#backer street

[neotomiccccc]

I LOVE THIS SERIES AND ALL OF THE CHARACTERS SOOOOOO MUCHHHHHHH . I LOVE THE,MMMMMMM I AM INSANEEEEEEEEE

[mostbreedabletwinktournament]

Round 1 Side B: Poll #6

Propaganda!

Axel Backer:

he does not look like it but he embodies twink

-Anon

Dream of The Endless:

Big important dream man just really REALLY needs someone to take control for him.

Additional propaganda:

-Made the Corinthian. Dream you horny bitch.

-When the literal incarnation of Desire made him a lover, said lover was a heroic lady who immediately called him a "beautiful prince, but not very bright", saved him, and sword fought a god beside his magic slinging ass

-"You need not have come to my defense"

-Every single look or interaction with Lucifer

Conclusion: Bratty sub who very badly needs someone to top him till he forgets who he is. Almost canonically.

-Anon

[yeyinde]

the morally questionable relationship between John Price and the darling little starlet he picks up off of the street during the golden age of Hollywood would be such a treat.

because producer!John Price is known as the best of the best in Hollywood. He has an eye for talent, they say, and a keen ability for spotting the diamonds amongst the rubble.

And of all the stars in the world, he sets his sights on you. Pretty little thing. Bright and blinding—Betelgeuse glimmering on the precipice of a supernova. All you need is a little push. A backer. A chance. And he gives it to you. Ushers you into stardom with a crooked grin around the butt of a cigar and a wicked gleam in his eyes that you—in all your artless, sheltered naivete—chalk up to pride.

The problem with sweet little darlings like you is that they all sing the same song. Yearn for the same thing. And it's so easy to mistake his interest as fatherly when the name on your birth certificate reads John Doe. And when he tells you his name is John Price, well—

It's fate, isn't it?

He told you he's been married once but had no children, and the longing in his eyes must be for the family he's never got a chance to have. So, you promise to give it to him.

Problem is: the devil lives in Hollywood and drinks his whiskey neat. You told him you'd be his family, giving him the one that left him behind. Signed your soul to blue eyes for the big screen.

Not that you'd know this, of course. To you, John is a sad widower with a heart of gold. Your overprotective bear who snarls at the directors and actors who get a little too handsy with you on set. His darling little star.

It's easy to wave everyone off when they express concern about these blurring lines between employee and employer. Boss and—

Father figure.

They just don't know him like you do.

And how funny, you tell him one evening with a wry twist to your lips, eyes swimming with sheltered mischief. They thought we were lovers, Mr Price. Isn't that just the damnedest thing?

This little quip has the opposite effect, and if only you looked a little bit closer at the gleam in his eye, the clench in his jaw, you might have seen the storm gathering on the horizon before it hit. Instead of laughing with you at the director's gall, this hilarious joke, John feels you slipping through his fingers just a little bit more. And that simply won't do.

You want a father figure? Then fine. That's what he'll be. Convenient, of course, because he's been thinking about fatherhood a lot lately, too. It's only natural that he decides to cash in on that promise you made all those years ago to make him a proud dad.

[probablyasocialecologist]

A few weeks before the presidential election, the New York Times published an article about the influence of big donors over the Kamala Harris campaign based on not-so-humble bragging from the heights of corporate America. Now it reads much more like a confession. While Harris refused to distance herself from Joe Biden over the carnage in Gaza, she had no problem signaling her intention to scrap parts of his economic agenda that benefited working-class Americans but went down badly with the very rich. The Times described “a steady stream of meetings and calls in which corporate executives and donors offer their thoughts on tax policy, financial regulation and other issues,” which had resulted in “a Democratic campaign that is far more open to corporate input than the one President Biden had led for much of the election cycle.” According to one business executive, the Harris campaign was “definitely giving large corporations a seat at the table and giving them a voice,” in a way that marked “a significant difference from the Biden administration.” The donors weighed in behind the scenes when Harris promised to ban “price gouging” for groceries and secured an immediate rollback on the pledge: “In the days after, Ms. Harris’s team clarified that the plan would apply only during emergencies and would mirror laws already in place in many states — a narrower concept that would not immediately address rising grocery prices.” Harris might have been left with little to say about one of the most pressing economic problems in the United States, but at least her corporate backers were happy.

[...]

As well as making “remarks that indicate a less zealous approach to antitrust enforcement,” which went down very well on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley, Harris explicitly rejected Biden’s plan to raise the capital gains tax to 39.6 percent. Billionaire Mark Cuban boasted that he had inundated the Harris campaign with “a never-ending stream of texts and calls and emails,” urging them to support various economic policies that would benefit his class: “The list is endless, and in all those areas I’ve seen something pop into her speech at some level.”

7 November 2024

[hedgehog-moss]

Update on the French protests: we've had a well-known expert in contemporary political history call the situation we're in "the worst democracy crisis France has known since [the end of the 4th Republic]" and meanwhile the government is trying its hardest to maintain a façade of normal functioning by a) hiding from protesters, b) hiding protesters from view, and c) banning saucepans and other means of drawing attention to the protests that are being swept under the rug.

I mean casserolades are an old tradition in this country but they wouldn't have been needed if Macron &co hadn't started almost systematically banning protests in entire districts of the towns they visit and setting up police roadblocks to prevent peaceful protesters from going anywhere near them. (Too bad because these are the kinds of images the media get (these 2 are from Le Monde) when protesters get to talk to Macron <3) :

Protesters corralled away where they can be easily ignored started banging pots and pans so the protest could at least be heard in the background of TV footage, and then pans started being confiscated.

French courts have repeatedly struck down the bans as illegal but police prefects keep churning new bans out every time Macron goes somewhere anyway, trying to publish them at the last minute so there's no time for a judicial review. (I saw a sign at a protest last week that went "Stop with all the bans we no longer have time to disobey all of them")

After boldly banning saucepans by calling them "portable sonorous devices" last week, today a police prefecture banned "festive gatherings of a musical nature" in a town Macron will be visiting tomorrow. They're (ab)using counter-terrorist legislation for all this, so these days we get to read unheard-of court rulings that go like "We are suspending this prefectural decree as we do not consider festive gatherings of a musical nature to pose a significant terrorist threat to the President."

If Macron had people showing up in support I don't think we would see so many pissy protest bans because then the media could show backers vs. opponents and things would look normal (and not like 70% of the country is very pissed off with Macron). But there's not much for them to show if they don't show the angry people banging pans and it clearly rankles Macron—we learnt yesterday that he sent a letter to 200,000 political supporters of his essentially ordering them to start making appearances all over the country, to show they are "proud of what you are and of what our country has become [since I got elected]." That seems a bit desperate.

For months Macron &co have been predicting that people would get tired of taking to the streets in large numbers, and now that people are going like—right, let's try a new strategy, small local protests greeting gov members everywhere they go!—we're hearing a clear "no not like that, that's not what we meant :l " reaction from the government.

They've also been trying the strategy of announcing stuff at the last minute, like on Monday the Minister of Education announced at noon that he would visit a higher learning institution in Lyon 2 hours later, and a hundred of protesters still showed up and tried to force their way into the building. They were held off by cops using tear gas and trying to block entrances (there's a pic that made me smile, showing cops trying to barricade university gates with garbage bins—how the tables have turned...!) and the Minister ended up not showing up and moving on to the next step of his schedule (protesters tried to follow him there but police vans were blocking the street.)

The first half of the video is at the uni in Lyon; the second half is in Paris later that day. When he returned to Paris the Minister was greeted by protesters with saucepans at the train station, it's like a national relay race of protesting at times. He had to go back through the train to leave via the other end of the platform under police escort so as not to meet any protesters (god forbid).

Macron commented that this was "uncivic" behaviour and I agree, civic behaviour on the part of gov members would be to at least face the people they choose to fuck over, instead of hiding behind cops and fleeing. Obviously Macron was condemning the 'uncivic' protesters though, and the Minister said he felt "physically threatened" by the "violence of [the protesters'] speech" which is a shit thing to say considering on the same day that he was mildly inconvenienced by having to take a different exit and felt physically endangered by words, yet another protester was mutilated after being shot at by police with a rubber bullet. Not a peep about this incident (or previous ones) from the government. The Minister of Education never even condemned that time high schoolers trying to protest got tear gassed and threatened with riot guns by cops in front of their school earlier this month.

But while people continue protesting despite the actual violence from cops, our ministers are looking pretty scared of citizens banging pots and pans. Here's a list of official visits that got cancelled "for safety reasons" (saucepan terrorism) in the past week:

1. Minister P. NDiaye cancelled a visit in Lyon 2. Minister F. Braun cancelled a visit to Evrard Hospital 3. Minister Delegate O. Klein cancelled a visit in Bobigny 4. Minister Delegate O. Grégoire cancelled a visit in La Baule 5. Minister S. Guerini cancelled a visit in Castelnau 6. Secretary of State B. Couillard cancelled a visit in Rochefort 7. Minister S. Retailleau cancelled a visit to the Paris Saclay University (electricity trade unionists cut the power in the building she was supposed to inaugurate, so) 8. Minister C. Grandjean cancelled a visit in Toulouse (this article says it was probably because the visit was quite near a big highway protest where protesters among other things were building a concrete wall on a national road)

In the same bullshitting vein as "portable sonorous devices", gov spokespeople have been insisting that visits aren't being cancelled, ministers are just "adjusting the course of their trips" which is funny to me. I guess we never beheaded any royalty we just adjusted the course of their necks. I also read a newspaper article that made me laugh, that went like "Minister cancels visit; trade unions disappointed" and I thought it was because the cancelled visit was a meeting with the unions which they wouldn't get to have, but the article said it was actually because they had a good protest planned and wouldn't get to hold it...

Watching protesters mess with the government in small ways on a daily basis has been good for morale—on Twitter the hashtags #IntervillesMacron and #IntervillesduZbeul popped up (zbeul = chaos, mess, and Intervilles was a TV game show that aired for over 50 years, where French cities competed against one another in goofy challenges). I only mentioned cancellations above, but fun things also happen on non-cancelled government visits, like a Minister having to leave a building via the emergency exit because of protesters blocking the building entrance (which some people argued is worth more points than a cancellation as it's more entertaining):

Various websites were created to keep track of all these smaller protests and to officialise the point system that ranks cities on their efforts to fuck with the government:

(the first symbol means a protest, the second means a casserolade, the last one means protesters managed to get inside a building where a visit was taking place)

(Translation: Ruckus (saucepans, heckling...) 1pt Protest: 1pt Creative action (chasing minister in the woods, etc): 2pts Measures of energy conservation (= power cuts by unions) 3pts Action that leads to a political figure fleeing: 4pts Cancellation of a visit: 5pts — then there's a weighting system where the score is multiplied by 3 if it's a Minister, by 5 if it's the Prime Minister, by 6 if it's Macron.) (I also saw an interesting debate on Twitter this week—since our leaders often embarrass themselves, how should the government's own goals fit into the point system?)

Right now the Hérault department is winning because on top of protests, power cuts and casserolades, protesters greeted Macron with a giant "MACRON FUCK OFF" sign hung from a cliff (!) and took over a highway display so it'd say "Welcome to [region] Butthole Ist"

These past few days I've been discovering unknown French cities (and Ministers) thanks to them showing up in the hashtag after a good protest. I discovered a mediaeval castle I'd never heard of when unions hung banners featuring our most famous revolutionary dates from the castle's battlements. (Two days later, another protest with eloquent banners in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris:)

People are very creative—last week we heard that protesters got prosecuted for giving Macron the finger and insulting him during one of his official visits (< we are a healthy democracy), so protesters in another region tried a more sarcastic approach, and greeted a deputy from Macron's party at a strawberry fair this week with clapping and confetti and "Thank you for making us work 2 more years, thank you for police repression, thank you!" The deputy beat a hasty retreat. Then said he would file a complaint against the harassment and intimidation he had been subjected to. (The tear gas and riot guns and arrests and protest bans are not intimidation of protesters on the other hand. Or the fact that another deputy from his party recently said on TV that they were "ready for war"... They're ready to wage war, but run and hide when people clang saucepans and throw confetti.)

Anyway. I'm enjoying the fact that they can't even attend a small strawberry fair without getting heckled right now. In one of my first posts about the political crisis in March I wrote something like "How will Macron and his gov have any legitimacy to speak about any issues after this?" and it cheers me up to see a lot of people across the country agree that they have no legitimacy to talk about anything, not even the strawberry harvest.

The next nationwide protest is of course for May 1st, but in the meantime it's been really fun following the smaller protest actions all over the place. Members of government & Macron's party keep making whiny statements along the lines of this is terrorist behaviour, we can't go anywhere, why are people not getting tired of fucking with us and the answer is, because it's really entertaining!

This was the last sentence of a recent Le Monde article about Macron's situation and it has such a sinister, end-of-reign tone:

"I'm moving forward," Macron concluded, on April 20th in the Herault department, while behind his back echoed the sound of saucepans.

[anim-ttrpgs]

Get Hunted by a Monster in the official Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy rulebook for only $5! Slots limited.

Alright, so there’s a bunch of slots on the hunting tables in the Eureka rulebook that never got filled. Many of them, we planned for, others, we didn’t because a whole bunch of the Kickstarter backers never submitted anything.

So now we’ve got all these empty slots for hunting table submissions, and we don’t want the monsters (or us, food costs money) to starve, so we’re selling them off.

What are the Hunting Tables?

If you’ve been following us, you probably already know that sometimes the PCs in Eureka are monsters that eat people. Often, this is one of the few ways they can restore their missing Composure, something that normal PCs restore just by eating and sleeping. If they need Composure, and can’t find anyone to eat in the immediate vicinity, they can go on a Hunt.

The GM rolls on the most relevant Hunting Table to provide the monster with an opportunty to satisfy their hunger.

If you pay for one of these slots, you can be on that table, or your friend, or your OC, or whatever you come up with, with your own little scenario for monster PCs to encounter and maybe come away from a little less hungry.

Email us at anim.contactus@gmail.com if you’re interested, and we’ll take payment after we’ve screened your submission for anything bigoted. You can submit as many as you like if you’re willing to pay $5 for each and there’s still slots available.

Submission guidelines under the cut.

For every $5, you will be allowed to submit 1 entry to be placed in the Hunting Tables in the Eureka rulebook. If you don’t know what the Hunting Tables are, you can find them in The Supernatural chapter of the rulebook. Refer to the table of contents. You can get the beta version of the rulebook here for free at this time if you need to take a look.

For a brief description of what the Hunting Tables are, they are a series of random encounter tables that the Narrator will use to determine who, or what, a monstrous investigator may encounter when they are prowling the streets looking for victims.

What we need from you is the person or persons’ name(s), a brief visual description of them, where they are, what they are doing when the monster PC sees them, and any other guidance you can offer to the Narrator to help them portray this person.

Keep in mind that your entry may be edited for grammar, spelling, clarity, and anything else we may need to do to fit it into the tables. If your entry is too far outside the tone, themes, or setting of Eureka, you may be asked to revise or the entry slightly edited to fit.

The entry will be sorted by us into the following categories based on your description:

Mundane or Supernatural

Urban, Town, Rural, or Wilderness for entries that seem right for Ambush Predators, and Nightclub/Bar, Gay Bar, Hobby Shop, or House Party for entries that seem right for Social Predators.

That being said, when writing where the person is, be more specific than “in an urban area.” If you say something like “walking down the sidewalk” we’ll know to put that entry in the Urban category. If you say “sitting on a bar stool at the counter”, we’ll know to put that entry in the Nightclub/Bar category. The more specific information, generally the better, though we may cut down entries that are overly long.

Your entry could be a character representing yourself, someone you know, or an original character, and can be a supernatural character so long as it fits within the guidelines laid out for supernatural characters within the rulebook. However, we do ask that you avoid any famous real people(unless you yourself happen to be that famous person), and avoid copyrighted characters. Also, please avoid offensive stereotypes.

[ravenstargames]

✦ Lost in Limbo Devlog #13 | 11.11.24

Feels good to be back! This is our first post-Kickstarter devlog and I'm so excited to be writing it.

First of all— Lost in Limbo was successfully funded on September 20th, 2024! 🎉🎇

Yep, it has been almost two months, but it's still something to celebrate! Thanks to every single one of you for making this possible! We didn't meet all our stretch goals (there were a lot and taxes are a pain) but that doesn't mean we are giving up on those. More on that another time.

There's a lot of things we want to show y'all, so let's jump into it!

A sneak peak of Envy's postcard!

Raquel has been working hard on getting the "special postcards from your favorite LI" ready to send them to print ASAP! Initially we were going to use art we already had of the LIs, but we thought it was more exciting to offer y'all exclusive art pieces. After this, Raquel will focus exclusively on the rework of the sprites!

We hosted a few polls and got a lot of feedback. If you missed it, you can check it here!

Astro says hello :^)

As you know, the Extended Demo will feature more locations, including a glimpse of the MC's city, Faybourne! Astro is getting the main street ready for you and your bestie as you go on about your day. I've calculated around three / four different and new locations to properly pace the demo as we imagined it in the first place!

The writing deparment (me. i'm the department) has been focusing on the Extended Demo script. I have a lot of things to play with, like the flavor choices, the personality choices, and more. I want to create a proper balance because one of the things y'all asked for was more choices, and the pacing needed a bit of fixing, as we already knew!

The Extended Demo will actually introduce characters you've heard about, like your mom, your ominous grandmother, and your bestie. So no more talking about them, you'll actually get to meet them like we wanted to!

There will also be more time with the LIs, and hopefully the amount of time you spend with each one of them will feel more balanced, too.

Programming has been an adventure! Huge shoutout to Feniks for helping me figure out how to properly make a toggle for the timed choices as well as helping me polish the personality system. What a lifesaver!

So the timed choices toggle now works perfectly. That means you'll be able to turn them off if you'd like to play the game without being jumpscared by a timer—that doesn't mean you won't be able to mess up, though, on purpose or not :^) This is a dark game, after all!

The personality choice system lets you decide how the MC reacts to things including the nature of your romance with the LI. That means dialogue will automatically change in certain parts of the game to reflect the personality of your MC, some options will be locked, some unlocked, etc. There's three different personalities available.

For colorblind folks, the choices will have a different icon when you hover over them for you to know they're different!

Also, I've started coding some extra mini cgs Kayden's been working on! There'll be more in the Extended Demo to enhance the experience, so we hope you enjoy them! :^)

All the packaging stuff has arrived to our provisional headquarters (Raquel's home), and our business cards have been secured! Every backer with physical goodies will receive one for free :^) This month has been all about managing Backerkit, orders and merch, as well as preparing the Extended Demo. We hope we can receive everything very very soon and start shipping packages starting December!

For now, that's it! There's a lot of stuff going behind the scenes, a lot of things that need attention, and a lot of planning happening. Also the catastrophe the DANA has been on our cities is keeping me a bit on edge, but I'm trying to focus on work. This Saturday I'm going on a trip to Greece with my family, so I'll disconnect then! It's our first time traveling to a different country since I was like...seven years old? And we have been saving up and preparing a lot for the trip, so we are excited :^)

I hope everyone has been taking care and doing alright! Have a huge hug from the Ravenstar Team, and see you around!

[224bbaker]

Season Two: The Case of the Precarious Park! 🎢 🎭 ❤️‍🔥

We are so excited to announce that Fawx & Stallion second season-long mystery, The Case of the Precarious Park, will be premiering on November 11th, 2024!

LONDON, 1891. At the press night of London’s first ever merriment park, and James Stallion’s newest investment venture, a ghastly and theatrical murder is committed, and its intended target appears to be one of the illustrious residents of 221B Baker Street. The only problem is that he’s since vanished, leaving only the residents of 224 to solve the case. And this time, every eye in London will be turned to them…

Episodes 1-6 will release bi-weekly on Mondays at 5 AM CST, and then we will take a brief hiatus before returning with episodes 7-10. All episodes will be available two days early to our Indiegogo backers at the Press Pass level and above, though we will ask you to refrain from sharing any spoilers for reasons that will very quickly become apparent.

Over the next month, we'll be sharing our trailer, a few sneak peek clips, some cast announcements, and a few looks behind the scenes! But if you haven't listened to (or finished) season one, you have just under one month to get caught up before Fawx & Stallion & Stallion's lives change forever...

[reality-detective]

Patriots in the Netherlands are walking the streets dropping flyers at the homes of citizens in hopes of awakening the people. According to Rem64 it is having great success. He sent me the flyer and I translated it to English so everyone can read it. 👇

Message to the population The information below is distributed worldwide by hundreds of scientific, legal and political organizations to inform humanity. Evidence for the stated facts can be found in the detailed evidence reports on StopWorldControl.com

The World Economic Forum wants to shape your life The world's richest come together at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The founder of the WEF, Klaus Schwab, is known for statements such as: We determine the future and We infiltrate governments. The WEF trains Young Global Leaders who are positioned in governments around the world. French President Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau and German Chancellor Merkel are Young Global Leaders of the WEF. The Netherlands and Belgium also work closely with the WEF and serve their agenda. Part of this agenda is to replace privacy with transparency. They want every detail of your life to be known soon: what you do, who you meet with, what you eat, what you buy... The WEF announces that new technologies will record everyone's thoughts, feelings and dreams in the cloud , where governments have access to this intimate data. To combat climate change, the WEF wants to abolish all private property. You will have to rent everything: houses, cars, work tools, etc. The WEF calls for blocking sunlight by massively releasing chemicals into the air. The WEF encourages the normalization of pedophilia, while the UN and WHO instruct all schools to teach sexual techniques to small children in kindergarten, so that they start having sex as young as possible, with people of any age or gender. As absurd as these plans sound, they are promoted by the WEF, the UN, the EU, the WHO and companies such as. Google and Facebook. They are part of the sustainability goals of Agenda 2030, which are supported by governments worldwide. All evidence of this can be found on StopWorldControl.com

The World Health Organization wants to rule the world The World Health Organization is being legally restructured as an effective global dictatorship, able to impose binding mandates on all countries whenever they declare a pandemic. However, the WHO is a private organization that operates outside any democratic process. One of the WHO's main backers is Bill Gates, who has no medical training whatsoever, yet is promoted as the medical authority around the world. As the world's largest vaccine dealer, his health advice is to inject everyone all the time, making him billions of dollars. WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus also has no medical training. Yet Gates and Tedros dictate to all the millions of medical experts worldwide what they can and cannot do. Article 18 of the proposed Pandemic Treaty allows the WHO to shut down any source of information that does not align with what they want all of humanity to believe. This means censoring millions of experts in every field. Only what the WHO and Bill Gates say should be heard. Do you want undemocratic organizations to become dictators over your life and over all humanity? Do you want all objective scientific and medical information to be hidden so that you only hear what a single private institution wants you to believe? Do you want to be forced to receive dangerous injections for the rest of your life, without being informed about the risks? If you do not agree with this course of action, we invite you to inform yourself carefully at StopWorldControl.com

The news is determined by investors Many people do not know that all major news agencies are owned by a small group of investors, who determine what can be said in the news. In addition, billionaires such as Bill Gates and George Soros donate hundreds of millions of euros to news organizations around the world, to determine what they broadcast Udo Ulfkotte, an editor at one of the largest newspapers in the world, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung which is published in 148 countries well-known I have been a journalist for 25 years and I have been trained to lie, betray and never tell the public the truth, journalists) are being bribed worldwide by the CIA, billionaires and governments to manipulate the public The world's best-known political commentator, Tucker Carlson, she The news you consume is a lie of the most insidious kind CNN technical director Charlie Chester said: There is no such thing as objective news. All newsreaders are told what to say. He admitted that CNN deliberately creates fear to manipulate their viewers, whether it is about a pandemic or climate change. Texts from Matt Hancock, British Health Secretary, read: We are making everyone scared? The World Economic Forum, the World Health Organization, the United Nations and the European Union, which are owned by the same financial entities that control the news, are calling on governments worldwide to censor any information that does not follow their narrative. Any investigation that exposes their criminal operations should be labeled conspiracy theory or disinformation.

Vital information is hidden Thousands of scientists, doctors and medical organizations are sounding the alarm as millions of people have died and hundreds of millions of people have been disabled after being injected with the experimental vaccines for COVID-19. Data from the US CDC shows that in the US alone, one and a half million people suffered from side effects including death, stroke, heart failure, brain disorders, convulsions, life-threatening allergic reactions, autoimmune diseases, arthritis, miscarriage, infertility, rapid onset muscle weakness, deafness, blindness, etc. Worldwide there is an explosion of turbo cancer and sudden death. Harvard Pilgrim Health Care's famous Lazarus report revealed that overall, only 19% of vaccine side effects are reported. According to this study, the number of adverse events and deaths must be multiplied by a factor of 100 to understand the true prevalence of serious vaccine injuries. COVID-19 has a 99.7% survival rate, comparable to the seasonal flu, and there are many effective medications, such as hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, budesonide, chlorine dioxide and many more. These have hardly any side effects, are completely safe and available everywhere in the world. This means that no vaccine is needed. However, the WHO instructed governments worldwide to ban these drugs for the treatment of corona and to censor any doctor who spoke about it, that vaccines are the only answer.

What's going on in the world? Why are governments controlled by private institutions like the WEF and WHO? Why is vital information hidden? These are not conspiracy theories as claimed, but facts that can be verified on the international website StopWorldControl.com. We work with world leaders in the fields of law, science, medical care, journalism and politics. Our network consists of more than 100 organizations that jointly inform humanity. They include Nobel laureates, presidents and presidential candidates, former generals of the US army, organizations of police officers and investigators, as well as top officials of the United Nations, the World Health Organization and the European Union. We encourage every right-thinking person to inform themselves carefully Visit the website StopWorldControl.com Pass this flyer on to others.

Stand Strong! Stand United! Be Prepared!

✨ 🛡️ 🇳🇱 WWG1WGA 🇺🇸 ⚔️ ✨

[seat-safety-switch]

Many, many years ago, the Catholic church had a problem: fake Popes. In the time before the internet, any group of rich assholes could get together, grab a random dude off the street, and declare him to be the Pope. Back then, you couldn’t even call (not even landline!) the Vatican to check this maybe-Pope’s credentials, and unless he acted extremely suspiciously, it was hard not to justify giving him whatever he (and his backers) asked for. He’s the Pope! If you don’t do what he says, God will force your daughter to eat your ribs or something like that.

Sure, a lot of these anti-Popes eventually did get busted. Lots of them took advantage of the massive power that was presented to them through fraud, and eventually the patience of the locals plumb ran out. It’s a pretty big deal to have the Pope visit your shitty town, even now, and so eventually the church would find out and send a small army to kill you and your friends. Sometimes they didn’t get there in time, because local warlords decided that the Pope (you) was probably trying to invade their country and decided to grease them first, only to end up doing the real Pope a solid.

Although I’m too lazy to check Wikipedia or even call the local diocese, I’m pretty sure that a decent number of these guys did get away with it, though. Real smooth operators would have known how to deal with certain sticky situations, like meeting people who had met the Pope already and knew he wasn’t 6′3″ and constantly drunk. As long as you didn’t make too much noise, and especially if you were somewhere that didn’t receive a lot of news or couriers, you could comfortably pretend to be a low-key pontiff for as long as you wanted. Your rich buddies would become richer buddies, and you’d get to wear a big hat. Good trade, the kind of relationship that doesn’t exist with employers today.

Why am I bringing this up now, you ask? Well, you might have noticed that I’ve been working at this O’Reilly Auto Parts with you for quite some time. And I have been asking you to log into the register for me, because I keep forgetting my password. I agree that that is suspicious. However, I think if you step in the back, you can meet some folks who will definitely assure you that I am in fact the head manager of this store, and you can help them load this unmarked, plateless van with all the Holley carbs we can sneak past that security camera.

No, no, no. Not the billet valve covers, that’s too flashy. Have you not listened to a word I’ve been saying?

[alhilton]

My position on Fan Fiction/ Fan-Make

I've been goaded into actually formulating a policy about this, due to actually finding fan fiction of my work. This is a good problem to have! My policy, here goes -

I firmly believe that fan-creations are a sign of health for any artistic property. I am always flattered when people want to spend extra time in my world and with my characters. There are a few pitfalls here, however, and authors have different ways of addressing them. Here are mine:

Visual Fan Artwork

I am generally delighted by visual fan art (images, dolls, cross-stitch, sculpture, etc) as long as you state clearly in the description where the world and/or characters came from and you’re not trying to sell it without a license. I enthusiastically share fan art when I find it. You do not need a license from me to make non-commercial, appropriately-attributed visual fan art.

Fan Fiction

Text-based fan fiction is a stickier subject. I am not interested in writing in a shared world. My canon is off-limits until I am dead. When my work is in the public domain, knock yourselves out!

Legally, best-practice is for me to pretend not to see fan fiction. I admit that I don’t always do this. However, I am nervous about interacting with fan fiction or linking to it because it is a legal mine-field. I do not want to lose control of my copyrights. (That is my main fear – not that you’ll make money on my work, but that I will lose control of my copyrights.)

Bottom line: if you want me to feel really free to interact with your fan fic and share it with my audience, you need to get a license from me. That license will give you legal permission to create “derivative works.” The license will also say that anything I create that is influenced by your fan fiction is mine alone and I do not owe you money or credit for any ideals that may pop up in my own canon creations due to reading your fan fiction.

If you obtain such a license from me, you are street-legal. This said, I do not promise to read fan fiction, even if you license it. I do not promise to critique it or give writing advice. Fan fiction is a gift to other fans, not to me.

Monetized Fan Creations (here’s where I really differ from other authors)

I am quite tolerant of fans making money in my world as long as you get a license from me first. I’m probably not going to give you a license for text-based stories to be published on retailers. Those have potential to confuse my readers. However, I will happily give you a license for many other kinds of monetized fan creations, including text-based stories in some forms. Unless you are a company, I’m probably not going to ask you for royalties. You can keep whatever you make, and I will happily link your work to my audience.

Examples:

You can sell commissioned artwork of my characters to other fans.

You can sell artwork of my characters printed on merch in places like Red Bubble (t-shirts, mugs, calendars, mousepads, etc).

You can make monetized pod-fic as long as it’s not on retailers and it’s clearly labeled as a non-canon fan-creation.

You can share your stories or art of my world and characters behind a paywall or on a site with advertising as long as it’s properly labeled and my own content is linked.

You can make a game based on my world. (If you are a company or a large kick-starter-backed endeavor, I will ask for royalties, but I’ll be reasonable).

You can make a D&D manual (OMG, please make a D&D manual. I get so many requests for this. I have no interested in making a D&D manual, but I will share yours and you can keep all the money…unless you are a gaming company or a large endeavor with backers, in which case I will want royalties, but I will be reasonable.)

The things you can do are practically limitless. I don’t have time to pursue all the good ideas myself! I just ask that you get a license from me first and link your source material (my books). Email me: abigail.hilton@pavoninebooks.com

If you would like to listen to me talk about this topic at length, you can listen to this podcast episode, recorded 8/31/2024.

[beekeeperspicnic]

The Beekeeper's Picnic Papercrafts are here! Including...

Paper Dolls - Make paper standees of Holmes, Watson, Mycroft and their little  neighbour Tilda in a variety of outfits! There are over 20 separate  items of clothing. Here's a little tutorial I made...

Colouring Sheets - Colour Holmes and Watson out for a stroll, or famous scenes from the stories The Gloria Scott and The Devil's Foot.Print them onto paper or card to colour with pencil crayons, or print  on watercolour paper and have a go at painting them! You could also  open the PDF in your paint package of choice and try some digital  colouring! (Just credit me for the lineart, please!)

Postcards/Prints - Print out a map of the village of  Fulworth and postcards from the Diogenes Club, 221b Baker Street, and  the famous cliffs over Fulworth Bay (famous for making an excellent  picnic spot! Also that whole jellyfish thing.) 

If you are a kickstarter backer who pledged at Creative Crafter or above, you can claim your rewards here.

If you'd like to buy the Creative Crafter package now, then this is the place to go!

[trb752]

Chandeliers in the lobby of the Backer building located at 136 Madison Avenue (31/32 streets) in Manhattan, New York, New York, USA.

The building was completed in 1916 and designed by Sommerfeld and Steckler.

Photo by Bonnie Chalek in August 2023.

[southernsolarpunk]

Hey check this out

I was making a zine (solarpunk ofc) and decided to use a bunch of old National Geographic magazines to cut up and use in a scrappy diy scrapbook fashion and of course I started reading them. This one in particular:

It caught my eye because it’s from September 1980 & talks about the Middle East. My brain wonders if they mention Palestine and they do! I copied the text for accessibility, but I put pictures at the end of the original pages.

“Jerusalem: reunited or occupied? The question has divided the city's 400,000 Jews and 100,000 Arabs since Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1967.

BEIRUT, JANUARY 1975. Armed soldiers lead me through labyrinthine back streets, up a dark stairway to a midnight rendez-vous. Only a bare bulb lights the temporary command post; Yasir Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, seldom dares spend two days in the same place. “Our argument is not with the Jews” He tells me. "We are both Semites. They have lived with us for centuries. Our enemies are the Zionist colonizers and their backers who insist Palestine belongs to them exclusively.

We Arabs claim deep roots there too."

Two decades ago Palestinians were to be found in United Nations Relief Agency camps at places like Gaza and Jericho, in a forlorn and pitiable state. While Palestinian spokesmen pressed their case in world cap-itals, the loudest voice the world heard was that of terrorists, with whom the word Palestinian came to be associated. Jordan fought a war to curb them. The disintegration of Lebanon was due in part to the thousands of refugees within its borders.

Prospects for peace brightened, however, when President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, most powerful of the Arab countries, made his historic trip to Israel in November 1977. A year later Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin signed the Camp David accords, a framework for the return of the occupied Sinai Peninsula to Egypt.

The former enemies established diplomatic relations and opened mail, telephone, and airline communications.

The Camp David accords also addressed the all-important Palestinian question but left it vague. Sadat insists that any lasting peace depends on an eventual Palestinian homeland in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza. Israel agrees to limited autonomy for those regions, but, fearful of a new and hostile Palestinian state suddenly planted on its borders, insists that Israeli troops must maintain security there.

Crowded Rashidiyah refugee camp, set among orange groves south of the ancient Phoenician port of Tyre in Lebanon, lies on the front lines. Frequent pounding by Israeli military jets and warships seeking PLO targets has war-hardened its population, some 13,700 Palestinians.

At the schoolyard I watched a solemn flag raising. Uniformed ashbal, or lion cubs, stood rigid as color guards briskly ran up the green-white-and-black Palestinian flag.

Ranging in age from 8 to 12, they might have been Cub Scouts— except for the loaded rifles they held at present arms. Behind them stood two rows of girls, zaharat, or little flowers. Same age, same weapons.

Over lunch of flat bread, hummus, yo-gurt, and chicken I commented to my hosts, a group of combat-ready fedayeen, that 30 years of bitter war had settled nothing nor gained the Palestinians one inch of their homeland. Was there no peaceful way to press their cause?

"Yes, and we are doing it. Finally, after 30 years, most countries in the United Nations recognize that we too have rights in Palestine. But we feel that until your country stops its unconditional aid to Israel, we have two choices: to fight, or to face an unmarked grave in exile."

AFTER CROSSING the Allenby Bridge from Amman, I drove across the fertile Jordan Valley through Arab Jericho and past some of the controversial new Jewish settlements: Mitzpe Jericho, Tomer, Maale Adumim, Shilat. Then as I climbed through the steep stony hills to Jerusalem, I saw that it too had changed. A ring of high-rise apartments and offices was growing inexorably around the occupied Arab side of the walled town. Within the wall, too, scores of Arab houses had been leveled during extensive reconstruction.

"Already 64 settlements have been built on the West Bank," said a Christian Palestinian agriculturist working for an American church group in Jerusalem. "And another 10 are planned," he said. Unfolding a copy of the master plan prepared in 1978 by the World Zionist Organization, he read: "Real-izing our right to Eretz-Israel... with or without peace, we will have to learn to live with the minorities...

The Israeli Government has reaffirmed the policy. In Prime Minister Menachem Begin's words: "Settlement is an inherent and inalienable right. It is an integral part of our national security."

"Security" is a word deeply etched into the Israeli psyche. The country has lived for 30 years as an armed camp, always on guard against PLO raids and terrorist bombings.

Whenever such incidents occur, the response is quick: even greater retaliation.

In Jerusalem I met with David Eppel, an English-language broadcaster for the Voice of Israel. "We must continue to build this country. Israel is our lawful home, our des-tiny. We have the determination, and an immense pool of talent, to see it through." His cosmopolitan friends a city plan-ner, a psychology professor, an author gathered for coffee and conversation at David's modern apartment on Jerusalem's Leib Yaffe Road.

Amia Lieblich's book, Tin Soldiers on Jerusalem Beach, studies the debilitating effects almost constant war has had on life in the Jewish state, a nation still surrounded by enemies. As she and her husband kindly drove me to my hotel in Arab Jerusalem afterward, some of that national apprehension surfaced in the writer herself.

"We don't often come over to this part of town," she said. "Especially at night."

I DROVE OUT of the Old City in the dark of morning and arrived a few hours later at the nearly finished Israeli frontier post, whence a shuttle bus bounced me through no-man's-land to the Egyptian ter-minal. As a result of the Egyptian-Israeli treaty, it was possible for the first time since 1948 to travel overland from Jerusalem to Cairo. An Egyptian customs man opened my bags on a card table set up in the sand. I took a battered taxi into nearby El Arish, to a sleepy bank that took 45 minutes to convert dollars into Egyptian pounds, Then 1 hired a Mercedes for the

200-mile run across the northern Sinai des-ert, the Suez Canal, and the Nile Delta. By sundown Cairo was mine.

Despite official government optimism, I found many in Cairo worried that President Sadat's bold diplomatic gestures might fail.

The city was noticeably tense as Israel officially opened its new embassy on Mohi el-Din Abu el-Ez Street in Cairo's Dukki quarter. Black-uniformed Egyptian troops guarded the chancery and nearby intersections as the Star of David flew for the first time in an Arab capital. Across town, police with fixed bayonets were posted every ten feet around the American Embassy. Others were posted at the TV station and the larger hotels. Protests were scattered, mostly peaceful. None disturbed the cadence of the city.

Welcoming ever larger delegations of tourists and businessmen from Europe and the U.S., Cairo was busier than ever-and more crowded. Despite a building boom, many Egyptians migrating from the countryside, perhaps 10,000 a month, still find housing only by squatting among tombs at the City of the Dead, the huge old cemetery on the southeast side of the capital.

Even with the new elevated highway and wider bridge across the Nile, half-hour traffic standstills are common. Commuters arrive at Ramses Station riding even the roofs of trains, then cram buses until axles break.

Cairo smog, a corrosive blend of diesel fumes and hot dust from surrounding des-erts, rivals tear gas.

Despite the rampant blessings of prog-ress, Cairo can still charm. In the medieval Khan el-Khalili bazaar near Cairo's thousand-year-old Al-Azhar University, I sought out Ahmad Saadullah's sidewalk café. I found that 30 piasters (45 cents) still brings hot tea, a tall water pipe primed with tobacco and glowing charcoal, and the latest gossip. The turbaned gentleman on the carpeted bench opposite was unusually talk-ative; we dispensed with weather and the high cost of living and got right to politics:

"Of course I am behind President Sadat, but he is taking a great risk. The Israelis have not fully responded. If Sadat fails, no other Arab leader will dare try for peace again for a generation."

Across town at the weekly Akhbar El-Yom newspaper, one of the largest and most widely read in the Middle East, chief editor Abdel-Hamid Abdel-Ghani drove home that same point.

"What worries me most is that President Sadat's agreement with Israel has isolated Egypt from our brother nations," he told me. "When Saudi Arabia broke with us, it was a heavy loss. The Saudis are our close neighbors. Now they have canceled pledges for hundreds of millions in development aid to Egypt. Some 200,000 Egyptians-teach-ers, doctors, engineers live and work in the kingdom.

"And Saudi Arabia, guardian of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, remains for Muslim Egypt a spiritual homeland."

This magazine was published before my mom was born, and yet the sentiments have basically unchanged. An interesting look at the past, and more proof this didn’t start October 7th. (But imagine my followers already knew that)

[dcdreamblog]

Addition Follow-up Question that hit me right after I hit the Reblog button.

So, hey, the Mystery *Women* got drafted into the Squadron also? How'd they swing that?

By nobody asking the exact question you just did.

For there to have been a problem with it, someone would have had to want to fight it. Nobody did.

I know the idea of "The Draft" has been rightly tarnished by the effect Vietnam had on American culture but let me be perfectly clear: There was NO push back on Article X or its implementation within the Mystery Man community. Certainly not from the superheroines among its number.

(Pinup poster of Wonder Woman (Hippolyta) produced to help sell war bonds, circa 1943)

By 1942 there were dozens of heroines on the street, fighting the good fight the same as their male counterparts. They were taking on the nazis on the wharfs and in the warehouse districts already why would they not want to do it with the direct backing of their peers as well? It's been argued, convincingly I think, that the All Star Squadron was the first FULLY integrated organ of the US government specifically because the superhero community at the time did not question the creed of its membership. It was fully integrated with female members, accepted a black man openly into its ranks and several of its members would in later decades turn out to be various forms of queer.

Not just queer (people have always been queer) but we know from the notes that Tarantula took for his book and published after the fact that the Squadron's membership KNEW many of its members were queer and made no secret of it within their ranks. Allowing those members to express themselves openly within the Squadron's walls.

The Squadron was actually notorious for stonewalling their government backers during the war, refusing to release ANY information about one another even under government threat. J Edgar Hoover made attempts basically against every Squadron member attempting to squeeze them for one another's identities and information on one another and he got NOTHING.

Simply put, if the government had not allowed the heroines into the Squadron. There would have BEEN no Squadron.

[rpgsandbox]

Terry Pratchett's Discworld RPG: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork

A tabletop roleplaying game set on Terry Pratchett's Discworld

"A city like Ankh-Morpork was only two meals away from chaos at the best of times."

Adventures in Ankh-Morpork, the Discworld tabletop roleplaying game, catapults you onto the streets of the Big Wahoonie, and once you've dusted yourself off you can adventure to your heart's content. With imagination and some shiny math rocks at your fingertips, your story on the Disc awaits.

Based on the popular Discworld fantasy series by Sir Terry Pratchett, Adventures in Ankh-Morpork is a tabletop roleplaying game set in its most recognisable city*, complete with Sir Terry's iconic wit, humour, and humanistic satire.

Discworld is a setting that has a special place in our hearts, it is our unbelievable privilege to bring that world to life on tabletops, both physical and virtual, for fans old and new. As a British company, immersed in the style of humour and sensibilities of Sir Terry and the Discworld series, we're looking to build a faithful recreation of Ankh-Morpork for you to roleplay and immerse yourself in.

*What about Lancre and Überwald, I hear you cry? We could've charged you £900, taken six years to deliver this Kickstarter... would you have liked that? We're not selling you pork futures here, or books in potentia. Instead, let's give you an amazing rulebook and sourcebooks, taking our time to deliver you the best treatment of Ankh-Morpork we can**, and then bring another Kickstarter project to life for the other areas of the Disc. We deliver more, sooner, more sustainably, and you can have books and accessories in a more reasonable timeframe each time. If this Kickstarter is a success, then more Kickstarters will follow, no sooner than Autumn 2026.

**Because the gods know it needs it. 

This campaign will fund the publication of rulebooks and accessories for a new edition of a Discworld tabletop roleplaying game. Knowing we wanted to remain true to the look and feel we most recognise, the campaign features a new, original, Collector's Edition* cover by Paul Kidby, who worked closely with Sir Terry to develop the unique illustrative style for Discworld. Neither Kickstarter Core Rulebook will be available in retail, and are exclusive to this crowdfunding campaign and Modiphius.

*It is very important to Management that backers know the Collector's Edition cover is better than the other core rulebook cover. Management wants backers to know that it's a new, original illustration by Paul Kidby, and that it's finished with spot UV varnish to bring out the details. Management also wants backers to know the page edges are gilded in gold, and it features no fewer than two reading ribbons. Management also also wants to make it clear that it won't be available in retail, and is exclusive to this crowdfunding campaign and Modiphius. Management tried to come up with a clever-sounding name for the Collector's Edition that explained all of this, but after several days of struggle and the heroic sacrifice of two whiteboards (and one junior developer), were convinced that 'Collector's Edition' is the most readily understood title.

"Without Narrativium, the cosmos has no story, no purpose, no destination."

Discworld is a unique setting, and it deserves bespoke rules to do it justice; a system that encourages those random silly moments that RPGs and the Discworld novels both embrace so well.

The rules for Adventures in Ankh-Morpork are built on two core premises: 

The Disc has a story it wants to tell, and left alone will spin on much as it has always done.

The players want to change this story to one more to their liking.

The Adventures in Ankh-Morpork roleplaying game is powered by an original set of rules, using a set of very familiar polyhedral dice — complete with a d100, d20, d12, d10, d6, d4 and a d7A (because we can't say it's true name, so let's just call it...) the Narrativium die! The Narrativium system focuses on your roleplay, and elegantly and simply resolves moments of risk and conflict with dice rolls and character-specific traits.

The game lets you create any denizen of the Disc, with the complete freedom to define their background, who they work for, their core beliefs, niches, and quirks. From Dwarfs and Trolls to Golems and Gargoyles, play anyone (or any thing) your imagination can conjure. Play a member of the Watch, or maybe a wizard, even assassins (student), concerned citizens, thieves, beggars, reporters, seamstresses, fools and visitors/tourists.

The RPG is powered by a simple dice roll, comparing your die with the GM's Narrativium die. Whenever you do something that has a chance of failure, you'll follow these simple steps.

Justify the Action Using Traits

GM Determines the Outcome Die

Roll the Outcome Die Against the Narrativium Die

Get Help (optional)

Resolve the Test (not optional)

By picking a trait from your character and using it to justify your chance of success the GM will decide which die you roll - anything from a d4 to a d12. You roll that, while your GM rolls a d7A*. If your outcome die has rolled higher than the GM's Narrativium die, you're successful! But if the Narrativium die is higher, then you've failed, and may now be subject to unforeseen consequences or twists, represented as new traits!

*Avoiding all possible mention of the dice's sides, which is the number between 7 and 9.

The rewards for this Kickstarter will be available in multiple languages, provided for by Modiphius' localisation partners. Make your pledge for the reward tier you would like, and you will be invited to choose your language as you complete your pledge in the pledge manager, after the campaign has ended.

A French edition of the game will be crowdfunded separately by our friends at Arkhane Asylum, at the beginning of next year. If you are interested in the French edition, do not pledge for this campaign, and instead visit Arkhane Asylum's page for more information.

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Kickstarter campaign ends: Thu, November 7 2024 8:00 PM UTC +00:00

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