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higuchimon · 4 years ago

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[fanfic] Answer To Unexpected Questions: Chapter 2

The more word that came from the front lines and the few messages from those who slipped behind the lines and sought to spy upon the army of Light, the worse everything looked for Kuragari.

“They haven’t lost a battle in weeks,” Juudai said, staring at the messages, all of them in code that he’d painstakingly taught himself how to read. He trusted his father not to lie to him but he also trusted King Aodh to withhold information if he thought it would be to Juudai’s benefit.

Yubel glanced over them as well. “They’ll be here within another month if something doesn’t stop them.”

Juudai didn’t want to hear that. But not hearing it wouldn’t have changed anything. He rummaged around until he found a map of the territory the invading army traveled through and unrolled it onto the table, staring down until he figured out where they were. Or had been; they would likely have moved on by now.

“I need to do something,” he murmured. “I need to stop them.” He didn’t know what he would do, just that he had to do something, and it had to be soon or all too soon Ancient Elf and his followers would be knocking down the city gates to get to him.

The idea of running away, hiding in some other country – perhaps in Johan’s kingdom, the Guardian of Light would definitely accept him – never occurred to him. Or if it did, it was only for a handful of moments, long enough for him to reject the concept and move on to something else.

If he’d been in danger enough for death to be a true risk right now, he knew Yubel would urge him to leave. Yubel’s purpose was to protect him, and Yubel would never do anything that would put him into danger. So if Yubel accepted his choice to remain and to find a way to do battle, then this must be the right choice.

Which meant he needed to do something that would make his choice worth it. Warriors, mages, spies, and people of all kinds were out there fighting and dying and being brainwashed, all to protect him and his kingdom. It wasn’t right and he wouldn’t let it go on.

So now he stared down at the map and tried to find something that would be a good idea.

If they’re coming here, then they need to come this way, he mused, tracing along the line of one of the rivers that led down to the ocean. If he’d heard about this sooner and realized what it meant, he would’ve met them at the ocean itself, and raised it against them. All the elements of the world were his to command, earth and air, fire and water, darkness and light.

Light could be kind of touchy, but if he’d known, he would’ve sent for Johan anyway, and together, there was nothing that could stand against them.

But there wasn’t time for that now, and he continued to look for answers he couldn’t yet find.

The river came out of the mountains that rose up in the center of Kuragari, home to many mines and gemstones of all kinds. There were passes through the mountains that merchants and miners used frequently.

“Not all of these are still used,” he said, indicating them to Yubel. “At least not by the miners. They could make an easy opening for an army.”

Yubel checked out the map, arms folded over their chest, thoughtfulness in all three eyes. “I think you’re right. And this one here,” Yubel rested one taloned finger on one particular mountain pass, “would bring them down into striking distance of Kethlar.”

Kelthar was one of the largest cities in the kingdom, a crossroads of many roads, and leading to at least three different port cities: and to the capital itself. If it fell, then most of the kingdom would be open to the invaders.

“Then we have to stop them before they get there.” He racked his brain, thinking of where the Kuragarian army waited now. They weren’t far from the pass, entrenching there and waiting to see what direction the enemy would take.

He stood up. “Yubel, I’m going to go see the Heroes. We’re heading out to the pass and the army as soon as they’re ready.”

“Of course.” A smile touched on Yubel’s lips and Juudai took a few moments to kiss it before he darted out of the room and through the palace corridors. He had too much to do to stop and talk to anyone, and no one wanted to interrupt him as he hurried along to where his bodyguards took their few leisure hours.

He burst in there, panting, aware that they all stood up as soon as he entered the room, worry across every feature.

“I’m all right,” he gasped out. “I just have a really important mission for all of you.”

“What is it?” The same question fell from multiple lips as Juudai caught his breath and straightened to his full height.

“We’re going to save Kuragari. I’ve got a plan and I know where we have to hit them and we have to hit them hard enough to drive the out of the kingdom and make sure they’ll never come back.” For a brief moment, his eyes flashed gold. “If they want to attack what’s mine, they should know that I’m going to attack back.”

The Elemental Heroes, guardians of the six elements and his personal bodyguards, all looked at one another. There were plenty of looks to go around. Then they looked back at him.

“When do we leave?” Sparkman wanted to know.

“As soon as we’re all ready. The sooner, the better.”

Juudai neglected – on purpose – let his parents know what he had in mind. They would want to talk about it. They would want to revise the plan until he sat back in the palace and did nothing at all useful. They would want the Elemental Heroes to help, of course, because the plan depended on them to do so, but they would not let Juudai anywhere near the battlefields.

And if it were me, I’d do the same thing. I am doing the same thing. They wanted to protect him. They didn’t want him hurt.

He wanted to protect his people. He didn’t want any of them hurt.

Only this was his battle to fight and it always had been and always would be. He needed to prove to the Light of Ruin and its host that he did not fear them and they should fear him.

And if they didn’t yet then after what he had in mind, they were most certainly going to.

It took less than a day to get everyone ready. The Heroes had anticipated something like this sooner or later, either Juudai deciding to head up to the front lines himself, or perhaps someone somehow getting by Yubel in order to attack the prince.

Granted, if someone got by Yubel and hurt Juudai, their duties would be more along the lines of ‘get everyone out of the city before Yubel destroys it’. But plans remained plans and now they headed out after the fall of night.

Juudai wore armor, of course. What he planned didn’t allow for one on one battle, but he wanted to make certain that no stray arrows or thrown daggers decided his tender mortal flesh would be worth biting into. He wore sensible black plate mail, knitted together from the powers of Darkness itself: mostly because he hadn’t had it made yet by the armorers and he didn’t want to either take the time to get it done like that or to alert his father and mother that something was going on.

He kept his helmet down to keep the wind out of his face as they soared toward the army’s location. He wanted to talk to the general in charge there before he started to rearrange the local geography. Yubel carried him, arms folded around him, and the Elemental Heroes in both bodyguard and honor guard position. Anyone who dared to try to attack him would likely not get that far.

“General Freed,” Juudai called out as Yubel set him down in front of the command tent. The general’s own bodyguards – lesser brothers of the Freed family – came to attention the moment that they recognized his voice and the general himself stepped out, weathered and experienced and the kind of leader who one could trust to win battles against ordinary enemies and sometimes extraordinary ones.

The moment that he saw Juudai, once the prince pulled his visor up, he went down on one knee.

“How may I be of service, my prince?” He did not ask what Juudai was doing there. He trusted that Juudai would tell him.

And tell him Juudai did.

“Your people are here to prevent the Army of Light from getting to the pass and on the other side. I want you to step aside and let them through.”

“Highness?” Freed stood back to his feet in a heartbeat. He didn’t reach for a weapon but his guards looked as ready to attack as they should be if treachery were involved.

Juudai only grinned, a slash of a manic expression. The more he’d thought the plan through, the more he thought it was a good idea, and he’d refined it down to its simplest points.

“This is what I’ve got in mind.”

He didn’t take long to explain it and slowly Freed nodded his agreement.

“As you wish, my prince. We’ll wait on the other side for any survivors.”

“I don’t expect there to be any,” Juudai said. He saw no reason not to crush every single one of them, right down to the roots. The only exceptions would be any he knew had been brainwashed. With the Light banished from Kuragari, they would be freed. “But just in case, that’s not a bad idea.”

The army packed up and headed out in the first light of morning while Juudai and his guards made their own plans. Featherman took to the skies to scout out the army, returning far too soon for Juudai’s taste.

“They’re on the way and they’ll be here within a day. That’s all the time we have to set things up.”

“Can we slow them down?” Juudai wanted to know. There had to be time for the army to get out of the way and to evacuate the small villages in the immediate area.

Featherman glanced at Bubbleman and Clayman. “What do you two think?”

The warriors of earth and water exchanged a quick glance, then nodded in unison. Bubbleman snickered.

“I hear that entire Army likes to wear white armor. I wonder how easy that is to get mud off of.”

“We’ll find out.” Clayman replied with a low, rich chuckle. “The sooner we get started, the better.”

The two of them took off, while Juudai started to work on the rest of his plan. He couldn’t do as much as he wanted until the invading army was where he wanted them to be, but what he could do was warn the miners and the villagers to get out of the way as fast as they could. What happened when the Army got in position wasn’t going to be good for anyone caught in the way.

For the span of time he had left to him, Juudai wished that he could see what Bubbleman and Clayman actually did. Hearing it wasn’t a problem, because they weren’t in any way quiet about it. He just wasn’t in a position to see it with his own eyes.

But what he heard was more than enough to give him some lovely mental images.

Clayman struck first, his power over earth cracking the ground in front of the invaders, opening a huge gorge virtually underneath their feet. It wasn’t very deep, perhaps two handspans at the most, enough to bury most of them to their knees and a few to their waist, depending on their species. The few who could fly stayed above it, tugging at their companions, but there wasn’t any way that they could get them out of there.

Not at all before Bubbleman struck, sending a wave of water rising up from the nearby river and pouring over them. At least a third of the Army of Light perished then and there, either by drowning or injuries.

“That should keep them in place long enough, my prince,” Bubbleman reported as he and Clayman returned to Juudai’s location. He expected at least a little time to rest, but just in case Ancient Elf decided to send out someone to see what was going on, he didn’t make a particular camp. He’d rest in the shadows, where few could harm him.

“Thanks, guys.” Juudai grinned at them, trying not to show how tired he was getting. He hadn’t slept since they’d left the palace and all the travel and work was starting to get to him.

Yubel rested a hand on his shoulder. “The Elemental Heroes can see to it that those villages and miners that we haven’t reached yet are alerted to what’s going on. There aren’t many of them left.”

Featherman took a long look at Juudai, then nodded. “Yubel’s right. You need your rest more than anything else. You’re going to be doing more work than any of us once they’re in position.”

Juudai wasn’t going to argue that point at all. If they chose to let him sleep, then he’d take the chance. He found the nearest patch of shadows, sank right into them, and in moments was in one of the deepest slumbers he’d ever had, safe under Yubel’s attention.

He came out of it some hours later, to find the Heroes all gathered together, murmuring among themselves, with Yubel only a step or two away from him, a nervous twitch in their wings.

The idea of something that could make Yubel nervous didn’t set well with him at all.

“What’s going on?”

They turned toward him and it was Sparkman who spoke. “I took a look at the army. I wanted to see just how much damage Clayman and Bubbleman did and how close they were to getting where we need them to be.”

Juudai nodded. There was more to this than just a simple scouting run.

“They have Johan, Juudai.”

No sooner had the words been spoken than a cold, distant feeling dropped over Juudai. He rose all the way to his feet.

“I’m going to go get him.”

Yubel reached a hand out to him. “Juudai, it’s a trap. It must be. Why else would they take him?”

“I don’t care.” Juudai pulled his armor together from the shadows once more. This was personal now. The idea of them abducting Johan, doing who knew what to him, maybe even brainwashing him, maybe killing him when they didn’t need him anymore…

Juudai could not, would not, accept that.

“They’re not going to go anywhere for a while yet. I can get in, take him, and get out of there. I won’t be long.” He didn’t want any of them going with him. This was a mission for him alone.

Yubel started to spread their wings but Juudai shook his head. “I’ll be all right.”

“I don’t care.” Yubel stared down at him. “I’m going with you.”

Juudai held back a sigh. He loved Yubel with every ounce of his heart and soul, but they could be as stubborn as...as… as he was.

“You may need help to get through the guards. Someone should go with you,” Featherman pointed out. Juudai sighed all the way this time.

“All right. We’ll be back soon.” If he had to blow up the army right where it was, instead of waiting for the right location, then to save Johan, he absolutely would.

Getting to where the Army of Light camped out – against their will thanks to Bubbleman and Clayman’s actions – wasn’t too difficult. Juudai jumped from shadow to shadow, Yubel only a breath behind, and saw not even a single guard on duty when he stepped out of them for the brief span of time he needed to in order to find the next patch of darkness.

In later times, looking back with more experience, he suspected that should’ve tipped him off that something wasn’t right.

As it was, he made his way to their control area without seeing anyone. A small circle of tents, each one with their own guard, stood around a roaring fire, and for

the first time, Juudai saw Ancient Elf, the one who led this army.

I should just kill him right now. Such a thing would end the war quickly and if it weren’t for Yubel’s restraining hand, he might well have done so.

No, Juudai. Yubel’s words whispered deep into his mind, on a level only he could hear or understand. It’s too close. But there’s something wrong here.

He frowned, wanting to know what was on their mind. He couldn’t bring himself to speak, not knowing if the minions of the Light could hear him or not.

I should be able to sense Johan’s presence. His power is as clear as yours. But I don’t.

The ice of fear and anger cemented itself deep within Juudai and he turned his attention to the circle of tents and those who sat around the crackling fires.

If they’ve hurt him, I don’t care how close we are or anyone else is, I’m bringing all of this down.

Yubel said nothing at all, but he could feel the disappointment in their mind, and promised himself to explain it all when they were out of here with Johan.

Tiny tendrils of shadow crept into each tent as Juudai and Yubel passed by it. As soon as he could assure himself that Johan wasn’t in there, Juudai moved on.

He’d checked on all but the last, the one that Ancient Elf himself inhabited, by the pure white splendor of it. Juudai made a face before he slipped his questing shadow tendril in there. He drew it out again almost as fast, wincing at how bright it was in there, but also gathering his resolve.

He cast a quick look to Yubel, nodding, and wasn’t surprised to see Yubel shaking their head.

No sense of him at all, Juudai. There is someone. It isn’t Johan.

Juudai set his jaw and turned back to the tent. He’d come this far. He wasn’t going to turn back now.

Finding a shadow on the other side wasn’t easy. But with all that light, there couldn’t not be a shadow somewhere and he found Johan’s own shadow, a tiny little thing that he emerged out of and turned, hoping that Johan wouldn’t make any noise on seeing him.

It wasn’t Johan.

To Be Continued

Notes: Juudai's armor here is more or less what he wears in season three. Just without as many Spikes of Villainy.

#fanfic #higuchimon writes #ygo gx #yuuki juudai #yubel #yubel x juudai #juudai x yubel #soulshipping #chapters: answers to unexpected questions #series: past & future

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dukeofriven · 6 years ago

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Guns or Children: The Only Choice Left, America

[Note: this post was originally a response to this thread.

Trigger warnings: guns, gun deaths, murder, violence, death, child death, school shootings, racism, anti-semitism, mass shootings, Orlando Pulse Shooting, sports injuries, cursing, swear words, statistics, sourced facts, responsibility, collective responsibility, the necessity of change, moral imperatives]

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There is always a justification for why it’s okay for Americans to own guns.

Tradition. The Cultural Importance of Firearms. Farmers Vs Wild Beasts. The Scary Non-White People Who Are Moving Into The Neighbourhood. The Need For An Unsubtle Penis Metaphor To Show-Off To Your Fellow Men.

And, of course, the worst of them all:

“I Like Them.”

I don’t care.

It has become parodic at this point to try and argue against these points because the people who make them aren’t arguing in good faith anyways: they like guns and they know that you don’t like guns so how can there be any kind of accord when you won’t even meet them on their own turf? You can’t argue with people who don’t like guns because secretly - or not-so-secretly - they just want to take you guns away. We can’t have a real argument about gun control against such an extremist position.

Which is fine because I’m not here to argue. There’s no argument to be made anymore. The time for argument was seventy years ago when America’s culture wasn’t so toxic that the sane, reasonable positions on gun ownership that other countries ended-up with could still be enforced.

That was seventy years ago. That opportunity is gone. There’s no longer any argument to be made.

The Onion makes a habit of running a variation of an article every time a big shooting happens:

The fact that America is irresponsible with guns, cannot be trusted with guns, has lost all ability to live with guns, is fundamentally true, and not in dispute anywhere other than in America itself. America’s mind-boggling gun-death rate is a direct, indivisible result of: [Note: most numbers here are from the last major survey from 2017] 1) The sheer volume of guns. America has about 120 civilian-owned guns for every hundred people in the country. There are more guns than people. If everyone in America had to start killing one-another in a grand old game of nation-wide paintball-with-bullets no one would have to share a gun and there would be spares before the first shot was fired. The next region with an entry on the guns per-people per-region list? The Falkland Islands with 60 guns for every 100 people. The Falkland Islands has a total population of some 3000 people. Its murder rate? Does’t seem to have one. Leaving aside the Falklands War I don’t think anyone’s been murdered there since 1981. Next country down? Yemen. Population: 28 million, with 50-odd guns per 100 people. Yemen a region that hasn’t known peace since... ever. Yemen has existed in some form since 1918 and not once has it ever had what you’d call a lasting and nation-wide peace.

The farthest down the list you have to go to find a country that comes close to America in terms of population size is Pakistan - population 200 million, and only 22 guns for every hundred people. Should they start that nation one -kill-paintball game most people would have to share until they’d wiped-out some eighty percent of the country.

So the three biggest gun-owning regions in the world by guns per person is a tiny British tourist trap where nobody but governments commit crimes, and civil-war ravaged Yemen. And America. Neither of those first places comes close to America in terms of either size or number of guns. America has more guns for civilian use than anywhere else on Earth. This number is not in dispute. America has more than twice the number of guns per citizen than anywhere else on Earth. This number is also not in dispute. America has a death-by-firearm rate far and beyond any other nation of its size, population, wealth, and stability. Of the six countries that make up half the world’s gun deaths, America is one of them - the other five are Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, and Guatemala, all nations with significantly more serious gang-related and stability-related issues than America. This number is also not is dispute.

2) Easy access to guns. 390 million guns don’t get distributed by accident. American gun laws are known for their laxity and their ease of use: in America the courts have decided that 1791′s Second Amendment of the US Constitution, by-and-large, grants Americans the largely unrestricted right to own guns, and indeed have something of a moral obligation to do so as a guarantor against tyranny. American law thus goes out of its way to make the process of purchasing a gun as inconvenient as possible. It is easier to buy a guy in many places in America than it is to purchase alcohol. 3) A culture that worships guns. America has a culture that loves guns. A culture that lauds guns. A culture that worships guns. America has a culture that that stands around and not only says ‘shit guns are cool’ but takes the next step and says ‘and people should be able to own cool things.’ This is somewhat odd given the awesome destructive power of a gun and the average citizen’s need to posses destructive power. Tanks are cool, but nobody is handing those out to civilians. Fighter jets are awesome, but we don’t make those for sale to anything other than repressive governments. “But DukeofRiven swords are cool and we let people buy those,” you say. Well, many countries don’t, first of all, or allow much sword-freedom - in my country it is legal to own a sword, but not to wield it or carry it. Secondly, you know how many people were murdered with a sword in 2017? No, you don’t. Nobody does - no one seems to be keeping track as far as I can tell. It’s so few people that the number is statistically insignificant. I can tell you that in 2017 some 1,591 people were murdered with all “knives and other cutting instruments” compared to a full 10,982 gun homicides. This is a list that notes all defenestration murders (4), and all murders via explosion (0) - it doesn’t take a lot to get on the FBI’s “common murder weapon” radar. Swords don’t qualify. “But DukeofRiven” - I hear you cry (’Your Grace’ will do) - “That’s a lot of knife deaths. Knives are a useful tool that would be silly to ban. Guns are an important tool too - farmers who live in dangerous areas find guns useful for warding off wild animals.” Well that’s true, fictional question asker - farmers do find guns useful. There’s about 3.2 million farmers in American - slightly less than 1% of the population - so let’s do the American thing and give them a heaping, generous portion of 10 guns each. That still leaves... uh... about 360 million guns not owned by farmers. Well what if we take all rural-dwelling Americans, who hunt and shoot and kill as part of their very important rural hunting/shooting/killing culture and make sure they all have at least one gun. 57 million rural non-farmer Americans - about 17% of the population - but damn, we’ve still got 303 million guns lying around. Most American gun owners own at least three guns? Can’t deprive the rural folk of their just due so will give them each an extra two guns. That still leaves us with 181 million guns to hand out to civilian urbanites who cannot possible have a good day-to-day use for them - and that’s counting the extra seven guns we gave to each farmer. If those guns were to secede and form an independent nation they’d bump Ethiopia’s spot to become the 12th largest country by-population in the world. That’s more guns than the population of the world’s 109 smallest countries combined. “Guns are still tools used by hunters” - oh sweet boy howdy do I not give a shit about hunters. 7000 of those 2017 deaths were by handguns, a gun that literally has no other purpose other than to shoot people. Handgun deaths top all other gun deaths in America by a significant margin. A handgun is not a tool. It is a weapon. That’s all it is - and Americans own a lot of weapons. You’re drowning in them. You are overrun by guns. Right-wingers should forget curbing immigration to save white people as the dominant ethnic group - the primary demographic of the United States is gun! Y’all lost already! I don’t care that you think guns are cool, because I also think guns are cool - and I own none. I can be impressed by guns without having to own guns, without making sure my friends own guns, and my family owns guns, and that there are enough guns in my country for every single person to personally shoot another person in the head in a suicidal conga line stretching round the entire country and still have spare guns left over. Culture? Tradition? Heritage? Don’t give a flying fuck. Slavery was part of your tradition too, and no that’s not a disingenuous comparison because both practices created death, pain, misery, and suffering for profit. Both practices were morally indefensible. You’ve been a responsible gun owner all your life? Don’t give a fuck. How many gun owners need to be un-responsible before the tipping point is crossed and you would agree that there is culturally a gun problem, that no amount of responsibility by one group os making up for the irresponsibility of the other half? Why is this ‘one good man in ‘Sodom’ argument framed this way? 10000+ people died in 2017 because of a culture that glorifies an item with no functional utility to improve society. Let me be clear about this: given the number of gun deaths compared to that of gun owners that 10000 deaths is statistically insignificant it terms of responsible proportionality. Most gun owners are responsible gun owners. There’s only 118 million gun-owning households in the US - only a third of the population actually owns a gun - so if we fudge the number a bit and just say that there are 118 million individual guns owners the numbers work out to about 0.009% of all gun owners being irresponsible. Guess what: that doesn’t matter. You want to know all the stuff America bans that hasn’t ever killed anybody but someday might? Kinder Eggs. Haggis. Imported brie. Think of all the chemicals banned since the 70s because of fears that they might do something. Think of every product recall that happened because one person was simply injured. Think of the products you’ve banned for nothing more than their dangerous ideology like Cuban cigars. You banned Amy Winehouse and Margaret Thatcher’s son from entering America but you won’t ban the sale of guns? Guns aren’t nearly as dangerous as the late Amy Winehouse? Gun culture and tradition glorifies nothing but instruments of slaughter. Arthur Hoppe killed your stupid arguments about tradition stone-dead 49 year ago:

(Hoppe, Arthur. "Legislation Attempts to Ban the Bomb." Sidelines (Murfreesboro), October 27, 1970. Page 4. For the original source see Hoppe, Arthur. "Ban The Bomb Banners." The San Francisco Examiner (San Francisco), October 25, 1970. Page 103. For print, see Hoppe, Arthur. Mr. Nixon and My Other Problems. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 1971. Page 78. )

The moral bankruptcy of the tradition argument was demonstrated half a century ago, when a lot less Americans were dying by the gun. When whole classrooms of children and concert goers on the Vegas Strip and students at their lectures and devoted church-goers [and hey, synagogue shooting after I first started writing this: all house-of-worship goers] all have to fear the omnipresent threat of death when does your right to admire the gun cease to be a relevant point of consideration? When does living every day with the constant gnawing fear that it could happen to you finally suffocate ‘most of us are responsible’ in its cradle? When do ‘a few bad apples’ become ‘too many bad apples’? If I’m making apple sauce you’re not going to care that 99% of my apples were perfect - because that 1% of rotten apples I tossed in was enough to ruin the batch. When does ‘most of us are not rotten’ stop sounding quite so reassuring? I’ve been listening a lot lately to Still Buffering, a McElroy extended universe podcast where - in its first year - the-then 15 year-old Rileigh Smirl shared her life with her 15-years-plus older siblings. In the episode recorded immediately after the Orlando shooting, where the adults are literally shaking and you can hear it in their voices, the 15 year-old very blandly describes life in a world where the idea of being shot in her school has been so utterly normalized for her that she has a hard time generating the same level of fear about it as the adults do. It is genuinely nauseating. Her sisters are practically crying into their microphones, sick with horror that their little sister goes to school entirely accepting that another member of her school not only might wander in with a gun and shoot-up the place, but would not be culturally abnormal for having done so. The young Ms. Smirl is already used to being evacuated: kids at her school have brought guns, brought bombs, and while nothing fatal has yet happened, she would be unsurprised if it did. resigned to the fact. If the shooter only murdered a handful of people the story wouldn’t still be in the news after a couple days (did you even remember there was a synagogue shooting a week ago?) - and if they’d killed dozens they’d be superseded by another shooting within a few weeks. (As of writing - April 26 2019 - there have been six school shootings in the US since the start of the year Eight. There were two more school shootings between me first writing this down on April 26 and coming back to finish it on May 11/12th. There were 20 mass shootings in total in just those fifteen days. 21 fatalities. Jesus Fucking Christ, America.) You know, I wouldn’t care if guns hadn’t killed a soul in 2017. If the simple spectre of their presence - the easy access, the sheer volume, the cultural identity - created a fraction of that level of fear and fatalism you hear in Rileigh Smirl’s voice in school children across America I would happily rip every single gun from the living hands of every American gun owner and melt them in a pyre the size of Delaware rather than let such a state of affairs continue. A mere 10000 gun owners were murderers in 2017? A mere 10000 gun owners a year have been murderers for the last 20 years? A mere 2,000,000 gun murderers in two decades? Damn you all. Keep in mind we haven’t touched on anything other than homicides. 10000-plus gun owners made the decision to murder others with their gun in 2017. People often bring up car deaths as a rebuttal to the gun stats - 40000 car deaths in 2017 to 10000 gun deaths should we therefore ban cars, you idiot? What a disingenuous question. That’s 40000 car deaths of all kinds - I’m talking about homicide alone, where the so-called ‘responsible person’ is proven to use their ‘responsibly’-owned item for irresponsible ends. The ‘bad-eggs.’ You know how many bad-egg car owners murdered people in 2017 as an act of willful homicide? No. And neither do I. It’s another stat so low it is presumably lumped-in with an aggregate - the 976 deaths in 2017 known only as “miscellaneous.” This, again, on a chart that notes that 13 people were murdered by poison, 4 people were murdered by being pushed, and zero people were murdered with explosions. The number of cars used to murder people? Presumably less than three. Could be as low as zero. [Note: the number is actually 50. See the Addendum and this follow-up article for expanded stats.] There are a little over 270 million car owners in the US, and from that we can conclude that while 0.009% of gun owners a year can’t stop themselves from murdering people with their guns, less than 0.000001% of car owners can’t stop themselves from being a first-degree car murderer. On the face of it those are pretty tiny numbers - infinitesimal, really. Less than one percent. Insignificant. Why get worked up? 10,000 lives ended by guns fired with a purpose to kill. By civilians, only, mind - I haven’t even touched on gun deaths by police officers, or the even broader question of gun deaths by US soldiers looking to shoot people. We’re still just focussed on civilian gun owners who felt the need to kill other human beings. ~10,000 American gun murders in 2017 alone. Three times the entire population of the Falklands, your closet neighbours in terms of guns-to-population ratio. I’m Canadian - 36 million people, a disturbing 36 guns per 100 people. If I go to Windsor and drive across the bridge I instantly become 10 time more likely to be shot to death - not specifically because I am now in Detroit, not specifically because I’m a Canadian in the United States, but simply because I went from any developed nation that wasn’t America into America. Taking Detroit specifics account, if you drive back and forth across the Ambassador bridge your odds of getting shot jump some 50 times every time you cross an invisible line on the Detroit River. Detroit and Windsor have very different crime rates: 2017 saw 267 murders in Detroit. Windsor saw 3. The Detroit Murder Rate is 45 per 100,000 people - Windsor is 0.89. These cities are less than 2000 feet apart. About 600 metres. 0.6 kilometres. 0.4 of a mile. Statistically speaking most of those crimes in Detroit were firearm deaths. I can stand in Windsor (having had an excellent meal at Smoke & Spice Southern Barbecue), walk some 300 yards, and my life-expectancy from being slain by a passing bullet balloons 50 times. People just die more in America. That’s - to be fair - partially a matter of volume. Contrasted against Canada, say, and you’re looking at nine times the number of people: of course you’ve got more deaths. But the homicide numbers don’t scale that way. Canada had 266 firearm homicides in 2017. If you made the population of Canada nine times larger, so that we had population parity with the US, we would have had about 2394 gun homicides - still only a quarter of the USA’s 10,982. You’d have to make Canada 41 times larger than it is now, creating a billion and a half Canadians, which amounts to a full 20% of the existing world population. You’d need there to be 1.2 billion more Canadians than there are Americans now to have the same number of gun homicides. Homicides alone! Because we’re still - still - not talking about suicides. Or home ‘defence.’ Or police shootings. Or killings by US troops. Just civilians with guns and the capacity to use them on fellow citizens out of a need to murder. If this getting through? Tell me this is getting through. Americans - your family, friends, colleagues, comrades, acquaintances, lovers, crushes, vaguely-recognized strangers are dying at rates from causes that are not present elsewhere in the stable places of the world. You are dying from solved problems. If ~10,000 Americans were dying yearly from the black plague you’d be upset. You’d be doing something. America has a disease, and that disease is a willingness to let friends, family, lovers, even children die rather than change. Six eight school shootings in four five months. “It’s lucky that fatalities were low,” you might say if you were a lunatic. That’s not lucky. Gut-wrenchingly relieving, all things being equal: six eight schools threatened and only one family four families had to lose a child. It didn’t happen to us think the thousands of parents whose children walked out of those six eight shootings alive. A school bus company that had six eight crashes in four five months wouldn’t count itself lucky that only one child four children died. It would be defunct as a company, drowning in litigation, its corporate officers hounded in the streets by mobs of furious parents horrified that this company had proven so incapable of a simple act like protecting their children. But six eight schools across the nation experienced an event with armed gunman and its not even notable. America, you’re broken. You’re just broken. And your problem is the guns. So I don’t care that you’re a responsible gun owner with a gun cabinet who memorized the rifleman’s credo. I absolutely don’t give a damn that you have fond memories of you and your grandfather stalking deer and bonding as family. If I weigh the cost of you sharing that bonding experience with your own grandchild someday against the ~10000 people shot dead in 2017, and the ~100000 people shot dead over the decade your warm fuzzies don’t amount to shit. Teach your grandkid to bake cookies. Go camping. Introduce him to the love of baseball. If you cannot imagine formative bonding without killing something go take a butchery course at the community college and learn how to barbecue a pig - hey, look, valuable life lessons, a trade skill, and I just made you a must-get for cool parties. Yes, I am talking about taking your guns away. All of your guns. All of them. This is a future I want - because you, America, collectively, have proven that you are not socially responsible enough to be a country that owns guns. If you can ban Kinder Eggs for 50 years because you thought it would take that much time to train your children not to swallow a massive plastic capsule that the rest of the world’s children have no problem surviving, I think at the very least a 50-year moratorium on firearms is the bare fucking minimum. There were 23 school shootings in America in 2018. There have been 20 school shootings in Canada in the entire 152 years of our existence. Over 10000 American civilians decide every year to shoot people to death. That doesn’t happen in other stable places. The difference is THE GUNS. IT’S ALL THE GUNS! IT’S ALL THE FUCKING GUNS! You can’t just talk about tightening guns laws. You can’t just talk about making gun owners more responsible - statistically speaking American gun owners are individually responsible! It doesn’t matter, because collectively you’re all irresponsible. Responsible people don’t prioritize their interests and hobbies over bi-monthly school shootings. Responsible people don’t ‘Good German’ themselves when children’s are under threat at least once a month nation-wide.

Real talk for you people out there who own guns, love guns, would never think or murdering anybody, and are genuinely angry that I keep acting like 10000-a-year bad apples reflects badly on your interests as a whole. How high does the number have to be before your association with your hobby would begin to make you feel uncomfortable with sharing an interest? Let me put it another way: enrolment in youth football teams is dropping nation-wide as parents aren’t comfortable putting their children at risk. Football has given America exciting games to watch, stories of victory and defeat, bonding with friends and family, and one of television’s true masterpieces, Friday Night Lights (#neededmoredevin #justiceforwaverly #justiceforsantiago). But all that good warm fuzzy feeling is running up against a problem: kids are getting hurt. In some cases kids are dying. 2017 saw 13 football-related deaths among the under-18 crowd: 4 direct fatalities, 9 indirect fatalities. (Direct fatalities are causes like head injuries and organ trauma. Indirect fatalities are causes like heat stroke.) That’s a death rate of 0.095/100,000 direct and 0.21/100,000 indirect - still lower than the murder rate in Windsor. And yet football enrolment declines. Because it’s more than just those thirteen deaths: it’s the up-front injuries like broken bones and sprains, it’s the long-term brain injuries that might not emerge for years, it’s the trauma of watching friends and teammates get seriously hurt, die, or simply find the sport a source of stress rather than joy. Right now football is experiencing white flight as predatory football pipelines double-down on players-of-colour to feed their football mills, but that too will decline as a generation that grows up not experiencing a close intimacy with football loses interest in the sport. (Another demographic timebomb lurking in America’s wings.) 13 child deaths by football in 2018. 44 students shot-dead the same year. High schools are shutting down their football programs - taking football completely away - because they can’t stomach all that death, injury, and trauma. The seriousness of this has proven that America is not a nation that can handle its football, and does not want to keep its kids playing football in the same numbers as it once did. (Anyone who wants to come in here and say “would you say the same about hockey, Canadian?” Yes. Absolutely. Instantly. Ditch the whole thing. It’s just a sport, a hobby. It is not more important than lives.) So what will it take to get you to admit that if America can’t handle football it can’t handle guns? A half-dozen kids got their hair chewed in the 90s and America decided that responsibility didn’t matter, that nobody should own a Snacktime Kid Cabbage Patch Doll. One kid died from a non-blunt lawn dart in 1987 and you’ve banned them since 1988. 44 kids got shot to death last year and America thought it unnecessarily restrictive of freedom to take away a single gun. Give me numbers. Please. How many kids would have to die in America this year before you felt uncomfortable owning a gun simply by transference of shame or guilt or association? What if every gun owner but you shot a kid at a school next year? Would you still say your responsibility kept your conscience clear? An absurd, hyperbolic question, fair enough. So let’s start counting down from those 117999999 gun-owning households who aren’t you: what’s the magic number when your responsible ownership of your thing-that-just-kills no longer sits comfortably against the annual number of gun-owning, school-child murderer-producing households? Not accidents, not mistakes, not once-in-a-generation horrors by an statistically aberrant psychopath - I’m talking about systemic patterns of yearly school-child homicide via gunshot. Because last year that was about 44 child murders from about 15 households. That’s currently a number that doesn’t shame you. Start counting up. I’m asking, genuinely, because I need to know. Is there a number? 440 kids murdered by 150 household? 4400 from 1500? 44000 from 15000? Or will others actions never affect you? Is what the rest of society does is of no import, no responsibility of yours? If you were the only responsible gun owner in America, ask yourself if you’d still be comfortable owning a gun. And think - real hard - at what the ratio of responsible-to-not-responsible gun murderers and death tolls are right now, and why you’re okay with that. Then ask yourself what other hobby has that kind of real-life school-kid homicide count that needs to be updated on a monthly basis. Not a lot of gunpla hobbyists struggling with the weight of rogue members murdering kids. Knitters can be vicious, but only socially. Mountain climbers and fast car enthusiasts see plenty of tragedy in their hobby - but they’re tragedies of accidents and mistakes. Not a lot of malicious intent going around. Not a lot of cut ropes and slashed brakes. Not to the tune of 10000+ homicides a year. Ask yourself if maybe - just maybe - America has a problem when it comes to guns. Maybe, just maybe, so many of you being responsible isn’t working. Maybe, just maybe, your hobby, your tradition, your culture, your warm family memories, your constitutional guarantees of ownership, are not worth the death of children in their schools, concert goers at their venues, worshipers at their altars, families in their homes year, after year, after year, after year, after year, after year, after year in numbers that simply, truthfully, are not present elsewhere in the world in places similar to America. Maybe, just maybe, being responsible isn’t enough. Maybe, at some point, the number of dead kids will be too many. And if it isn’t, you need to come clean and admit that every child in America could be shot to death tomorrow and you’d still love owning a gun. You can get rid of the guns, America, or you can start wearing shirts that say “kill all the kids you like - I’m proud to be a gun owner.” Because there’s no other choices left to you. The time for incremental change is long over. The time for saner, less drastic measures died decades ago. There is no moderate position left. It’s the guns, or it’s the children. There are no other choices.

________________________ Addendum: there is now a second part to this article, which expands upon some of the points made here with the more comprehensive fatality statistics from the CDC, including numbers I did not have when originally writing this article.

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junghelioseok · 6 years ago

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Not sure if ur taking req.This came to me as I read catharsis, I loved their friendship.Ur hired as a choreographer for the group, & ur in Korea on a work visa.JK just gets you like no one else does. You are bff, then it turns romantic.U keep ur relationship secret, & when U travel with the group he always sneaks to ur hotel room. He wants to take the relationship public, but u know the company will fire you, & you need your work visa to stay in Korea (to stay with JK). happy ending please. 😊

so i don’t take requests, sorry! however i have also been thinking about this idea nonstop since i got it so! i’m gonna not ignore it for once and lay out exactly what i would do if i did write it (which i refuse to actually do bc more jk ideas is the absolute last thing i need, lolol).

that being said, if any of my writer friends want to take this on, please do so!!! and tag me in the finished fic bc i would read the hell out of this shit. i fucking love this idea and i need it to come to fruition one way or another. (but like, obviously you should take it in whatever direction you see fit. please don’t feel the need to follow my outline, lmao.)

anyway, without further ado, here is my abbreviated version of this, ft. the frankly absurd, stream-of-consciousness way i plan every fic i write, ahaha.

let’s get it!!!

you weren’t ready

you weren’t ready when the email from bighit came, asking for your help choreographing the dances for love yourself: answer

(you thought it was a joke, tbh)

you weren’t ready to get a korean work visa on such short notice

and you definitely weren’t ready to actually live and work in a different country

two years of college-level korean and a month’s worth of nightly cram classes couldn’t have prepared you for life in seoul

and no amount of researching bts - whether that was binging music videos or going over every dance practice vid or repeatedly listening to the albums - could have prepared you for your first meeting with the boys

tbh you kinda thought they’d be jerks, being so wildly popular and whatnot

but you couldn’t have been more wrong

one month into your time at bighit, and you finally understand the undying adoration army has for the boys

they’re just seven big soft nerds in stupidly handsome bodies

you’ve been subjected to hundreds of dad jokes, courtesy of seokjin, and plenty of clingy hugs from jimin

you’ve grown to love hobi’s screaming laughter and yoongi’s quiet grumpiness

but no matter how well you get along with all of the boys, nothing compares to your budding friendship with jeon jungkook

admittedly it’d taken a while for him to get comfortable enough to speak to you directly, especially when namjoon isn’t around to act as a translator

and likewise, it took a while for you to become accustomed to speaking korean every day

but once you both get past the language barrier, it’s like you’ve known each other your entire lives

you bond over your mutual love of dancing, of music and flow and rhythm

and watching him dance is a dream

every move is the perfect mix of grace and power, and he’s a joy to teach choreo to

hardworking and perseverant and more than a little bit of a perfectionist

but so are you, and that just means that you spend plenty of late nights in the studio together

working through the bits of choreography that just aren’t clicking yet

prepping for the upcoming ly tour

helping him with the choreography for euphoria

you were shocked when he approached you about his solo stage instead of sungdeuk, but you can’t say you weren’t pleased that he trusts you

and the first time you heard him open his mouth and sing euphoria in person, you were blown away

after that, you spend even more time together in the studio, long after the other boys and sungdeuk have left

late night after late night, dancing and laughing and ordering takeout at 1am when you’re both starving and need a break

one night you’re both hanging out in golden closet, snacking on ice cream and fried food you know you’ll regret later, listening to the setlist and talking big picture stuff for the ly tour

and jungkook suddenly pauses the music and pulls up a new, different audio file

“um, i’ve been working on something and i was wondering if you wanted to listen to it?”

surprise, it’s his mixtape

it’s a work in progress - just a short collection of songs and a few random snippets that he admits he’s been working on for almost a year now

but every single one is so heart-wrenchingly lovely and emotional

your eyes may or may not well up a little during the last song - a soft, sentimental ballad that has you longing for something you didn’t know was missing in your life

“jungkook… this is beautiful”

“… i wrote it for you”

“…”

what are you gonna do, not kiss him?

lmao unlikely!

so you kiss him. a lot.

and then you do a lot more than that

you end up straddling him in his chair, your knees on either side of his thighs as his hands curl around your waist and find their way under the hem of your shirt

it’s sweaty and hurried and he tastes like the strawberry ice cream that he was just eating but it’s perfect nonetheless

afterward you are both in a happy haze, your head leaning on his shoulder as he strokes your back fondly

but then reality comes crashing back down

“jungkook, oh my god, we can’t do this!”

“but noona”

“but nothing! i’m only here temporarily, and if word gets out that we’re dating i’ll be fired!”

it’s so hard to tear your gaze from those pretty doe eyes when they’re staring up at you so beseechingly, but somehow you find the strength to wrench away from him and out of golden closet

you can still hear him calling for you as you run away, but you don’t turn back and he doesn’t chase you

needless to say, things are a little awkward from that point forward

you still see him every day at rehearsals

but you stop having one-on-one sessions with him late at night and tell yourself that it’s for the best

the other boys aren’t dumb; they notice that something is amiss straight away

but they don’t press too hard and you’re grateful for that

just days later, the international part of the ly tour starts and you are all jetting off to north america

by that point, it’s been almost a week and a half since you’ve spoken more than two sentences to jungkook

and you have no intention of changing that anytime soon

you can feel his eyes boring into you on the plane and in the car on the way to the hotel

but you escape to your hotel room and don’t see him again until dress rehearsal later that night

they’re running through the setlist, and you can’t help but admire how he looks in casual clothes

no one else could pull off a matching gray puma tracksuit, tbh

but he can, and he’s got the sleeves of his gray sweatshirt rolled up to his elbows to expose the rolex on his wrist

and his sweatpants are juuuust tight enough to show off the definition of his thighs

but! you’re a professional, and you can’t be looking at him with anything more than a critical eye so that’s what you do

even when he keeps glancing your way during euphoria

and stares right into your eyes as he nails the high note

afterward, you go onstage to give the boys your notes

you have a lot to say to hobi about just dance, and you can just feel jungkook’s hot gaze lingering on you the entire time

and then…

(thanks a lot for this shit, @puellaigmotum istg i have fucking nightmares about this bit of dialogue and it’s 10000% your fault)

… he corners you backstage

“noona, why are you paying so much attention to hobi-hyung… when i’m right here and ready to be on my knees for you”

he’s so close you can’t even fucking breathe by this point, his lips right at your ear and ruffling your hair with every word he speaks

when he begins kissing a trail along your jawline you finally regain control of your lungs

and all you can manage is a shaky “jungkook, not here”

and you press the second copy of your hotel key into his hand

he comes over that night, of course

(and just like he promised, he does end up on his knees)

(head nestled between your thighs, one of your legs thrown over his shoulder to keep you spread open for him)

but a n y w a y

when you wake up in the morning, jarred awake by your alarm at far too early an hour, he is curled around you with one arm draped over your waist

he’s bleary and a little dazed and has the cutest bedhead you’ve ever seen

but when he sees you still in bed with him, his entire face splits into the brightest bunny smile

he pulls you in for a kiss and you could happily spend the rest of your life tucked away under the blankets there with him

but he’s got a concert to get ready for and both of you know it

the last rehearsal before the concert goes off without a hitch, and if anyone notices how you and jungkook are on good terms again, no one says anything about it

the concert is incredible. the boys smash it.

you are beaming when jungkook comes off the stage after his solo, ready with a bottle of water and a towel and plenty of congratulatory words

he beams right back, scooping you off your feet and twirling you in a full circle before putting you back down again

(his stylists are a little dismayed by the rumpled state of his clothes, but they can’t say much when namjoon destroys everyone’s outfits daily. they’re used to it.)

besides, all the staff can see just how happy he is around you

afterward, you all go out for a celebratory dinner, toasting to a successful tour kickoff

jungkook sits beside you and cracks inane jokes the entire time, and you spend the entire evening laughing your ass off with him

naturally, he finds his way back to your hotel room that night

and pretty much every night after, from la to hamilton to london

you’re in berlin when he first broaches the topic of taking your relationship public

“jungkook, we can’t! i’ll be fired!”

“no you won’t”

“how can you be so sure?”

“i’m negotiating my contract renewal right now, and i’m making sure that nothing prohibits me from dating. i want to be with you, noona.”

“but jungkook…”

“don’t you want to be with me?”

“yes, of course i do-”

“then that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?”

he kisses you before you can speak again, and all your protests and arguments fly out of your head the moment his lips meet yours

the very next morning you agree to gradually make your relationship public, first to the other boys and then bang pd and the rest of the bighit staff

(most of them already knew though)

everyone’s happy for you, even the company higher-ups, because it’s so easy to see how happy jungkook is these days

(and like, lowkey, sungdeuk has already decided to spoil rotten any kids you may have in the future)

but no one is happier than you and jungkook

as soon as the tour ends, you extend your visa so that you can stay in korea longer with him

jungkook is yours and you are his, and life is good ♡

#jungkook #jungkook scenarios #jungkook imagines #jungkook x reader #jeon jungkook #anonymous #ask lia #answered

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kriscynical · 6 years ago

Text

Retropalooza 2018

So as already stated, Bree and I went to Retropalooza this weekend and had an absolute blast as always. This was our third year to go, and we love this con to bits. It’s practically in my backyard, only 20 minutes away from my house. It’s big enough to have good guests and a sizable dealer’s room, but still small enough to be fun. I dread the day when that happy medium finally gets tipped because of growth. You always want a con to be successful but... you know.

As a side note, if the con you are running is for retro gaming and started out as a swap meet, if you’re suddenly going to ban screwdrivers at the door, perhaps you should mention that on your website beforehand? Seeing as how screwdrivers are... you know... the only way to definitely check the authenticity of retro game carts? That way your attendees won’t have to sprint back out to their cars in 10000% humidity in end-of-September-in-Texas heat. Just a suggestion, guys.

But anyway.

I don’t talk about it much on this blog, but I follow a lot of gaming YouTubers. I’m not as religious about it as some people are, but I enjoy listening to gaming content while I’m working, especially letsplays. Retropalooza always has several YouTubers I follow as guests, which adds to the fun factor. This year’s guests that Bree and I were into were Jirard and Alex of Super Beard Bros and The Completionist, Norman Caruso of The Gaming Historian, James Rolfe of The Angry Video Game Nerd, and Arlo. Every single one of them are super nice, although AVGN being there this year caused a bit of bullshit to happen which I’ll detail in a little bit.

I have a little third party NES/SNES console, the RetroDuo, which I’ve had my favorite YouTubers sign for the last three years, all at this con. It’s usually displayed on one of the bookshelves in my studio. This year’s additions were Arlo and James Rolfe. It’s pretty full now:

This is long because of several photos from meet and greets as well as my Zelda haul from the dealer’s room, so...

Arlo! I just discovered his channel over the spring and this was conveniently the first year for him to be at Retropalooza. His content is really fun, and I always look forward to his reactions and discussions to Nintendo Directs and E3. His reaction to the E3 Metroid Prime 4 teaser reveal in particular was priceless.

I’ve met Norman in years past, so we just went to his panel this year. His panels are usually a live version of a Gaming Historian episode along with some Q&A and a little game show based on information from his videos. His live episode was on Punch-Out. He usually does Jeopardy! as the game format, but this time he changed it up to Who Wants to be a Millionaire?... and the lady he picked out of the audience to participate didn’t know the answer to a single damn question. I don’t know why she even raised her hand, because it wasn’t like he even asked anything difficult in the first few questions! If you watched his videos even once you’d know the answers. Bree and I were frustrated because we probably could have gotten to the million dollar question. >:\

Later in the day was AVGN’s panel, and that’s where the bullshit comes in. From the time we first got to the con on Saturday Bree and I noticed that it was way more crowded than usual, enough to get her anxiety going. AVGN doesn’t make a whole lot of convention appearances, so obviously the uptick in attendance was due to him. The people who run this con know gaming, particularly on YouTube since all of their guests are YouTubers. They should have known AVGN was going to attract hoards of people. Did they prepare for that? Of course not.

Bree and I go to the panel room he’s scheduled to be in 15 minutes before the previous panel ends, and we get our seats. Jirard’s Completionist panel is scheduled right after AVGN in the same room, so we plan to camp out for a little while.

Right as the previous panel is ending con staff announces that AVGN has been moved to main events, and everybody exits in one mass trying to get over to main events as quickly as possible. We ended up stuck in a massive line that snaked down the hallway and back, and before we know it it’s 1:15... 15 minutes past when the panel was supposed to start. So now we know that if we get IN to this panel, we’re going to have to miss a good chunk of it because for both of us it’s more important to see Jirard’s panel than AVGN. We’re also afraid that AVGN’s panel running over is just going to decimate Jirard’s numbers.

Con staff comes back and says there won’t be enough chairs for everyone but there’s basically unlimited standing room, which isn’t great for me or my back. They then ask if anybody has a condition that won’t allow them to stand for an entire panel, and I raise my hand. I tell them I had back surgery a few months ago and they say okay, we’ll get you a chair. Which they did. Once they started letting people in they pulled Bree and I out of line and escorted us to two chairs behind the back row, one for me and one for her since she was with me.

She proceeds to post this to her Snapchat:

This was what the room looked like when the panel started, at 1:25:

We still can’t believe the con didn’t anticipate this. This was the dealer’s room. Meaning the acoustics sucked ass. We couldn’t understand a single thing that was being asked or answered, nor could most of the people in the back of the room. As a result, several people left within the first 10 minutes (and the overall crowds at the con dropped like a ROCK after that panel was over, thank god!). At about 1:45 we gave up and left, too, to go grab seats for Jirard’s Completionist panel, which worked out well because we got front row. Thankfully the room was mostly full by the time the panel started, too.

The Completionist panel was the best of the weekend that we attended, imo. Bree and I were smiling and laughing through the whole thing because it was just that much fun. He had nothing planned because he’d been in Japan until a couple days before that, so it was just a laid back Q&A. He called on both of us to ask questions, and my question (“Given what you just said about Sleepy Jirard, would you say it’s a cure for Jirard Syndrome?”) got quite a bit of an audience reaction as well as a reaction from him, followed by “That was a good question.” with a laugh after he answered. Bree and I hope we can find video of this panel on YouTube soon.

After his panel we went back to the dealer’s room and found him and Alex at their guest table, they recognized us from years past (“Oh hey, guys!”), we chatted for a bit, took pictures, and I gave both of them some little goodies I’d made based on the Kaizo episodes of Super Beard Bros:

These are buttons Bree wanted of the designs I made. I gave both Alex and Jirard keychains of “Ladies and Gentlemen: The Bullet”, then gave Alex “The Goochy” and Jirard “This is not how I end”. They both liked them a LOT and Alex said he was going to put the bullet on his keys, which made me ridiculously happy. These will be available at next year’s A-Kon.

Before we left for the day on Saturday we saw that the line for AVGN wasn’t too bad, so we decided to give it a shot for autographs and pictures. Thankfully it only took about ten minutes to get through the line, and even though the con had fucked up his panel royally, James was super nice when we got to meet him.

I didn’t realize he had made that face until I saw the picture afterwords. If I had known, I would have made a face, too, dammit! >:\

On Sunday we brought along my mom so she could 1) see what a retro gaming con was like since she’d only been to anime cons, and 2) see the Beard Bros panel/meet them because I had gotten her into their channel over the summer via the Kaizo videos. I introduced her to them separately since they were each talking to different people, and when I said “I recently got her into Super Beard Bros” both of them independently said “I’m sorry” as a response without having heard the other do so. lol

I’m posting this picture again because I love it. Y’all can deal with it. You’ve read this far.

I had printed out a shot of the Beard Bros title card so my mom could get it signed, and she did. She said she thoroughly enjoyed herself at the con, and I’m hoping she can come out on Sunday next year, too. She bought an NES cart of Classic Concentration, a game that she and I played together on my NES all the time when I was a kid. I wish they’d bring it back on TV because it was a good game show, dammit.

My Zelda Haul:

The three game box covers are mounted on 1/2″ foam core and I plan to hang them over the TV in my studio since that’s where all of my retro gaming stuff is set up. The BotW box art is layered 3D cutout in a shadow box frame. The Hylian Shield is a new pillow to add to my gaming chair. Not pictured: a Sheik Amiibo that the seller gave me a good price on after some haggling, and a replacement gold Wii remote to replace the one the batteries destroyed a couple months ago. I got that for a really good price, too, from a different seller. He was selling it as a bundle with Skyward Sword, and I of course didn’t need the game.

“Will you sell this by itself?”

“I was selling it as a bundle, but sure.”

“How much?”

“What will you offer me?”

“Uh... I dunno? I don’t know what it’s going for online right now.”

Bree said, “I’ll check.” and pulled out her phone. I had only seen it in one game shop here in Arlington for $80 and hadn’t tried looking online yet. She turned her phone to the guy and said “On eBay it’s going for anywhere from $45 to $82.”

So then the guy says to me again, “Okay. So what will you offer me?”

“$50?”

“Cash?”

“Yep.”

“Done.”

Yaaaaaaas.

THIS THING is the crown jewel of my haul and I love it to pieces. Guh. I picked it up on Saturday.

Just LOOK AT IT. I bought it from the same seller as the Sheik Amiibo, and I referred to it as “my baby” for the rest of the day and carried it in front of me in its box quite proudly. I had several people tell me it was badass and that was satisfying. Every time I had to get into my backpack for something I told Bree, “Hold my baby.” before handing it over.

I think I got him for a great price, too. After reaching a deal on Sheik I asked the guy how much the figure was, and he said $100 but asked what I would offer for it. He’d had it up on eBay but pulled it after a week because it wasn’t selling. I’ve only seen it for $110-120+ online, but I went ahead and tried to haggle some more because why the hell not. I asked if he’d do $80, then he asked if I’d do $90 because he gave me a good deal on Sheik (he really did... $10 off of his asking price which was almost a third total!), and I agreed. He said that made him happy because he’d rather the figure go to me “because it looks like you’ll take care of the box” to which I told him yes, of course, I keep all of my boxes in a safe place, and his buddy said “That’s the way to do it!!”.

And that’s that. I spent the most money this year of any year before now, but I don’t regret a cent of it. Especially on my baby. Bree and I already can’t wait for next year!

#retropalooza #cons #conventions #youtubers #youtube #retropalooza 2018 #zelda #loz #merchandise #video games #retro gaming #personal shit #family #photos #shut up kris

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butchlilith · 6 years ago

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writing meme part 1: synchronicity

this is the first round of some commentary i’m giving on stuff i’ve written! if you’d like to send in parts you’d like me to discuss, i would be indescribably thrilled. check out this post if you’re wondering what’s going on or this post if you’ve somehow escaped my bullying everyone into reading this fic. all of these were suggested by the delightful @ladynoblesong to whom i owe my life

under the cut learn all about...

daphne wearing niles’s clothes

mel’s introduction

lilith’s invitation

daphne wearing niles’s clothes

Daphne tucks in her shirt (your shirt, that is, but this conjures up all sorts of images of domesticity more shameful than sex), and grins back at you. Her lipstick has accidentally adorned the collar, and your mind flickers only briefly to Maris before Daphne’s voice draws you back to her. “There we are,” she says, impossibly pleased. Then, slipping suspenders over her shoulders, she walks to your mirror. Immediately, her wide eyes go bright, and she reaches for your arm, pulling you beside her.

“Don’t we look dapper?” she asks.

You know precisely what you look like, what you’re sure to look like to everyone who sees you together, and some part of her must know too, but dapper is hardly it. All the same, Daphne is electrified every time she catches the two of you reflected in a window.

Though it surely says more about you than her, you realize later that no one’s ever been so proud to be seen with you in your life. If this thing were real, you would have to stop seeing her because of it.

For once, you feel relieved that you could never be together.

Not that it was ever anything more than a fantasy; Maris, after all, is all you have ever known, all you could ever want.

sdfghjkl you really picked a scene here. it’s a charming combination of “wish fulfillment” and “therapy session material,” which… is honestly very reflective of this fic. so… yeah. i guess we’ll just start with the parenthetical, because it’s a solid dozen suitcases worth of unpacking to do. borne from my wanting to say “your shirt” to highlight that it is not her own but realizing that this would suggest her tucking in a shirt that is on another person’s body i was like, “let’s get into this.” because i have never let a single thing go ever in my life. & it ended up being something of an important detail imo, that this is the way niles approaches sex and love? i think it’s relatively similar to canon niles but presumably with different cause. in this case the cause would be, you know, living in a culture that does not provide too many models of what it is to love a woman and be in a healthy relationship with one as a woman yourself? so it’s much easier to say, “i’m happy having this non-relationship of a relationship” or “i’m only interested in sex with this woman” or whatever because what else do you have to go by? and that’s also sort of what i’m going for with the last line in this excerpt. so. we’ll move on, then.

i think even for women who don’t have a particular relationship with gender that can sometimes manifest as butchness etc. there’s still something very powerful in being something other than the woman you’re meant to and in seeing models of other women doing the same. i wanted daphne to have a moment like that. also… it’s hot. also hot: lipstick on button-ups. these last two are just objective facts more than analysis but it was what was going through my head at the time of writing.

but niles’s feelings in response to daphne’s excitement. well. that’s a moment and a half right there. i can’t fully remember my thought process—i think i might have thought of the situation while unable to write it down, so it was already a bit diluted once it got to the page. basically, though, it’s just that realization that she has largely (as a lesbian, as a butch woman) felt ignored at best, and that to be in a relationship with the first person who did recognize her and want to be recognized with her as herself would have… some layers to it that are not entirely… the healthiest. so that’s one of my many excuses for why this iteration of niles and daphne cannot get together for another six or seven years: they both needed to grow as people! because this is from niles’s pov we mostly get niles’s end of that but we see as well daphne kind of dealing with stuff as well even if it’s more obscured by niles’s lust/10000 other emotions.

on a lighter note, a fun fact for you: i hate the word dapper! but i thought daphne would use it in this context so i wrote it and i hated it every step of the way. i’m allowed to say this because as a certified stuffy butch i have an unfortunate degree of intimacy with the word.

mel’s introduction

You take the rest of your queries regarding your lingering financial ties to Maris to their sources.

The first, her surgeon, is fastidious and beautiful, and her airy voice informs you of four things as you call to schedule a third appointment with her. First, that she would not have expected a woman like you to have such an affinity for her line of work. Second, that she has never met a pair of friends that exchanged cosmetic procedures in the tens of thousands for the holidays. Third, that she is gay, too. (She does say, “too,” with her laugh floating through your cell phone smooth and half-threatening.) But, fourth, perhaps frightening you the most, she tells you that she wouldn’t mind if you took her to dinner sometime.

“You know,” you say, with a just-there laugh, “I’ve been meaning to ask you that very question.”

Frasier, of course, is aghast at each word of your account, but you have, by the end of it, obtained symphony tickets and a somewhat backhanded compliment on your uncharacteristic boldness. You take the opportunity to comment on his substandard squash performance, then fly out the door before he can return the blow with his usual ineptitude.

God, if he knew he was responsible for the best night you’ve had in years. The moment Mel leaves your car, you long to spend hours recounting what a wonderful night you had had. The strange thing is that you long to tell Daphne, long to tell her that you know, now, what she had meant when she told you that she loved first dates, that Mel is exactly like you, and impossibly beautiful and—

ooohh boy. the first sentence-and-a-half of this are probably among the last i wrote for this fic. i very seldom write things in the order they appear, so i always end up with the task of pasting these scenes together in a way that doesn’t seem entirely ridiculous. i think this is especially obvious with this and the preceding scene, which i wanted to happen in the opposite order before i remembered that, hm, canon does technically exist and i should maybe follow the barest outline of how that proceeds. but it worked out because i was able to pretend like there was an explanation for niles having a divorce lawyer without ever having been married.

but. that aside. i think we all know by this point that i love first dates. i love asking people on first dates and going on first dates and telling my friends about first dates and all of it. and basically i wanted to show that feeling as well as niles’s relationship with daphne as a friendship for both of them, not just daphne.

so on that first item! i wanted to preserve niles’s cowardice, obviously, but because she doesn’t have quite the same relationship with frasier as canon niles, there wasn’t really anyone to say “you realize this is exactly the reason you’re not with daphne now, right?” so i had mel take some (or… all) of the responsibility there, but i didn’t really feel mel was the sort to frame it as a question and certainly not the sort to let personal details about herself into the world without their recipient knowing that she knows even more of them. i mean, she literally doesn’t even present it as something she wants so much as something she knows niles does dfghjkl. and honestly? it’s hot. sorry but i’m right. if you’ve never been asked out by a woman in the form of a statement i need you to know that it is the hottest experience on earth. anyway. i just really don’t care for love stories that center on jealousy or the singularity of love. i’m not saying every good first date is love, but i wanted to show that there was genuine excitement here that could lead to love. i know mel is maybe not the most lovable character in the frasier universe, but i do feel like she truly cared for niles and niles for her.

with regard to the last line, that way daphne cuts off niles is something i do a couple times as well, which i wish i’d maybe explored a little bit more. it’s mostly leading up to daphne’s cutting her off with the kiss as in canon during that balcony scene, but i think it appears afterward as well. it often shows up when niles is overthinking, and, especially as we progress, it’s when daphne doesn’t want to think about what niles is thinking about. this particular line isn’t quite at the peak of that, but it would be a fair interpretation if you wish to believe she (consciously or not) wished to avoid hearing about niles’s infatuation with mel. you might even be able to make an argument for the other cases of interruption being similarly motivated (though this may prove most difficult with the moon dance instance), but my intention was for it to reach its peak toward the end of the pining stage and into the beginning of their relationship, iirc.

honestly, there’s more i could comment on in this scene, but i don’t know that it would be particularly interesting, and i’ve rambled enough, so i’ll leave it here!

lilith’s invitation

Lilith calls you that evening offering any help you need should you feel any sudden fondness for the state of Massachusetts. “And, Daphne,” she says, though you can scarcely remember when they last spoke, “if you’re looking for a rat breeder, there’s an excellent couple just north of the city. I’d be glad to introduce them to you.”

Somehow, the two of you accept both offers immediately.

this is part two of the payoff for the wish-fulfillment tidbit in the niles/frasier banter we get earlier on that reveals lilith is a huge dyke, the first part being when niles and lilith have sex. i just feel like the amount that lilith truly cares for her family is underutilized in the frasier canon and i think that would be amplified in a familial gay solidarity situation. also i just really want them all to be friends! i’ve already said that this was wish fulfillment and i won’t hide from that truth.

wrt why i wanted them to accept these offers, i a) feel that, even though obviously we as gay people have been getting married long before there was actual legal recognition of the fact, all three of these people (albeit in different ways) do value that system and that recognition imo b) am FOREVER bitter that daphne’s interests are just kind of… tossed aside in canon as being too weird or unrefined, when they’re really cool (or just… normal!) things? and because i think i hopefully provided a little more evidence of niles and daphne making efforts toward understanding over placation, i think niles would be in a place to say, “let’s do it!” even if she is… moderately horrified at first. so yeah. this response did kind of become “why i think i’m better than late-season frasier writers” but… yeah. i was just having fun and writing what i would want to see.

#ladynoblesong #yes i DID write a novel about each of these excerpts. i'm sorry but both my major and my job are just... discussing writing all the time #it's what i do #writing meme #tagging this as #asks #because that's pretty much what this is?

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meaniefay-blog · 7 years ago

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Taeil Appreciation Posts

Okay I had never NEVER expected so much notes from my Jaehyun appreciation posts. So I thought why not do more with every member? (Someone please help me with the whole mobile link thing cause I don’t really know how to do it. And I’m really hoping to add all the members with their link)

Jaehyun, Taeil, Yuta, Doyoung, Winwin, Mark, Haechan, Johnny, Taeyong, Ten

Anyways Moon Taeil need to get more love. I feel like he is the least appreciated member so this post is really important. If you never heard of him or not like him as much as the others, be prepared to be blown away.

This boy can sing and make my heart stop. I swear when I heard his voice he made MY MOTHER FREAKING HEART STOP. Its amazing how one person can do to someone. (Just listen to “Because of you” its a beautiful song sung by a beautiful person. Note this is the song the member tease/sing all the time to him)

Although he’s not really known for being a dancer, like every NCT member, all of them can dance. I don’t care what anyone says Taeil is a great dancer.

Taeil can be sexy. FIGHT ME, IF YOU DON’T THINK SO. I know he’s mostly the awkward, introverted, shy type of guy. But I believe in the bottom of my heart he has a sexy side. *wink* *wink*

He is the greatest motivator. I mean did you see those cheer leading skills in NCT LIFE PAJU?

He’s hella cute. You can tell in those beautiful eyes of his he is innocent to the soul. So pure and angelic not a care in the world. A LIVING ANGEL I TELL YA, A LIVING ANGEL.

I don’t know about anyone else but I’m loving his hair in cherry bomb era. It’s so fluffy and bouncy I want to touch it. It looks like a cloud that just happens to be on Taeil’s head. LET ME TOUCH IT.

But that gaze thou. SO RUDE LOOKING AT US LIKE THAT.

Did I mention his jawline? No? Well that jawline can cut a diamond no problem cause it’s so sharp. I also like his eyebrows, I don’t know why I’m mentioning that, when your eyes is on his gorgeous jawline but... eyebrows.

Savage AF LEVEL 10000+. Poor Doyoung, I swear Taeil is gonna kill Doyoung one day by accident. If Doyoung dies one day you will know why, two words. Moon Taeil.

Also R.I.P Jaehyun’s dick. Like I said Taeil is not only gonna kill Doyoung but every NCT member. Poor Jaehyun, I love how Yuta just ends up laughing.

His smile. I feel like every member in NCT had one of the most beautiful smile I had ever seen. When can I have a beautiful smile and look good while smiling? Oh I know, never.

I just wanted to include this cause why not. Doyoung looking at Taeil’s butt thou. We see you Doyoung, WE SEE YOU. NASTY BOY.

Look how small he looks compared to the other members, so tiny and cute. Jaehyun-6ft, Yuta-5′9ft, Taeil-5′8. However Yuta looking like he’s 5′10 or 5′11 but I won’t judge. Taeil maybe tiny but he’s still taller than me shm.

AWWWW IF THIS ISN’T ONE OF THE CUTEST THING YOU HAD EVER SEEN. I DON’T KNOW WHAT IS.

Like every NCT member, he’s a dork. A cute, lovable dork. A dork in which we should all love and cherish forever.

Once again look how small Taeil looks compared to Jaehyun. If Taeil was wearing a dress and a wig or something, I would mistake him for Jaehyun’s girlfriend. (Throwback to Haechan dressed up as a girl. Freaking Haechan looking better than me as a girl, when I am one.)

BONUS:

2Tae’s. Tbh I feel like Taeyong can be shipped with any member, or is it just me?

Also I personally ship Doyoung and Taeil. I haven’t seen this ship much but this gif just bring a smile to my face. (Whats this ship name?)

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kinetic-elaboration · 8 years ago

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June 18: Thoughts on 1x07 Contents Under Pressure

Finally continued my The 100 Season 1 rewatch yesterday. Wrote some notes:

It kind of looks like the Council is also the judicial system on the Ark, which honestly shouldn’t surprise me at all. Whatever hearings they do seem to take place in the Council chamber. I still think Marcus is basically the prosecutor or otherwise sort of in charge of the judicial function—Jaha is fine and still Chancellor but it’s Marcus reading out the summary of Abby’s case. She’s spared because her “medical expertise is still required” which fits with my theory about the Ark class hierarchy.

Raven identifies herself as from Mecha Station, so if I ever need to establish the canon nature of this fact, this is where it is, 1x07. Also, she identifies herself to Sinclair as if he didn’t already know her but that could just be because she doesn’t recognize his voice.

That moment when Abby hears Clarke’s voice was so lovely. Nothing in the second two seasons stirs my heart like small moments in the first two. Also when Jaha hears that Wells isn’t alive, fuck, that’s too sad. Get it away.

Apparently this is Miller’s first episode.

Also man I love storm episodes. Big weather events get me EVERY TIME.

They say at the beginning that Monty, Jasper, and Bellamy aren’t back yet—I know it’s been a while since I saw the last ep but weren’t they all in at the end of it? I remember Bellamy closing the gate and dramatically saying “there’s a storm coming.” And if you know there’s a storm coming, why would you wander the fuck off? Okay never mind, Bellamy went Grounder hunting. And this is also where Miller was introduced—his first scene is dragging in Lincoln.

Raven taking a drink of moonshine before sterilizing her hands and Clarke smiling fondly at her = why I ship (S1) Princess Mechanic.

OMG little doggy made out of nuts and bolts that is the most adorable thing. I miss the Ark aesthetic SO MUCH.

Honestly, that Clarke has assisted her mom in surgery, meaning she’s trained at least partly directly under Abby, makes me wonder how close they are/were. Like, a combination of them starting the show estranged and fan fiction too often painting Abby as a bitch or their relationship as strained has somewhat obscured what I think is canonically a strong bond between Abby and Clarke—not just because they’re mother and daughter, I mean they genuinely were close beyond even that.

The Bellamy, Miller, and Lincoln scene: First, it’s my headcanon that Lincoln was the spy on the camp the entire time, including back to the pilot (IDK who that actor was, I’m not saying it was Ricky Whittle, just that I think it was Lincoln-the-character in a lot of war paint and shadows), and that his reports might have been designed the whole time to keep Anya et. al. at bay, and also that he might have volunteered for the spying job because he was curious about the Sky People—and that fits with this scene. Second, when Bellamy says they’ve “lost” 10 people, I wonder if he’s counting exile Murphy. I hope so.

Bellamy sees a picture of a big furry creature and asks “What is that thing? Friend of yours?” which, first, haha Bellamy joke, and second, YEAH WTF IS IT? IT’S BEEN FOUR SEASONS WHAT IS IT?

Clarke’s grumpy cat get out of the way face = A+ more content like this please.

I love that Miller was introduced as a surly Bellamy minion and the whole time he was gay and only Jarod Joseph knew.

“In case you didn’t notice, his people are already killing us. How many more of our people have to die until you realize we’re fighting a war?” Interesting because actually most of those people didn’t die at Grounder hands at all. Two died when the dropship landed. Wells died because another delinquent killed him. Charlotte committed suicide. Murphy, if he’s being counted among the ten, was exiled after a series of events having nothing to do with Grounders. Trina and Pascal, who I’m pretty sure are already dead, died of acid fog, which is a Mt. Men weapon (I know Bellamy doesn’t know this but we do). And the other three were killed by Grounders, fair enough. Plus Jasper and Finn’s injuries. But still, ten Grounder deaths there were not. Also none of them were killed or injured at the dropship camp, which fits in with my theory that this was never a dispute about territory or a case of mean colonialists stealing native people’s land. The dropship camp doesn’t bother the Grounders at all.

There’s a little American flag at the memorial to the culling victims. Also, here we see the exact moment when Kane’s redemption arc begins. And a continuation of Jaha’s… I don’t want to say ‘redemption’ but like…transformation?

Okay, that’s ridiculous to say the people in the culling died for nothing—it wasn’t nothing because there aren’t enough life boats NOW there definitely weren’t 320 people ago. I mean I understand why the populace is angry but, haha, little do they know that between the Unity Day attack, the Exodus ship explosion, and all but 3 stations either exploding, crashing, or getting lost on the way to Earth, there are many more population-reduction events to come. Oh yeah and then radiation comes in a ridiculous overwrought wave and kills them all in a terrific shark-jumping explosion of silliness.

More Ark life details: “I swore an oath to protect and defend these people.” There’s something called “station representatives”—the same or different than Council members? Also they have a “mess hall.”

The dropship is three stories. Did I think it was two? Clarke has amazing boots.

The torture sequence makes me intensely uncomfortable, which is of course obviously the point. Again, nothing that the show’s done in the last two seasons accomplishes this. They just…try so hard to be constantly shocking and tense but it reads poorly to me, it reads like overcompensating for having nothing more to say.

I don’t get the station representatives thing. First, they’re not the council. Diana Sydney is one of them. And also there are, what, like a hundred of them? Why so many? What do they do? Is this like a primarily administrative job? An advocacy job? The Ark’s not that big, direct communication with the council doesn’t seem like it would be that hard. Are these also elected positions? How many does each station have, and how big is each station that they need, like, 10 reps per station? Some of them are pretty young, too; is this like an every-sub-group-has-an-advocate thing? Diana refers to her people as “the workers,” which I always assumed meant she was a rep for one of the worker-stations, like maybe Factory, but maybe it means she literally, specifically, represents “workers.”

I want a prequel that’s just like the political rivalry between Jaha and Diana. Actually, I want a refund on Season 4 and for it to be replaced by this prequel.

Say what you will about Octavia, but Bellarke’s torture plan was stupid as fuck—yes, it makes sense on the level of a preschooler (a very violent preschooler) but anyone with real cognitive skills should honestly be 10000% distrustful of any answer Lincoln did give because, like, why would he tell you the truth? If I were him, I’d get the torture to stop by pointing out the wrong vial. I mean he has literally nothing to lose; they’ll kill him but they would have done that anyway, and at least he takes one of their own down too.

That said, I feel like the more they made Octavia violent, over the seasons, and played up her ridiculously unrealistic amazing warrior skills or whatever, the more they ignored how smart and resourceful she used to be.

Abby didn’t “turn Jake in” though—he hadn’t done anything wrong, there was nothing to turn him in for. Like don’t get me wrong I love Jaha, but HE’S the one who floated his friend for a non-crime, so maybe he should take some of the blame for that.

I love Kane’s mom. Honestly, they used to have such good minor/side characters and they threw them away so willy-nilly and I thought, okay, I get it, we need casualties and there will be more good side characters but frankly there haven’t been. The quality of side character has declined precipitously. I literally cannot remember the last time a new character was introduced that I gave an honest shit about. After S2, there’s been like…no one on the sidelines who holds any interest for me. Probably because they’re all Grounders.

Finn’s using Raven’s jacket as a pillow, which reminds me of Jasper using Monty’s jacket as a blanket.

Finn’s basically just this totem Clarke and Raven pass back and forth. They’re both under the impression they literally need him to keep going (“he’s all I have;” “I can’t do this without you”) but like, really, what does he bring to the table? Certainly no literal skills, but not even that much by way of emotional support or devotion—especially not to Raven, obviously. And Clarke’s known him all of a week so the concept that she needs him for anything is like, I can see why she herself thinks that (in a normal situation she and Finn would be in a honeymoon phase, plus she just lost Wells so like I can see how she’d latch on to someone else in a pinch)—but it’s still laughable.

I’ve seen that shot of Bellamy and Clarke’s hands touching a million times but totally forgot they were handing off a torture weapon. And that their dialogue can basically be summarized as “deep sounding shit we tell ourselves to excuse our guilt for the reprehensible things we’ve just done that had literally no actual justification whatsoever.” I mean, I’m not judging per se, the show needs conflict and also they’re basically fetuses so they should be imperfect but still. How romantic.

My characterization of Clarke, most of the time, is so bad. I feel bad about this.

I’m trying to get a better sense of the delinquent camp but it’s difficult.

It looks like there are only 6 Council members, which semi-confuses me because it just seems like it would make sense to have one representative per station. I don’t think they’d give Prison Station a council member, but counting the Chancellor, that would still make 12. But then—do all stations have living quarters on them? I’ve been assuming yes but why should I assume that? Go-Sci very well might not—nope, never mind, that’s the only part left and I bet we’ll be seeing living quarters on it next year (by “we” I mean probably not “me” but you know). Anyway. How are the Council members elected then? At large? Also, post-culling, post-100, there are 2,237 people on the Ark. And Jaha says there are “only enough dropships to carry 700.”

I can’t believe people still know what the Titanic is to be honest. And would reference it so casually.

#the year 2017 #2017: fandom thoughts #2017: the 100 s1

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survivedeathvalley · 8 years ago

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EPISODE 2 - “CHICK FIL A FOR EVERYONE, IT’S RAINING FRIES, HALLELUJAH!” - GABBY

I wanna establish myself as a strong force in this game. When people open skype web and remember they have to be active here I want them to think, "Oh I gotta deal with that bitch Misty too" And I intend on getting to the bottom of who voted for me... Paul [Kage]

Guess who helped start a new alliance! :) Basically Kat, William and I are part of a 3 person alliance called "The Chaos Crew". I feel fairly comfortable working with these two because they both said they were supposedly new to ORGs (don't 10000% buy it), also it would be in all of our interests to stick to a 3 person alliance to make sure that if in the case we do attend tribal we can at least tie if not be in the majority.

I don't really understand this cast. They're really bad aliases. Yikes... I was talking to that one guy on my tribe with the normal-sounding name and I told him I didn't like making small talk because everyone is "fake". Then he said "I'm not fake! I promise". So I responded that it's not like anyone is fake in *that* way, but it's because of the alias thing... then he thought I was asking him for an alliance. What the fuck. Then he exposed to me that he's NEVER played orgs before and he's SO out of the loop, which might be true, but I don't want to take any chances. I think he's just bad at playing dumb.

http://imgur.com/j0q7pWl

I'm glad that Marco is gone, but I can't help but wonder who voted for Misty. I hope she doesn't think it was me.

chick fil a for everyone, it's raining fries, hallelujah! I have to remember Sunday that I can't be working if I'm not around because Chick fil a does not run on Sundays, I can feel myself forgetting already.

Misty and I want to work together for the long run, and I'm already scared I'm going to tell her too much info and she'll figure out who I am. On another note, I noticed the viewing lounge the other day and I wonder if Issy is playing in this, because she's in the VL. I'm pretty sure she hates me? We played Arabia together and I lied to her a lot and blindsided her a lot and I think it would be SO FUNNY if we were working together in this, I almost feel like maybe she's Mattie? Thinking back she reminded me of Issy a bit.

Girl Idk but if we lose I'm voting off the biggest threat in our tribe now that's the tea!

I want Paul out tbh. Me/Bianca/Gabby/Mattie alliance would be the dream. I wanna take control of this tribe. Idk what has gotten into me but I wanna be like Sandra in Game Changers. If we lose, I do plan on making a fake account for Paul and making some fraudulent receipts of him saying he wants Gabby out................... Whatever it takes, you know?

i honestly keep forgetting im in this game! rip me! and also like i think im gonna start impersonating karen so people think I'm her

Nothing has happened yet

https://youtu.be/xB5CQqqra0o

Ummm, so ummm, unmmm, I have no idea what tribal will be like tomorrow

Note to self: NEVER PISS LOGAN OFF. <3 Paul has got to go, I liked him better when his account wasn't working. Also I think I figured out who he is because he kept putting a different name instead of Paul when we were doing the challenge. I don't know that person outside of this game though and can't remember what he said his name was to save my life. I hope that maybe Misty, Bianca, Mattie and I can vote together to get Paul out of this game, his smart mouth is going to ruin it for all of us. He was also the more pissy person towards Mattie when she was messing up. And true, I was lowkey annoyed with her too but then she told us she had dyscalculia and one of my friends has that, and I could see how this challenge could be difficult for her. We should have started it YESTERDAY, i felt like suggesting it but I just... never did. UGH, I'm so ready for a switch or something, Panamint is dropping like flies and I just hope I'm in a good enough spot to stay another round.

This tribe is?? Interesting I guess. We don't communicate like at all. Nobody answers pms (including me) and when we do it's like very vague and messy. Alex sends haha every other word and it makes it very hard to see if he's serious or not? I like Jenny she seems cool hopefully we can work together but the rest of this tribe idk

We just lost.. and of course I was the only one to NOT participate. I'm sure I'm on the chopping block, because at this point I'm pretty sure there's no inactives to hide behind. I'm still gonna push for Paul to go home though. Maybe not be as aggressive as I planned to be.. but I will try to make it work. I trust in Bianca and Gabby so hopefully they keep me safe!

So we lost. Which I expected. And I originally thought I'd be the target, since I fucked up so much we kept having to go back. But Tanner never showed up to participate and everyone has to participate so we lost for that reason instead. Which means that I'm a little safer than I was before, and Tanner is most likely going home. I hope. I'm kind of glad he fucked up tbh, because I think we would've gone either way and now I get to be safe.

Now this is the truth tea and I can't wait to see all my devious villains with me at merge bc it's obvious the other two tribes are stupid enough to actually win a challenge *giggles*

https://youtu.be/BS93E9_5f1o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpsXJTPAOYE

I think everything is peaceful right now but I just hope everything isn't under the table and no one is targeting me.

Nobody wants to be the first person to throw out a name! It's so annoying! Nothing is happening! Wait, maybe they have an alliance *facepalm*

I dunno what I said last, but I think it was to the effect of I really suck at that flash game and I hope that the people on my tribe are better at it than I am. And... they were! They were actually a lot better than I was at it and I think one person (Alex maybe??) made up the difference of my failings https://media.tenor.co/images/9d06a86bdcd648c964e322559fdd3b80/tenor.gif We won the immunity challenge and avoided the first vote off of the season because that's what you do when you're immune I guess. Anyway, it looked like the Panamint tribe that did the worst decided to vote off their inactive player to increase their chances of success. I'm assuming this will be the strategy for most tribes moving forward anyway. https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/99/39/d8/9939d80aafd7f1217af815bd1f7ab42b.gif

The reward challenge was the degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon thing that is always really fun - https://media.giphy.com/media/Ff2LmUUzZQAeY/giphy.gif I did the best I could at it so that I would look like an asset to my team... perhaps. Gotta plant those seeds that I'm of value so people will start inviting me to be part of their alliances and I'll become less likely to get the boot. We lost, but luckily it was just reward and then Kai went back to the Devil Hole to dig for an idol or something. So.. maybe Kai has an idol now? At the moment, I'm not too bothered because I don't think that I have given them any reason to play it.

Next challenge rolls its ugly head out of bed and I can see myself crying. I literally wanted to sit out of this one because I hate these types of challenges. They make my knees weak and my heart break. http://www.gifimagesdownload.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Disgusted-cute-gif.gif It's a counting endurance challenge... WITH A TWIST ™ because you can only respond with odds on odd minutes and evens on even minutes... and I wasn't online to ask to sit out so I get to help count!! Rather than um... being a flop I decided to OVER DO so that people will want to pull me into potential future alliances since these challenges are the opportunity to bond over the fact that you hate your life. https://media.tenor.co/images/12ef9945086f38f2b314cdd6206fa1dc/tenor.gif

This dude named Tanner who Kai and some other people keep calling Eddie (suspicious?? I dunno, nor do I care tbh.. just weird honestly) didn't participate in the challenge at all and has more or less disappeared. http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/shrg-1.gif While concerning because people disappearing is not necessarily a good thing, it has made the first vote an easy target. Our tribe needs strength and somebody that we can't rely on to play is definitely the opposite of desirable. Also! Fun facts! Alex and I worked really closely and very consistently on this challenge and we shared with each other afterward that we were each equally glad to have someone to rely on throughout the thing... and then Alex did some weird alliance pitching thing that made me slightly uncomfortable. They were like.. "We could be more ;)" and I was like... stop with the wink face and just ask if I want to ally with you. It's giving me creeper vibes. https://m.popkey.co/98eb3f/1xWo0.gif So we decided to form an alliance and to pull in Wash as a third so that we will be able to control votes moving forward. I guess that'll be something... assuming it sticks and is successful and all of the other permutations are fun... also, given Jenny's chaotic nature she's probably going to out this alliance the moment she gets to a swap so she can stab them in the back.

I feel bad for not doing reward fuck i might go home fuck this

https://youtu.be/H4LrsvmlSAA

Ok, so episode 2 in a nut shell... Kat, William and I started a 3 person alliance called the Chaos Crew which is kinda cute I guess, hopefully since there are 3 people in the alliance it will secure them as a number more. Then we had the reward competition which was the wikipedia thing and my type A personality legit did the entire comp for our tribe. I really wanted us to win and have a possibility of being sent to satan's asshole. So we won!!!! And we got an idol clue :) also I convinced them to let me go to the hole. I decided thatd itd be smart to send the same people as last week because itd put a larger target on their back and if they found an advantage it would at least be in a known area. Basicalllllly, I found this cute Zirusikisisiaasdas Idol which works as a normal idol but also randomly gives another person protection, but my ass tried and tell most people that I found nothing (a rock). This is good for the most part unless it chooses the person I am trying to idol out. Then we had the reward comp which was the ugliest fucking counting endurance comp ive ever had to do. So basically, Giruga, Justin, and I did the majority of the competition even though I was on a fucking road trip on mobile so that was wild. Layla legit did little to nothing which made the entire tribe kind of mad, thus theyd be an easy vote in a future tribal probs. I think Giruga and I working on this competition and communicating during it made was a lot more beneficial for our relationship... basically I suggested that we made a good team in the comp and I was wondering if he'd want to work together and he said yes!!! So im basically working with everybody on the fucking tribe whew. We won immunity because we are the only tribe to finish it which has me shook, but that means we have a significant advantage going into a future tribe swap or merge :). I have feeling that next episode is going to be a tribe swap, but we will see!

I was told to make a confessional. Also I'm going to make an alliance so if I'm gone you'll know why.

So....we lost....again. But it's no sweat this round because I have my alliance with Gabby and Misty, which gives us majority. I love a good majority. The plan is to vote out Paul because he is literally a mess and a half. After that disaster is handled, we can hopefully move forward and not have to go to tribal again. I'm really praying that I can go to Devil's Hole again because now that I have my glow stone i have better chances of maybe finding something that could really turn my game around. But who knows? Only time will tell

I swear, i'm a good egg, i'm going to make a confessional whenever i'm asked to. :o) Okay so.... I just got asked to join an alliance with Paul and Mattie... now I'm going to have two alliances, how exciting is this gonna be. Time to start making some choices and hope for a swap because someone is going to know i was playing both sides soon!

Well fuck me with an Iron Dildo I think it worked!

If I go home this round... I just........... It doesn't feel natural. I GUESS it's my fault for not being on skype all day yesterday/today but? I was busy. Whatever. If I stay, Mattie better watch the fuck out. They think they can vote me out? Surprise bitch

EP 2 EDGIC:

#buriedinsand #confessionals

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