#ballet office japan

[lovelyballetandmore]

Célestin Boutin | Yui Sugawara | Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal | Artistic Ballet Gala 2022 | Japan

[duhragonball]

Neon Genesis Evangelion 17

"A solar eclipse. The cosmic ballet... goes on."

"Sir, the eclipse was last week."

"No, you're supposed to say 'Does anyone want to switch seats?'"

"I ask that every time we take the train, sir."

"No, it's a Simpsons bit. How have you never seen the monorail episode?"

"No one ever wants to switch seats with me..."

This one opens with the council of crappy old men questioning Misato about the events of the previous episode. They wanted to talk to Shinji directly, but Misato refuses to allow this due to his precarious mental state. I accidentally watched this scene early, because I thought it was Episode 16 and I clicked the wrong thing. So these guys are asking about Shinji getting swallowed up, Eva and all, by an Angel, and they want to know if it was trying to communicate with him telepathically. "What the fuck happened?" I asked, and then I realized I was on the wrong one.

So I guess I can relate to these old farts desperately trying to make sense of what's happening in this show. For them it's real life, and NERV isn't exactly forthcoming about the details. Hell, a lot of NERV personnel don't even understand any of this. Shinji was inside that Angel, maybe talking to it, and he has no idea what happened to him. The old men question Misato by proxy, and they ask some good questions. But Misato's answers mostly boil down to "I don't know, and neither could anyone else."

Like, the Angel probably contacted Shinji's mind. I think that's as valid a theory as any. Maybe the Eva was the one talking to him, but if so, it picked a strange time to do it. But I'm just speculating about what might have happened in a fictional cartoon. For the characters, this all actually happened, and they have no idea if the Angels are intelligent, if they recognize humans as intelligent, if they have the means or motivation to communicate, etc. The old man council that talks to Gendo is made up of the most powerful bigwigs in the world, from what I gather. And they only know just enough to be terrified. I can understand how they desperately wish they could just talk to Shinji and ask him what he knows, but then they'd be even more terrified to learn he's even more confused than they are.

All Gendo will say about the matter is that the Angels appear to be getting smarter, which was something I picked up on a while back. The Third Angel just rampaged its way into Tokyo-3. The Fifth Angel had a more coherent plan, and it seemed to know exactly where to point that big drill. The 11th Angel actually made it inside the NERV base and nearly won. But the 12th didn't actually attack. It's like it waited for the Evas to come to it, just so it could trap them inside itself and... do whatever it did. It seems likely that it sacrificed itself just to complete that task. If that's true, then it isn't just acting independently, as some of the characters believe. If I'm right, the 12th Angel was setting up a strategy that will be carried on by the 13th, and so on.

Speaking of the 13th Angel, did you know NERV has a second branch in Nevada? No? Well, it doesn't matter, because it's not there anymore. It mysteriously vanished, along with thousands of staff, a new Eva, Unit-04, and everything else in an 89km radius. This wasn't an explosion, so Ritsuko theorizes that this was accomplished by the same "Sea of Dirac" effect the 12th Angel used to swallow up Shinji. So it's a safe bet that an Angel took out NERV-02 in a single stroke.

There was also another Eva being built in the United States, Unit 03, and I guess that one was already completed, so they're shipping it to NERV's home office in Japan. But Unit 04 was special, I guess. They were installing some new engine in it, and that's all gone now. Ritsuko begins to despair, like she's worried that anything less than five Evas won't be enough to survive what's coming.

Gendo, however, seems confident that the NERV base in Tokyo-3 is all they need, and Unit 01 is the only Eva they need. Unit 04 and the second branch were unexpected losses, to be sure, but he sees them as being of no consequence. So why did NERV bother building them in the first place?

I think I'm starting to get the picture here. I don't know what they're talking about when they refer to the "Dead Sea Scrolls", but it sounds like a set of predictions about future events, and NERV's mission is to navigate humanity through some predicted crisis. But Gendo seems to be the only one who really understands how any of this works. Ritsuko and Clownshoes seem to have some vague grasp of his plan, and maybe Rei knows a thing or two, since she seems to be an important part of it, but I doubt any of them have the complete picture. Then you have characters like the crappy old men, Misato, and Kaji, who know just enough to be concerned.

So I think the NERV branch in the U.S., plus whatever facility they had in Europe, were originally set up as failsafes, in case Tokyo-3 ever failed. But as the plan has progressed, it's become clear that those foreign offices only continue to exist to placate frightened governments. The U.S. insisted on being involved in building Units 03 and 04, and Gendo let the baby have their bottle. He doesn't even need those American Evas, he just let them work on it so they'd have something to do while he handled the important work.

That S2 engine was somewhat important, but this doesn't bother Gendo either, since the designs are still on record in Germany, so they can always build another.

Gendo and Ritsuko discuss the arrival of Eva Unit 03 while they look at a "dummy plug". Basically they built an entry plug with a computer recording of Rei's brain patterns. The idea is to load this thing, empty, into an Eva, and it will activate without a pilot. Ritsuko is skeptical that the Eva will be of much use without a human to operate it, but Gendo doesn't care. As long as it merely activates, that'll be enough for him.

However, the Dummy Plug isn't ready for use just yet, so they still need a pilot for Unit 03, which means they have to recruit the Fourth Child. So is this what Rei's been doing inside this contraption they're looking at? Is it recording her brainwaves to upload into the dummy plug?

But how can they locate the Fourth Child in time? After all, there are very few humans with the right parameters to be compatible Eva pilots. That's why the Marduk Institute was created, to carefully screen potential candidates from all over the world-- ha ha just kidding, there is no Marduk Institute. They put all the likely pilots in the same school in Tokyo-3. And they already have a guy picked out, it's Toji Suzuhara.

I'm skipping around a little, but Misato finds the whole thing fishy, because they just happened to get a Fourth Child lined up right when Unit 03 was ready to be delivered, so she asked Ritsuko about it and Ritsuko was evasive, saying the official paperwork from Marduk would be delivered tomorrow. So Misato asks Kaji what he knows, since he's secretly working for the Japanese government to spy on NERV, and he tells her there never was Marduk Institute or whatever. NERV identifies and selects the Eva pilots themselves, and they use "Marduk" to make it look like there's some convoluted process to it.

I think it probably also struck Misato suspicious that the Fourth Child just happens to be living in Tokyo-3, attending the same classes as the First, Second, and Third Chidren. It's like they already knew he was pilot material from the beginning, and they've been keeping him close by just in case the need arose.

A bunch of people moved out of Tokyo-3 after the battle in episode 2. But Suzuhara and Big Rigg Mahoney stayed, and I'm pretty sure that was because they had family who couldn't leave the city. It's very likely that NERV quietly arranged for certain families to be tied to the city, so that their children would be here when needed.

Ha ha! Look at Ritsuko's coffee mug! That's adorable! Cat cat cat cat!

Anyway, there's a scene where Suzuhara has to deliver papers from the school to Rei, since she's been absent for a while. He doesn't want to go alone, so he asks Shinji to accompany him, although I think that one girl with the pigtails was hoping he'd ask her to join him. Suzuhara is amazed to see a girl's apartment look so dirty, but Shinji's been here before, so he's probably just relieved to see she threw out all the bloody bandages. He cleans up her trash, and when Rei finally comes in, she seems genuinely touched by this gesture. She even thanks Shinji, then later reflects on her words of gratitude. She never even said thank you to Gendo before, and she actually likes and respects him.

Also, Kaji reveals his secret hobby to Shinji: growing watermelons. I have no idea what the point of this is, except that gardening is both a source of pleasure and toil, and while Kaji finds the experience rewarding, Shinji can only think of the pain involved. Well, pain and hardship have some value in the grand scheme of things. As Kaji says, suffering can make it easier for you to be kinder to others.

So you might be wondering where Big Rigg Mahoney's been this whole time? Well, he was off on a trip. I think he toured some old battleship or something. Anyway, as soon as he comes back, Suzuharu gets summoned to the principal's office, and Big Rigg Mahoney's like "What'd you do now?" Ha ha! It's funny because he doesn't know his friend is getting drafted to fight in the robot war!

See, this episode doesn't actually come out and say Suzuhara's the Fourth Child. I mean, it's pretty obvious from the way they keep cutting to Suzuhara after conversations about the new pilot. But they never spell it out. I already know, though, becuase when I was looking up these guys' names so I could tag them on this blog, I ended up finding out Suzuhara is not only chosen to be the Unit 03 pilot, but he also dies later on. So that's why I didn't want to go any further to look up the other kid's names, and that's why I started calling him Big Rigg Mahoney.

Ironically, Big Rigg Mahoney wishes he could be the next Eva pilot. He asks Shinji to recommend him to Misato, but Shinji doesn't have that kind of pull. Neither of them know Suzuhara got the job yet, but when they do find out, Big Rigg Mahoney would probably be kind of envious. Hell, for all we know, Big Rigg Mahoney might actually get the job later on. I refuse to look it up and find out! But I do know there's going to be an opening soon...

But Suzuhara does know he got the job, and the look on his face says it all.

He's still sitting there hours later, and the school rep, who tried to go with him to Rei's place earlier, asks him to finish up his afterschool duties, but he's too bummed out. She mentions how he buys school lunches because he has no one to cook for him, and she says she cooks for her sisters and always makes too much, so...

Suzuhara offers to help her dispose of her leftovers, which is kind of this weird thing where she's doing him a favor, but neither of them want to make it look like a favor. This is powerful stuff, very subtle. Suzuhara's not looking forward to this Eva stuff, maybe because he's sat in the plugsuit with Shinji during a battle, and because his sister is still in the hospital from the Third Angel battle. Oh, right, he visits her twice a week because the rest of his family can't get out there as often, so if he gets killed (ha ha! "if".) there's be no one to visit her at all. I think he's seeing Pigtails here as though for the first time. Before, Suzuhara had his whole life ahead of him, but now he realizes he needs to make whatever connections he can in life, while there's still time to do it.

Meanwhile, Asuka tries to bug Kaji while he's working, and she find out about the new Eva Pilot. She doesn't take this well at all, which... I mean, Asuka never takes anything well, but I think in this case she's upset because Suzuhara being the next pilot just proves there's nothing exceptional about the job. In Germany, she probably believed--and might have been told-- that her compatibility with Unit 02 was a product of her skills and intellect. And she gradually came to recognize Rei and Shinji as peers, albeit begrudgingly. I mean, Rei was the first, and Shinji has the combat experience and stats to back him up.

But to Asuka, Suzuhara is just Some Guy. He didn't go to a fancy school; he's not a savant True Believer like Rei, and he's not the miraculous son of the NERV Director like Shinji. Suzuhara is just some dude she goes to school with, so how does he rate? Well, it's Episode 17, and I still don't know how Eva pilots are chosen, but I'm pretty sure it's just some sort of brainwave pattern that only so many people have. As long as the readouts are in-spec, they could slap anyone in there. Shinji had never seen an Eva before and he survived. Hell, NERV even has plans to run Evas with no pilot, save for a computer simulation of Rei's brain. It really doesn't matter who they put in there as long as it runs.

So naturally, this is huge blow to Asuka's pride. She doesn't understand. What is there to understand, Asuka? You thought you were a pilot, but all you really are is an ignition key.

And that's the episode. Once again, a real tour-de-force, which makes me wonder what the hell was going on with those first 13 episodes. At least now I understand why they've been doing that Rebuild of Evangelion thing. As popular as NGE is, it's an uneven production at best.

And the next episode looks like it's gonna be bleak as fuck. Ha ha! Misato promising fan service in that same cheery voice gets darker and darker every time she says it! This is gonna be terrible! Now this is what I signed up for!

[foster-the-world]

Blueberry pediatrics

When rebel had her stomach bug in Japan I signed up for blueberry pediatrics. It's $18 a month and includes unlimited tele-health visits for any number of children you have. There was also a $35 sign-up fee but that provided a pulse oximeter, a thermometer and Smart Otoscope. Its not supposed to replace a pediatrician. All of my kids still have one of those - different physicians because of foster care, post foster care and non foster care kid requirements/needs. But this is perfect when I know exactly what the kid has and/or when we can't get into the doctor's office.

In this case I need a quick prescription refill for baby boys inhaler. We have his nebulizer so it was not an emergency but also nothing I needed to go to the doctor for. They had me on a call with a doctor within 15 minutes.

I wish I could get the same thing for myself. I hate going to the doctor when I know its the same UTI I get every few years. I know I need antibiotics.

I really wish baby boy didn't have asthma. We are lucky its not as severe as some cases but its still not fun to hear your kid breathing heavy/coughing like crazy. It also doesn't go well with his other sensory seeker diagnosis. The kid runs around like a maniac regardless of whether it will cause him to hack away or not.

Happy to be home. I missed my babies. Baby boy was ramped up with excitement. Rebel scored a goal at soccer.

This week both girls have Ballet Hispanico performances at school. The program only goes through first grade so it's Bee's last year :( On Friday the teacher said some kids wanted to audition for a speaking part. We knew Rebel would be on the list. She's totally the type to audition. Bee could care less and wouldn't waste her time memorizing a line. "Afrobeats is a diverse and fascinating style of dance originating predominantly in Sub Saharan Africa." We've all got it memorized because she practiced her little heart out. She told me she picked that line because only one other kid did. As you can see, she's also the type to game the system to her favor. I don't think she'll be too upset if she doesn't get a part. Or at least I hope not.

[talenlee]

Story Pile: Lycoris Recoil

New Post has been published on PRESS.exe: Story Pile: Lycoris Recoil

Lycoris Recoil is a 2022 action thriller anime about a pair of girls working to prevent terror attacks in Tokyo, while they get to know one another and become ＧＯＯＤ ＦＲＩＥＮＤＳ, while a plot happens around them. You know the type, right?

I am going to talk about things all through the series, I am going to spoil major twists, I am going to Talk About This Show. This serves as a spoiler warning, but also a content warning; this is a show that features guns, lots of guns, police shootings, medical tension, terrorism, bad dads, and dead probably-gays. It’s an action thriller anime set in a terrorism-wracked Japan, don’t imagine you’re getting something else just because there are girls on the posters.

Lycoris Recoil is your typical form of a Cute Girls With A Special Interest genre, where that special interest is covert ops counterterrorism. The story starts following Takina Inoue, a Lycoris working the exciting job of protecting Japan’s peace through missions she’s assigned from the secret organisation Direct Attack. But wouldn’t ya know it, on her first mission, she messes up! Aw beans!

In the tradition of failing on mission one, she then gets kicked from her on-the-fast-track-for-promotion, top-of-the-class, you-haven’t-messed-up-once style status to the obligatory you-have-messed-up-and-lost-everything status, resulting in her getting bounced from the central offices with the nice water cooler and the sodas in the fridge, down to the middle of nowhere, to work in the LycoReco cafeteria alongside another Messed Up Bad Lycoris, Chisato Nishikigi. They’ve got no budget, no support, their coordinator is old (like, thirty), and how good can this other loser be?

Based on that, Takina has to just overcome this mess up, do the missions right, and get herself out of this slump! It’s the classic setup for your come-from-behind loser story!

Except her coworker Chisato isn’t here because she sucks, she’s here because she’s a walking talking john woo movie in spanx. Takina is not the main character of this story, the one good player who has to learn to relax as she helps elevate a group of losers, she’s the eye-level character for observing the LycoReco staff and particularly Chisato. Chisato, you see, is here because she, also, screwed up, kinda. Direct Action thinks she screwed up, because she didn’t kill someone they wanted her to kill. In fact, she doesn’t kill anyone they want her to kill. Chisato uses specialised bullets that only ever disable or stun people, (which yes, is silly, considering these bullets do go through metal and wood), but this also lets her do moves that are cool as hell, and lets them show her unloading multiple shots into hard targets and makes the gun less ‘instant kill’ and more ‘balletic fight’ element.

Oh and she’s bulletproof.

Not that she can’t be hurt by bullets, but that anyone who shoots at her misses. Anyone. She’s so good at Guns, she can avoid being shot at by just observing the way the shooter behaves (which yes, is sillier, because she does it even when she can’t see the shooter). Chisato is simply the best at this particular genre of ‘doing things with guns,’ and that’s why Direct Action hasn’t gotten rid of her.

It’s not that Takina isn’t good, it’s that Chisato is categorically better than everyone else, and freed from fears of failure and the threat of mortality in most situations, it means that she gets to consider Direct Action, the project, in terms of its goals and ambitions, and make choices, rather than just comply with this organisation that holds over you all your opportunity for advancement. Chisato, in this context, decides that she wants to not kill people, and fight to protect people.

And that’s your kick. That’s the story.

Now, how gay is it?

When we talk about queerness in anime there’s a lot of different systems ratcheting into place that can make people heavily invested in the genre look absolutely bonkers.

This guy grabs this other guy’s sleeve and pulls on it, with his eyes not visible? Oh wow, they’re fucking, that’s incredible.

Anime experts

This can be extraordinarily weird when you recognise that there are openly and tangibly queer anime, anime that Asks And Tells in the most blatant way. If nothing else, there’s a lot of hentai studios out there. When there are openly and canonically, not-kidding no-really queer media out there like Yuri on Ice, the fact that a large portion of the supposed queer representation in anime is always at best implied or created by extension of existing ideas. Ranma 1/2 is a seminally important queer text made by a woman who definitely wasn’t trying to make one and is probably also a homophobe (just based on statistics and age). I won’t name names because I don’t want to deal with people who are permanently brainboiled in online discourse about how ‘no really, this is obviously queer’ when I describe that a lot of queerness in anime has to be implied.

Now this is in part because anime is a really conservative industry. Not the art form – the industry. The people signing cheques are paying for genre media for merchandising, and that means that mostly, you get a lot of stuff that looks like it can be monetised in similar ways and the quality of the media itself is less important than what it is. Anime is not a rich industry and yet, the people who are paying money to get the anime made tend to be people who make conservative choices and who want to appeal to an audience they like.

In anime, of course. Manga has the whole doujin scene and lower production costs and that is a space where queer shit is really everywhere.

With that in mind, then, how queer is Lycoris Recoil?

Gunna level with you: We don’t get a kiss. We don’t get a confession. We don’t get admission of the homosexualities. What we get instead is merely in the ‘deniably adjacent’ space. It’s not in the next category over – you know, the ‘real reach’ style where characters just engaging with one another is enough to declare them canonically yuri – but instead, there’s a bunch of signifiers that look in aggregate like the story is guiding towards these two girls banging.

In the same way that Sk8 The Infinity is an incredibly gay show that features nothing gay, Lycoris Recoil is a really gay anime. The girls go on dates. They dress up together. They inspect each other’s underwear. They work together, they fight together, they take care of each other, they move in together after one date and become roommates and they learn each other’s little tells. They go to the aquarium and reference other queer anime. They run away to Hawaii together to run a food truck. And yeah, you may point out that none of that is canonically gay, and you’re right!

There’s also the way Chisato has two male mentors who the story really implies are banging. If Captain Kirk was getting laid in Star Trek, then Chisato’s dads were fucking in this.

There’s this image, that chances are, you’ve seen before, which is an optical illusion, sorta. If you look at the image one way, you see two people facing each other, about to kiss, or talking to one another, or inspecting itself in the mirror – just a bunch of different interpretations. If you look at it in another way, you can see a silhouette of a candlestick or vase or something like that. This is an enduring image in a variety of kid’s books, and it’s often framed with this misformed question ‘what does this depict?’

Because it depicts both, as far as you can perceive it. The nature of semiotics means that the message being decoded is part of the message – I might parse it as something else entirely, like seeing maybe a river inlet from above, or a date stamp, all just because those are shapes I more powerfully associate like this.

This image presents you with multiple things that are not related to one another, despite sharing a frame and boundaries. What matters is how you’re looking at it, what details are standing out and meant to represent a surface while you engage with it. As long as you have it in mind and consider its importance, you’re left with different impressions and, like this illusion, if you blink, you might find yourself in a totally different frame where the same objects stand out to you starkly in how they present the same visual information.

These ideas are shaped by the same boundaries and the same frame, but they are not the same ideas, and the ideas do not have to have anything to do with one another. I want to direct your attention to this image, to this vase, to this image that is faces and a river and a candlestick, because Lycoris Recoil is a thing, and another thing, and another thing, and none of these things have to have anything to do with one another.

First of all, perhaps the first reason I like this anime, the easiest to see, the easiest to grasp: This series is rad and full of stuff people like me find obviously rad. It’s got sick gunplay and stylish action sequences, and they’re juuuust long enough that the tension exhalation at the end is a huge relief. It’s so fast and it doesn’t pad that out the way that anime often pads out combat sequences, but it doesn’t get confusing!

And then it’s about this walking talking war of a woman who is rad, and she has a bestie, who contrasts with her and they’re probably crushing on one another, you know, the way that other girls comment on them asking if they’re gay? And Chisato has these great ideas, these things that form how she approaches the world, like how she talks about how important it is to do what feels honest to her, and then capping that off by saying she’s going to go beat up the bully that was mean to Takina.

The greater spread of the series, though, it doesn’t just rely on these small moments. There’s this greater, spreading idea about secret organisations and ideology of the wealthy that distribute their mercies at wild and random, and how that creates ideologically framed obligations, and those obligations are at the behest of the kind of people who buy into the random distributions of secret wealth. It’s this great little spilled wad of spider silk where if you buy into it, you’re stuck, you’re tangled up, and if you stand outside it, it’s just a blob. You can boil your brains in ‘well of course this is a reasonable moral quandrary’ and then the second you stop buying into the idea of it, you can realise that’s fucking nonsense.

Chisato stands apart from this ideology and its demand, and then refuses to be lied into an ideology. There’s a worldview this moral quandrary demands, and she rejects that worldview as she rejects the quandrary. Chisato refuses to kill, and when forced by conspiracy to despair and kill in order to save herself, she refuses, because her own moral framework rejects the premise of the conspiracy. She’s willing to walk away from everything and die rather than kill against her morals.

That’s awesome.

Then there’s this other thing, another way to look at the vase, where this story is about how fucked up it is the level of social control we exert on women in general?

The universe of Lycoris Recoil is one where the social controls and standards women are held to is just a hyper-real version of the one we already have. Women are used because women get to be invisible and they get to be invisible because they are meaningless – because nobody would expect danger from a schoolgirl, even in a world with guns. This creates this contrasting pair of demands; women are the most dangerous thing in the world (really), but also they are helpless because they exist to obey the orders of the social order (also really).

The appearances and presentation of women are a repeatedly examined detail. How they dress, how they are allowed to present, the ways that they are supposed to look and the ways they’re meant to behave. They drill on things, and the opening presents waves of these girls, all made to look like one another, moving in a cloud, onto the task of what we already know is sometimes fatal and almost always results in someone dying. The world exists as it is and gets to support itself entirely because of how it controls women…

… and women are more complex than that.

(I mean, the idea they’re schoolgirls is also fanciful, I mean when you have two jobs and your own apartment and no parents taking care of your bills, telling me you’re a teenager is a goddamn lie, but whatever).

Chisato doesn’t want to be a Lycoris, she’s good at it, and she likes doing it, but it’s not her big dream. Left to her own devices, notice how she keeps wanting to do things like give people food and hang out with her (not-really-)girlfriend. Her desire is to do good, to take care of people. That’s enough for her, that’s all she wants and she’s a great hero who exists to press out against this system that tells her how to be what she is. She doesn’t want to abandon being a girl, or cute, or fun, or happy – she’s okay with some of the things she’s had imposed on her – but she doesn’t want them imposed.

Oh and then finally, most damningly, holy shit, this world is a fascist dictatorship and the narrative doesn’t think that’s a problem. These characters are kill squads! They disappear terrorists, but they don’t actually make things safer, because there are still police around, and those police are terrible at de-escalation. It’s a little second-amendmenty of the narrative to be all ‘look, just give people a gun and the power of the gun will compel the world to change,’ but then it doesn’t seem to think that’s a good thing.

But also, this whole structure that lets Chisato and Takina get into these super cool fights where they get to look cool rely on a world full of violent crime in a fascist police state that’s killing and removing people extrajudicially in the name of preventing terrorism but which nonetheless still has an ongoing supply of non-stop terrorists to have to deal with. Terrorism isn’t a natural phenomenon, it’s a response to deprivation and political disempowerment and factors of radicalisation.

Know what might radicalise a population? Living in a fascist police state!

And then at the end of it all… it’s not like they get rid of it. The characters get out of it, that’s great, but they don’t fix it. After all the fighting for big ideas and the safety and wellbeing for people, they don’t stop the threat represented by a system that can periodically murder people without any due recourse.

I can understand the feeling at the heart of Lycoris Recoil with its seemingly ‘whatcha gunna do’ neoliberal wishy-washy ending. The problems – in my life and in the story – are big and vast and I cannot address them; I’m not nearly as badass as either of these girls, even if it’s easy to imagine being able to do what they do should make you powerful enough to change things. I can’t even find people in meaningful positions of power – the Lycoris have an entire death squad designed to take them out if they get out of line, and the story about toppling that structure may involve a re-envisioning of the world that doesn’t have room for cool things in this setting. Like, the whole story is about how cool Lycoris are but it’s also about how the Lycoris shouldn’t exist.

It is, as always, easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.

It all just depends on what part of the vase I focus on. If I’m looking at the Lycoris organisation and the stated facts of the setting where occasionally they disappear people, this place sucks. If I look at Takina, I think about how unfair it is that you can work as hard as possible to the extent that your identity itself suffers and you’ll still never be treated fairly under The System that tells you the problem is you didn’t work hard enough. If I’m looking at Chisato, I think about how ironclad devotion to your ideals and a willingness to do violence to protect them is, itself, a way to build something or resist the very corruption that brings you into existence.

I don’t think Lycoris Recoil was ever made to be this intentionally deep. I think it was made to sell merchandise of cute girls and airsoft guns. I think that’s why I find myself liking it so much: I don’t feel like this is a series with a specific point as much as a narrative that wants to include things it likes, and that inclusion has created this strange, misshapen vase.

Time to time, I am reminded of this tweet:

me: i am fundementally opposed to the monarchy and the church as ruling powers. history is a record of their atrocities

my therapist: that’s fair

me: but i love it when the chosen king reclaims his divine sword and leads his army in glorious battle

my therapist: who doesn’t

And I think about it so much more when I think about Lycoris Recoil.

I love this anime, I love these characters, I enjoy the story, I love how it stands up for big ideas it believes in. It seems amazing at the things it’s trying to do a good job of, and it’s full of cool things for characters to do.

And I turn the vase a little more as I set it down.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#Anime

[shadowqueen402]

Hiya! What would the NEW stages look like now? (Thanks to the result of both hiccups)

Glad you asked! I'll even add my oc's stage!

Jose Gallard: In the first part of his stage, it resembles a pink and purple sparkly fairytale theme. In the second part of his stage, it takes place in his damaged farm with lots of tornadoes. And finally, in the third part of his stage, a very expensive and fancy city.

Fiona Demetria: In the first part of her stage, it resembles the inside of a gothic mansion. In the second part of her stage, it takes place underwater, but it is dark and filled with shadowy dragons. In the third part of her stage, it takes place in a football stadium.

Yuri Brand: In the first part of her stage, it is a city street with lots of motorcycles of various designs. In the second part of her stage, it's an abandoned school. In the third part of her stage, it's an elegant backyard with a tea party being held.

Haoyu Chang: In the first part of his stage, it's a rapper's mansion with loud rap music blasting. In the second part of his stage, it's a hill that has multiple airplanes crashing down when you'd least expect it. In the third part of his stage, it's a really huge kitchen.

Sana Hudson: In the first part of her stage, it's a dance club. In the second part of her stage, it's her forest that is now in ruins. And in the third part of her stage, it's a large nurse's office. (And yes, it does have an ultrasound.)

Cass Milligan: In the first part of her stage, it's a large and beautiful garden. In the second part of her stage, it's the clocktower again but with rather speeding cars that don't stop. In the third part of her stage, it's an ice skating rink.

Cal Suresh: In the first part of his stage, it's a tropical forest. In the second part of his stage, it takes place in a gigantic chessboard with the gigantic chess pieces attack intruders. In the third part of his stage, it resembles a part of Japan.

Iben Bia: In the first part of her stage, it resembles the inside of an elegant mansion. In the second part of her stage, there is snow everywhere and tombstones appear. In the third part of her stage, pyramids are seen in the background.

Attilio Caccini: In the first part of his stage, mattresses, cushions, and blankets are everywhere. In the second part of his stage, it's Christmas Rose Park but Princess Merry is seen with someone else. In the third part of his stage, it's in a basketball court.

Lucy Wong: In the first part of her stage, it's in a ballet studio. In the second part of her stage, it's back in her art exhibition, but every painting is pitch black. In the third part of her stage, it's in a concert.

Eis Glover: In the first part of his stage, it's in a farm with the farm animals. In the second part of his stage, it takes place in a burning city. In the third part of his stage, it's a temple that has a bunch of precious gems inside.

Bruce Stone: In the first part of his stage, stuffed animals, building blocks, and other baby toys lay strewn about. In the second part of his stage, it's his hometown but it's covered in litter. In the third part of his stage, it resembles an animal shelter with puppies and kittens.

Aria Montgomery: In the first part of her stage, it resembles a Bollywood dance club. In the second part of her stage, rain pours down heavily in a cemetery. In the third part of her stage, it resembled Moscow, Russia and it's snowing heavily.

[boricuacherry-blog]

Who murdered the Miyazawa family? Was it a disgruntled skater? A contract killer? For a grandmother and a retired police chief, there is no closure without answers.

The end of the year is one of the most momentous occasions in Japan, a chance to celebrate a fresh start and welcome new beginnings. It was a frosty winter's night in Setagaya, Tokyo when eight-year-old Niina, her younger brother Rei and their parents Mikio and Yasuko were at home, preparing for the festivities. But the Miyazawa family would never celebrate that day.

All four were brutally murdered on December 30, 2000 in a crime that shocked Japan.

Police knew so much about the killer - everything except who he is and why he committed such a violent crime.

He left his DNA everywhere.

He left clothes at the scene.

He left the murder weapon.

He used the victims' computer.

He ate at least four ice creams from their freezer.

And he stayed inside the house for hours as the family lay dead.

Almost 250,000 investigators have worked on this case, receiving more than 15,000 tip-offs from the public.

But nearly two decades later, officers are seemingly no closer to solving the crime.

Niina was a clever and active young girl. The eight-year-old was in second grade at school and a year ahead in her studies. Her paternal grandmother Setsuko fondly remembers how much she loved ballet.

"Niina loved to show me her moves. She was just a bright and adorable child," she said.

Niina's six-year-old brother Rei lived with a mental disability, but his parents surrounded him with love and support. Their father, Mikio, worked for a marketing company and their mother Yasuko was a teacher.

Takeshi Tsuchida was the police chief when the Miyazawa family was found murdered in December 2000. He was the chief officer at the Seijyo Police station, the force tasked with investigating the family's murder. Although he has been retired for 11 years, he is still unofficially working the case.

"When I think about the brutality in the way he murdered the four, I just wonder, how could a sane person carry out such an extreme crime?" he said.

"He slashed them from above the chest to the face as if he tormented them. It was extremely brutal. And the way he finished them off in the very end...[it was so horrific] we couldn't show these scars to the devastated victims' families. There are no other cases in which the victims have been cut up like this."

Police believe the attacker continued to stab Niina and Yasuko far beyond the point at which they had died [having killed Rei and Mikio first].

Some officers believe the killer climbed up a tree, removed a screen and then entered the open window of the second floor bathroom. But the exact point of entry is still not clear. Their home backed on to Soshigaya Park, giving the killer several possible points of entry. Their home was behind a skate park, separated only by a fence. Grandmother Haruko [maternal grandmother] who lived next door at the time of the murders, initially told police she had unlocked the door using her spare key [the family wasn't answering her calls because the killer had cut the phone lines], but in her later years was not so sure. This has made it much harder to confirm exactly how the killer entered and exited. They lived on a street where all but six houses had been demolished, because of developers.

However, they have the killer's DNA, which revealed the killer was male and potentially mixed-race, most likely of Korean or Chinese heritage, with a mother of European background, probably from the Adriatic. But because the police cannot work out the motivation for the killer, police cannot narrow their focus.

[mad-starling]

“My parents didn’t give me a choice; they loved me and they wanted a better life for me. I love them, but, I won’t shed a tear at their funeral.”

Sabrina was a Starling inside and out. She committed herself to the organization designed with a sole mission, to protect Queen and country. 

THE STARLINGS

Established: 1960 - Present

Founded by Queen Elizabeth and Prime Minister Harold Wilson, the Starlings were a special operations taskforce with a single purpose; to infiltrate, collect intelligence and neutralize their target.

With the Cold War leaving many countries braced for nuclear attack, the Queen Mother and Prime Minister determined they needed a countermeasure should the threat become imminent.

When a member of the United Nations was killed by a Black Widow agent, the Starlings’ mission shifted from defensive tactics, to killing Hydra and Red Room operatives. While their mission was to protect the country and its allies, the Queen and Prime Minister realized the only way they’d combat the danger, was to infiltrate and neutralize the enemy at its heart.

Recruitment was a challenge. Queen Elizabeth insisted recruitment be voluntary, however, the Prime Minister argued it could compromise the secrecy of the agency.

By 1965, recruitment was in full swing. They selected men and women who came from lower income families; aiming to not only boost public moral, but also, believing families in poverty would be eager to join in exchange for the benefits and hefty compensation.

Sabrina Tyler

The Starling 

Sabrina Tyler was born on October 1st, 1984. Her parents owned a hole in the wall corner market. With the Cold War bringing economic insecurity the family barely scraped by. Sabrina was loved and had dreams of becoming a doctor.

However, she abandoned that dream over time as her grades weren’t good. Her aspirations and goals changed on a whim. She was energetic, bright, and determined. From doctor to fashion model, Sabrina’s eyes gazed at the stars with ambition.

She struggled in school and her parents couldn’t afford the tutoring she needed to excel. Still, they insisted she finish and go to college in spite of her grades. As she grew older, Sabrina became rebellious and college became an after thought to her free spirited nature.

Her parents didn’t budge. They feared she wouldn’t make it such uncertain times. After many sleepless nights and arguing Sabrina, now 15, was sent to the Starlings’ Institute to serve her country. It was a painful decision for her parents, and proved harder on Sabrina.

She tried to run away many times. Each time she ran, she was found and returned. Eventually, Sabrina accepted her role within their “family.”

Sabrina trained with her allies every day from sunrise to sunset. By the time she was 25, she was sent on her first highly classified mission. She was tasked to kill a Hydra officer who had sensitive intelligence. She was successful in her mission and would go on to complete high profile missions.

After she and three other agents killed several Red Room agents, Sabrina and her unit were captured by Hydra and sent to Russia’s deadliest corrections facility, IK-6.

There she and the agents spent over 10 years there. The conditions were cruel and monstrous. Several of Sabrina’s unit faced torture and death. The Starlings’ chief administrator Sarah Jones, appealed to the Prime Minister for a deal to free them.

The Prime Minister and Queen denied the request, tensions between the UK and Russia were high. Supervisory agent Sarah Jones didn’t relent and instead took matters in her own hands. She couldn’t risk the mission backfiring. She  pulled strings and called in several favors. Eventually, she sent in her best and deadliest assassin,

Mei Song

The False Widow

Mei Song was born in Okinawa Japan, to a Chinese tailor and an Okinawan businessman. She was passionate about dancing and dreamed of being a professional ballet dancer. Mei vaguely recalls her recruitment, having been 10 when she was taken. Her dream to be a ballet dancer came true, only it wasn’t in the traditional sense. Her dances were to hone her craft as a skilled assassin. 25 years and several completed missions later, Mei would defect from the Red Room after a mission took her life.

Mei was sent to assassinate President Ronald Regan. When the attempt failed, she was shot dead by the secret service. Other Black Widow agents were able to resuscitate her, though her condition was touch and go for the next 8 weeks.

After her brush with death, Mei defected and became a freelance contract for hire. Her allies in the Red Room now had a target on her back. She lived on the run, unable to shake her title as a former Black Widow.

Mei was offered a second chance. Agent Sarah Jones came to her for help. Determined to rescue her agents from IK-6′s facility, Jones pulled Mei into the fold as the first former Red Room agent.

 May was an expert marksman and ranged combatant, though it was just one of her key skillsets.

She lead the elite group of agents in a rescue operation. The mission was successful with limited casualties. Mei, who considered herself a freelance contract killer, reluctantly joined the Starlings.

Sabrina wasn’t the same after being rescued from IK-6. For weeks she didn’t speak, holding the 1,000 mile stare. She was put on active leave and sent to a clinic where she received intense trauma treatment. It helped some but many of the Starlings could see Sabrina’s mind seemed “broken.” When asked about the events in IK-6, Sabrina would evade the question. 

Sabrina and Mei regularly went on missions together. The two developed an inseparable bond, one that couldn’t easily be defined. However, Mei also saw Sabrina’s mind was deteriorating. Sabrina became ruthless in her kills. The times she’d interrogated an enemy, Mei couldn’t stomach it. She worried Sabrina was becoming a threat.

Over time, Sabrina became fixated on the missions; relishing in the hunt of the missions. Mei and the other Starlings soon learned the depths of Sabrina’s 10 year sentence and the torture she endured. They determined, Sabrina wasn’t fit to continue missions. However, that didn’t stop Sabrina from stealing the contracts from other Starlings. Like Mei, she went freelance after being put on leave. 

The thrill of the kill was enough to keep Sabrina chasing deadlier marks. Eventually, the Starlings sent Mei was sent to neutralize their rogue agent and the two former partners, were now on opposing sides of the sniper rifle. 

Abilities:

Sabrina is skilled in hand to hand combat, firearms and explosives. However, she’s proficient in toxins. Ricin is her weapon of choice when eliminating enemies.

Sabrina and the Starlings take medication that enables them to have super human strength, speed, endurance and dexterity. This allows the Starlings to stay one step ahead of most their targets.

Along with enhanced reflexes, Starlings also have a heightened healing factor and longevity. This was a decision made by the Queen, to ensure Starlings who came up against Supers, had a fighting chance.

If their daily medications aren’t taken, the Starling runs a high risk of medical risks, least of which being the lost in enhanced abilities.

[shop-korea]

DEAR - KOREAN - GIRLS - OF - SEOUL,

AS - U - KNOW - MY - FUTURE - NAME

WILL - BE - CAILEY JAMES - CJ - YES

THE - JAMES - FAMILY

MEETING - KINGS - AGAIN

KING CHARLES III

KING - OF - ROYAL - THAILAND

ALSO - MEETING - AGAIN

IMPERIAL HIGHNESS - OF - JAPAN

PRINCE ALBERT - OF - MONACO

ALSO - MEETING

CURRENT - POPE - OF - VATICAN CITY

PERKS - OF - FORMER

CHILDREN's - ROYAL - BALLET

MET - ALL - ABOVE

AS - RELATIVE - OF - PRESIDENT - PUTIN

OF - RUSSIAN - FEDERATION

BORN - WITH - HIS - EYES - BLUE - SAME

EYES AS - 2ND PRINCE - LAST MONARCH

OF - ALL - OF - FRANCE - KING LOUIS

AS - TEEN - LOOKED - LIKE - WITHOUT

FRECKLES - THE - QUEEN OF SCOTTS

QUEEN - OF - SCOTLAND

FR - SON - OR RELATIVES

BEHEADED - ORDER OF - SKIN PROBLEM

QUEEN - OF - ENGLAND - WHITE - ROYAL

AS - CHILD - LOOKED - LIKE

SHIRLEY TEMPLE

GROWING - UP - GRANTED - AS - TEEN

SHIRLEY TEMPLE - AGAIN

WENT - 2 - EDINBURGH - SCOTLAND

WENT - 2 - HIGHLANDS - OF - SCOTLAND

THEY - BOWED - 2 - ME - DIDN'T - KNOW

WHY - OF - COURSE - SHOWED - ME HER

PAINTINGS - AND - SAW - WE'RE - TWINS

ENJOYED - MYSELF

BUT - LIFE - IN - PHILIPPINES - IN - USA

MURDEROUS - FR - HISPANICS - WHITES

WHITE - HISPANICS - AND - BLKS - ALSO

MURDEROUS - FR - PHILIPPINES - BY TEL

TELEPHONE - ALSO - MURDEROUS - FR

SCOTLAND - YARD - LIFE - AND - DEATH

NON-COLLEGE - GRADS - WHITE WOMEN

NON-VIRGINS - OF - LONDON - ENGLAND

SUCH - A - SMALL - PLACE

REMOVED - OF - SCOTLAND THE FUTURE

INDIA - BOYS - TOLD - ME - 2 - CALL - TEL

OF - SCOTLAND - YARD - THEIR - POLICE

THOSE - PEOPLE - NOT - ALLOWED GUNS

NOW - MEN - SPECIAL - POLICE - WITH

FIREARMS - SO - QUEEN - OF - UK - THEIR

MONARCH - HER - LAST - WAS - IN - THE

CASTLE - OF - SCOTLAND

SCOTLAND YARD - WOMEN - OF - LONDON

ENGLAND - ATTACKED - ME - BY - TEL AND

KEPT - YELLING - AT - ME - 4 - I - SAID - WAS

BORN - IN - PHILIPPINES - CALLING - LONG

DISTANCE - JUST - LIKE - THE - ENGLISH

THREW - HARD BREAD - AT - JUDY GARLAND

DINNER - THEATER - CALLED - HE - A DRUNK

HAS - BEEN - CAN'T - SING - WRINKLED

PRUNE - BAG - LOST - GIG - INCLUDING

HOTEL - LISA MINNELI - DIDN'T - WANT

HER - NO ONE - DID - HER - INSURANCE

RARE - INCLUDED - SUICIDE - SO - THE

SLEEPING - PILLS - PSYCHIATRIC MEDS

DIET - PILLS - SUPPLIED - BY - STUDIOS

OF - PAST - HOLLYWOOD - FILMS - AS

WITH - ALCOHOL - LIKE - MARILYN MONROE

BOTH - COMMITTED - SUICIDE - THESE PILLS

AND - ALCOHOL - MONROE - BARBITUATES

AS - THEY - ENDED - THEIR - LIVES

JUDY GARLAND

HER - BOY - AND - GIRL - KIDS

LISA MINNELI

ALL - 3 - RECEIVED - $1 MILLION - EACH

BENEFICIARY

SO - FORMER - CASE - WORKER

HISPANIC - ELENA QUIROS

NEW HORIZONS - LMHC - MENTALS

FOR - THEIR - HUDS - IN - MIAMI FL

01 OCT - ARRESTS - 4 - THE - HOMELESS

ILLEGAL - BILL - ILLEGAL - LAW

REPUBLICAN - PART - OF - FLORIDA

GOVERNOR - NOT - ALLOWED - 2 - CALL

THEM - HOMELESS - AS - FR - VOTING A

SALARIED - POLITICIAN - MORE - THAN

DOUBLE - MINIMUM - WAGE

THEY - ARE - NOT - ALLOWED - 2 B YES

CALLED - 'POOR' - EITHER - BUT - THEY

ARE - CITIZENS - OF - THE - UNITED

STATES - THE - RESIDENTS - OF MIAMI

FLORIDA - RESIDENTS - MUST - B - YES

ADDRESSED - FOR - THE - KILL - SHELTERS

DOMESTIC - TRANQUILITY - 14TH

'WITH - DUE - PROCESS - OF - LAW' - WHAT

THEY - DO - 2 - CATS - DOGS - 50 STATES IS

LEGAL - 4 - HUMANS - POOR - HOMELESS

1 MIN - ODORLESS - GAS - THEN - DEAD &

KIDNEY - BLADDER - $9,000 - EACH - FOR

THE - WORTH - OF - AMERICANS - THEIR

BODY - PARTS - FR - RUN - OVER - BY CAR

OR - BIKE - IN - HOSPITAL - COMA - THEN

THEIR - HEART - $35,000 - OUR - WORTH

SO - TODAY - FR - YANDEX - MAIL - THE

ONLY - ONE - ALLOWED - ME - WITHOUT

TEL - NO - ENTRY - MAIN - LIBRARY

DESKTOP - DELL - COMPUTERS

TODAY - MY - LEASE - STATED - STARTS

ON - WHAT - ELENA - SAID - LAST - DAY

MONDAY - 30 SEPT 2024

WHEN - I - WAS - APPROVED - AUGUST

JESSICA - BLK - FEMALE - ILLEGAL YES

PROPERTY - MANAGEMENT - 2 BUILDINGS

LOW - INCOME

ONE - SPANISH - SPEAKING - MAINTENANCE

ONLY - ONE - MANNING - HER - OFFICE

WHEN - NOT - THERE - WHICH IS - ALWAYS

LAW - STATES - MINIMUM - WAGE

1 MUST - BE - THERE - AND - PART - TIME

DURING - 30 MIN - LUNCH

8A - 4P

MAINTENANCE - CAN'T - B - ALONE

AND - WORKING - DAILY - ILLEGAL

WORK - HOURS

MIAMI - ILLEGAL - WORK - DAYS AND

WORK - HOURS - ILLEGAL - ONLY

SPANISH - SPOKEN - BY - MAINTENANCE

SPANISH - SPOKEN - BY - STAFF - IN - FL

FLORIDA - WANTS - 2 B - SPANISH - COLONY

AND - US STATE - 2 - GET - MONEY FR THEIR

WORLD - 3RD - POP

OVER - 333 MILLION - AND - MORE - FEMALES

SO - HAVE - 2 - GO - 2 - BUILDING

2 - GET - LEASED - SIGNED - AND - WHEN - ME

PAYING - I - WAS - PROMISED

ONE - MONTH - THEY - PAY - THEN - NEXT

MONTH - I - PAY - 33% - THAT's - $311.19

SO - CITY - OF - MIAMI - AGAIN - ROBBED

ME - MY - PAYMENT - BEGINS - ILLEGALLY

IN - OCTOBER - ROBBERS - THIEVES - YES

ACTIVE - BUILDING

APP - ALSO - PAY - RENT

VISA - MASTERCARD - DISCOVER - AMEX

labre place shepherds court active building . com

GOT - PLACE - AFTER - ALL

2ND FLOOR - LAST - BALCONY - ON - OUTSIDE

BLACK - BALCONY - EVENT - OF - FIRE

JESUS - IS - LORD

GOING - SOON - 2 - GET - LEASE - SIGNED

SHE - MIGHT - BE - THERE - LABRE PLACE

12 MIN - WALKING - FR - MAIN - LIBRARY 2

[lovelyballetandmore]

Yui Sugawara | Célestin Boutin | Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal | Artistic Ballet Gala 2022 | Japan

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 5.4 (before 1950)

1256 – The Augustinian monastic order is constituted at the Lecceto Monastery when Pope Alexander IV issues a papal bull Licet ecclesiae catholicae. 1415 – Religious reformers John Wycliffe and Jan Hus are condemned as heretics at the Council of Constance. 1436 – Assassination of the Swedish rebel (later national hero) Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson 1471 – Wars of the Roses: The Battle of Tewkesbury: Edward IV defeats a Lancastrian Army and kills Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales. 1493 – Pope Alexander VI divides the New World between Spain and Portugal along the Line of Demarcation. 1626 – Dutch explorer Peter Minuit arrives in New Netherland (present day Manhattan Island) aboard the See Meeuw. 1686 – The Municipality of Ilagan is founded in the Philippines. 1738 – The Imperial Theatrical School, now known as Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet, was founded under the reign of Empress Anna. It is the first ballet school in Russia and second in the world. 1776 – Rhode Island becomes the first American colony to renounce allegiance to King George III. 1799 – Fourth Anglo-Mysore War: The Battle of Seringapatam: The siege of Seringapatam ends when the city is invaded and Tipu Sultan killed by the besieging British army, under the command of General George Harris. 1814 – Emperor Napoleon arrives at Portoferraio on the island of Elba to begin his exile. 1814 – King Ferdinand VII abolishes the Spanish Constitution of 1812, returning Spain to absolutism. 1836 – Formation of Ancient Order of Hibernians 1859 – The Cornwall Railway opens across the Royal Albert Bridge linking Devon and Cornwall in England. 1869 – The Naval Battle of Hakodate is fought in Japan. 1871 – The National Association, the first professional baseball league, opens its first season in Fort Wayne, Indiana. 1886 – Haymarket affair: In Chicago, United States, a homemade bomb is thrown at police officers trying to break up a labor rally, killing one officer. Ensuing gunfire leads to the deaths of a further seven officers and four civilians. 1904 – The United States begins construction of the Panama Canal. 1910 – The Royal Canadian Navy is created. 1912 – Italy occupies the Ottoman island of Rhodes. 1919 – May Fourth Movement: Student demonstrations take place in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, protesting the Treaty of Versailles, which transferred Chinese territory to Japan. 1926 – The United Kingdom general strike begins. 1927 – The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is incorporated. 1932 – In Atlanta, mobster Al Capone begins serving an eleven-year prison sentence for tax evasion. 1942 – World War II: The Battle of the Coral Sea begins with an attack by aircraft from the United States aircraft carrier USS Yorktown on Japanese naval forces at Tulagi Island in the Solomon Islands. The Japanese forces had invaded Tulagi the day before. 1945 – World War II: Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg is liberated by the British Army. 1945 – World War II: The German surrender at Lüneburg Heath is signed, coming into effect the following day. It encompasses all Wehrmacht units in the Netherlands, Denmark and northwest Germany. 1946 – In San Francisco Bay, U.S. Marines from the nearby Treasure Island Naval Base stop a two-day riot at Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. Five people are killed in the riot. 1949 – The entire Torino football team (except for two players who did not take the trip: Sauro Tomà, due to an injury and Renato Gandolfi, because of coach request) is killed in a plane crash.

[vanillacup-cakes]

It's been a while since I've done this. And by that I mean it's been a while since I finished one of these. I always end up drafting and never publishing.

I kinda forgot what happened in 2023 until I started writing my appraisal at work, and then it started to trickle back in. In short, 2023 was one hell of a stressful year.

Work wise, we started the year wherein a major project that we've been working on for literal years, and then finally got pushed through in 2022, and was centimetres away from the finish line, was pulled. It was too expensive they said, so all the work we did was not only redundant, but also had to be reversed. Everything.

Speaking of redundant... We also had to go through a redundancy process, and boy was that a rollercoaster. Did I think I had a good chance of keeping my job? Yes, I mean I had been working for the company for nearly 6 years and had been keeping team afloat for all those 6 years with roughly 1 manager a year, for probably about 6-9 months of that year. I wasn't 100% sure, you never know with these things, but I thought it was going to be okay.

I got to keep my job but shit only got started, I take one sick day off and suddenly I'm being flung in different directions that doesn't make sense. On top of all of that, we also moved offices, meaning I was getting up at 5:30am to make sure I beat the traffic and got to the office around 7:45am.

I was stressed, and tired, and people I liked at work started disappearing, and then suddenly my job is no longer what I thought it would be, and, honestly, I've never felt that miserable in my whole entire working life.

Sure there's been peaks and troughs at work but this was a whole new level.

Here's the thing. After spending time thinking about it, I think I never really recovered from the pandemic situation. Pre-covid I had a full-on calendar but I felt like I managed. Post-covid, I think I was feeling overwhelmed all the time but I kept insisting to myself that it was fine and I'll get back into the swing of things soon.

Then I read articles about how people felt that their life foundations went down when the pandemic happened and it finally made sense. For years and years I built a steady foundation for the life I was leading, slowly putting in routines and habits to help with the persistence of events, and chores, and things I wanted and needed to do. And then that all came crashing down when the pandemic happened. Life was different and so things were different, my routine and habits were different, and trying to get back into a post-covid era was not easy.

I was overwhelmed and didn't know how to get back into the high-speed train that was my pre-covid schedule. And so in 2023, I found myself just about getting through.

That's not to say nothing was good in 2023.

On the contrary, January started with a weekend away to A's place. It might have been cold and dreary sometimes, but we had fun at the boardgames cafe, chatting til the late hours, and eating the best damn pie I've ever had.

We went back to ballet, and the monthly dinners were back on track again! In fact, it might be a record? We went from January to May, on a 5-month streak, only broken up by Singing on the river (June), and birthday celebration (July), then back again in August. Then it was S's birthday (September), and one final dine out (October) before I went on my sabbatical (November), and then it was Christmas.

I also always nearly forget I went to Japan in March, just before everything went on lockdown (not that lockdown) at work, then no more travelling for work after that.

The only travel now was personal, to the Lake District in wet April, to sunny Italy for B's wedding, and the Cotswolds in October for our anniversary, and annual weekend away.

There were AmDram evenings with raffles, comedy shows with our favourite comediennes (some booked almost a year in advance), Harry Styles, Hozier, and a couple of West End musicals scattered around the year.

The Eras Tour Ticket Debacle.

Turning 30.

I deferred my chance for a big birthday bash to 2024 in hopes that H would be able to come to the UK. C deferred too but for different reasons. S planned a wonderfully relaxing spa weekend, and K planned a delicious trip to Hungary.

Turning 30 is not so bad when you use it as an excuse to be a little frivolous and enjoy the money you make sitting at a desk 37.5 hours a week. Or 40+ if you're S.

I changed jobs, same company, different departments. Just as my hope to get out of then current predicament was dashed, another opportunity arose.

I also moved houses, moved in.

So, as September closed, just over a month before my big trip, I moved house, and started a new job all at once. Why make one big life change at a time when you can do almost three things at once!

Speaking of which, 2023 was also a year of vaccines, so many goddamned vaccines. Well, at least the 2nd half was full of vaccines. Finally, after a turbulent year at work, I was getting close to my years-hoped sabbatical trip, 3 weeks in Thailand; 2 weeks at an elephant sanctuary, and then a few days at a dog shelter. From August to October, I had various vaccine appointments. So much money spent!

And November came and went in a strange time flux that felt slow but quick all at the same time, like life in Thailand was always going to be the way, but also like it was all a dream.

Then it was December. Going from days walking around Thailand in 30 degree heat, to coming home to -6 in the UK, barely two weeks back at work and then it was suddenly Christmas.

And of course there are the date nights, Christmas in February, and the evenings of laughing at the most mundane things in our little flat. Walking for hours and just missing the lunch hours at the pub, saying he won't share food but not caring if I steal a chip or two, and stocking up the fridge with his and hers desserts. Paper cranes, post-it notes, and bringing two winter coats when he came to pick me up from the airport because he knew I'd need an extra one to keep warm.

Boxes, and boxes, and even more boxes at every corner of the flat. Constantly trying to think of ways we can make more space.

There's starting a new routine of yoga before bedtime and starting immediately after we came back from his parents'. We followed the routine even on New Year's Eve, in bed before it was even 10pm.

And just like that 2023 was over.

2023 was chaotic.

I think that's really the best way to describe it.

I've never felt so out of my depth in my own life, but also such a happy year in many other ways.

2024 will hopefully be the year of new routines and habits and maybe less overwhelm and just more fun.

Here goes nothing!

[castle-dominion]

6x18 the way of the ninja

the ninja episode liveblog

my intention is not to be racist by lumping in asian martial arts together but this kind of reminds me of Kung Fu Crabtree from murdoch mysteries.

Ooh she pretty oof thought that flapping was a gunshot. Oh it's a knife. WAIT IS THIS THE EP WITH THE KARAOKE THAT GAVE ME ANOTHER SONG TO PUT ON MY RYSPOSITO PLAYLIST? (dang there rly was subtext there huh.)

Ooh jazz Ooh friend from high school! Carly. Interesting. Like the other high school friend who owned a restaurant. Love the castle theme in the music here. KB: Definitely not. You are exactly her type. And the last thing I need is to watch someone from my past trying to seduce my fiancé while talking about the goddess that lives in her hoo-ha. RC & me: !?

KB: Please, Castle. You have to promise me. If you don’t hear from me by 10 o’clock you will call me and get me out of there. RC: I am setting an alarm right now. See, this is what having a partner in life is all about. Me: so true bestie.

they LIKE the strange ones Passport? why does she have it here & now? SP: To the untrained eye, perhaps. But what you don’t know about postmortem analysis could fill a book, Mr. Castle. In fact, it has. Numerous times. (Lanie first met him & praised him for his writing of death) & maybe castle should read those books to please permutter. RC: (dryly) Fine. So it was not a knife. SP: Ah, wrong again. It was a knife. But "stabbed" implies the blade was thrust into the victim, whereas this wound was produced by it being hurled into her chest. tbh could clip but won't

KB: Ryan, do we have any witnesses that saw the Great Throwdini or anyone else in the area? KR: Uh … no??? Not so far... (looking between them)

Ryan backstory moments: It’s a drop key. Yeah, I used to scavenge stuff like this from old buildings when I was a kid. I LOVE KEYS I HAVE AN ELEVATOR KEY MYSELF WHICH I HAVE USED TO PLAY WITH MY SCHOOL ELEVATOR BEFORE, I LOVE EXPLORING OLD ABANDONED BUILDINGS RYAN & I SHOULD HAVE BEEN KIDS TOGETHER.)

rehearsals fo rwhat? Oh dancing. Oh that's beautiful actually. Poor Dean he's so broken up over this & still young enough to be living with his parents.

Ryan comes in looking so excited (Ooh ryan totally was in ballet as a kid or smth lmao. except who can afford that? it was either piano or ballet, not both. Only one extra curricular.)

Ooh a good old yucky chair. Also grabbed a pic of caspockett but not ryan bc he was on the other side. tho had a great look.

point, why an elevator if no elevator? Ooh hanging sheets, can't see anything?

Ooh tatami mats & a shrine!

Castle no touchy! love a good silhouette

love slow motion & a puff of smoke...

... a ninja... stole the murder weapon... ... ho ho ho yeah!!! a cough diversion!

caskett: *married couple bickering* Gates: MURDER INVESTIGATION HERE

KR: Detective Beckett, this is consulate officer Amaya Tagamai calls her detective <3 Amaya Tagamai

Good old accents. Shinto my beloved. I really wish I learned more when I was in Japan & in World Religions class

Actually I heard that ninjas don't exist... in the plural form. But there is one last ninja & he is going to pass away before he can teach anyone else ninjutsu because the era & need for ninjas has passed & assassination is not a pretty thing to be proud of. Or maybe I'm remembering wrong. idk. But yeah as soon as he dies there will be no more ninja! ninja 3 the domination XD

KB & me: I swear she just said that it wasn’t that mysterious.

Actually yeah! bruce lee was a great dancer!

Oof ex(ish)-lovers playing lovers.

esposito said karate nicely <3

Castle mixing up two different east asian ppl, I'm glad that it was a funny bit of "don't be racist" without being to heavy

Lee: Look, if she fumbles a lift I’m the one that blows a knee. That's true He did almost catch the cup bc he does have good reflexes from being physically trained, but yo're right he did fumble. But the cup srs broke? kinda shocked but becks reacted nicely & calmly even tho castle broke the blue mug that she likes. Imagine her getting mad. Then castle tries it again with ANOTHER person he thinks is a ninja & this time breaks Ryan's signature mug. then he's mad too. Then ryckett gang up on him mad for breaking their cups.

WHY was she giving it up? She IS mad abt the cup! He slept thru it!? lol

*castle raises his hand* KR: yes castle! Carly & the goddess lol

bro it DEF looks like a tea import company a warehouse. A limo in the warehouse district.

"& two of us are cops" I was just thinking "only two really count" but he was thinking "there are three of us, plus two more bc we're double-powered bc we're cops" but I was thinking "three plus sokka"

*camera lets them in for some reason*

Ooh music. Ooh glass beaded curtains. Bro: they're shooting a porn? No wait it's an asians themed single club. I mean an asian themed singles club Nice place!

I've worked at a place like this. or it looked like this & I worked serving food. Castle buying these two their fun. Love it. Wow she is faking that accent. Wowie esposito with the girls & poor ryan my married man. "yes" "no" love it when they do the rysposito opposite directions thing *pushes her off*

ryan & esposito making each other all. I love. "private time" RC: I'm fine right here *watching rysposito fight* "what we came here for" good line

I love japanese karaoke. Play the part or they get in trouble? do they... do they have cameras? or ppl watching? Also Castle could ask for a massage where they don't need to play the part so much. oH WAIT THAT IS WHAT HAPPENS I was just remembering it by accident lol. CASTLE SNOOZE THE ALARM

je: Do you think maybe we could get another bottle? Something better? More expensive? they didn't put their badges in their pockets? JE: I’ll stay here and... entertain the ladies. Ryan has two paths: "fine by me I was getting uncomfy since I have a wife" or "why can't I be the sexy one?"

YES NO YES KARAOKE. I hate it I love it I'm excited it's a new song on my playlist kill me kill me kll me second hand embarassment but he's actually good skjfdskdlfjsdklfjlksjd didn't kate have a karaoke stakeout with mike Aww mama-san, like what I call my mom.

*getting thrown out* just like that time in vegas. This is not the first time these three have been thrown out. Best table, second bottle of more expenseive sake, three people, private time,,, still tho that's pricey (it is not lawful to remove alcohol from their premisis" KR: you're rich it's fine (tho that's a term or even two of college)

JE: It cost you six k and we’ve got nothing to show for it. RC: Ah, I wouldn’t say that. KR: You mean besides lipstick marks on your shirt? RC: I actually got a lead in there that’s going to blow this case wide– oh, whoa. Wait. Lipstick marks on my shirt? Where? Beckett’ll kill m– (he stops and covers his mouth) Oh my God! I didn’t call. (he scrambles for his phone) You guys. Beckett is going to kill me. He pulls out his phone, but before he can dial there’s a ninja throwing star embedded in the screen. KR and JE gape. RC: Ninja attack. (not clipping but I could have)

(or maybe I will & I'll grab this fight scene too.) Yeah clipping. I love how castle slowly backs away. rly edited voice. Look up idiot look up!

Sounds crazy AND you were drunk (possibly) If I was Gates I'd say they're trying to cover for something. mister saito not saito-san? He threw a party. The girls must have been brought by car... Ohhhh catering! Genius! Castle & gates I love them Castle in trouble with gates ryan oh no castle in trouble with his gal. Clipped that genuinely.

Ok but the excuse its valid!

Oh no beckett is afraid that marriage will be boring! Romance my beloved <3 *the music holds for a sec* How bout now?

I have never heard of cronuts until this show. croissant donusts. Ryan with the cronuts "Hey!" Becks, who took one & then stole the box with a second: they're not both for me! What are they already doing here? they already went down to soho & bought cronuts & talked to caterers?

Hoho, the consulate gal

NOT just like! Those ones are decorative, yours were made of steel! (& tbh it looked to me less on the japanese side of the spectrum, but def not as far on the german side of the spectrum. Just judging by the use. I mean, obviously it is far away from the maleable german side, but I wouldn't say it is quite fully there on the brittle japanese side. Tho ofc again if you consider the use, japanese steel would make more sense. & ofc you can't forget that they are literally japanese. but they are a more malleable japanese.)

Love the way beckett said esposito's name to mr saito. Love how he is so... good at talking. No technically her job is to solve what happens AFTER ppl are on the street. (& remove "dangerous people" from society so that yeah no murders happen on the street.)

If it were me I'd say "Of course, I'll have it right over. Can I read through the warrant? Oh, you don't have one? don't you need one? Oh not if I give it willingly? Well I'm not sure how that works so I'd like to read the warrant first, sorry. i just don't want to get in trouble with the law for sharing private information without a warrant or not reading the warrant, because you're legally supposed to read the warrant right? You're saying it is my RIGHT to read the warrant but not my JOB? Hm sounds sus. I'd rather not. I want to be a good citizen of the law."

Wasn't esposito in organized crime for a sec? (btw love the ryan outfit. stripes are smth he has. tho tbh I dislike it.)

tagami was on mat leave for 2 months! imposter! Crazy! Love it! except the orphpangage will be japanese

Aid you in your quest? she's only like 20 years old? I mean yeah she was dating a guy who was still young enough to live with his parents. To me that looks like a burn more than a scar. Then again, my stars aren't that shape even tho they are nearly the size.

Okinawa!

the green dragon wow cool name lol you had jade's bday? she didn't change it along with her name?

But the body type. Was the body type of the ninja close to saito? (also were they feminine? then again, skinny asian ballerinas don't have boobs)

Not wearing their vests? She said behind your head-- you come up with them down & then throw them up rly fast?

The sister survived too? Good on the uncle. Did the brother die?

I REMEMBER THE BUSINESSMAN NOW Ph I remember the green dragon arc now!

Randall: We were property developers. Jade’s father? He was an architect. I was a builder and Saito was the money guy.

He didn't do nothing! He called asked not to hurt her!

*killed just before he shared the name* ah the ninja was waiting to kill him later or see if he got arrested, but he was forced to kill him to protect his secret.

Wow love a good fight scene & also love the score Maybe don't shoot either maybe she told u to get the gun so THEY wouldn't shoot! (looks like a white guy babes) & it's bedford. & IT'S SAYA!

will she get charged with attempted myrder?

Oh no I remember Castle taking out the star. (he's so going to cut himself on that) But remember how in future episodes he has it.. framed almost? In a jar or smth? Ah the theme

Loved that ep! Absolutely loved it!

[violetncee]

ok, this isn’t our first rodeo, so i’ll keep it simple, (esp since this one is pretty wordy all by itself): a hc dump for yuri will be under the cut! <3

>yuri is the sole heiress to her family’s business, ‘oh-ware!’, a fairly well-known OS and general software company in japan, which is fun. or, well. it would be without the inattentive/emotionally abusive parents, and the pressure that’s been weighing down on her since she was a child, to be perfect and poised and keep up family appearances. but it’s not like she exactly has a choice in the matter, so… >to say the least, her relationship with her parents isn’t one of love, but business, it’s cold and calculated. and, that’s if they’re even around at all–when not in the office, they’re out at business parties, taking business trips, holding conferences, making public appearances, etc etc. so, unless it’s a ‘family event’ or s/t particularly important, she’s left home alone, which she’s gotten pretty used to over the years.

>most ppl wouldn’t know this abt her tho, as she generally tries to keep her business-life and personal-life two v separate things. to her, there’s a big difference between ‘yuriko ohnishi’ and… well, just yuri, y'know? >but on a lighter note, switching between the two on a dime is her favorite party trick (with people that she trusts/that know, obvs). bc it’s v jarring to see her ‘get into character’, and she thinks the reactions are pretty funny.

>yuri is almost always wearing a specific dainty old locket, even tucking it inside her uniform on school days. it was a hand-me-down from her grandmother, the one family member she ever considered herself close to. unfortunely, she passed from old age when yuri was about twelve-ish, which left her upset for a long time. >but, she’s glad to have something to remember her by, at least. just having the locket on her makes her feel a lil bit more at ease in a lot of situations. >(the picture inside said locket isn’t of anyone in particular, instead it’s a faded photo of a simple wedding bouquet, made up of lavender and baby’s breath.)

>she’s bullied at school since her studious, and skittish nature makes her a prime target in her classmate’s eyes, esp w/ all her personal quirks and ‘strange’ interests. she’s purposefully tripped, has her hair pulled, she has trouble picking up sarcasm which is used to mess with her, mean notes are left on her desk and/or locker, she’s given rude nicknames, etc etc. >it’s gotten a lil better in the last year or so, but she’s still generally alienated. she usually eats lunch on the rooftop alone, but recently her clubmates have started to join her, which she’s appreciative of.

>yuri has a slight phobia of storms/lightning in particular + the dark, because of an incident from when she was about seven years old. one night after being left home alone, a heavy storm rolled in, and at one point caused the power to go out in the whole house. it freaked her out, and she didn���t know what to do/she had no one to turn to. she ended up hiding under the kitchen table until she eventually fell asleep.

>she struggles with some chronic pain from an dance injury to her left knee, which thankfully, didn’t result in her having to quit ballet. but, some days are worse then others, and when it’s particularly bad she either wears a brace, or uses a cane. >also: sayori decorated her cane with stickers after a heart-to-heart she + yuri had abt their different experiences with chronic illness and chronic pain, respectively.

>during times where she’s not too busy during the week, yuri can be found at a small bookstore near the school, either reading, doing homework, or volunteering. >she goes to ballet classes on fridays + saturdays, ever since she was a kid. it was originally just another thing her parents signed her up for, but it’s s/t she rlly enjoys. >tbh if she weren’t an heir/expected to take up the family business, she’d go to a ballet school, and work to become a professional, but… you know how it is.

>she’s usually a bit late to the on wednesdays. why? well, inspired by some of her favorite bands she’s taken up playing guitar (specifically a bass), so, she has lessons with a girl from the music club that day! >none of her friends/the other literature club members know about this though. she knows sayori would ask her to play for them, and. she wants to practice some more first, okay? she’s nervous, ok…

>there’s a lil cemetery park near yuri’s house that she visits often to read, think, bird-watch, and just generally get some peace and quiet. there’s a particular bench she likes since it’s sort of tucked away, and usually in the shade of a nearby tree. >sometimes, she’ll take a walk and visit her grandmother’s grave, along with a few of the older, more lonely graves. she cleans them up, and leaves something small. >she realizes the 'goth hanging out in a cemetery’ thing is maybe a lil stereotypical, but! she legit finds the place calming, alright? let her live! (…no pun intended, ofc.)

>yuri has an interest in photography, to the point she almost joined the photography club last year, but promptly chickened out last second. she really puts herself into each piece, so, it’s more then a lil nerve-wracking to share that stuff with people, esp strangers! (even if she ended up doing that anyway, in the literature club.) >even so, it’s another thing she’s passionate about! her preferred styles are: still-life, portrait, and night-time. some of her photos do involve color, but they’re mostly in B&W.

>yuri is big on doing things properly, all those lil details and extra steps matter to her. bc of this, she’s developed lots of 'routines’, even for small, average things. >for example, when trying to do some homework or write she: gets her notebook, gets some sticky notes, neatly lays out her pens and inks, turns on her AC, and turns her desk lamp on, in that order. it just helps her get into the zone, basically.

>some stuff u’d find in her room are!– *her knife collection, ofc. she has all types, but her favorites tend to be switch blades/pocket-knives, daggers, and butterfly knives! also: any fun novelty knives. *teacups + saucers! and a few teapots too, some of them are for decoration, but some are for actual use. she likes kintsugi-styled stuff in particular bc! it’s pretty!

*fantasy/horror movie posters, fantasy/horror movie soundtrack records, box-sets of a few of her favorite book series’, horror movie masks for display purposes, etc etc. general fandom memorabilia, basically. *has a few old 'haunted/cursed’ dolls she’s bought over the years, usually on impulse. but, they all have names and she loves them. *animal skulls + other assorted animal bones. yes, they’re real.

>though, unfortunately a lot of this stuff (mostly the horror-related things) end up covered up/hidden, since her parents don’t rlly approve, they say it’s 'unladylike’.

>yuri has. v big feelings on horror movies that are jumpscare fests and pure gore and nothing else, don’t get her started unless you’re prepared to hear all about it. >she loves horror as a genre, obvs, but. to her, there’s gotta be a point to it. like, even if it’s just 'people do bad things, bc that’s just how people are’, then. great! does she rlly agree with it? no, but. at least it gives u s/t to think about, y'know? >she doesn’t mind watching them tho, especially with friends, since they’re still fun to pick apart/make fun of, but. just… know what ur getting into first.

>you know how in act two it’s mentioned yuri brings a different knife to school each day? well, that’s true, hence how she died, but. it can be sort of said for act one yuri as well, just… in a less intense sense–aka she often carries around a small swiss army knife, for many reasons. >she started carrying it around in middle school, as it was her very first knife, so while it may seem silly, it has a lot of meaning to her!

>has two japanese rhinoceros beetles named 'hana’ and 'nana’ as pets, and. y'know how people baby-talk their dogs? yeah, that’s her with them. don’t @ her! >vaguely dabbles in the ‘occult’ at times, though i wouldn’t say she practices, its done mostly in a casual sense. does tarot readings for fun, taught herself how to read palms, collects pretty crystals and memorizes their meanings/uses, etc etc! >yuri was. 100% one of those kids that taught themselves how to speak elvish (or some other fictional/fantasy language) + bits and pieces of klingon too, probably.

>is a secret adrenaline junkie, which probably at least partly influenced her interest in the horror genre/spooky things in general, collecting knives, etc etc. when the school’s cultural festival rolls around, you’ll often find yuri hiding out in whichever class is putting on a haunted house. she’d probs also really like thrill-rides + roller -coasters, but she hasn’t been to an amusement park since she was a kid, sadly. >bad/tacky romance type novels are still a big guilty pleasure of hers despite what she might say–she keeps a box of them hidden in her closet under some general clutter. and yes, she would die of embarrassment if anyone ever found out, lmao

>yuri’s kinda nosy? idk if that’s the right word, bc she doesn’t mean any harm, of course, but: her casually eavesdropping on sayori + MC’s conversation, her being curious when MC mentions sayori avoiding him, etc etc. y'know? >and. idk, i find that kinda interesting? yuri keeps to herself, and just. reads, so. i wouldn’t be surprised if people blab abt stuff around her without thinking abt it. either bc they didn’t notice her, forgot she was there, assume she’s too engrossed in her book, or don’t think that she would care–but rlly, she’s like 👀👀👀, lmao >yuri is. v much the type to people-watch in general, tbh! she knows its not exactly very polite, and she would never, use anything she hears against anyone, or share it around or anything. it just makes her happy, in a weird way? makes her feel included, i guess. like she’s apart of something! she doesn’t have a lot of her own friends, after all. (she’d doesn’t rlly like talking abt it though, fearing ridicule + people thinking it’s weird or creepy or w/e.)

>some of yuri’s fidgets/habits are!–

*often folds her hands, holds them close to her chest, tucks them behind her back, etc etc–both out of awkwardness, and to kept them from wandering, and looking for s/t to fidget with. *tends to walk on her tippy-toes/the balls of her feet, but maybe that’s not so surprising from a dancer. this means she walks rlly quietly though, and tends to accidentally scare people, rip, lmao *fiddles with her hair a lot, twirling it around her finger, playing with the ends, trying to hide behind it, etc etc.

*gently bites/chews on the ends of her pens while in deep thought, or generally day-dreaming. which is… fairly often, if i’m being honest. *she’s REALLY bad with making eye-contact like, 98% of the time. if she makes direct eye-contact with you, she is Very Serious™. *she tends to pick up some of her friend’s usual gestures: a certain pouty face from natsuki, a few of monika’s poses, the 👉👈 thing bc of sayori, etc etc. she doesn’t do it on purpose, of course, but. it’s done out of love for her friends! she just thinks they’re neat, ok

[brookston]

Holidays 4.27

Holidays

Abolition Day (Mayotte)

Autism Super Mom Day

Babe Ruth Day

Celebrate Teen Literature Day

Day of Russian Parliamentarism (Russia)

Day of the Uprising Against the Occupying Forces (Slovenia)

Ed Balls Eve (UK)

Flag Day (Moldova)

Freedom Day (South Africa)

Free Feral Cat Spay Day

International Crow and Raven Appreciation Day

International Donor Conception Awareness Day

International Hyena Day

Koninginnedag (King’s Day; Netherlands)

Lapu-Lapu Day (Philippines)

Learn To Make An Apricot Cream Pie Day

Marine Mammal Rescue Day

Marselan Day

Matanzas Mule Day

Mayotte National Day

Moehanga Day (UK)

Morse Code Day

National Alicia Day

National Back Office Heroes Day

National Bubble Butt Appreciation Day

National D.J. Day

National Little Pampered Dog Day

National Patricia Day

National Pneumatics Day

National Veterans' Day (Finland)

New Beginning Day

Poetry Day (Ireland)

Resistance Day (Slovenia)

Rogers Hornsby Day

Sleep Day

Teach Your Children to Save Day

Tell A Story Day

UnFreedom Day (South Africa)

Woody Woodpecker Day

World Bath Bomb Day

World Design Day

World Graphic Design Day

World Tapir Day

Write An Old Friend Today Day

Food & Drink Celebrations

Battenberg Day

Chips with Everything Day

National Devil Dog Day

National Gummi Bars Day

National Prime Rib Day

World Marcela Day

4th & Last Thursday in April

Dining Out For Life [Last Thursday]

Gathering of Nations (Native American Pow Wow) [begins 4th Thursday thru Saturday]

International Girls in ICT Day (4th Thursday]

Love Your Thighs Day [4th Thursday]

Pay It Forward Day [Last Thursday]

Poem in Your Pocket Day [Last Thursday]

Support Teen Literature Day [Thursday of Library Week]

Take Action for Libraries Day [Thursday of Library Week]

Take Our Daughters and Sons To Work Day [4th Thursday]

Thank You Thursday [6 Days Before 1st Wednesday in May]

Independence Days

IKwaZulu-Natali (Declared; 1994) [unrecognized]

lundren (a.k.a. Viscounty of lundgren; Declared; 2020) [unrecognized]

Sierra Leone (from UK, 1961)

Togo (from France, 1960)

Feast Days

Anastasius, Pope (Christian; Confessor)

Anthimus of Nicomedia (Christian; Saint)

Assicus (Christian; Saint)

86400 Seconds Day (Pastafarian)

Ennead Sail Through the Land, The (Ancient Egypt)

Floribert of Liège (Christian; Saint)

Hanuman Jayanti (Birthday of the Monkey God; Hindu)

John of Constantinople (Christian; Saint)

Liberalis of Treviso (Christian; Saint)

Olive (Muppetism)

Pollio (Christian; Saint)

Rafael Arnáiz Barón (Christian; Saint)

Shemp Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Theodor Kittelsen (Artology)

Virgin of Montserrat (Christian; Saint)

Walpurgisnacht, Day V (Pagan)

Xenophon (Positivist; Saint)

Yom HaShoah begins (Holocaust Remembrance Day; Judaism) [27 Nisan; 8 Days]

Zita of Lucca (Christian; Saint)

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Butsumetsu (仏滅 Japan) [Unlucky all day.]

Lucky Day (Philippines) [23 of 71]

Premieres

Anna Karenina (Film; 1948)

Apollo, by Igor Stravinsky (Ballet; 1928)

Avengers: Infinity War (Film; 2018)

Chips with Everything, by Arnold Wesker (Play; 1962)

Cold War (Disney Cartoon; 1951)

The Dish (Film; 2000)

The Fabric of the Cosmos, by Brian Greene (Book; 2004)

The Five-Year Engagement (Film; 2012)

Für Elise, a.k.a. Bagatelle No. 25 in A minor, written by Ludwig van Beethoven (Piano Music; 1810)

Heavy Cream, by Cream (Compilation Album; 1973)

Hooked Bear (Disney Cartoon; 1956)

Hoots Mon! (Film; 1940)

In His Own Write, by John Lennon (Poetry Book; 1964)

Justice Society: World War II (WB Animated Film; 2021)

Kill the Umpire (Film; 1950)

Koyaanisqatsi (Documentary Film; 1983)

The Krays (Film; 1990)

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (TV Series; 2014)

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Film; 1975)

Mrs. Robinson, by Simon and Garfunkel (Song; 1968)

Music for the Royal Fireworks, by George Frederic Handel (Orchestral Suite; 1749)

Now Hear This (WB LT Cartoon; 1963)

Personality, by Lloyd Price (Song; 1959)

The Pirates! Band of Misfits! (Animated Film; 2012)

Spaced Invaders (Film; 1990)

The Streak, by Ray Stevens (Song; 1974)

This Week with John Oliver (TV Series; 2014)

We’re Not Gonna Take It, by Twisted Sister (Song; 1984)

Today’s Name Days

Petrus, Zita (Austria)

Euzebije, Ozana, Polion (Croatia)

Jaroslav (Czech Republic)

Ananias (Denmark)

Haldi, Haldja, Halja (Estonia)

Meea, Merja (Finland)

Zita (France)

Montserrat, Petrus, Zita (Germany)

Zita (Hungary)

Zita (Italy)

Inars, Klementīne, Raimonda, Tāle (Latvia)

Anastazas, Aušra, Gotautas, Zita (Lithuania)

Charles, Charlotte, Lotte (Norway)

Anastazy, Andrzej, Bożebor, Kanizjusz, Martyn, Piotr, Teofil, Zyta (Poland)

Simeon (Romania)

Jaroslav (Slovakia)

Montserrat, Pedro, Zita (Spain)

Engelbrekt (Sweden)

Laverne, Sam, Samantha, Sami, Sammy, Samuel, Samuela, Ulises, Ulysses, Vern, Verna, Verne, Vernon, Zita (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 117 of 2024; 248 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 4 of week 17 of 2023

Celtic Tree Calendar: Saille (Willow) [Day 12 of 28]

Chinese: Month 3 (Bing-Chen), Day 8 (Yi-Mao)

Chinese Year of the: Rabbit 4721 (until February 10, 2024)

Hebrew: 6 Iyar 5783

Islamic: 6 Shawwal 1444

J Cal: 26 Aqua; Fiveday [26 of 30]

Julian: 14 April 2023

Moon: 50%: 1st Quarter

Positivist: 5 Caesar (5th Month) [Xenophon]

Runic Half Month: Lagu (Flowing Water) [Day 3 of 15]

Season: Spring (Day 39 of 90)

Zodiac: Taurus (Day 8 of 30)

[dance-world]

Célestin Boutin - Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal - photo by Ballet Office Japan

[twicearoundthesun]

[MiMo Family AU]

There was a lot of yelling coming from the open first-floor window. Mina stopped in her tracks, pausing to listen before she rang the doorbell; she couldn’t see in.

She could faintly hear footsteps thundering, getting further and closer, and loud, shrieking giggles. There was a big yell and a separate yelp, like someone had jumped out at another person to scare them.

“Surprise attack!!” Her daughter’s voice rang in her ears, full of glee. Mina smiled; Dahyun wasn’t usually this loud, especially outside of their home.

“Ohhh noo, not a surprise attack!” A woman’s voice answered. “Oh no – my own daughter, in on it too?”

“We made a truce!” another kid’s voice joined in – that must have been Chaeyoung. “FIRE!”

“Waaaaaahh!!!”

Mina couldn’t bite back the laugh that escaped her lips at the sudden, ridiculous noise of pure fear that came presumably from the woman who was watching them. She hadn’t interacted with Chaeyoung’s mother much outside of the necessary get-to-know-you-before-you’re-in-charge-of-my-kid phone call pre-playdate. She honestly couldn’t even put a face to the name – Hirai Momo; the school was large, Dahyun had only started at it this year, and she hadn’t shown much interest in having playdates with any of the children before now. Mina hadn’t been too worried, she’d been just as much of a homebody when she was a kid, but it was sort of a relief when she’d asked for this one.

She waited for the giggles of the supposed surprise attack to end before she pressed the doorbell.

“Ah, Dahyunnie, your mother’s here.”

“Nooooo Mom you have to stall her!” Chaeyoung sounded distraught.

“Chaeyoung-ah, if they’ve got places to be, that’d be very rude.”

She heard a small stampede run from the door as it swung open in front of Mina. And there stood who she assumed to be Hirai Momo.

She was a bit taller than Mina expected, and younger – maybe closer to her age than the rest of the parents at the school. Her black hair was pulled into a messy bun and she wore what appeared to be work khakis with an undershirt tucked in, and mismatched socks. The most notable part of her outfit, however, was the Velcro NERF target vest that was hanging around her neck with at least a dozen bright orange foam bullets stuck to the front.

Well, that and the very toned shoulders showcased by the lack of sleeves.

“Hi! Mrs… Dahyuns mom!” She sounded breathless. Mina gave her the benefit of the doubt. Running around playing velcro dart tag with two eleven-year-olds was taxing; she’d been in her fair share of nerf gun wars with her older brother growing up.

“Mina.” She smiled. “You can just call me Mina.”

“Very nice to meet you in person, Mina.”

“Likewise.”

Momo flashed her a bright smile and Mina was a little entranced. The woman cleared her throat.

“Would you like to come in? My daughter wants me to stall you.”

Mina smiled, glancing down at her phone. “I guess a few more minutes wouldn’t hurt. We have nowhere to be.”

A few more minutes turned into an hour, much to Dahyun and Chaeyoung’s delight. Mina completely lost track of time; Momo kept pouring tea and asking about work and Mina kept talking. It was refreshing to talk with someone who asked a question and payed attention to the whole answer. She didn’t get that often in her house, whether it be from her eleven-year-old daughter or her twenty-eight-year-old sister.

She got to learn a bit more about Hirai Momo as well – she was an architect for the city planner’s office, but she taught dance some weeknights as she’d minored in it in college after years and years of contemporary dance training growing up. Her eyes lit up when Mina shared she’d also trained for years, in classical and ballet, and Momo told her she’d need to stop by one of her night classes and show her how it’s done. She’d moved with her family from Japan in highschool, and was very impressed to hear that Mina came over by herself in college.

The conversation even slipped comfortably into Japanese, which Momo was thrilled about, since she didn’t get to use her native tongue that often. All of Chaeyoung’s aunts spoke only Korean, apparently, and Mina got the feeling they helped out a lot. Momo was surprised and impressed to hear that the main language spoken in Mina’s household was Japanese, and that Dahyun was fluent.

The conversation was cut off by Mina’s phone ringing. She’d missed three texts from Sana, who very much wanted her to know that as soon as she’d answered the call. Mina rolled her eyes and apologized, but after promising her she’d be home soon and hanging up she turned to her host.

“My sister’s going to be super insulted if we don’t go home and eat the sludge she so kindly cooked for dinner.”

Momo chuckled. “It sounds like she put lot of love into it, then.”

“She might need to try a little less of that, maybe.” Both women laughed. “Thank you so much for the tea and for watching Dahyun. She really had a blast, I can tell. She doesn’t get to do this often.”

“Well she was absolutely a delight. She’s welcome any time.” Momo smiled. “And Chaeyoung had a great time too. Hopefully we can get them together again soon.”

“Definitely.” Mina smiled back.

For a second, neither of them moved. Mina wanted to say more, but couldn’t get her brain to do much, not with Momo’s kind eyes on her like they were.

Momo cleared her throat and glanced away. “Let me go upstairs into the pillow fort and get them so you guys can be on your way, yeah?”

“Oh – I can get her. You don’t have to be the bearer of bad news.”

“Hmm… Yes I do.” Momo said slowly, already halfway up the stairs. “You don’t know the password to the pillow fort!” And she darted up the rest full-speed.

Mina found herself smiling after the woman.

She hoped Dahyun wanted another playdate soon.