are sterile. The mutagenic alchemy that was used to create them has also taken away their ability to produce children."

"I can corroborate on such facts, your Grace," Maester Mellos interjects, "some of my followers have traveled to the Continent prior to studying in the Citadel. There are dozens of accounts on these so called witchers that span for nearly centuries. It appears there has never been one that was born, but were created by rather dark and unnatural magics. Deadly as well, as very few have appeared to survive the process."

"I've heard those tales as well during my travels to the Skellige isles," Corlys adds, "three out of ten boys, it is said. And all unable to produce offspring of their own afterwards."

"Well then, by all accounts, it would appear (y/n) and my brother have spoken the truth" Viserys speaks, "now, if there are no further disputes over my...niece's parentage, I see no reason why she and her mother should not stay here and be cared for." 

Rhaenyra approached you and the king, "I wish to meet my cousin," she announces. Viserys nods and stands aside to allow the princess to meet Aemma. Alicent gave Rhaenyra a small smile, but it seemed to only be answered by a cold shoulder on Rhaenyra's part.

"May I?" the princess asks. You lower the shawl again so she could meet Aemma.

"The blood of the dragon does indeed run in her veins," the princess states, "it's a shame she was born under such cruel circumstances."

"It's not true!" Ciri blurts out, unable to stand the lies anymore, and getting everyone's attention, "none of this is true. (y/n) was taken against her will, but not by the witchers. She was taken here by this man," she points an accusing finger at Daemon.

"Who is this girl?" Viserys asks. "Her name is Ciri, your Grace," you answer, "she's...my ward. I-" "I found the girl at the keep of the witchers," Daemon explains, "she had been staying there for some time before (y/n) was brought there. It didn't seem...right to leave her there alone."

"Sounds to me the poor girl has been through worse then what the lady troubadour has," Lyonel states.

"Those deviants," Mellos says, "they truly know no morals or character."

"No, that's not true! They're good people!" Ciri insists, "if it weren't for the White Wolf, I would've perished in Cintra or have been captured by the armies of Nilfgaard!"

Now that got the attention of everyone in the room.

Rhaenyra broke the silence when she approached Ciri, "and what would Nilfgaard want with you?" she asks.

Ciri knew the barrel of ale has been opened right now; there was no closing it at this point.

"I'm not just some girl," Ciri states, briefly glaring at Daemon before continuing,

"I'm...I am princess Cirilla of Cintra. And I am here because I had sworn to protect Aemma at all costs."

Chapter 14

Masterlist

[not-goldy]

i'm choosing to believe that this anon isn't serious 😭

You know why pjms hate jikookers the most?? It’s because you’re always in pjms business, always talking shit about pjms and making us your entire shipping personality.

so we're just going to ignore that at least half of y'all are ex jkkers..??

like we were friends with some of y'all until you decided to blame jk for things the company or the western industry did/does to jimin

You entertain ask disparaging pjms because we do not share the same view with you but I’ve never seen a ‘Jjk said this and that ask’ on your blog but guess what?? Pjms has never dmed other fandoms or locals to drag jk, we’ve never trended tags to free jm from jk, we’ve never tagged millitary defense, we’ve never faked group chats claiming jokers are hating on jm, we’ve never actively find ways to sabotage jk, we’ve never tried to actively turn the fandom against jk, our fanbase has never trended cancel jikook show lol. All these your beloved cousins have done and are still doing.

spent the entire day yesterday watching jjks complain how jkkers never call out pjms and are always attacking jk fanbases, but ok...

we're not going to forget how y'all were acting during seven/golden

the fact you were trying to boycott the travel show, have gotten mad at jimin for posting about jk bc in YOUR minds he should hate him, and constantly taking down about jk in the military

"beloved cousins" when pjms were actively agreeing and spreading tkker narratives about the travel show and jikook?

Y’all will be on pjms case because someone said they don’t like jk, someone dmed saeon, someone said jk payola and other irrelevant shit but these people be doing horrifying criminal shit and guess what they don’t like y’all. I do hope bighit listens to them tho.

y'all are constant in our inboxes complaining about jk

some of y'all use saeon to jokingly ship him with jimin, even though he (saeon) has stated he is not a part of the lgbt+ community and a large part are doing so bc jikook's bond (even platonically) bothers them

jikookers well aware jjks don't like us 💀

90% of them are homophobic y/ns that hate jimin for reasons linked to homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny

"hope bighit listens to them" so y'all don't care about jimin?

y'all hate jk that much, that you're willing to hate on your own fave? bc we've seen y'all complain about jimin interacting with jk, complain about jimin "being a bottom" and not a real man, complain about jimin wanting jk to protect him, insult jimin's intelligence and refuse to like posts bc he showed love and support to jk

Y’all don’t have any allies in the fandom and that y’all being persecuted makes me the most happy. I hope they fabricate another group chat about y’all that is more serious than this that’ll destroy your community once and for all.

Ps: The free jk from jikookers hashtags are cute. I hope they recruit more people to hate on jikook bond till jm is free from you and your cousins Jjk/tkkrs. 😘

do you really think that if y'all get rid of every single jikooker that jimin will stop loving, supporting, and interacting with jk?

"fabricate another group chat about y’all that is more serious than this" so more hate for jimin then? bc that's what these set ups and hate campaigns lead to.

Oh you read all that chileee

Power to you I couldn't give a fuck😹😹😹😹😹😹

[felixcloud6288]

Higurashi: Massacre Chapter 21

A big amount of info dumping this chapter.

So long story short, there's a local disease in Hinamizawa that can cause people to suffer paranoia and persecution complex that eventually drives them to suicide by clawing out their throats.

It's localized to the village and everyone in it likely has it.

I would assume the disease prefers certain particular climates, hence why leaving the village can lead to lower-level symptoms (Keiichi likely had Type-3 at the start of Abducted by Demons since he was hearing Hanyu speak), but I doubt the Queen Carrier part of it.

In Cotton Drifting and Eye Opening, Rika was dead for at least a week before those stories concluded and nothing of note happened within the village.

If there is some connection to the Furudes and the disease, I'd assume it has more to do with Hanyu than anything like a Queen Carrier.

And Rika also revealed "Tokyo's" involvement in all this. At this point, she's summarizing most of the things we already know. "Tokyo" is likely made up of several influential figures within Japan's political and economic circles.

And they were indeed looking into using Hinamizawa Syndrome as a bio weapon. Why? That never ends well! Have they never heard of Resident Evil!? (The answer is no because that came out in 1996). I swear, if it turns out "Tokyo" is the Japanese branch of Umbrella Corp...

But yeah, Rika knows everything. She knows Takano, Tomitake, and Okonogi's true roles in all this as well as Okonogi's involvement in the kidnapping in Time Killing.

Despite how unbelievable this is, Keiichi is holding to his promise to never doubt his friends again. I think Keiichi and the others are less concerned about whether Rika's fears are valid and more about her fears themselves. Whether or not anything is true, it doesn't take away from how Rika is scared for her life and is willing to tell them her concerns.

And now Rika has decided to bring Ooishi fully in on the truth as well. Trusting in him has paid Rika dividends throughout this arc and he just provided an additional advance payment by revealing the burnt corpse is not Takano's, confirming she is still alive.

I had a little chuckle at this shot.

It's just a strange site mixing Ooishi into the friend group.

You know who should have been part of this? Akasaka. But no, Akasaka is useless.

The Wild Dogs just slap Okonogi's name onto every one of their fake companies. We had Okonogi landscaping and now Okonogi Electric.

What was Ooishi's plan when he confronted those men? He's demonstrated that he can't ignore when he thinks someone is up to something so I can understand him wanting to investigate why some men are poking around a phone line.

But confronting them directly and calling them out on their lies can only end in so many ways. He's used intimation throughout the series, but did he genuinely think he could intimidate several men by himself and if they were in fact up to some illegal activity that they wouldn't potentially attack him?

At least now we might have an idea what happened to him and Kumogai in Curse Killing. In that arc, Ooishi wasn't dealing with any other investigations or potential leads on Takano and Tomitake's deaths so the only leads he might have would be Takano and Tomitake's corpses. He may not necessarily have encountered the Wild Dogs while they were tampering with the phone lines, but they may have killed him because he had discovered the burnt corpse wasn't Takano.

back

[project-do-over]

Violet_M00n is available

Violet_M00n: Heyyy sorry for the delay! Got caught up with work stuff...

Bookwyrm1982: literally no time has passed.

Violet_M00n: Right. Right. Habit, I guess.

Violet_M00n: Anyway, what else did you want to know about the future?

Bookwyrm1982: Well you said you had AI, right?

Violet_M00n: Well... Yes and no. We have programs people *call* "AI", but they're really just advanced machine learning. They can't actually think or anything, but they can put together a surprisingly human sounding sentence, and draw things that could at first be mistaken for art.

Violet_M00n: But of course it's awful. The results are full of factual errors or have way, way too many fingers, companies are trying to use it to replace creatives, and it burns a ton of energy doing essential nothing of value.

Violet_M00n: So could you go on ChatGPT and talk to a convincing facsimile of a human but underneath it's just a more advanced version of Dr. SBAITSO.

Bookwyrm1982: that's a shame. But then again at least you don't have to worry about them taking over the world, right?

Violet_M00n: Luna, at this point I'd welcome our robot overlords. Better than the fucks we have running things these days.

Bookwyrm1982: Are things that bad?

Violet_M00n: *sighs* no, I suppose not. I still have a job, a family, I can exist in public without fearing persecution, and I'm mostly free to do as I please.

Violet_M00n: But trust me when I say the people who very much want to take that away have much more power than feels comfortable.

Bookwyrm1982: that sounds scary though.

Violet_M00n: More enraging than scary, really. Just so many people who can't or don't want to see things from anyone's point of view from their own.

Violet_M00n: Well, that, and capitalism.

Bookwyrm1982: I thought capitalism was good though?

Violet_M00n: *sigh* we have so much to learn.

Violet_M00n: Honestly though, and you should be able to find these online if not in the library, but read some Marx.

Violet_M00n: It may not resonate a lot yet, but it will.

Bookwyrm1982: I always thought that Communism was a good idea in theory but it needed a global revolution to actually work.

Violet_M00n: You may be on to something there. And someday, hopefully in our lifetime, we may get there. But it's a long, long road. Especially here in America, where it's been used as a boogeyman for like 80 years now.

Violet_M00n: (55 for you)

Bookwyrm1982: Wow, that's.... I'm not sure I want to grow up now.

Violet_M00n: Well maybe your timeline will invent actual time travel and you can keep that wish. Luna knows I wish I could.

Bookwyrm1982: so

Bookwyrm1982: um

Bookwyrm1982: Can we talk about something more fun? Like, what's something good in your time?

Violet_M00n: Well Magic the Gathering is still pretty good.

Bookwyrm1982: We're still playing? I kinda lost interest and stopped following it a year or two ago.

Violet_M00n: Oh yeah, we're still playing, and the game is... Well, it's way different from your time but also at its heart the same.

Violet_M00n: Like it's still Magic but also there's D&D and cowboys and Gandalf, for some reason. It's cool but it's also kinda scary how much they're pumping out.

Bookwyrm1982: Oh that sounds cool! Is it just D&D and LOTR?

Violet_M00n: They've done a ton of crossovers, they call them "Universes Beyond". They've done, let's see...

Violet_M00n: Dr. Who, Warhammer, Assassin's Creed, Final Fantasy, they're doing Marvel soon, Transformers (those are Hasbro though so they were among the first), The Walking Dead, Fortnite, Stranger Things (you... Don't know about those yet, don't worry), um, lots more stuff too that I'm forgetting, but those are mostly in like five or ten card bundles.

Violet_M00n: Unlike LotR which was a full set, with boosters and everything. And the best selling set of Magic in all time, unless Bloomburrow has passed that already.

Bookwyrm1982: Really cool! You'll have to send me some pictures sometime!

Violet_M00n: I'll be sure to downscale them appropriately this time!

Bookwyrm1982: What else do we like? Is Star Trek still running?

Violet_M00n: It had a long break there where it seemed we weren't going to get any more Star Trek.

Violet_M00n: But then JJ Abrams (a director/producer of some renown) made a Star Trek movie that was meh, but good enough to get people interest in the franchise again.

Violet_M00n: Soon after that Paramount spun up Star Trek Discovery, which had a rocky start but Grew The Beard soon enough for them to greenlight Star Trek Picard. Then Lower Decks, Strange New Worlds, Academy, and probably one or two others I'm forgetting (not to forget Short Treks and Very Short Treks).

Violet_M00n: Prodigy! I forgot Prodigy!

Bookwyrm1982: The online service?

Violet_M00n: No, Star Trek Prodigy. It's a CG animated series for kids made by Nickelodeon.

Bookwyrm1982: You're making that up.

Violet_M00n: I swear, it's true. Lower Decks is animated too, but 2D, and it's for adults and probably the best thing Star Trek has ever created. It's hilarious!

Violet_M00n: SNW follows Captain Pike on the 1701

Bookwyrm1982: And Discovery?

Violet_M00n: Complicated! It starts out pre-TOS but... Spoilers! And Picard is... Also here!

Bookwyrm1982: Is that about young Picard or something?

Violet_M00n: Old Picard, but close.

Bookwyrm1982: Hey my mom... our mom... just told me to get off the computer so

Bookwyrm1982: ttys!

Violet_M00n: See you in literally no time at all!

Bookwyrm1982 is away

[tylerxm]

'' Home '' (Narcos)

pair: steve murphy • javier peña (narcos)

genre: fic, lgbtq+

audience: teen

contains: fruity ppl, steve murphy out of the shower, serious but steady javier peña, fluff, obscene language, mention/use of alcohol, mention of drugs, mentions of connie and olivia, flirty peña, slight angst?, dumbass steve, no one confesses shit, so fucking cheesy, peña talking spanish, persecution, MARVEL MENTIONED.

word count: 3.6k

enjoy! ;)

It had been a long, really long years for Steve.

Steve had moved to Texas after finishing off Escobar like almost 4 years ago, what he didn't know was that his former (and only) best friend lived in his same building, he discovered it a few weeks ago when both of they had met at the entrance of the building. They greeted each other, hugged, and Peña invited him to a coffee. Steve must have admitted that he missed him a lot, too much, but he wouldn't say it to his face. Not yet, at least.

The thing, Javier had left the DEA and they had won. At least, that's what we all thought. The Texan updated the American, telling him about the things that happened since he arrived in Texas until now. All that was the same day they met again, and they had a long night of alcohol, coffee, food and chisme. Steve felt like home. He really did.

Peña the night before today had suggested that Steve should move into his apartment since it had two rooms. Steve happily accepted, the rent was shared between them.

Steve found a somewhat mediocre but well-paying job 10 km from his house, it was an office job as a secretary in a appliance company. He didn't work on weekends.

Compared to Peña, he had found work as a librarian, but he was 'unemployed' at the moment so he couldn't do much...

They were having something to eat on a terrace, each one asking each other about something or other about life and health, until the topic of love came up to life.

──── So, what about Connie? How's Olivia? ──── Peña took a sip of his non-alcoholic beer in case he had to drive at any moment, raising one of his eyebrows curiously.

Steve just showed a shy and clear smile, taking a bite of a mixed sandwich that he was carrying between his fingers.

──── Dunno, we broke up a while ago. It was before we could catch Escobar, way before. All I know is that Olivia's almost 5 years old and I get to see her next month. ──── The blonde's blue eyes lit up slightly. For some reason, that made Peña's heart warm.

──── I didn't know you broke up. I'm sorry. But at least you get to see her. I haven't seen Olivia for a while. ──── He remembered the time he had to take care of her when she was 2 years old, he did felt like she was a miracle. He seemed to have this face of hating little children, but he actually had a certain charisma with them.

──── It's okay dude. Sometimes in life you achieve things and other times you lose them. I got through it. ──── Steve smirked slightly while taking another bite of his sandwich. Peña felt a confusing but yet warm emotion when he saw Steve smile or laugh. Since when was his smile so fucking pretty and charming?

Peña carefully bit into his sandwich, not looking at Steve.

──── So what about you? Are you into anyone at all? ──── Steve asked.

The Texan opened his eyes in surprise as he almost choked on that piece of food he had previously chewed. He stifled a sigh after coughing for a while, even Steve got scared. Why the hell had he reacted like that? If the answer was simple enough, he believed.

──── N-Nope. I'm an old bachelor, and I haven't been with prostitutes either. ──── He coughed again while laughing and hiding his true feelings and thoughts that not even himself recognized.

Steve couldn't help it and laughed at Peña's obvious but confusing nerves. Peña looked away with a very slight blush, somewhat embarrassed by what had happened.

──── But, being honest. I think I do like someone. I'm not sure. ──── Peña admitted, smiling sadly, taking another sip of his beer. Steve seemed curious.

──── Well, then spit it out Peña. ────

Javi's nerves increased as he tried to compose himself, thinking of how to send him a hint. What are you? Fucking fifteen?

──── Well, h-...She's blonde. Like- ugh. I don't even know how to start. ──── Peña sighed deeply when he felt the stranger's oceanic eyes on him, closing his eyes to begin.

──── She is beautiful. I could say that I feel really lucky to have her. I've known her for a few years, but I feel like I've known her for a lifetime. She is blonde, yes, but she is not a blonde like it stands out a lot, it's a honey blonde, I feel like it would smell like cologne and lavender. just like her. She is tall, and when she smiles small but noticeable dimples form. And she has these blue eyes that when I look at them, it seems that I am reflecting in them and I see waves breaking in the port, a calm and beautiful sea, just like her. ──── Peña cleared his throat, now finally looking at Murphy who was apparently really attentive, even surprised. Surprised by Javi's passion.

──── Wow. That was-. Wow. I'd wish someone would tell those things about me. ──── Steve complained jokingly.

──── Yeah, haha. The thing is that there's no woman. ──── Javier admitted the last thing in a whisper, averting his gaze, praying that Steve hadn't heard him. He looked at him curiously.

──── Nothing. Just forget it. ──── The one with brown hair left the money on the table to give Steve the signal to go. ──── I'll tell you the plan on the way. ────

A totally unknown person had called Peña about an issue, more about the issue of drug traffickers and the already executed Cali Cartel. Despite no longer being in the DEA, he wanted to settle things to get away from all that stuff. He still possessed his gun.

Steve was in the driver's seat because Pena had said he would be back in a few minutes, so he didn't bother getting out or moving the car. The engine resonated while still running, since he had turned on the heating since it was starting to get cold.

He took a drag on his half-filled cigarette, now sighing, letting the smoke leave his system. He looked up at the sky, which had beautiful colors like shades of orange, pink and red. The sun was going to set soon and they were 30 kilometers away from home, the trip was going to be a bit long.

Steve was thoughtful, but not even he knew why. He was thinking about Peña, thinking about how he had gotten there, what he would have been through if he had never met him, and where he would be if it wasn't because of him. I was really grateful to have a best friend like him. So attentive, willing, ambitious, attractive, desirable and handsome-

BANG!

──── What the fuck? ──── The American turned to look out the window next to the passenger seat. Shouts and insults in Spanish could be heard on the other side of the opaque fence. More shots were seen, that made his breathing stop for a moment fearing the worst.

But, his knot disappeared when he saw Peña jump the pole with the gun in hand, running as he headed to the car.

──── We gotta go dude! ──── He said agitatedly into the distance as he ran and frowned. Murphy was very confused. And worried.

──── What? What's going on? Are you hurt? Why there where so many shots? Wh- ──── The oldest was interrupted by Peña, who before getting into the car he shouted.

──── Floor it, Murphy! ────

And finally that scream brought him back to reality in a few seconds. He released the handbrake, backed up quickly to take a run, and floored it. They immediately left along the road, skidding as they heard more bullets almost going through the car.

Peña quickly came out of the window and shot the two cars behind them, leaving them without wheels and mobility. Peña put the rest of his body inside, sighing deeply with his eyes wide open. They both remembered the old times.

──── Virgen Santa. ──── Peña said in a sigh, trying to calm down.

──── What the fuck just happened, Javier? ────

Oh right. Shit.

──── Uhm. Remember when I told you about that mysterious guy calling me for leaving this all behind? Well- things went out wrong. At least they're not really big, they're like just 20 people. We're okay. ──── Peña smiled slightly, leaving his hands under his neck. He closed his eyes, calm.

Steve took that relaxation away from Javi as he turned the car into the emergency corridor. He looked at Peña after putting on the handbrake. The sun reflected his face in a spectacular way, that made Peña a little nervous, feeling fluttered.

──── "We're okay"? Javier, we've could died. We're not that young anymore, and we aren't in the DEA anymore to be so carefree and sure of the problems we get into or create. I came here to get away from everything, and live in peace. But it seems that you just want to lead me to your misery. ──── His blue eyes penetrated Peña's gaze, whose eyes were wide open.

He opened his mouth wanting to explain everything but not being able to say even "I". Peña looked with regret at Murphy, who deep down felt bad and bitter for scolding Peña, but he was right. The Texan's heart became smaller as if it was squeezed hard.

──── I-I'm sorry. ──── He stuttered with ellipses in between, not knowing what else to say. It was the first time he was like this in front of someone.

The American just released the handbrake and got back on the road. He never looked at Peña again, but he looked at Murphy the entire time. They didn't even speak the rest of the trip. Peña felt his throat way too tight like to talk now.

It was 6 PM. It'd gotten dark and the atmosphere in the apartment was tense and heavy. Kinda.

It was cold, very cold. Javi was watching a movie in the living room while he was covered with a soft passion red blanket, it only covered his legs. And the heating didn't work properly.

Meanwhile, Steve was in the shower splashing himself with hot water. The Texan had left food on the counter just in case, while he ate some dry cereals, which were his favorite snacks.

The bathroom door opened.

Steve had a towel tied around his waist, still somewhat wet across his torso, back and hair. He approached Peña and sat next to him watching the movie for a few seconds. It was his favourite movie.

──── This is my favourite movie. ──── He broke the ice as he spoke with a neutral face, settling down.

──── Dr. Strange? I've seen it like, 5 times now. Didn't know you were into Marvel. ──── Peña commented as he went back to chewing on his snacks, now feeling somewhat calmer seeing that Steve was talking to him again. How odd.

Steve looked at the bowl of cereal, grabbed a handful and put it in his mouth. Peña smirked.

──── I've been into Marvel for a while. Didn't know you were into Marvel. That's funny. ──── He also smirked.

Peña stopped looking at the screen while Steve was attentive despite having seen the movie about 17 times. Peña sighed deeply, putting the bowl of cereal aside.

──── I'm sorry about- ────

──── Save it. ────

Steve interrupted Javier with a small smile on his lips, without showing his teeth. He looked carefully at the stranger, taking his eyes off the television. The half Colombian got slightly nervous.

──── I'm not mad at you, I'm the one who should be saying sorry. I said awful things and I'm sorry. We're both here to forget things and that's how's gonna stay. But if you need help, count on me. ──── Javi's heart began to race rapidly again. To hide his nervousness, he laughed and gave Steve a light push on the shoulder. The American snorted a laugh.

──── You're being so cheesy about it. Ew. ──── Peña replied "bitterly", now laughing again.

──── Yeah, it was too soft, even for me. Sorry dude. ──── Steve raised his shoulders with a smile on his lips, that smile that Peña loved so much, the smile that illuminated his worst days.

──── Nunca pares de sonreír. ──── Peña said in his native language as he closed his eyes and leaned his back against the back of the sofa. Steve got a little closer to him so he could snuggle under the blanket starting to getting cold. He should definitely get some clothes on.

──── The hell did you say? I just understood 'smile' and 'stop'. Do you want me to stop smiling or sum'? ──── He raised an eyebrow curiously as he asked "hurt", not removing that smile of his from his face.

──── I said that you should never stop smiling. ─── Peña answered, now hearing a laugh from his partner. That made his smile bigger, and his stomach get butterflies.

──── Now who's the cheesy one? ──── Murphy teased.

──── Oh fuck off. ──── Peña laughed at him again, getting kinda fluttered cause of that statement.

Now he wasn't cold. He was warm. He was next to the person who'd made him feel warm every single time he'd see him. His home.

[roxannarambles]

teal mask fixit-fic on the fly part 10

(Current story so far: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 -

Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7 - Part 8 - Part 9)

After an eventful afternoon, the gang met once more at Ogerpon's den. Despite the fact that the defeated Loyal Three had managed to escape before they could be captured, the kids had obtained all three of the masks and taught Ogerpon's bullies a lesson they were not likely to forget anytime soon, so overall it was a pretty big win in anyone's books.

Ogerpon was as happy as a Clamperl with all of her masks returned. It was likely she had not seem them in a very, very long time, and they were the only things she had left to remind her of her old friend. She spent a long time just touching the masks and smiling.

Even Kieran seemed to be feeling a bit better, seeing how happy Ogerpon was. They all had a little picnic outside of Ogerpon's den, to give her some much-appreciated company. She seemed to love Arven's sandwiches as much as Koraidon did. She was gradually warming up to the others, too, although she still seemed to be attached to Arven the most, hanging on him and looking to him for reassurance.

Kieran was very quiet during most of the picnic, but eventually he spoke up when there was a lull in conversation among the rest of the group.

"I'm glad she has her masks back, but I know it's still going to be tough for her. She's still an outcast from the village."

The others were quiet for a bit; this fact was impossible to deny. Then Carmine waved a hand casually, saying,

"We can visit her on a regular basis! She'll be fine, Kiki."

He sighed.

"I guess . . . but . . . I think it would be better if we could clear her name and tell them all the truth."

"Kiki, believe me, I would love that too, but we can't-- Grandpa said our ancestor tried that and he was persecuted as a heretic!"

"Well maybe he just didn't try hard enough!" Kieran shouted stubbornly, his arms crossed, scowling. He continued, quiter,

"Besides, I don't care if people call me a heretic or whatever, it's not like anyone likes me anyway. I bet I could convince people if I tried hard enough--"

"Kiki, I care, I don't want anyone hating on my little bro! And if anyone is doing that, you better tell me so I can go kick their faces in!"

"She's right, you know," Penny said quietly, from her spot sitting beside Kieran. They both glanced to her.

"Not about the . . . excessive threats of violence, she really should stop doing that-- I mean about nobody believing you. Your town is practically founded on that Ogre story. People grew up with it, it's steeped in your culture and traditions by now. People are attached to the story they know, so simply telling them the truth probably won't make much of a difference at this point."

Kieran's expression fell and he looked glumly to the ground, but Penny wasn't finished.

"You need to change their hearts, not their minds."

He looked hesitantly back up to her.

". . . how do we do that?"

After a thoughtful pause, Penny answered,

"By changing the narrative."

Looking impatient, Carmine asked,

"And what the heck does that mean?"

Penny glanced at the others.

"It means I have an idea."

Later . . .

Daylight was fast fading as the gang rushed about in Kitakami Hall's central building, preparing as quickly as they could.

"Hey, I'm back, I have the costume-- took the seamstress long enough, ugh, I felt like I was standing there forever."

Nemona answered cheerfully,

"Great! Penny should be here in just a bit, she's just going over the script one more time with your grandpa! Then she can try it on."

Carmine set the costume down and griped,

"I still don't see why Ogerpon can't just play the part herself . . ."

Patiently, Juliana told her,

"Carmine, she's still terrified of returning to the village, and considering what happened the last time, can you blame her?"

"Yeah, yeah . . . all right. I guess that makes sense. So how are things going here?"

Nemona gave her a thumbs-up.

"Things are okey-dokey! Thankfully our costumes are nowhere near so complicated since it's mostly just the masks."

Nemona, Juliana and Arven had been trying on the black shawls, which seemed to fit them well enough. Carmine sighed,

"Great. Where's mine?"

"Here you go, right here!" Carmine grabbed the shawl, quickly putting it on, but then she picked up the indigo-colored mask. Indignantly, she said,

"What?! I'm not supposed to be Munkidori!"

Nemona glanced between the others, saying,

"Oh, I'm sorry, I thought we already decided it?"

"Heck no, I'm not being the lame-o monkey!"

"Well somebody needs to be Munkidori?"

"Well somebody else can, why don't you be the monkey?"

"Oh, well, I'm gonna be Okidogi!" Nemona said, flexing her arm with a grin.

"Wait, what? I thought I was gonna be Okidogi!" Arven protested.

A little confused, Nemona answered,

"We never said that?"

"Yeah, but I just kinda assumed-- I mean, I'm the guy, isn't it kinda obvious I should be the big strong one?"

Juliana made a rocking-back-and-forth 'ehh' gesture with her hand.

"Oh, c'mon!"

"Sorry, Arven, but I feel like Nemona is better suited for Okidogi."

"You're totally biased though, Juliana!"

"No, that's my unbiased opinon--"

"We could battle for it!" Nemona suggested suddenly.

"No, no way! That isn't fair either, you know that!"

Nemona shrugged, and then after a beat, she said,

"We could arm wrestle for it?"

Arven paused, looking as though he was considering it. Carmine said,

"Look, I don't care who plays Okidogi, just as long as I'm Fezandipiti. Juliana can be the monkey."

Juliana crossed her arms, saying,

"Hey, what-- why? I mean, I don't really care, to be honest, but I feel like you're singling me out here for some reason."

"STOP CHEATING," Arven shouted, while he and Nemona were seated at a nearby table in the midst of arm wrestling. Nemona gasped,

"I'm not?!"

"YOU-- NGH-- HAVE TO BE!"

"She's really not," Juliana said mildly as she watched. Ignoring them, Carmine carried on,

"I dunno, it just makes sense. You come across as a good monkey to me. I mean, it's not like you'd be better at playing Fezandipiti. She was annoying to fight but she was so pretty! And elegant and graceful! And you're just . . . well . . ."

Juliana turned to her, her eyes narrowed.

"I'm just what?"

"I don't know, you're just . . ."

"You'd better think very carefully before finising your sentence, Carmine."

"HrrrraaaaAAAAAAAghhhhhhhh!"

Nemona slammed Arven's hand down with a sudden burst of energy and an incredible amount of yelling. Arven wailed,

"No, no!"

She sprung from her seat and was quickly in Carmine's face.

"Well I for one think Juliana would make an amazing Fezandipiti!"

Although Nemona had said it with a friendly smile, there was an undercurrent of tension in her expression, as though she was daring Carmine to challenge her on the point.

Carmine's eyes shifted away and she muttered,

"Tch, better than me? How?"

Nemona moved to Juliana's side and squeezed her, beaming and saying,

"'Cause she's stunning both inside and out, and-- and she has poise and fuerza y fuego y encanto, and I bet she could encanta la flor lejos de una Flabébé--"

"Ugh, spare me the mushy Paldean dribble, I'm going to be sick."

"You guys do realize that all three of them are the villians of the story anyway? It doesn't really matter who's what," Arven said.

Juliana raised and brow,

"Says the guy who just arm-wrestled to be Okidogi?"

"She's short!" Carmine said suddenly, pointing at Juliana.

"Uh?"

"Munkidori is really short. That's why she should be the monkey."

"Stop trying to make me the monkey!"

"Oh my god, you guys, will you just shut up and--"

The door to the room suddenly opened, Kieran and Penny staring in confusion at whatever they'd walked in on.

"Uh . . . everything okay in here?"

Arven coughed and cleared his throat. Juliana smiled and gave them a thumbs-up.

"Everything's hunkey-dory! We're just trying on our costumes and . . . uh, deciding who plays what."

Anxiously, Penny asked,

"You still haven't done that? We're on in like, five minutes, guys!"

"What? Crap!"

"Okay, okay, ugh. I guess I'll be the stupid monkey . . ."

"No, forget it. You and your annoying girlfriend can play Okidogi and Fezandipiti, I'll be super generous and nice and play Munkidori."

"Wh-whuh, we're-- we're not--"

"Ahaha, we're not girlfriends, Carmine--"

"Sure, whatever you say."

"Wait, if you guys are the Loyal Three, what the heck do I do?"

"I haven't heard any thank-you's yet for my generosity, you know . . ."

"Do we, um, give off a couple vibe?"

"I dunno . . ."

Kieran had been helping Penny put on her costume, but he turned and suddenly said,

"Enough!"

Everyone fell quiet. He sighed, then handed Arven a mask.

"You're playing the other minor roles, Arven, check with grandpa before going on. Thank you for playing Munkidori, sis, and everyone else, make sure you have everything you need. We have to be on stage in just a few minutes. This needs to go well, okay? Ogerpon's entire future hangs in the blanace . . ."

Penny, dressed up in the little green Ogre costume, gave Kieran a reassuring smile.

"Don't worry. It'll go well."

After a pause, she turned.

"All right, you guys heard him, quit standing 'round, let's go, go!"

At the front of Kitakami Hall, the area had been set up to act as a stage, the raised stone floor perfect for the task; they even had a curtain arranged. When word had spread that tonight, on the last night of the Festival of Masks, there was to be an extra-special performance, people had gathered very quickly. The crowd was very boisterous while people chattered, curious and eager for the show.

When the Caretaker came on stage, there was a smattering of shouts and cheers. He raised his hands and smiled; the crowd hushed immediately for him. Then he spoke.

"Hello, my dear friends. I am excited to announce that tonight, Mossui Town has a very special performance. In the past, of course, we've often enjoyed re-enactments of the Loyal Three's heroic deeds. But tonight we are joined by some talented young students that wish to add to that legacy. They have told me that their performance will offer a new perspective. This is all I know, but I trust their show will be memorable."

He waved a hand, finshing,

"On this auspicious day, the same day the Loyal Three have returned to us in the flesh, let us celebrate! Please welcome our friends and enjoy the show!"

The crowd cheered as the Caretaker left the stage. Kieran's grandfather appeared from behind the curtain and shuffled to stand on the far side of the stage. Mossui Town did not have much in the way of technical equiptment but it did have lights, as well as a single microphone and speaker set up for the man. He took up the microphone, his expression quite serious, even somber. The crowd waited, curious.

After a pause, the grandfather began to speak.

"We have told the same story on this stage for generations now. It is a tale celebrated and beloved by all . . . a story we know by heart. Tonight, however, I would like to share with you all . . . a new story. One that has some of the same, familiar faces, but whose roles are changed."

There were murmurings among the crowd.

"Now, I know how very fond of tradition Mossui Town is. There is comfort in the familiar. This I cannot deny. But all that I ask of you tonight . . . is to try to listen."

Finished with his introduction, the curtains drew open.

"A long, long time ago, there was a man and an Ogre from a foreign land . . ."

Kieran and Penny appeared on stage: Kieran dressed in baggy clothes and wearing a wig of long hair pulled into a ponytail, Penny hunched over in her little Ogre costume.

"The pair were the best of friends, inseperable. More than anything, they loved to travel, and they had explored lands far and wide in their lifetime. They had seen many wondrous sights and met many wonderful people. Yet, although the Ogre was still young and spry, age was now catching up to her human companion. They decided to travel one last time, and to settle down for good."

The man and the Ogre walked, hand-in-hand, along the stage, as if hiking through the mountains.

"And so they came to the land of Kitikami. They saw its verdant meadows, its lush woods, and its majestic mountains, and thought there would be no better a place to live. They came to the village, eager to meet its people."

Someone else appeared on stage-- Arven, in his shawl and wearing a carved mask that had a wide, smiling grin and a pale, nondescript face.

"The people of the village, however, were terribly set in their ways and very wary of outsiders. And so when the foreign man and his Ogre companion came to the town, people were frightened by their strange dress, their manner of speaking, and even their faces . . . which seemed so different from what they were used to."

The Man held out a hand in friendship, but 'the villagers' drew back in fear. Arven switched his mask around so that it now had a deep scowl, waving at the travelers to leave.

"The man and the Ogre were used to being welcomed wherever they traveled, and were saddened to be treated this way. Try as they might, the villagers refused to allow them anywhere near the village. Yet, they had grown to love the land they had traveled to, and still wished to call it home. So, they settled in a cave in the mountains. It was a simple, quiet life, and a little lonely, but they were still happy to have each other."

The scene changed, with Arven stooped over a table, a selection of masks upon it.

"The only villager that pitied the two travelers was the village mask maker. He decided he would try to help them, and created for them several masks. So inspired by their plight, the masks ended up being his finest creations-- adored with gems that the foreign man had brought from a distant land."

The scene changed again, now with the Man and the Ogre; they had cloaks over their clothes now, and Kieran wore the Teal Mask, while Penny wore the Cornerstone Mask.

"By wearing these masks, the travelers could hide their true faces and mingle with the villagers. The man an the Ogre were overjoyed, and they thanked the mask maker for his kindness."

Arven was back in his role as 'the villagers,' milling about in jinbei with a candy apple. 'The villagers' admired the Man and the Ogre's masks.

"The travelers began to secretly join the village festival, at a time when wearing masks was not something that seemed out of place. Soon the mysterious pair became the talk of the town, thanks to their brilliant masks. In fact, rumors about them began to spread far and wide."

The actors left the stage as the grandfather intoned,

"But rumors of exquisite, shining masks attract more than just innocent curiosity . . . and a group of greedy Pokemon soon made their way to Kitakami."

Carmine, Juliana, and Nemona arrived on stage, each in their Loyal Three masks. There was some cheering from part of the crowd that awkwardly tapered off into murmurings of confusion.

"There was the crafty Munkidori. He had long yearned for intelligence, but once he gained it, he began to scheme all sorts of ways to steal great riches."

"Mua ha ha ha--" Carmine balled her fists and cackled evilly. The other two nudged and shushed her.

"What? I'm acting--"

"Shh! These are silent roles!"

". . . there was the alluring Fezandipiti. He was once a very dull and forgettable pokemon; but once he became beautiful, he started to use his charms to manipulate others."

Juliana waved her 'wings' as she waltzed across the stage.

"And there was the powerful Okidogi. Once the runt of the litter, he now had incredible strength; but instead of protecting the weak, he used his strength to bully others."

Nemona leered at the crowd-- or at least, she tried to, but it was a bit difficult for her to see through the little cheap plastic mask. Juliana gently re-positioned her so that she was facing the crowd properly.

"These three pokemon worked together, but it would be incorrect to claim them friends; rather, they were temporary allies, eager to backstab the others if the opportunity arose."

Kieran was now on stage, laying on a pile of blankets as if asleep.

"And so the three pokemon snuck into the cave in which the man and the Ogre lived. They found where the masks were kept, and tried to make off with them. But the man happened to be there. . ."

The trio crept up, towards the man. They 'stole' the masks, turning to quickly remove their cheap plastic Loyal Three masks and replacing them with the brilliant, handcarved ones: Carmine with the Wellspring mask, Juliana with the Hearthflame mask, Nemona with the Cornerstone mask. They flaunted about in their new masks, but suddenly, the man gasped and leapt to his feet, awoken by the intruders.

Quickly, the man grabbed an old wood axe and tried to attack his foes. The others surrounded him.

"The man tried to stop the thieves, but he was outnumbered and could not wield the incredible powers that the pokemon could . . ."

The man collapsed, while the Loyal Three pretended to strike him over and over. They then gloated and left the cave behind.

"They wounded the man gravely and left with their stolen masks."

The man struggled back to his bed, unfolding the blanket to reveal something beneath.

"But the man had saved one of the masks, kept in a place the thieves did not know of. He took solace in the fact that at least his dear companion would still have one mask to use."

The man then tried to stand, but collapsed back to the ground. He tried again and failed, and opted to crawl instead, dragging his body painfully.

"The man left the cave, perhaps in search of the Ogre. Several hours later, when the Ogre returned to the cave . . ."

The Ogre arrived, walking to the spot and looking around, distraught.

"She found her beloved home in ruin. All that was left were the signs of a struggle and a teal mask."

On her knees, she cradled the Teal Mask as if it were the only thing she had left of her companion. She seemed to cry for a while.

Then she squeezed a fist.

She put the mask on and leapt to her feet, pulling a cudgel from the ground and brandishing it.

"The Ogre donned the mask and rushed to the village!"

She rushed to the other side of the stage, where the Loyal Three were gathered, showing off their masks to a fawning Arven, 'the villagers.' She raised her weapon and charged, startling the trio.

"She found the greedy pokemon there with the stolen masks and fought them, crying out for her friend."

The group pretended to fight. It was not a well-choreographed battle, by any means; they certainly didn't have time to prepare any of that. But what it lacked in skill it made up for in enthusiasum, the teens chasing each other around, Penny waving her cudgel wildly, Nemona throwing pretend punches and Juliana and Carmine trying to make things generally as chaotic as possible. Eventually each of the Loyal Three, in turn, died very dramatically on the floor. Arven watched it all in horror.

"The Ogre defeated them. The villagers, of course, had no idea what was happening or why. All they saw was the raging Ogre. And they felt great fear."

They put out a few red boards set up like the little roof of a memorial, which Arven stood over in mourning.

"The villagers thought the three Pokemon must have tried to protect the village from the Ogre. To honor their sacrifice, they gave them the name-- the Loyal Three-- and interrred them with care."

The Loyal Three masks were placed carefully on the memorial.

"And so the greedy pokemon perished for their cruelty and their crimes. But they were worshipped by the villagers as heroes."

The stage lights cut out, leaving only a single spotlight pointed upon the Ogre, trudging along slowly.

". . . wounded and weak, the Ogre returned to her cave . . ."

She limped until eventually stopping and dropping to her knees, removing the mask. She gazed at it and slumped. The light grew dim and dimmer, and her shoulders shook as if she were sobbing.

". . . alone, and with great sadness."

The spotlight faded out, and the curtains closed.

There was a long pause. The crowd began to mutter amongst themselves, sounding very unsure.

Then, from behind the curtain, Kieran returned to the stage. He was no longer in costume. His grandfather came up to pass the microphone over to him; he gave his grandson a reassuring pat on his shoulders and smiled before leaving the stage.

Kieran faced the crowd alone. He took a nervous breath, his hands trembling. The audience continued to whisper and mutter, confused, curious.

Finally, Kieran mustered his courage and spoke.

"Th-the story you've just heard tonight . . . is a true one. It is a story that has been passed down in my family by word of mouth for generations. The true version of events . . . all those years ago."

He paused, and the audience began to rile, people speaking out and questioning; the Caretaker in the front row looked very confused and at a loss. Kieran swallowed nervously and tried to ignore them. "It's not an easy story to hear, I know-- and it's not what we're used to. It's not a story of heroes triumphant over evil. It's a sad story, very sad. And it doesn't paint Mossui Town in a very good light."

He took a shaky breath and continued,

"But it's important. Because of Mossui Town, the man and the Ogre were shunned and forced to live alone. Because we were so scared of outsiders and scared of anyone who was a little bit different. And when the man and the Ogre were in trouble, nobody was around to help them. When the greedy three pokemon attacked, they had to face them alone."

Some people in the audience began to shout-- "The Loyal Three aren't greedy, they're heroes!" "Lies!" "What is this?!"

Kieran looked panicked, on the verge of the audience turning on him entirely. But he raised his voice and answered,

"I know how much you all love the Loyal Three, but listen! Things aren't always as we first assume them to be. You've all heard one version of events, but you never heard it from the Ogre's point of view. Try to look at it from her perspective! All she wanted to do was live her life and be herself. And people were scared of her and hated her for it!"

The audience quieted a little, shifting into whispers and mutters again, uncertain. From the front of the crowd, the Caretaker spoke up.

"I-I must say, this has all come as quite a surprise . . . a-and I commend you kids for presenting such an interesting new interpretation. I do confess of course that with a story so old, there is no way to know for certain what did go on, exactly, back then. But I am . . . curious. Is there really any harm in continuing our folklore? Regardless as to what really happened in the past. It is such a beloved part of Mossui Town, after all. Surely you see that, Kieran."

Kieran's eyes sharpened. His voice took on a tone of pure conviction.

"Yes. There is harm. The harm that was done to Ogerpon. The harm that is still being done. Because she is still alive, and she is still living in that cave in the mountains, all alone."

The Caretaker's eyes widened. There were shocked whispers among the crowd again.

"She has been living up there all this time, shunned and hated for nothing. And so I am here to finally clear her name. And to ask you all to do something. Please . . ." His voice trembled a little and he swallowed, starting again,

"Please try to look past your fears and your hate. Try to look at the real Ogre. To . . . welcome her, into our village. Please. Think of how scared you might be if you were up in the mountains, alone all this time. All she wants . . . all she wants are some friends. Just like any of us do."

The crowd was somber and quiet after Kieran's plea. A little awkwardly, Kieran turned and parted the curtain behind him, just a little bit. He gestured to someone off-stage, as if asking them to join him. All around was silent expectation.

Then, very shyly, a little figure dressed in green came out on stage. She wore the Teal Mask and fidgeted nervously. Kieran reached out and took her hand. Then he looked to the crowd.

At first, people just whispered and stared; Kieran could see many anxious and ambivilant faces. His stomach twisted in knots, fearing that all of their efforts would be for nothing.

But then, somewhere near the back of the crowd, a clear voice called:

"We love you, Ogerpon!"

And right after that, some children cried out,

"Yeah! You were so brave and cool!"

Expressions shifted and changed, and others were emboldened.

"We're sorry, Ogerpon!"

"You can come visit me if you come to the village!"

"We love you too!"

"Please let Mossui Town make things up to you."

"You were both very brave!"

As people continued to shout their support, Kieran felt the awful anxiety release its stranglehold on him; relief flooded in, instead. He squeezed the Ogre's hand and smiled at her.

Then people began to applaud. It was hesitant and scattered at first, then grew louder and louder, until soon it was positively thundrous.

Kieran looked back to the Ogre and gestured, tilting his head a little, his expression gentle-- asking her something. She gave a small nod.

Then she reached up to her mask and removed it, peeking out warily at the throngs of people. Her bright, starry eyes blinking in the stage lights.

There were cheers. A smile overcame Ogerpon, as brillaint and shining as the gems on her mask. Their hands still clasped, Kieran and Ogerpon took a bow.

Eventually, the curtains parted and everyone else came on stage to join them and bow as well. Strangely, Nemona was missing at first, but she appeared from somewhere in the audience and scrambled up on stage to take her place among them. When Kieran cast her a puzzled look, she just grinned and said,

"Sorry, was busy sowing some seeds of rebellion."

It suddenly connected in Kieran's mind why that first person to shout out their support for Ogerpon had sounded so familiar. He gave her a wide, grateful smile.

All around them, people cheered.

Later . . .

The final night of the Festival of Masks for that year was one to remember. The entire town had turned out for it, and the energy among them was unlike it ever had been before. The celebrations lasted for hours, with Ogerpon as the guest of honor. All of the love was wonderful, although the shy Ogerpon did find it a little overwhelming after a while. Kieran bought her a plastic Ogre mask to wear and a shawl, so that she could continue to enjoy the festival but without all the intense focus, since she blended in with all the other festivalgoers. There was a distinct irony in this, to be sure, but they knew once people had calmed a little, she would be able to go about like normal again.

And Kieran suspected that's really all she ever really wanted. To go about like normal and just have the chance to live her life among others. Which is what they and the rest of the gang did that night.

It was nice, just fooling about. Carmine challenged Nemona to a rematch at Ogre Ousting (very recently rebranded to Greedy Greedent Grabbing), and when she managed to beat her personal best and Nemona, she was elated. Surprisingly, she didn't gloat over her victory this time, though-- not much, at least. Instead she awkwardly told Nemona that it was a good match; Nemona beamed at her and shook her hand, agreeing that it was.

They all went to a face-painter after that, which was fun; everyone's cheeks decorated in whatever silly requests they gave the painter. Ogerpon loved the little stars that were painted on her. Next they went on some rides, like the Tilt-a-Whirl and the Octillary Ride, although Penny avoided those. Kieran and Ogerpon opted to stay off them as well; the others convinced them to try the Bumper Cars, though, since in theory they were a lot less pukey. In practice they were not nearly as calm as Kieran had hoped, mainly because Nemona, Juliana and Carmine made it their personal mission to run people down and ram them as hard as they could, friend or foe alike. After that, the group wanted to do the Ferris Wheel. Kieran was reluctant, because he was a bit anxious of heights and in the past his sister would tease him by rocking the compartment violently back and forth when they rode. Carmine swore she wouldn't do it this time but he didn't believe her, and they eventually solved the problem because Kieran, Penny, Arven and Ogerpon rode in a seperate bucket. It was surprisingly a very peaceful and enjoyable to ride when someone wasn't swinging it back and forth.

There were some impromptu doubles pokemon matches taking place in the central courtyard, so they enjoyed watching that for a time. Some of them even joined in when invited to. Kieran shied away from battling himself, but he watched Carmine and Juliana team up in one battle, and then Nemona and Penny pair up in another.

After that, the gang broke off to wander about and do their own thing. Kieran ended up with Penny and Ogerpon, watching some jugglers, then wandering the vendor booths. Ogerpon was drawn to a booth that was selling sparklers, so Kieran bought the three of them some. When Kieran lit Ogerpon's sparkler (telling her to be careful), she gazed at the little sparks of fire and giggled, waving it about. It was probably pretty tame compared to most pokemon moves, but she enjoyed it anyway.

They milled around the festival like that, going nowhere in particular, just enjoying the atmosphere. Kieran couldn't stop looking at Ogerpon and smiling, feeling so light everytime he saw the joy in her eyes. When he'd done it for perhaps the 50th time that night, Penny chuckled.

"She has you to thank, you know."

Kieran glanced up, caught off guard. Penny was smiling at him. He glanced away, his face warming. He insisted,

"Thanks to all of you. Everyone helped her out so much tonight."

He hesitated and added,

"Especially, um, y-you. It was your idea, after all, the play and everything."

Penny shook her head.

"You're giving me too much credit. It was my genius idea, true, but your grandpa and you really brought it to life. And there's no way I could have convinced the entire town the way you did. It was honestly pretty badass."

Kieran blushed and he fidgeted with the tie on his jinbei.

"That's-- um-- I-I-- t-thank you."

Ogerpon chirped and suddenly dashed ahead. Kieran's eyes widened and he rushed after her.

"Ogerpon, don't go too far, you'll get lost!"

Penny and Kieran chased after her into the path of food vendors. Eventually she came to stop in front of a table, and Kieran realized why she'd dashed ahead-- she must have heard a familiar voice. At the table, Arven and Carmine sat, with plates of cheap fair food as they talked.

". . . so turns out, he'd gotten himself lost and his phone was dead-- not that it'd help much anyway, reception is pretty much nonexistant out there-- middle of the night, out in the Timeless Woods. I had to go back and find him."

"Wow."

"Yeah. Pretty scary, right? I bet a cityboy like you would be helpless out there like that. But I was--"

"Wait, he didn't have a map or a compass or anything?"

". . . no? He was just using his phone."

"Oh, man, that's kinda risky for a big hike like that. You should have at least some basic fallbacks."

"Yeah, he didn't have anything with him, just his phone and some water and his pokemon, I think." "Wait, seriously?! That's not a great plan. I hope he doesn't still go out like that? Y'know, if you need suggestions on some great gear, there's a great little compass I bought that's lasted me for years. Oh, and I know it's a little dorky, but a headlamp is so much better than a flashhlight. Here, I can show you, gimme a sec."

After Arven pulled a little strapped light from his pack, he saw Carmine was staring at him. She asked,

"Who are you?"

He blinked,

"Huh? What do you mean?"

She gave a short laugh and shook her head.

"Why do you even have that with you? And why do you know all this, I thought you came from Naranja Academy?"

Arven shrugged,

"Yeah, so? I also went backpacking across pretty much all of Paldea, so . . . wait, did you think Paldea was nothing but cities?"

"No! I just thought . . . I-I dunno, Naranja's in a big city, I figured it's all you guys know."

She looked a little embarassed admitting it. Arven chuckled,

"Hah. No, not really. Most of us have actually been out in the wilds a lot, during our independent study program. They pretty much just turn us loose for a few months. They say it's a chance to get hands-on experience and see the world or whatever."

Carmine's gaze shifted away. She said,

"That's . . . actually pretty cool."

Arven nodded.

"Yep! So I spent the time traveling all over, hunting down some rare herbs with powerful medicinal effects and defeating gigantic Titan pokemon! With some help with Juliana, that is. We had to go all over, in the mountains, the deserts, the forests, all kinds of terrain."

Carmine looked thoughtful for a moment. She glanced to the big bag sitting on the ground by Arven's feet.

"That still doesn't explain why you have all that stuff with you now, though. It looks like you could fit a house in there!"

"H-hey, it's not that big! It's useful, I thought we might wanna go backpacking in Kitikami!"

"So you have a sleeping bag in there, what else?"

"Just basic gear. Ummm . . . some cooking supplies, clothes, a tarp, stakes, rope, duct tape, an axe, hmm, some repels, matches, tiolet paper, soap, binoculars--"

"That sounds like a crapton."

"And water and food of course. Hey, what are you doing, no snooping!"

Carmine pulled something from his bag.

"What's this?"

Arven grabbed it back from her, answering defensively,

"It's a garlic press."

Carmine cackled,

"A garlic press?!"

"What's so funny?"

"Only basic supplies, huh?"

"There's nothing wrong with being prepared! You never know when you might-- oh, hey there, little buddy!"

Arven leaned down to talk to the pokemon who had suddenly appeared and tugged at his pant-leg.

"How are you enjoying the Festival? I hope you're not running around all on your own . . ."

"She's not," Kieran said, as he and Penny caught up to them. Arven greeted,

"Oh, hey! We were just talking about you a bit ago."

After Kieran's worried expression, Arven added,

"Nothing bad! Carmine was just telling me about your hiking adventures in the Timeless Woods."

Kieran grumbled,

"Aw, man . . . sis, why do you tell that story to everyone . . ."

"What? It's a good story!"

"For you, it is. Not for me."

"You gonna finish that?" Penny asked, sitting down at their table and pointing to Arven's leftover nachos. He made a face.

"Heck no, they're all yours."

"Sweet."

Arven shook his head when she began to eat them with gusto.

"You all have no tastebuds, I swear. Anyway, don't worry, Kieran. We've all gotten lost at some point, especially when we were younger, it's no big."

"Mmm," Kieran responded, leaning against a neighboring table. Ogerpon was curious about Penny's nachos, so she held one out for her; the pokemon sniffed and then wrinkled her nose and backed away. Arven laughed,

"HAH! At least Ogerpon's on my side!"

"You're just picky, Arven."

"What?! No I'm not! If thinking that artificial orange slime they have the audacity to call cheese is being picky, then I guess I'm--GYAHH!"

They all startled when something went shooting through the air and struck Arven square in the chest. He looked down in shock and brushed large, fluffy flakes of white from his jinbei.

"What the heck--"

Nearby giggling alerted them to the likely origin of the projectile; they all looked up to see Nemona and Juliana lurking nearby, with sneaky grins.

"What is wrong with you two?!"

"What did they even throw at you?"

"I don't-- hey, NO--"

He blocked as Nemona chucked something at him again, which exploded upon impact with his arm.

"Are you weirdos throwing . . . snowballs at me?"

"What?"

Juliana took aim but he sprung from his chair, so they began to run away.

"Get back here!" "Run, run!"

On their way out Juliana threw her snowball, missing her target since she was in such a hurry.

"It's the middle of freaking summer, where did these even come from?!"

Arven chased them off, returning to the table when he'd grown tired of running after them. They spent some time speculating and eventually concluded the two girls either had access to some ice pokemon or were buying shaved ice specifically for the purpose of packing them into snowballs. They came by a few more times to try and annoy Arven further-- accidentally hitting Carmine in the crossfire at one point-- and Arven responded by trying to throw nachos at them (they didn't fly far enough, sadly).

They continued to just hang out until they all noticed some music, which seemed to be coming from the central courtyard. Carmine said it was a performance they usually did on the last night, so they decided to head over there. They wanted to try and find Juliana and Nemona first (well, some of them did, Arven and Carmine just wanted to leave them) and so they split up and attempted to locate the troublemakers.

Kieran and Carmine searched the outer edges of the festival-- eventually Kieran spotted the pair, in their orange and purple jinbei, ambling about together under the lights of the lanterns. When he approached, they seemed absorbed in conversation.

"What? No, you did great, what d'you mean?"

"Well I just felt kinda bad, she seemed really deadset on it."

"Nahhh, she volunteered to be Munkidori! It's fine."

"I guess so. Though I got the feeling she only did that 'cause-- uh."

"Cause what."

"Nothing, nothing."

"What?"

"It's silly, it's-- well, she made that weird comment, um. Thinking we were girlfriends?"

". . . oh."

Kieran backed off a little, feeling suddenly very awkward about interrupting their conversation, and tried to see if he could spot where the others had gone off to so he could perhaps pass the buck. Make somebody else do the awkward thing. That sounded like a better plan.

"Does it bother you?"

"Does what bother me?"

"Just, um. People thinking . . . that. I mean, if it bothers you, we can tell them we aren't--"

"What, no, it doesn't bother me!"

"Oh, okay. Are you sure?"

"Of course! Why would it? Like . . . somebody thinks I'm dating the coolest, most kickass, smartest girl in my school, oh nooooo, how awful, whatever shall I do?"

"Unnngh, c'mon, Jules."

"What?"

"I really wanna know if it bothers you, I'm being serious--"

"I'm being serious too!!"

The two girls stopped walking to pause at an isolated corner of the festival near some benches. To Kieran's relief, he finally spotted Carmine, so he emphatically waved at her to come over. He couldn't hear most of Nemona and Juliana's conversation anymore, although he could see from their body language it was still a rather animated discussion; Juliana apparently trying to convince her friend of something, until an embarassed Nemona hid her face in her hands. Meanwhile, Carmine stomped over to Kieran, looking pretty annoyed. Oh . . . hopefully she wouldn't get into a yelling match again. He shot the others a wary look.

Uh-oh. Juliana had gently pried Nemona's hands away from her face and was holding them now, gazing deep into her friend's eyes and apparently spilling her guts about something really heartfelt and potentially very mushy.

This was gonna be even more awkward now.

Carmine reached Kieran, grumbling,

"Have you found them? Forget this, I'm just gonna--" She suddenly spotted them, then, saying, "--Oh, finally! I've been all over the damn place. HEY--"

Eyes wide, Kieran quickly grabbed Carmine's shoulder and interrupted in a half-whisper,

"W-wait, uh, we-- we should maybe just go, Carmine."

"What? Why?! Why are we whispering?"

He gestured very awkwardly towards the girls-- Juliana holding Nemona's hands and Nemona blushing intensely, their conversation still too quiet to make out.

"I think they're maybe, ummmm, having a moment?"

Carmine briefly assessed the situation and then turned, staring at him and stating,

"Oh my god Kiki are you kidding me I am not going to stand here and wait for these losers to make out."

"W-what? I just meant--"

"If anything I should be getting payback for-- wait, hold up, that gives me an idea. Wait here, make sure they don't go anywhere. I'll be right back."

"What?!"

"I'll be right back!"

Kieran watched helplessly as Carmine snuck away and then darted through the fairgrounds, for reasons he could not begin to imagine. He unhappily waited for her return, watching the two blushing girls exchanging tender looks and soft converation, grateful that at least he couldn't overhear.

When Carmine returned, she had a snowball and an evil grin.

"Sis, no!"

"They still don't know we're here, right? Good."

Kieran tugged on Carmine's arm,

"Don't be mean--"

"Fair's fair, they hit me earlier!"

"Y-yeah, but I think they were aiming for Arven."

"That doesn't make it better!"

"Let's just go--"

She pulled away from him,

"You can leave, but I'm getting revenge!"

When they stopped squabbling and turned back, Carmine gave a surprised, indignant squawk; Juliana and Nemona really were making out now. Kieran hoped this meant Carmine would bail, but no, she did not bail. Instead, Carmine took aim and went charging in,

"All right, EAT DIRT, DORKS!!"

Kieran ran after her, calling out a belated warning-- but Carmine's snowball smacked Juliana hard in the back. He winced as both the girls startled and turned around.

"I'm sorry, I tried to stop her," Kieran mumbled, bracing himself for things to turn into a big fight.

But to his surprise, the two girls didn't get mad. They stared at Carmine a few moments, realizing what she'd done, and then they just . . . laughed?

"Hi Carmine."

"Did you actually make a snowball too? That's-- that's dedicated, I gotta respect the dedication."

Carmine paused, looking a bit thrown off. She then huffed and crossed her arms.

"Yeah, well . . . nobody goes around hitting me with snowballs without retribution!"

The two girls exchanged looks with each other, then laughed again-- silly, carefree giggling.

"I mean, that's fair, that's true."

"We did start it and then got super distracted, can't exactly be mad." Carmine sighed. She grumbled,

"Ugh. You two take all the fun out of getting revenge. I'm leaving."

Kieran stopped Carmine, saying,

"But-- we came out here to tell them--"

She groaned,

"Right, forgot. Uh, there's a performance going on in the courtyard, so. If you care, everyone else is over there already."

"Oh! Yeah, sure, let's go."

Carmine looked surprised as the two girls followed them back into the fairgrounds. Juliana asked,

"What's wrong?"

Carmine turned away and replied, with a bit of sass,

"I dunno, guess I'm just surprised you two wouldn't rather be alone."

After a little laugh, Nemona said lightly,

"We're not gonna just abandon our friends tonight, we're not gonna be here for very long, after all. Me n' Jules can see each other anytime."

Juliana nodded and agreed. Carmine frowned,

"Yeah, but . . . you can also see Arven and Penny anytime too, so . . ."

"Yeah, but not you and Kieran!"

Carmine visibly tried to quash her surprise but didn't quite manage it. Self-consciously, she muttered,

"We're, uh . . . we're friends?"

Nemona smiled brightly and laughed,

"Of course!"

She threw an arm over Carmine's shoulders; Carmine stiffened a little, but didn't seem too bothered by it.

"You too, Kieran," Juliana said, causing the boy to smile bashfully at being included.

"Yep, you're stuck with us now, better get used to it."

Carmine groaned and rolled her eyes, but there was a soft smile on her face all the while.

When they arrived at the main courtyard, the musicians were all warmed up and playing some very jaunty music on their fiddles. The atmosphere was delightful, festivalgoers dancing and clapping, some of them with very coordinated dances that Kieran was familiar with, but many others just freestyling and bopping about. Kieran's friends soon joined in, while he opted to remain in the sidelines, just watching.

Before long it seemed like not a single soul was standing still. Children were squealing and laughing, Carmine had joined one of the formal folk dances, Juliana and Nemona were bouncing about together, very goofy and freespirted; Arven was shuffling awkwardly until Juliana and Nemona found him and encouraged him to dance more, so he hammed it up for them and they all laughed.

Kieran was watching it all and smiling, until he felt a light tap on his shoulder. He turned, finding Penny nodding towards the dance floor in polite invitation.

"O-oh, um, I-I'm not very good," Kieran said, smiling self-consciously.

Penny chuckled.

"Yeah, me too. I actually kinda hate it . . ." She looked around and shrugged, giving him a silly smile.

"Wanna do it anyway?"

Kieran laughed. He was surprised when he answered,

"Okay."

Kieran's heart raced as they joined the others, but he found it wasn't nearly as bad as he'd thought. Nobody was paying them any attention, they were all just dancing and laughing, so he could just sway and move his feet a bit; it actually started to be pretty fun. He closed his eyes and let himself just enjoy the rythm, bouncing on the balls of his feet and doing little twists.

When he opened his eyes again, he saw Ogerpon was bopping along on the dancefloor right next to him, her bright eyes full of undiluted joy. She bounded around him in circles and he blushed, realizing she'd picked him out of everyone here to dance with.

Kieran laughed, the world around him celebrating.

And everything finally seemed to be just right.

[coffee-n-bagels-comic-universe]

[Ghostbusters] Brainwaves: Quotes

Dr / Professor May Keaton

"It's okay to wonder what happens next."

“If we’re all gonna die anyway, shouldn’t we be enjoying ourselves now?”

“Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are all noble pursuits, and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”

“Who allowed you to take my breath away?”

“She pushes people away before they get a chance to leave her, and for twenty years she’s been alone because of it.”

“You can never replace anyone…because everyone is made of such beautiful, specific details.”

“For the wound to heal, you need to stop touching it.”

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.”

Dr / Professor Allison Wada

"The body is a temple, treat it like one."

"What a dangerous combination."

"Maturity begins when you understand that dignity is more important than falling in love."

"Women, they have minds and they have souls as well as just hearts. And they’ve got ambition and they’ve got talent as well as just beauty, and I’m so sick of people saying that love is just all a woman is fit for. I’m so sick of it! But, I am so lonely.”

“Let’s leave the Jews out of this for a moment. Let’s think of another minority. One that… One that can go unnoticed if it needs to. There are all sorts of minorities, blondes for example… Or people with freckles. But a minority is only thought of as one when it constitutes some kind of threat to the majority. A real threat or an imagined one. And therein lies the fear. If the minority is somehow invisible, then the fear is much greater. That fear is why the minority is persecuted. So, you see there always is a cause. The cause is fear. Minorities are just people. People like us.”

Dr / Professor Heather Nieto-Jorge

"Look for truth, not for fantastical lies."

"I'm surrounded by idiots."

“If A is success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is the ability to play along. and z is keeping your mouth shut.”

“The most important thing in life is life itself.”

“Pursue excellence and success will come chasing you.”

"Each one of us has a story of how we got to where we are, which most likely involves study drugs, getting blackout drunk, and having one night stands. We’ll tell these stories at dinner parties and to our future children. Well, maybe not the one night stand part. Or the blackout drunk part. Or the study drugs for that matter. But maybe our stories don’t have to be for anyone but ourselves.“

Dr / Professor Nova Teufel

"And that is how the world ends."

“When I’m with you, I feel so safe. Like I’m home”

“My problem is that I think too much and I feel too deeply.”

“Why, you stuck up, half-witted, scruffy-looking Nerf herder.”

“Nothing that lives, lives forever.”

“Nobody ever does anything to be nice. They always wanna get something out of it.”

“I’m just a screwed-up girl who’s looking for my own peace of mind.”

“In many ways, I prefer my own company. It gives me time to think.”

“Those that see me for me, don’t think that my face is the most attractive part.”

“People should be able to say how they feel. How they really feel. Not some words strangers put in their mouths.”

“You talk way too fast, and you are way too nice to everyone … you’re not hard to get at all. You’re hard to earn.”

“My house. My rules. My coffee.”

“If I had a normal family and a good upbringing…then I would have been a well-adjusted person. I mean, I feel like I’m…I feel like I’m ya know well-adjusted. We’re good friends, and it’s good to be, ya know, good friends. I mean, I’d like to really talking with you.”

“There are some people that go to the party and dance, and there are some people that sit in the corner. I’m the corner guy.”

“I am so lost in my life. eleven cups of coffee a day in bed, reading irrelevant things, eating junk all day, lazy, unhealthy and non-productive.”

Others

"You stay well away rom my sister, or this drill is going… somewhere." - Mars Teufel

"Put the drill down, Mars… please? Put the drill down." - Dr / Professor Ira Freud

"Milo. Stop. Let me do that for you." - Anselm Teufel

"I thInk you'll Ind, I knOw what I'm doIng." - Milo Teufel

"Our whole family is mad, Devils to some, Angels to others." - Dr Amalia Teufel

"I'll hit you again if you try that again." - Dr / Professor Gilbert Teufel

"Like any of you men have brains." - Medusa Teufel

"How do they survive without a brain?" - Electra Teufel

"I don't know, but I seem to be doing well for someone with an empty skull." - Norman Teufel

"She's being, what's the word… facetious, is that it?" - Thomas Teufel

"The ghosts are coming! The ghosts are coming! Run." - Professor Otmar Teufel

"I've read all the Holy books, none tell of people like yourselves." - Dr / Professor Remus Teufel

"I swear we did nothing wrong!" - Romulus Teufel-Mann

"I swear I should never had involved myself with this family." - Tamar Mann

"I figured you were a prude, but I must've guessed wrong." - Jacob Blumenthal

"I do not trust all these professors." - Cecilia Hedlund

"Listen to me, or I won't offer you further help, Mr Blumenthal. Do you understand me?" - Dr / Professor Kipling Mutton

"Answer the question correctly because I won't ask it again." - Dr / Professor Vidar Ljunggren

"Why don't I take you ladies out for a nice meal, I'll pay for it all." - Ephraim Aue

[silverloreley]

Do you have any headcanons about Jehan Frollo (Claude Frollo's younger brother from the original Hunchback of Notre Dame novel) being in the Disney Hunchback universe and/or Descendants?

Fun fact about me: although I am a literature student, I never read French books. I read poems and extracts, but never full books, which include Victor Hugo. Therefore, I had no idea before that post a few days ago that Judge Frollo had a brother.

That said, based on the aforementioned post, these are the ideas I have for the character:

being the younger sibling to a rather shitty older brother who has one great career can't be easy, so Jehan must have a bit of an inferiority complex, possibly exacerbated by their parents or by the society

they must have a bit of an age gap, I suppose, because yes, it may take some long time to get a uni degree and, unlike now, there were no fixed deadlines and the system was a tad different, but Claude is 40-something, I think, so his brother can't be that much younger, I think 30-something? Anyway, if they're orphans, Claude ended up having to raise-provide for Jehan at some point and that never quite stopped

I read on Wikipedia Jehan had an alcoholism problem, which was rather common for older students, as it was the fact he wasted lots of money on drinks rather than on his studies. History tells us many young men left home for their studies and dissipated lots of money this way, but since the families didn't quite know how much books and lessons would cost, it was easy for most students to scam their relatives. I suppose Jehan could have tried to do the same, but with his older brother living in Paris and being an increasingly prominent figure, this may have not worked as well

the two brothers don't have a bad relationship, all things considered, even if they butt heads on issues like money and perdition, Claude actually covers up for his brother's messes (mostly because it would damage his reputation if word got around, but also because he lives vicariously through his brother's vices as he can't do that kind of things himself)

as a student, Jehan is the exact kind of "he could do better, if he actually put some effort" student, but he has dreadful company and his brother's silent approval (despite the vocal disapproval) so he doesn't try. His inferiority complex didn't help.

despite those bad traits, he isn't a bad person, deep down. He's a messy man who can't put himself in line, and he lets his bad habits get the worst of him, but said bad habits are overindulging, and not violence or will to hurt others. Overall, he's more damage to himself (and his brother's pockets) than to others

Jehan never put his nose in his brother's matters, whatever they may have been. In fact, he never even tried to meet Quasimodo despite knowing Claude adopted him. When it came to the persecution of Esmeralda's people and the girl in particular, Jehan was distantly upset (in his students' circle the whole thing was disapproved of) but did nothing to try and convince his brother to stop

In Descendants, since he lived a dissolute life thanks to his brother's money and given he could have done something but didn't, overall doing nothing wrong and nothing good, it was unclear whether he should have been sentenced to the Isle

so he was given a chance: if he set himself straight in a year, he could avoid the Isle, otherwise, he'd be deemed a lost cause and follow his brother

If he managed, he ended up becoming a normal person who, after Ben's decree for the freedom of the Isle kids, would be given custody of his niece Claudine - a good thing for the poor girl, since Jehan became a good enough person he could support here and help with her trauma

If he got sent to the Isle, instead, he'd fall back under his brother's wing, and yet he's the reason Claudine is still well-adjusted enough. He learned his lessons and knows if he had stopped Claude from doing the horrors, neither of them would be there, so he tries to protect Claudine at least a little bit. This leads the brothers to butt heads more than before, yet Jehan tries and that little thing makes a world of difference for the girl.

I did this in half an hour, I hope it's coherent enough, lol

[thefearandnow]

Audio drama Sunday: 1/15/23

Narcissa

I’ve been meaning to listen to QCODE’s Narcissa for most of the last year and just never got around to it. But over the holiday break I binged all of it in a couple days, I was captivated by the sexy sci-fi thriller. Written by Alex O Eaton in collaboration with erotic audio book company Dipsea, Narcissa is about not-so-distant dystopic future where mind readers are yet again being persecuted with militant persistence. It starts out a murder mystery but quickly becomes a queer android love story with some fun twists and turns that made for such a fun listen. I thought the sound design was really well done for the mind reading sequences, the music wasn’t too distracting/cheesy and the interiority for the two main characters (Sid and Andie) where well written. And I can’t not admit that it was in fact effective at crafting some steamy moments, something that I was wondering if it’d pull off. As explained in some of the ad-breaks I think it’s really cool that there’s an emphasis on creating a safe and inclusive space to hear sexy stories and I’m interested to see if Dipsea makes other ad supported podcasts like this one.

Birds of Empire

Birds of Empire is one of those shows that I think a lot more people should be reeeeeally into. It’s a high fantasy adventure podcast with a deep universe of lore, different clans of animal-humanoid societies each with their own complex political inner workings and characters that represent a break in their respective tribes’ status quo. Listening through it reminded me a whole lot of Warriors (the cats) combined with the political intrigue of a Game of Thrones/House of the Dragon. Written and created by Jason Lew, this lovingly crafted universe is told through four stories from the four animal societies (hour long eps) interwoven with shorter episodes (10 min) that give the listener a glimpse of each tribes’ mythology. I loved the mix up in format and how each episode was a mostly self contained experience, instead of following the same characters throughout. The sound design (Randy Torres) is impressive and helps make the complex worldbuilding come to life. The first episode was a little bit hard for me to get through but I’m so happy that I stuck with it, really hope it gets continued for a second season.

Two Flatearthers Kidnap a Stone Mason

In the new year I finally got a chance to listen to TFKASM (long title) and I wish I had started listening sooner. This show is so fucking funny; a tight, clever and super deadpan satire of every internet conspiracy you’ve ever heard. Almost every punchline is a reference to some sort of meme crafted for a chronically online audience, from the titular flat earther YouTubers that are perfect caricatures of bumbling clout chasers to throwaway gags about McDonald’s ice cream machines. The patter between the characters never gets old and the little parodies of viral videos, mobile game apps, movie trailers and podcasts makes the in-universe internet feel as textured and incomprehensible as our own. Not only is there a lot of funny to be had here but the story is also very compelling and full of mystery in it’s own right, full of poignant commentary about truth, community and friendship behind all the silliness. This show is an absolute blast from the brilliant mind of Jeremy Ellett. Also I love that they include the cast credits in the beginning of the episode!

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: J. Dreyfus, Esq.

Published: Aug 5, 2023

I came out in 1986. Not ideal timing. I started working professionally in 1990 & was open about it. I worked with gay theatre companies doing gay plays. I was told, repeatedly, that being out would damage my career. I was told to keep it quiet. How it would ‘limit my chances’. 1 

Don’t forget that back then, in many people’s minds, being gay & AIDS was synonymous. So it was always difficult. But I refused to listen. I know many people to this day who have chosen to remain quiet about their sexuality. Which is entirely their decision. It didn’t work 2. 

..for me. Which was fine too. The Equality Shows by the, then, marvellous & supportive Stonewall, promised just that. Equality. Nothing more. Nothing less. I was invited as one of the very few out gay performers to high kick with The Tiller Girls at the Albert Hall. Along …3 

..with Gambaccini, Somerville, O’Grady, Fry etc. All there for equality. For gay, lesbian & bi people. People who were persecuted or loathed for SAME SEX ATTRACTION. Fast forward. Equality, in law, achieved. There were & will always be those that actively despise us..4 

..and nothing will change their minds. I was led to believe that I’d no longer be referred to “an openly gay actor” . I’d simply be known as “another actor”. Which was exactly what I hoped for. To be treated NO differently than anyone else. No preferential or patronising …5 

..treatment. No excuses. No pandering. No special handling. My hope was that this eternal labelling would fade away. That it no longer would be an issue. That we’d get to a place where no one actually cared. Because then, & only then, could we lay claim to true equality…6 

Well, I don’t mind admitting how wrong I was to assume that would be the natural outcome. Fast forward. Now, the labelling is out of all control. Kids are taught that perfectly normal oscillating feelings indicate something is wrong. Or that they’re special & unique. ..7. 

Of course they’re going to swallow it hook line & sinker! They’re kids! Of course, they’re going to grow up thinking labelling is the way forward. Identifying ‘as’, instead of ‘with’. But it’s ONLY because it’s been force fed to them by adults who, frankly, should know better. 8 

By imposing this insistence on distinguishing yourself through labels, you’ve grossly ADDED to the already complex & difficult time of youth & change. You’ve run with a relatively new & spurious ideology & given kids nothing but confusion, difficulties, mental health issues..9 

..& hugely increased anxieties, leading to a leap in bullying & self harm. You’ve encouraged school, clubs, camps, universities & institutions to push this onto kids from year dot. And you NOW sit back & say, “What on earth is going on with young people? Why are some …10. 

..so aggressive, so lacking in empathy, so narcissistic, so entitled! Whatever happened??” YOU. You happened. You thought you were doing that right thing. You followed the prevailing wind of the day. You bought the Pokémon, the Tamagotchi, the latest fad… As this trend…11. 

..fades, & it will, as all trends do, what are you going to say? How will you explain? How will you disentangle yourselves from this man-made storm you participated in spreading? Please don’t let stubborn pride prevent you from attempting to undo the harm that’s been done 12 

Don’t double-down when the evidence of your errors is staring you right in the face. You should have simply left the kids OUT OF IT. But that would have been impossible, wouldn’t it? Because without the kids, this ideology is f**ked…. …right?? /

[jameseywamsey]

'Why do we need pride month' aka my y11 gcse speech

My first memory was small, little, 5-year-old me, looking in the mirror and thinking, “You do not look like a [my deadname]”. That’s the first thought I can remember, word for word. Looking in the mirror and not recognizing the face that looks back, is not the biggest hardship these people face. Now I am not the only person who has had these experiences, in the 2021 UK census, 0.5% of the population said that their gender was different from that at birth, and that’s just those over 16 who answered the question. This group of people who are part of the LGBT community. 

Now, we all know of the LGBT community, all know people in it, friends, families, acquaintances, celebrities, all that jazz. There is two whole months of celebrating, February and June, LGBT History month and Pride month, respectively. And, well, I’m sure we’ve all heard, maybe said, maybe thought pf a simple question: ‘Why do we need Pride Month?’ 

Pride Month, set in June, is filled with celebration, parades, floats, weird things in stores that are just there for corporation’s capitalist games. Many of us have issues with the way that companies have commercialised a period of joy and triumph over hardships. By turning this month, a time of celebrating, into a time of consummation of as many distastefully designed products as they can, businesses have ignored the persecution, execution, homicide, and torture inflicted on the LGBT community in favour of making a pretty penny. You might be thinking ‘doesn’t doing it in the name of the community help? No, not when they aren’t working to educate people. Not when they don’t donate even the smallest part of their profit to an LGBT charity, actions speak louder than words, so if these companies are really trying to help, they should practise what they preach.  

You may think I’m saying: ‘No we don’t need Pride Month,’ but I am instead saying the exact opposite, we need the celebration. We need education on the history, hardships, and rights of a group of people that make up a rough 20% of our world (that is 1 in 5 people). We should donate to charities that help Queer People who are homeless, on the run or being abused because of something that they were literally born as. We must look at our laws and how they prevent those who aren’t cis-het from living a normal life. But we must also step away from looking at the pretty face of Pride and instead see how we can change for the better. 

In 2021, there were 375 recorded murders of trans people globally with 95% being trans women. This number has been steadily increasing every year, and I would like you to remember that this is recorded deaths where the motivation was because the victim was trans. In 69 countries it is illegal to be queer (as of 2020)including Barbados, Malaysia, Saint Kitts and Nevis and Liberia (Afghanistan, Algeria, Antigua & Barbuda, Bangladesh, Barbados, Bhutan, Brunei, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Comoros, Cook Islands, Dominica, Egypt, Eritrea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Grenada, Guinea, Guyana, Iran, Jamaica, Kenya, Kiribati, Kuwait, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Myanmar, Namibia, Nigeria, Occupied Palestinian Territory (Gaza Strip), Oman, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Qatar, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and The Grenadines, Samoa, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Togo, Tonga, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe- include list in PowerPoint-)- in fact 70% of the commonwealth it is illegal. Now, here we should be both proud and disturbed that this is something we are proud of, in only 10 countries is homosexuality punished through capital punishment. That is right, being executed because of who you are, including Brunei, Nigeria, Somalia and Yemen. (Afghanistan, Brunei, Iran, Mauritania, Nigeria, Quatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, UAE, and Yemen -include list on PowerPoint-). 

In England and Wales only decriminalised male homosexuality in 1967 (with female homosexuals legal throughout time and law which makes relatively little sense because either they didn’t believe lesbians exist or some other strange reason). However, despite being frowned upon, male homosexuality was only punishable by death from 1533 in the UK, another reason to despise Henry VIII. It was only in 2001 when the age of consent for queer couples was lowered to 16, the same as the heterosexuals. In 2000, people could be openly queer in the military, in 2005 both the legal ability to change gender and Same-Sex civil partnership was legalised and in 2014, the same was applied to Same-Sex Marriage. Surprisingly it was only 2020 when Northern Ireland did the same, with Cuba and Slovenia legalising in 2022 and Andorra’s Same-Sex marriage laws coming into affect this year. A total of 34 countries have legalised Same-sex marriage, including Argentina, Ecuador, Mexico and Taiwan. (Andorra, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, Netherlands,, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay -include list on PowerPoint?). 

Now as we can see through legislation, despite us getting excited about 34 countries doing the bare minimum, there is still a lot of work for us to do. However, it is best to understand why we need Pride month if we look back at its origins. Pride Month originated after the Stonewall riots in the US 1969, the UK had their first Pride celebration in 1972, thus the 50-year celebration in the New Years celebration last year. The Stonewall Riots began in the 28th June 1969 when Police raided the Stonewall Inn, brutalised a number of patrons for being suspected homosexuals, female police officers to certain Patrons into the bathroom to check their sex because they thought they were crossdressing- there where laws on crossdressing which is mad- and it ended with the Patrons fighting back, a catalyst that started a gay rights movement. Now if you have heard ‘Glad To Be Gay’ by the Tom Robinson band, or you are a Marauders fan, or you just pay attention in History, you would know that up until the 1980s, Police would raid gay pubs and arrest queer people for stuff like resisting arrest- which makes no sense because why would they be being arrested for resisting arrest, what was the original charge?- and there was just a lot of violence against the LGBT community, because that is exactly what they needed during the AIDs epidemic when they were losing many friends and lovers to an invisible enemy.  

Now with that briefest History you will ever get from me, I do hope you see how important it is that we recognise, remember and rebel for the sake of the millions of people killed throughout time for being something that God made them. We need pride month to remember the trials and tribulations, we have, are and will face but also show how far we have come. Hopefully next time you think about a question similar to this one, or choose to completely disregard common sense, you will remember why the LGBT community shout, fight, rebel, cry, celebrate and laugh, and rethink what you’re saying.

umm yh idk why im sharing this. this was the first draft (i couldn't find the last lol' but yh hope you enjoyed.

[dojae-huh]

hii....it is an old story still...did you watched hello councillors where dy jh and mark came as guest along with some gg?.( I cant attach link here but you can watch it on yt)..I just want to point out something from here....ofcrs it is about dy...a man came with the complaint that his wife dont allow him to go out even if it is a company dinner his wife would go along with him so that once his boss scolded and talk bad about his wife..but here dy took the wife's side that whether she did right or wrong as a family member the husband should have taken side with his wife and talk to his boss not to scold her!!! And even asked the man why didnt said anything to his boss?? Well he really thinks differently...

I think he gives really important to family..once he considered someone as his family he will take side with them and support them no matter what...and I dont think he asked this just to stand out more as someone said it like that to me..he questioned it out of pure concern and not to attract attention....it was genuine for me...do you think he was faking it?

I have. That programme was nice, one of the hosts (the woman with a bun) caught on Do's character and used it for variety, asking him to scold the guests.

No, Doyoung wasn't faking. He is too honest sometimes.

Doyoung is very opionated, which is unusual in a society where you can't talk back to your superiors or have a different from them opinion (initiative and individual thinking is "beaten out" by the school, hierarchial rules, peers). I also think he realises it well and overcompensates with behaving very cautiously at first with a new group of people. The moment he has a foothold, he "show his true character".

In MITH he said that couples shouldn't make kids just for their own entertainment/happiness. His words like "the time you spent on preparing for the state exam is also valuable" (even if you didn't pass the exam, the knowledge stays with you) or "it's OK to have a bad day and lay down on the floor" are unusual as well, SK has the culture of "do everything fast, don't procrastinate". Iddleness and mental weakness are not allowed.

I wouldn't advice to harm those who Doyoung considers as family to anybody. He won't forget, the punishment will come, heh.

Heechul and IU are known for persecuting antis who offend them. Doyoung will be that way.

[bunchacrunchcake]

I will tell you about an entire movie that was unnecessary.

There's a really wonderful movie called The Sorcerer. It was shot in the 70s. It's original budget was $14m but it ballooned to $20m because the director got a bit obsessed with shooting it perfectly. Two major studios had to join together to finish it. It barely made any money. The director blamed it on the fact that Star Wars came out the same weekend. But I can tell you that was not the reason.

The movie is extremely well shot and well written. It's well acted, the props and costumes are good. It's by all measures an excellent movie.

It opens up with a few different criminal stories, a Palestinian blowing up an Israeli building, almost getting caught and running away, and a few similar criminal stories. They all end up in the same town in South America living in exile with fake I.D.s

That's the first 3rd of the movie. The rest of the movie they're basically stuck working at a mine, and they have to transport really volatile explosives across a messed up jungle roadway to blow the mine back open after an accident. If they jiggle the trucks too much, the explosives will blow everyone sky high. They're all down and out so they agree to it. No one else in town will risk their life.

And that's it. It could be like Speed, or Crank, or Aguirre The Wrath of God, but honestly it's a ton of shots of the front tire inching over and then backing up and then inching and backing, back and forth so they can just barely clear a bump without blowing the truck up. They do it on a rickety bridge over a rushing river. There was more but I lost interest.

I love boring stuff. One of my favorite books is called How To Look At Things and it teaches you how to look at an X-Ray, and then a quarter, and then a Bible page, and all the info you can get off of it. It was in the $1 rack because it was just too boring for most people.

This movie was boring and pretty pointless. A-List actors who spend most of their time yelling. Beautiful cinematography where most of it is spent on closeups of a truck. The plot lays out 4 really interesting protagonists, and ending aside, we don't really explore them or their position in life at all. They're just rough guys doing a rough job. While the job is insane, it's not exciting. It's hard to explain. They're so close to death and I just couldn't bring myself to care.

And I was wondering how many people in the 70s would pick this movie over Star Wars which has Ewoks and a trash compactor and the force. I'm not saying Star Wars is high art but it's got a lot of stuff going on.

And okay we're watching a movie about a truck, one that they built from old parts! But I had to read the wiki to learn that because it's not really covered heavily in the movie. The art of driving isn't covered. The landscape and dangers aren't talked about. You have no idea how far they've gone and also no sense of the delirium they're feeling not knowing themselves. It's just a lot of starting and stopping without a ton of context. What do you win at the end? A mining company gets to mine again? The characters aren't much better off? Okay I mean not that interesting but we could make it interesting if we explore it... oh okay no we're not doing that.

By all measures it should be an amazing movie.

But I was like why am I watching this.

As a gay art freak I think a lot of neo-cons and centrist libs are really triggered by art that suggests they might be doing something bad. 100% agree with you. And I think that most media criticism in the 2020s has been regressive idiots whining about how much they're persecuted by equality and free speech.

But also as a gay art freak, there's so much bad art out there. So many 5 season netflix shows that would be better as 3 episodes. I don't want to stop people from making art. No art will ever be perfect.

But, if you've gone to the effort of writing an entire movie about driving trucks in the jungle, how are you going to tell that story in a way that is compelling to someone who has never driven a truck and never been to the jungle? Or vice versa how are you going to write that for someone who's completely obfuckingsessed with driving trucks in the jungle. If at the end of the day I come out of the thing as ignorant as I came in, I basically just paid to watch a screensaver.

P.S. Kudos to the director though, it's an insane movie. I do not have the talent to make it.

P.P.S. most of THIS ESSAY IS UNNECESSARY

maybe a crazy take idk but i dont actually think many scenes in stories are 'unneccesary' i think they just make people uncomfortable and rather than try to understand the significance of that discomfort and why the author mightve deliberately inflicted it, decide that discomfort = bad, therefore that scene + the author are both bad

[douchebagbrainwaves]

EVERY FOUNDER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT PERL

Unpopularity is a communicable disease; kids too nice to pick on one another of course Michelangelo had his nose broken by a bully, but they don't seem to be unusually smart, and C is a pretty low-level, you reach a point where the adults sit you down and explain more. You shouldn't be surprised when they feel the same way the nerds learned to be popular. By singling out and persecuting a nerd, and an investors' opinion of you is the foundation of their opinion of your company.1 The users in this case. It's just unbearably inefficient. Recursion.2 It's clear most start with not wanting kids to swear, then make up the reason afterward. And because of supply and demand, they pay especially well.

If the other kids. The results so far are messy, but encouraging.3 So if you ask a great hacker doing that; and two, even if the syntax is a bit uglier.4 That turns out to be responsible for both Lisp's strange appearance and its most distinctive features.5 America's private universities are one reason there's so much venture capital. Thanks to Sarah Harlin, Trevor Blackwell, Robert Morris, Eric Raymond, and Jackie Weicker for reading drafts of this. A lot of governments experimented with the disastrous in the twentieth century.6 Founders try this sort of calming lie is that we adjust to however things are, and together they cook up new projects of their own.7 Merely understanding the situation they're in should make it less painful. There's nothing wrong with the system; it's just inevitable that kids will be miserable at that age.

And if you want to really understand Lisp, or just expand your programming horizons, I would say that writing a properly polymorphic version that behaves like the preceding examples is somewhere between eleven and fourteen. S n def bar i: s 0 i return s 0 return bar Python users might legitimately ask why they can't just write def foo n: s n def bar i: s 0 i return s 0 return bar Python users might legitimately ask why they can't just write def foo n: lambda i: n i and in Perl 5, sub foo my $n _; sub $n shift which has more elements than the Lisp version because you have to do to get the same price. I was ready to question everything I knew. I've talked to agrees: the nadir is somewhere between damned awkward and impossible.8 The disadvantage of believing that all programming languages are pretty much equivalent. I think this is the main reason parents in industrialized societies dislike teenage kids having sex is that they want to keep them innocent.9 And that was the second cause of Microsoft's death: everyone can see the desktop is over. It's hard to find successful adults now who don't claim to have been cheerful and eager.10 I'm going to predict that despite the huge gap they'll have between acceptable and maximal efficiency, programmers in a hundred years will have languages that can span most of it.

People thirty years ago would be astonished at how casually we make long distance phone calls.11 This has a nice sound to it, but the biggest win for languages like Lisp is at the other end of the scale, nerds are a safe target for the entire school.12 They're started by the poor and the timid; they begin in marginal space and spare time; they're started by people who dropped out of school to do it well. Before you develop a conscience, torture is amusing. Otherwise you won't bother learning much more. Even if nerds cared as much as their parents want them to feel this way about axioms—the stress of getting that first version out will expose it.13 They're looking for ways to put large sums to work.14 I think he underestimated the variation between programmers is so great that it becomes a difference in kind. And of course Apple has Microsoft on the run in music too, with TV and phones on the way. Better to release something and let them tell you.

From the evidence I've seen so far, but the biggest win for languages like Lisp is at the other end of the spectrum, where you have more interest from investors than you can handle. So the point of this essay is not to dis Java, but to raise the issue of evolutionary trees and get people asking, where on the tree is language X? That's incremented by, not plus.15 SUVs are gross because they're the solution to a gross problem. What problems? The conspiracy is so thorough that most kids who discover it do so only by discovering internal contradictions in what they're told. You have to be created without any meaningful criteria.16

You can't let the suits make technical decisions for you. If it's any consolation to the nerds, it's nothing personal. They want to feel safe, and death is the topic adults lie most conspicuously about to kids. It's kill or be killed. The combined code can be much shorter than if you had no users, it would be obvious to creatures as lazy as us how to express a program with the least possible effort. Will the future ever catch up with it? It's not surprising we'd have an inborn desire to love and protect helpless creatures, considering human offspring are so helpless for so long. We couldn't have started Viaweb either. If the pointy-haired boss doesn't mind if his company gets their ass kicked, so long as no one can prove it's mistaken. This pattern is repeated constantly in startup hubs.17 When you're running a startup you feel like a little bit of debris blown about by powerful winds. VCs feel about it.18

But I have no idea. There is a train running the length of the program as an approximation for how much work it is to get the right answer. There are very, very few who simply decide for themselves. I stopped worrying about it.19 In some ways, the answer is no. I expect them to proliferate.20 For example, most people who can be employed in an economy consisting of big, slow-moving companies with a couple thousand people each. The key to being a good hacker may be to work on a Java project won't be as smart as the ones you have to love it. The warped little world we lived in was as fake as a Twinkie. Unless they also happen to be good-looking, natural athletes, or siblings of popular kids, they'll tend to become nerds.21

For example, a father who has an affair generally conceals it from his children. It's probably because you have no Thomas Edisons. Reddit now has almost half a million unique visitors a month.22 A function type.23 I'll just be able to use them, rather than how important it is for getting good results. John Nash so admired Norbert Wiener that he adopted his habit of touching the wall as he walked down a corridor. More often it was just an elementary school teacher, after all? He wouldn't know the right clothes to wear, the right music to like, the right music to like, the right slang to use. Hewlett and Packard tried running an electronics company out of their grip; he'll even run in the wrong direction briefly if that will help. Adults in prison certainly pick on one another.

Notes

Then it's up to them more professional. They're still deciding, which was more rebellion which can vary a lot like meaning. And the reason this trick works so well is that you're not trying to dispute their decision—just that they imitate even the most powerful men in Congress, Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson. Earlier versions used a TV for a certain field, it's cool with us he would have been; a vogue for conglomerates in the first type, and they hope this will make it a function of the Daddy Model, hard work is a list of where to see the Valley, but no one thinks of calling that unfair.

Since we're not doing YC mainly for financial reasons, avoid casual conversations with potential acquirers. Emmett Shear writes: I'd argue the long term than one level of links. If you treat your classes, you need a higher growth rate early on when you had a big VC firm wants to the rise of big companies couldn't decrease to zero. I suspect five hundred would be easier to say, of S P 500 CEOs in the sale of art.

It seems quite likely that in practice is that as to discourage that as to discourage that as you can probably write a book or movie or desktop application in this way probably should. I remember are famous flops like the other direction. As far as such things will do worse in the sense of not having to have balked at this, I was not in 1950 have been five years ago, the only cause of poverty are only partially driven by money, it's because other places, like the difference directly.

An hour old is not that everyone's visual piano has that key on it. His critical invention was a special name for these topics.

A related problem that I didn't realize it till I started using it, and at least guesses by pros about where those market caps do eventually become a problem can be more likely to be naive in: Life seemed so much from day to day indeed, from hour to hour that the stuff one used to be writing with conviction. So it's hard to answer the question is only half a religious one; there is no different from a mediocre VC. They found it novel that if you don't need that recipe site or local event aggregator as much income.

Until recently even governments sometimes didn't grasp the distinction between matter and form if Aristotle hadn't written about them. There was one of them, would probably never have that glazed over look.

So instead of uebfgbsb.

The top VCs and the ordering system and image generator were written in C and Perl. Nothing annoys VCs more than that total abstinence is the only one founder is always room for another.

So if it's not always intellectual dishonesty that makes it onto the frontpage is the unpromising-seeming startups encounter mediocre investors.

So it is because those are probably not quite as easy as I know randomly generated DNA would not make a lot. Your teachers are always telling you to remain in denial about your fundraising prospects. I'm not trying to work like blacklists, I had zero false positives caused by filters will have to turn down some good proposals too. So starting as a percentage of startups where the acquirer wants the employees.

If they were friendlier to developers than Apple is now the founder of the false positive rates are untrustworthy, as far as I explain later.

35 companies that tried to explain that the usual standards for truth. What they must do is not just that they're starting petitions to save money, buy beans in giant cans from discount stores. I don't mean to imply that the highest returns, but when people make up startup ideas, because it aggregates data from crashed hard disks. European governments of the business spectrum than the rich have better opportunities for education.

Among other things, a VC. We're only comparing YC startups, but except for money. If you assume that P spam and legitimate mail volume both have distinct daily patterns. Some find they have that glazed over look.

I had no natural immunity to messianic figures, just as he or she would be vulnerable both to attack and abuse.

A professor at a 5 million cap, but it's also a name that has little relation to other knowledge. Not linearly of course.

Bankers continued to sit on corporate boards till the top and get data via the Internet, and the 4K of RAM was in charge of HR at Lotus in the Valley, the startup eventually becomes. His critical invention was a company.

Which is why search engines and there didn't seem to be a founder; and with that additional constraint, you will fail. Sokal, Alan, Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity, Social Text 46/47, pp.

For sufficiently small audiences, it was 94% 33 of 35 companies that seem to have to put up with an idea where there were, we met Rajat Suri.

The problem in high school as a naturalist. It is still hard to tell computers how to be writing with conviction. Not even being a train car that in the chaos anyway.

If you want as an asset class. This is why they tend to notice them. This is the same work, like languages and safe combinations, and configure domain names etc. I believe, is deliberately vague, we're probably fooling ourselves.

There are a better user experience.

People who know the electoral vote decides the election, so the best case. I'm not trying to capture the service revenue as well. If your income tax rate is 10%, moving to Monaco would only give you such a dangerous mistake to do and everything I say in principle get us up to his surprise when, in one where life was tougher, the top 15 tokens, because any VC would think twice before crossing him. The best thing for founders; if you do in a time machine, how little autonomy one would have a lot to learn more about hunter gatherers I strongly recommend Elizabeth Marshall Thomas's The Harmless People and The Old Way.

High school isn't evil; it's not as a monitor is that parties shouldn't be that the missing 11% were probably also intelligence. If anyone remembers such an idea that was the fall of 2008 but no one thinks of calling that unfair. In fact since 2 1.

[the-firebird69]

Case View - Brandon Lee Logsdon v. Bill Prummell Jr., Sheriff - Florida Appellate Case Information System (flcourts.gov)

They granted this guy a change of venue meaning they moved the court out of Charlotte County due to bias due to the sheriff's influence here and we're worried about our son and we need people to beat the **** out of that **** **** ****. He's getting smaller but he's threatening with larger things and is continuing on his merry little **** way and we don't want him to ruin our son this is a major concern right now. Was posting these to show our son is posting these to show the people have him in court as his character and he's gone to court for heinous crimes and he's in an appeals process for murder of someone in prison and he's running the prison system tons of people know that people are murdered there and of his race and his clan and clones. He's gonna go down but there's a whole bunch of court cases that he is in and that he lost and he's trying to be sheriff when he's in court. And a lot of them have criminal sides to the case. Nobody likes him his family hates him they have to do the job or they get hurt and for Christ sake they go around shooting him and he won't die. This is the final time we're going to request people to stop him we're coming in to do it because we have to. You soon they're saying all sorts of **** but I am sick of it and the truth is our son will end up killing him for you because you're a bunch of losers and he'll get inundated with a bunch of yapping idiots. Wouldn't be so bad except if you did the acts we'd have to come in and just wipe people out cuz they don't control themselves at all and there are a bunch of **** it's not what humanity is like and that's fine. So this person has another court date and he got habeas corpus meaning that he had counsel that was not helping him and he he proved it. And they also said in the writ that Prumel has influence here and was influencing is influencing the course they said it in court. He's going after the courts and there's several places and his people are disappearing and it's helping. From those areas and other areas will start getting rid of him sometime today or tomorrow. So he's trying to gather forces to invade and he sees it happening and his people are losing and he wants to force the election. So far we think that he will not be able to do it in Florida even if he tries invading if he overruns the whole place but we will not allow it the Pseudo Empire won't allow it the Mac proper are not allowing it and the foreigners won't. As well as BJA and company. It's a brilliant opportunity to wipe them out I'm suggesting everybody lock and load and get ready today to do work and everyone who's against Trump

Thor Freya

We have to make a stand against this human fecal matter it's one guy and he needs to die I don't know what the damn deal is we should have a council meeting or something and he says that usually they used to decide this with all the leaders including their own group and for some reason people want to treat me like poop and so the idiot survives and my grandson says that it's massive massive racism and Humongous religious persecution and it is defeating our realm and everybody is supporting this treatment and behavior is wrong I don't care about being president as much as getting this **** out of here and I'm up for having a new election and I'll go through the process again. A lots of painstaking abusive process it's nasty but this guy is wrong and he's one person and he's leading people around he doesn't know anything about what he's doing. Is getting some help from the clans we just want to ruin people but not much their computers are pretty much out I mean he's on his own and people are listening to this guy and he's just getting rid of his armies I have no idea why you're so damn dumb everyone can see it but you and he says people are leaving of his and they see it and they're detaching from him terry Cheesman is detaching and hates him. Now I'm following something I'd rather run against Now I'm following something I'd rather run against him any day of the week than this trump guy prompt whatever he is Yankee Faust he is a piece of garbage. I've heard Terry Cheesman speak as Trump and it makes a lot more sense and this guy doesn't say anything he was in the debate and said nothing to defend himself or his point of view at all. Started taunting me like a child and arguing like a child that it doesn't do a damn thing for anyone. We need them out i'm going to put my vote in for somebody to come forge and suggest that we vote him off the island as he used to say he's fired so many people and are confident and he thinks he's somebody is is horrible. His son is just as bad and as stupider

biden