#but not enough to combine the names in some capacity

[driftingvoid-155]

William who wanted to call the restaurant Springbonnie’s after his fursona, and Henry who wanted to name it Fredbear’s after his, and after days of arguing and arguing they finally play a game of rock paper scissors over it.

Cue Henry who has the most smug look on his face for the next week and William acting like a wet cat that got a bucket of water poured on him for that same amount of time.

[silverskyeline]

'messy' 18+

oneshot (request) - logan learns that you can squirt, he indulges in that information (1.8k words) pairing - logan howlett (xmen) x f!reader tags - established relationship, fingering, petnames: babygirl, baby, good girl, praising, kind of overstimulation, squirting, lots of squirting, a little rough, he talks reader through it, wet mentions, reader orgasm, dirty talk, fingers in mouth, logan makes reader taste themselves.

.・。.・゜✭・. .・。.・゜✭・. .・。.・゜✭・.

you're splayed out on his lap on the sofa just how he likes you to be, nestled on top of his plush, firm thighs. your knees are bent with your ankles resting over either side of his legs, your back flush with his warm chest, your whole body exposed, open, for him.

logan's thick, calloused fingers lazily stroke your clit, earning soft mewls from your lips as your head tilts back over his shoulder. his other hand is ensuring his middle finger pumps in and out of you at a slow pace, your body craving those broad digits stretching your tight walls.

.・。.・゜✭・. .・。.・゜✭・. .・。.・゜✭・.

you're moaning, gripping his arm for dear life as you squirm in his lap, rolling your hips instinctively. it was beautiful, the way he could make you sing for him, the way he could make your body move for him with just a few simple strokes, almost like a puppet, pulling your strings. he would never consider himself your 'master', but god, you'd let him control you whenever he liked.

he smirks, nuzzling his fuzzy beard into the side of your cheek, his lips finding their place at your ear, "that feel good, baby girl?" logan asks, his voice a deep purr. he already knows the answer.

you gasp at his low-toned voice, gruff like gravel but sweet like honey, "yes. . ."

"mh, that's what i thought. . . think you can take a little more though." he huffs, slipping another finger inside.

your walls clench around the sudden new presence and you moan, loudly, craving the feeling of being filled by him in whatever capacity he's willing to give.

"that's it," he coos, picking up the pace, "good girl, gooood girl. . ." logan loves how easily he can slip inside of you, how he'd always find you dripping, cunt aching, core throbbing for him. his sensitive ears perk up at the sweet sounds of your wet pussy taking his fingers in, the wet schlick sounds filling the room.

your cheeks flush, looking down at the way his fingers are making light work of you, your shirt hiked up to expose your breasts. with the pace increasing, and the way he's so sweetly purring filthy words into your ear. . . you feel a sensation start to build.

it's. . . new, almost uncomfortable but not quite. not the same as an orgasm but almost. it pools low in your belly, just a little out of reach.

but his fingers pick up again, slamming deep inside of you, curling just enough. his fingers circling your clit remain slow in contrast, creating a dizzying combination of sensations that have you clenching around him and calling out his name over and over in some desperate plea. desperation for him to continue, for the building feeling, for him, full stop.

the feeling returns. fuck, it almost feels like you need to piss. your cheeks flush, eyes rolling back as you fight back the feeling, but he's rubbing you and touching you and fucking you too good for you to hold anything back.

"logan," you gasp, arching your back, "l-logan wait-"

but it's too late, before he even has the chance to slow down, you squirt. your juices coat his hands, his fingers, dripping down along his arm and onto the sofa below earning a gasp from both of you.

his eyes widen, stopping his movements immediately causing you to whine at the sudden lack of friction.

then there's silence, save for the lewd wet dripping from the sofa onto the hardwood floor.

your head is reeling, did. . . did you just squirt? fuck, you'd never done that before. heart pounding, you swallow hard, instinctively wanting to apologise for the mess, "shit, sorry i-"

"holy fuck. . ." he whispers shakily before you even have the chance to finish your sentence, "where were you hidin' that from me?" you can hear the smirk in his voice clear as day as he talks into your ear.

"what?" you whisper.

he smirks, kissing your ear, "you didn't tell me you could make cute little messes like that, baby."

"i didn't know i could. . ." you admit, biting your lip as you feel the cool air of the room brush against your dripping sensitive core.

logan's eyes widen, the implication of your words nestling deep in his brain, and groin. he was the first ever to make you squirt, the first to make you feel so good that you couldn't help but make a mess for him. pride swells in his chest, manifesting in a low rumbling smug chuckle at the back of his throat.

". . .think you could make another mess for me?" he hums, his fingers on your clit slowly resuming their movements.

you whimper, the new sensation you experienced was foreign but surprisingly welcomed. you had no idea it felt that good, that you could ever do that. but logan has a way of coaxing everything out of you, cock and fingers playing you like an instrument he's mastered.

"don't know. . ." you mumble, suddenly feeling skittish.

it's then that his fingers start fucking you again, gliding in and out easily, your fluttering hole welcoming the movement. "you can, i know you can." he encourages, nibbling at your ear, "you'll be a good girl, you'll make another mess for me, won't you?"

fuck, his words. his fucking words. every single time they had you acting crazy, letting out sounds you didn't know you could make. and he drinks them in, drinks up all those sweet little sounds from that pretty little mouth of yours that he loves so much.

you simply nod, feeling his digits pumping rougher, curling to find that sweet sweet spot once more. you're not sure if you can even do it again, but logan seems pretty fucking set on making him gush for you at least once more.

he scissors his fingers slightly, stretching you, the motion making you whine with pleasure. but when he pushes in a third finger? that's when you really start screaming for him.

"that's more like it, huh?" he grins, breathing deeply through his nose from how hard he's working you, "just needed a bit more, cus' i know you like it thick baby, don't you? like it thick like my cock?"

you want to gasp, to react to his words, but your eyes are rolling back again, mouth stuck open in an 'o' shape as you feel that sensation build once more. your body is tensing, thighs clenching, back arching, eyes squeezing shut. subconsciously you hold your breath as if that'll help. he's got you right where he wants you, right where he knows you want to be.

seconds later you're gushing, more this time - it lands on the hardwood below with a crude splash and coats his hands nicely. logan laughs, a deep dirty laugh as you writhe. he gives a gentle slap to your clit, then a firmer one, causing more to spill from you along with some squeaks.

"there we go, good girl, what a good girl. . ." you can hear the smirk in his voice, the wide grin he's wearing, the smugness lacing every word that leaves his lips, "feels good to make a mess for me, doesn't it?"

you're breathless, panting, overwhelmed in the best way. and then he speaks again.

". . . i think you can handle one more." logan purrs, movements suddenly fast and hard. his fingers fuck deep into you, curling to hit your g-spot with each calculated thrust. the fingers on your clit speed up, rubbing in practiced circles sending sparks of electricity throughout your body.

you want it too, you'd give it to him over and over again, create messes all night long if your body let you.

god you'd do anything for him, especially in that moment, and how could you not? the way his fingers play with you, toy with you, slide into you. . .

"d-don't know if i can!" you admit, huffing, trying to get more air.

but he shakes his head, "yes you can." is all he says, firmly.

and he's right. moments later you feel it pooling in your belly once more, the accompanying orgasm approaching that threatens to throw you overboard. you're lost in a sea of sensations, stars in your vision, his voice in your ear the only anchor you have to reality. you let it guide you, until you're drenching his fingers and jeans once more, voice ringing out within his bedroom as his voice coaxes and praises you softly.

his fingers on your clit come together to slap down against you, each smack against your sensitive bundle of nerves causing more to spray. you're making such a big mess, his jeans are damp. he doesn't care. this is what he wants, and fuck, if you don't feel the best you've ever felt in your entire life. . .

he keeps going, his fingers steadily pumping into you roughly, desperate to get every last drop as he feels you clamp down around his fingers. you're moaning, gasping, gripping onto his arm for dear life as you ride out your orgasm. it's too much, but it's also perfect. logan watches on in deep satisfaction as you writhe on his lap, his bulge pressing against you above him, cock twitching and rock hard just from touching you.

as your body relaxes, so do his movements, slowing down. he glides his fingers in a few times, enjoying the slick sounds they make before pulling them from your still-fluttering hole. he lazily drifts his damp digits along your tummy, leaving a trail of wetness up to your chest until it finds your mouth.

you part your lips gladly, turning your head to look up at him through hooded lids as you take his fingers in your mouth. diligently, your tongue laps at his fingers, reeling at the taste of yourself on him, dripping from him.

"good girl, you're always so fuckin' good for me. . ." he smiles, kissing your forehead as he watches you, his free hand resting on your tummy. you enjoy the feeling of his large palm against you, making you feel comforted whilst also grounding you after that whirlwind of release.

you pull his fingers from your mouth with a wet pop, instead kissing along his fingers and down across the sensitive skin of his knuckles. a silent thank you, for making you feel so good.

logan watches keenly, growling quietly at the stirring in his groin. his eyes flash with something. you'd call it mischief.

your eyes flit up to his, knowing what he's thinking before he's even said it.

"wonder what else you can do. . ." he smirks, "keeping any other secrets from me?" logan asks as he rolls his hips against you, prompting you to feel how hard he is for you and you exhale, relaxing back against him.

it was funny, how he could always push you right to the edge when you think you're spent.

and yet have you craving more. . .

you grin, biting your lip, "wanna find out?"

[reasonsforhope]

No paywall version here.

"Two and a half years ago, when I was asked to help write the most authoritative report on climate change in the United States, I hesitated...

In the end, I said yes, but reluctantly. Frankly, I was sick of admonishing people about how bad things could get. Scientists have raised the alarm over and over again, and still the temperature rises. Extreme events like heat waves, floods and droughts are becoming more severe and frequent, exactly as we predicted they would. We were proved right. It didn’t seem to matter.

Our report, which was released on Tuesday, contains more dire warnings. There are plenty of new reasons for despair. Thanks to recent scientific advances, we can now link climate change to specific extreme weather disasters, and we have a better understanding of how the feedback loops in the climate system can make warming even worse. We can also now more confidently forecast catastrophic outcomes if global emissions continue on their current trajectory.

But to me, the most surprising new finding in the Fifth National Climate Assessment is this: There has been genuine progress, too.

I’m used to mind-boggling numbers, and there are many of them in this report. Human beings have put about 1.6 trillion tons of carbon in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution — more than the weight of every living thing on Earth combined. But as we wrote the report, I learned other, even more mind-boggling numbers. In the last decade, the cost of wind energy has declined by 70 percent and solar has declined 90 percent. Renewables now make up 80 percent of new electricity generation capacity. Our country’s greenhouse gas emissions are falling, even as our G.D.P. and population grow.

In the report, we were tasked with projecting future climate change. We showed what the United States would look like if the world warms by 2 degrees Celsius. It wasn’t a pretty picture: more heat waves, more uncomfortably hot nights, more downpours, more droughts. If greenhouse emissions continue to rise, we could reach that point in the next couple of decades. If they fall a little, maybe we can stave it off until the middle of the century. But our findings also offered a glimmer of hope: If emissions fall dramatically, as the report suggested they could, we may never reach 2 degrees Celsius at all.

For the first time in my career, I felt something strange: optimism.

And that simple realization was enough to convince me that releasing yet another climate report was worthwhile.

Something has changed in the United States, and not just the climate. State, local and tribal governments all around the country have begun to take action. Some politicians now actually campaign on climate change, instead of ignoring or lying about it. Congress passed federal climate legislation — something I’d long regarded as impossible — in 2022 as we turned in the first draft.

[Note: She's talking about the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Act, which despite the names were the two biggest climate packages passed in US history. And their passage in mid 2022 was a big turning point: that's when, for the first time in decades, a lot of scientists started looking at the numbers - esp the ones that would come from the IRA's funding - and said "Wait, holy shit, we have an actual chance."]

And while the report stresses the urgency of limiting warming to prevent terrible risks, it has a new message, too: We can do this. We now know how to make the dramatic emissions cuts we’d need to limit warming, and it’s very possible to do this in a way that’s sustainable, healthy and fair.

The conversation has moved on, and the role of scientists has changed. We’re not just warning of danger anymore. We’re showing the way to safety.

I was wrong about those previous reports: They did matter, after all. While climate scientists were warning the world of disaster, a small army of scientists, engineers, policymakers and others were getting to work. These first responders have helped move us toward our climate goals. Our warnings did their job.

To limit global warming, we need many more people to get on board... We need to reach those who haven’t yet been moved by our warnings. I’m not talking about the fossil fuel industry here; nor do I particularly care about winning over the small but noisy group of committed climate deniers. But I believe we can reach the many people whose eyes glaze over when they hear yet another dire warning or see another report like the one we just published.

The reason is that now, we have a better story to tell. The evidence is clear: Responding to climate change will not only create a better world for our children and grandchildren, but it will also make the world better for us right now.

Eliminating the sources of greenhouse gas emissions will make our air and water cleaner, our economy stronger and our quality of life better. It could save hundreds of thousands or even millions of lives across the country through air quality benefits alone. Using land more wisely can both limit climate change and protect biodiversity. Climate change most strongly affects communities that get a raw deal in our society: people with low incomes, people of color, children and the elderly. And climate action can be an opportunity to redress legacies of racism, neglect and injustice.

I could still tell you scary stories about a future ravaged by climate change, and they’d be true, at least on the trajectory we’re currently on. But it’s also true that we have a once-in-human-history chance not only to prevent the worst effects but also to make the world better right now. It would be a shame to squander this opportunity. So I don’t just want to talk about the problems anymore. I want to talk about the solutions. Consider this your last warning from me."

-via New York Times. Opinion essay by leading climate scientist Kate Marvel. November 18, 2023.

[artbyblastweave]

Heroify: Kingpin

Compared to some of the other characters people have sent in today this is like shooting monkeys in a barrel!

Part of the reason Fisk is such a good Daredevil villain is that he's already got a lot of the basic elements you need to make a street-level hero work- the will, the drive, the protectiveness, the territoriality, and the quote-unquote "badass normal" peak human fighting ability that, let's not fuck around here, is absolutely a superpower even if the chickenshit writers won't directly admit to that. It's just that he uses those abilities to be a crime boss rather than to fight crime bosses. To put himself in charge of his childhood bullies instead of fighting his bullies. A classic case of "If only he'd used his immense capacity for interpersonal violence for good." What would make him stand out from all the other heroes in his niche is his propensity for Empire-building, his complete inability not to build up some kind of organization from scratch, and what that impulse might look like in a superheroic context.

I'm imagining that his initial schtick is that of a Bully Hunter. After getting ripped and wiping the floor with his childhood bullies-or maybe this is one of the versions who offed his own father for beating on his Mother- he embraces the specific high of the "pick on someone your own size" routine, and he becomes The Big Man, the guy you go to when you need somebody who's been getting away with something for a while cut down to size. Upstairs neighbor is beating his wife and kid senseless, and nobody does anything because his brother's a cop? Call The Big Man. Real Estate Baron's using his connections to try to muscle out the residents of a tenement? The Big Man's gonna pay them a visit. Boss at the diner's withholding your paychecks and getting away with it because you're undocumented? You get where this is going. He usually doesn't kill people- not out of any particular code, but out of a combination of pragmatism and sadism. He's smart enough to engineer situations in a way that he can claim self-defense or frame someone's tumble down the stairs as an unfortunate accident or rely on the unexamined illegality of whatever his target was doing to prevent them from getting the police involved. He's got a bit of a financial cushion, as well, because all of this is actually his side gig- he's still a very successful, if not as cutthroat, local businessman, because hospitalizing domestic abusers doesn't pay the bills. As a power move, he does most of this under his own name- he's got a "costume" in the form of the distinct suit, and a nominal codename, but part of the bit, part of the point he's making, is that he's slightly better at weaseling out of the consequences of his actions than the people he targets. Always a bigger fish, after all. Power is relative. His thematic niche is distinct from Daredevil's abstract sense of idealized justice. It's not Frank Castles mechanical eye-for-an-eye approach. It's about the satisfaction of leaving a certain category of wrongdoer alive, so that they can remain very, very afraid.

Of course, since his entire bit is that he keeps putting untouchable assholes in fullbody casts, the attempts on his life start stacking up- First it's Ed the domestic abuser and his buddies from the bar coming around for a rematch, and then goon squads, then hand ninjas, then low-rent supervillains- and because The Big Man toes the line of being an actual superhuman, he's usually winning these things, and coming out ahead in the PR game for beating down a bunch of costumed thugs attacking his Perfectly Legitimate Art Gallery- but it's a pain that his office keeps getting firebombed. And this is where you start to reap the benefits of having done under-the-table favors for hundreds of people all over New York- The Big Man has a network now. The Big Man knows guys who knows guys, some of whom owe him favors, some of whom are just really afraid of him coming back for round two. The Big Man can pull together a hundred guys with crowbars and hammers on a day's notice, if he happens to need something like that. If he doesn't know someone with a backdoor into Tombstone's fortified penthouse or Hammerhead's mansion, if he doesn't know someone with incriminating information on Silvermane or Norman Osborn, well. He knows their cousin. And once he thinks to begin leveraging this? If the people escalating things have specific addresses, by the end of the week they very likely don't.

It's not as if he eliminates all criminal activity. He's not even interested in doing so. Like half the painting's he's selling are really convincing forgeries. But things hit a point where there's simply a hard practical limit on how imperial a supercriminal's ambitions in New York can become, how domineering, how visible to the man on the street, before The Big Man decides it's time to make a point and starts calling people, who in turn start calling people.

[izzystizzys]

the thing about being the highest-ranked and most-decorated officer in any GAR/Guard capacity, fox thinks, is that unsurprisingly nobody could give less of a shit or listen to anything he says. it’s not like he earned those medals and recognitions and perfect test scores or anything, now is it, kote?

or, after the zillo beast disaster, the coruscant guard medbay just so happens to be much closer than the GAR one, and surprise surprise, senators don’t want meatdroids to be treated in their facilities after they’ve just protected them with their lives. fox tries to reason against this. fox is unsuccessful, because no one listens to fox.

which is how he finds himself crammed into a corner along with cody, ponds, bly, rex and their jedi, looking out across a medbay which is quite frankly a goddamn disaster rivalling the fight with the zillo beast in proportions. skywalker tries to step out towards one of the medics, and has to be pulled back by the collar of his shirt by amidala, squawking loudly when he’s nearly rammed over by mauler, crucifix and a shrilly screaming crash cart.

it’s not like fox said this would be a bad idea or anything.

“um, vod”, cody begins, unsure, “what’s - is that guy sewing wooley up with thread?!”

meathook, who is in fact sewing wooley up with thread, and looks about as happy about it as his patient, and who fox honestly thought was going to cry when he announced the influx of patients about to descend on them, snaps something about triage over his shoulder at hound, whose arm is decidedly bent in a way it shouldn’t be, jerking his head to gesture at the rickety cot next to cody’s ARC. fox is pretty sure they salvaged the thing from a dumpster. he slaps a bandage on the stitches that fox fears might be from the same dumpster.

“putting those advanced reconnaissance training skills to use, kote”, says fox, who invariably turns into the worst possible version of himself whenever cody opens his mouth within a klick of his vicinity.

skywalker harrumphs, evidently at the end of his impressive patience. “well, why?! hey, trooper! these men need bacta!”

“do they, now? i’m sorry, i hadn’t noticed”, a low voice hisses angrily behind them, and fox is the only one who doesn’t jump on account of he’s too dead inside to be scared of his CMO anymore. a grave error, he’s sure. “i guess i’ll just go pull some out of my ass along with a tank and painkillers, then! hadn’t thought of that yet!”

warcrime, whose eye is twitching and who is holding a bloody saw in visible consideration of using it, pins skywalker with a look that has had shinies all over the guard peeing themselves. “we don’t have any fucking bacta, you absolute numbskull.”

“but that can’t be right”, cody pipes up again, next to a very troubled looking generals kenobi and windu. fox sympathises very much with the patented migraine-glare on windu’s face. “why do you not have any bacta?”

“because i like to smear meiloorun juice all over my patient’s stab wounds, commander”, warcrime says. “it’s a homeopathic medicine thing. because the chancellor refuses to give us any, genius.”

“what?!” skywalker says, bristling. “that can’t be true! he wouldn’t -“ he’s cut off by his comm pinging loudly over the moaning and crying in the medbay, and warcrime leaning close enough to be heard with a whisper.

“well, he would, and if you don’t believe me, there’s a holorecording of him telling marshal commander fox why biological weapons on the homefront have lower priority and therefore half rations of everything. now get out of my medbay or find out why they named me warcrime, sir.”

amidala, the collective braincell holder for both her husband and the senate combined (on occasion), tugs him out of the way of warcrime’s bonesaw and ire. fox, who very much enjoys not being the primary target of a medic for once, unfortunately also has to be the adult in the room. “sirs, a transfer to the GAR barracks medbay might be a preferable- AH, MOTHERFU-“

“get him, stabby!”, rabid whoops from where he’s resetting thire’s nose, who echoes a much more nasal and muffled, “go, ftabby!”

“get kriffing FUCKED, stabby, you absolute-“, fox seethes, trying to swipe for the medic’s head and nearly planting one on cody instead by accident, who unfortunately manages to evade the swing fox is admittedly projecting very obviously on account of the sedation hypo jammed into his flank.

“medbay rules, sir”, stabby calls, dancing away towards mauler and his crash cart, while someone bumps something solid and flat against the backs of fox’s thighs that he can’t help but tumble back on, already seeing two codys and blys dancing around his vision. “commander fox protocol dictates he is to be helped to sleep as often as possible, sir.”

“a desperate but well-founded measure, i’m sure”, kenobi of all people agrees, and fox waves an unsteady hand in what might be the general’s direction to the sound of cody’s scandalized gasp. “as you were, officer… stabby.”

“traitors”, fox slurs, just as his com-unit begins to ping with an urgent notification. before he can try and answer it, warcrime has ripped it off his arm and flung it somewhere out of his sight. eh, it probably wasn’t anything THAT important, fox thinks. and if he wakes up two days later to a near-hysteric meathook kissing the glass casing of the guard’s brand new bacta tank over and over again, he decides to just roll over and go back to sleep.

[a-very-tired-jew]

Let's Talk Expertise

This will anger some people, like my age post did, but it also needs to be said and is about something I have been seeing consistently. If you are in your undergrad and taking major courses, you are not an expert on the subject material, let alone the profession itself. You are a student who is just building their foundational knowledge for your chosen field. You have not accumulated enough knowledge on the subject matter to speak from a place of expertise, nor have you learned enough to parse through the nuance of your chosen field or reached any of the milestones to be considered as such. There's a reason why we actually have an expertise system here in the USA that is paired with the legal system and our government employment system. If you go onto a government job site and look at their listings you will see some combination of Degree, Degree + Experience, Degree + Equivalent Experience and Amount of Time. What does this mean? It means that if a job is asking for someone with a Master's degree in a specific field they will consider individuals with the appropriate degree, but they will also consider people with a Bachelor's degree and the equivalent amount of time and/or experience in their field that makes them as knowledgeable as the MS candidate. The reason for the Time/Experience component is that not everyone pursues a graduate degree, but that does not mean they lack the knowledge required. However, there is an equivalency in Time/Experience to those graduate degrees and the special knowledge they impart. This gets even more complicated in higher levels when a position is asking for a PhD + 10 years of experience, that means a BS might be right out unless they have 20+ years of experience and an MS might need 15-20 years alone. In my time as a professor I have seen scores of undergrads present themselves as their major professions when they haven't even finished their junior year. Sometimes it's benign so that they can puff up in mixed company. Other times? Not so much. Several years ago I saw an undergrad present themselves as a psychologist that was "recovering traumatic memories" and got a multitude of people falsely accused of various violent crimes. This culminated in several court cases where the student had to admit they were falsely representing themself as an expert and therefore falsely producing "evidence". In light of the ongoing conflict I have seen a number of blogs on here present themselves as historians/experts on various related subject matter, while openly admitting that they are undergrad students and/or do not work in any capacity relating to the material. The latter can be fine up to a point, but if you are not working in your field and it comes to being an expert according to the GS and/or Daubert Standards, you most likely are not making the cut. The person regularly publishing papers and working as the profession will be considered the expert over you. If all you have is a few papers to your name and no other activities relating to the subject...well it's not a good look to be considered an expert. "AVTP this is elitist! Not everyone can go to college/grad school on *subject matter*" That's right. Not everyone can go to school for psychology, history, ecology, polisci, let alone go and make it their career. These people are not experts then. Plain and simple. You don't get to call yourself an expert because you listen to podcasts or do deep dives on Wikipedia. (And note, this is not about the blogs who are posting about how they did a hyper fixation deep dive on frog naming nomenclature when they were in high school. I am talking about the persons who are presenting themselves as knowledgeable authorities and using phrases like "As a *insert specialist field here*" while they pick courses for their sophomore/junior/senior year.)

[ryunumber]

KazaaakplethKilik from FTL?

KazaaakplethKilik has* a Ryu Number of 5 4.

(CORRECTION: Per @skapokon, an update to Sea of Thieves that adds Monkey Island content shortens Kazaaak's Ryu Number.)

(old image and explanation below)

The one unambiguous crossover for FTL I could find is a Rockman assist character in Fraymakers, which as the "a" implies is never specified as a specific Rockman (like, say, Ariadne) and is therefore ineligible.

So lacking a more straightforward path, we're going to have to take a bit of an iffy detour through Australian actor, video game enthusiast, DidYouKnowGaming? collaborator, and noted Game Grumps fan Vitas Varnas.

If there's an indie game that had a fairly well-known crowdfunding campaign, especially with some substantial higher-tier backer rewards, there's a decent chance Varnas helped back it. Broken Age, The Banner Saga, Mighty No. 9, Shovel Knight, and Wasteland 2 are among the many games he's thanked in as a backer and can be spotted in some minor capacities. Naturally, one of them was FTL.

Through this backer reward, a random male human crewmember can be named "Vitas Varnas". You can absolutely quibble over whether it makes sense to count this as the same "character" as the real Vitas Varnas, but the restriction that the crewmember must be male and human in order to be named Vitas Varnas, combined with a general lack of default names for crewmembers (bar special ones like Kazaaak), is basically enough for me.

If you allow that, Varnas has also lent his voice to Thimbleweed Park as part of yet another backer reward.

As a Ron Gilbert joint, you can spot Guybrush in the background of a scene in Thimbleweed Park, and the rest is a known quantity, more or less.

[marsbutterfly]

The Boy Who Cried Your Name

a/n: HI!!!! I'M BACK AFTER SUCH A LONG HIATUS!!!! I MISSED YOU GUYS! This story was based on this postI hope you all enjoy!

ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢs: none, just fluff <3

2:07am > manjiro: ok this movie genuinely seems really stupid 2:08am > manjiro: i think i'll watch it and tell you all about it during our date tomorrow. 2:11am > manjiro: oh shit, i've seen this actor somewhere 2:13am > manjiro: i know you're asleep but like 2:13am > manjiro: when you wake up can you help me find out this dude's name? 2:13am > manjiro: *image*

It's a Tuesday night, or at least it was when you first went to sleep. The nonstop vibration of your phone combined with the light that comes from it is enough to disturb your deep slumber.

You grunt, eyes squinting as you try to adjust to the brightness. Your warm hand comes out from its place underneath your pillow, only to be received by a rush of cold air that comes from the AC. Your fingers tremble gently while trying your best to type in your passcode, though your brain isn't fully awake.

Ultimately you decide to simply shine the phone on your face in the hopes that it will recognize your features even in the dark of your room.

Before it can even unlock, another notification.

2:16am > manjiro: i am learning so much from this movie already 2:17am > manjiro: did you fucking know that you can make your own butter if you shake milk for long enough?

You can't help but giggle at the sight, 17+ messages from Mikey. Before the two of you became a real couple, he would hardly ever text first, maybe because he could never remember where he put his phone in the first place or maybe it was because he was actually afraid of getting his feelings hurt, after all, a girl like you was hard to come by.

When the two of you decided to become official, his texts became more and more frequent. Most nights, you were forced to put your phone on Do Not Disturb because you desperately needed a good night's rest and lord knows you wouldn't be able to achieve that goal as long as Mikey was awake.

Your thumbs aren't moving at the speed you would like them to, your vision is still partially blurry and your throat is so dry that it feels like you are swallowing nails. Nevertheless, you open the messages to encounter a great variety of content.

Tired eyes skim through the various paragraphs, some quite lengthy as he declares his endless love for you and everything you have done / do for him on a daily basis, describing how you are the most beautiful person you have ever met and how the light that radiates from you reminds him of a sunset lit inside of your chest. How the color of your hair is his favorite because, whenever he sees it anywhere else, he feels like the universe is sending him a small reminder of how lucky he is. You smile at the sight of his gentle words.

However, you can no longer ignore the rain of incoming texts now that he has noticed the "seen at 2:14am" at the bottom of the page. He feels awful for waking you up but he cannot help himself. Every new thing he learns, every new detail of the movie he thinks you will enjoy knowing, he must share with you.

2:15am > manjiro: THIS DUDE JUST ATE HIS MOTHER-IN-LAW WHOLE? 2:16am > manjiro: IS THAT A FUCKING THING THAT SNAKES DO? EAT PEOPLE WHOLE? 2:16am > manjiro: I HAVE TO GOOGLE THIS HOLD ON 2:17am > manjiro: I have learned that, in fact, they can. I'm actually going to jump, I cannot do this 2:18am > manjiro: oh shit, i didn't mean to wake you up, but now that you are here! 2:19am > manjiro: did you know that drinking too much water can kill you? I read it somewhere, let me find the link. 2:19am > manjiro: Oh and also that when the dinosaurs walked the Earth, days were 23 hours long instead of 24?

You take a deep breath, knowing that he is coming from a place of love and care but you can't help but be a bit annoyed. Not wanting to snap at him, you use your full mental capacity at the moment to type a response to one of his many, many texts.

2:19am > manjiro: typing... 2:19am > you: Mikey, I love you, so so much and I wish for nothing more than for you to be here cuddling with me, than to feel the warmth of your body against mine, but you know I have an exam early in the morning. 2:20am > you: but baby, I am begging you, STOP THIS MADNESS.

His texting ceases and it feels like an eternity, certainly long enough for you to regret the way you spoke to him, even if it wasn't malicious or even purposefully mean. You understand that, other than Draken, Mikey doesn't usually confide in anyone else, especially not in a way that makes him seem weak or "stupid."

A sigh escapes your lips and you blink intensely for a few seconds in the hopes of stopping your eyeballs from burning. Time seems to slip by you and the next time your eyes open, twenty minutes have passed.

You bolt awake for a few seconds, heart beating faster than a race car, an irrational fear that you might have missed a message from him taking over you so the natural course of action is to check your texts. It would be a lie to say you weren't a little disappointed that there were no new messages from Mikey in that short period of time and your heart sinks just slightly.

2:41am > you: Mikey, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you, I'm just nervous about my exam and super tired. I shouldn't have taken it out on you. I hope you can forgive me.

Not even thirty seconds go by before the three dots inside of the blue bubble appear at the edge of the page. The full sensation of relief doesn't wash over you until you hear back from him, a simple message, spelled completely wrong because you knew he was keeping an eye out on whatever he was watching on the television.

2:42am > mikey: all gpod bsby, u luv u. (all good baby, i love you)

With a smile on your face, you finally allow yourself to relax and place the phone down underneath your pillow, giving Mikey time for himself as he enjoys his tv time. Now, you are finally going to be able to have a good night's rest before your big exam tomorrow. Eyelids become heavy and your breathing finds its own perfect pattern, your pillow is cold and underneath your covers is warm, everything is simply falling into place.

When you are within seconds of falling asleep, your phone buzzes from beneath your head. You refuse to open your eyes and simply roll over, pushing your body away from the device.

Some time passes and you find yourself in the same peaceful vibe as before, a gentle smile on your face as you fully allow yourself to be submerged in the cold feeling of the ac against your face while the rest of your body is nicely tucked away. The feeling doesn't last long for Mikey, once again, decides to start texting you every few minutes, if not seconds.

You grunt loudly, reaching for the edge of your pillow to pull it over your ear. In moments like these, you truly had to remind yourself of how much you loved him and why because he does, in fact, test what little sanity you have left in you. But you didn't know that all he was doing in that moment was being his usual self: the guy who is deeply and madly in love with you.

3:14am > manjiro: oh yeah 3:14am > manjiro: i forgot to tell you 3:15am > manjiro: good luck on your exam tomorrow, you got this! 3:15am > manjiro: i love you so much <3 3:15am > manjiro: have a great night <3

[ethicaltreatmentofcowplants]

Bunker Babe: The First Fourteen Days

I'm combining Weeks One & Two since Week Two was all about giving the GREMLINS trait to the lot for the HANDINESS grind, and days blended together verrrrry easily. But Lilac survived. Ish.

See?

On Day One, our plucky heroine started with a CHAIR, a TRASH CAN and a TOILET - and some fruitcake that she'd snatched from Leslie Holland and the rest of the 'welcoming' committee.

Turns out that fruitcake is a 'like,' which is fortunate as guess what we'll be eating exclusively for the next four days? Looks like three things have the capacity to survive MOTHER: cockroaches, Lilac... and fruitcake.

Many terrible selfies later, Lilac was able to afford a KNITTING BASKET. While wearable items can only be sold over Plopsy, the animal clothing (some of which you can start crafting right from Level 1) can be sold directly from your inventory. And Lilac needed those simoleons - stat.

Level Three KNITTING and ART LOVER self-discovery? Acquired. Considering how she'll be making most of her simoleons, that's one of the more useful traits she could have.

Oh, and one of MOTHER'S children said hello.

By Day Two Lilac's hygiene needs were already in the amber, but the Watcher thought that loneliness could eventually get her first. So the new objects acquired? A BED aaand a MINI-GOAT.

We named her Gouda Girl.

On the third day in hiding the Watcher gave to me... one MINI FRIDGE and a Vladdy visit for freeeee...

(Actually the Watcher had nothing to do with Vlad.)

While Lilac was asleep, I got his usual creepwalk message but thought nothing more of it - at least until the fastforward sleep speed slowed back down to regular time and I heard the usual sounds of sizzling and screaming.

S'up Grim.

Since Lilac had no interaction with him at all and didn't even register his demise (maybe he can't find your Sim if they're in the basement), there were no sad moodlets and she simply continued knitting and keeping up her social bar with Gouda Girl.

Gouda Girl can also be milked for 45 simoleons each day, and thus will pay for herself in no time. Beyond her companionship, which of course is priceless.

Day Four and this was around the time where the Watcher discovered that Lilac's energy bar was refilling way too slowly. Yes, her mattress was cheap but she was sleeping for 10 hours at a time and still only recovering about a third of her bar. The Watcher sold the old bed, cheated her a better one - and yet the problem persisted.

It could be the LAZY trait, but I've never had that issue with other LAZY Sims before - or Lilac other times that I've played her.

Since bunker life is already boring enough without watching a Sim sleep for 20 hours, I simply resolved to use the 'make happy' cheat every other day until her HANDINESS would be at a high enough level to upgrade the mattress (thus Week Two Gremlins).

And it was on this day that Lilac consumed the last of the fruitcake.

By then she was getting major moodlets for too many fast meals, but Gouda Girl made everything better.

The two big gets of the day were a ROCKING CHAIR and a KITCHEN BENCH, so Lilac was finally able to prep some proper food. Ish.

Ah, the bliss of low poly salad...

Oh, and on Day Three I think Lilac acquired a SINK. No shower yet, but queuing the 'wash hands' interaction did restore a lot of her hygiene bar.

Day Five and well - what a great whim for this challenge.

She's like 'yes, see this here? I'm the smartest Sim you ever had...'

More knitting, while Mei Prescott kindly came by to mourn Vlad, much to the delight of the garden gnomes.

The bat came back, the very next day...

He came, he haunted his own urn, he cried. Lilac kept on knitting and skill grinding.

Since Lilac was getting major embarrassed moodlets from purchasing all of her low poly salad ingredients due to the FREEGAN trait, the Watcher bought two of those VERTICAL PLANTERS from Eco Lifestyle. Sure, the regular pots would have been cheaper, but soon we will be crunched for space.

Oh, and on Day Seven we acquired a WORKBENCH.

Skills: Week One

LEVEL 8: Knitting LEVEL 3: Programming (acquired from the Watcher needing to unless MOTHER) LEVEL 2: Photography, Handiness, Cooking LEVEL 1: Gardening, Logic (likewise acquired for MOTHER)

Items Acquired

KNITTING BASKET, BED, MINI GOAT, MINI FRIDGE, SINK, ROCKING CHAIR, KITCHEN BENCH, VERTICAL PLANTERS (x2), STRAWBERRY, BASIL AND SOY PLANTS

Week Two was the exciting addition of a SHOWER - less so once Lilac realised that the Watcher had likely purchased it just to give her more things to repair once the witching hour struck.

I couldn't spare Lilac or myself from the grind, but I may as well spare you. Let's get on with it, then.

Because Lilac's energy bar was refilling so slowly, in spite of my use of cheats this week was just a vicious cycle of sleep, repair, repeat. Even with a decent mattress that was fully upgraded, it was taking her eight hours to refill her energy bar from halfway - in comparison to the three hours that Andie Mae and Paolo Rocca in another save need for a cheaper upgraded mattress.

Skills: Week Two

LEVEL 9: Knitting LEVEL 8: Handiness LEVEL 4: Gardening LEVEL 3: Cooking, Programming LEVEL 2: Photography, Singing LEVEL 1: Logic, Fitness

Items Acquired

SHOWER, LAPTOP (she swiped the basic one from upstairs), VERTICAL PLANTER (3 in total), TABLE TOP LIGHT, WALL LIGHT, FEAR OF FAILURE, FEAR OF DEATH, GHOST!VLADDY

With this being the only save that's currently playable, I'm running through Week Three fairly quickly, so see you soon.

[yikes-kachowski]

what abt toph x aang kids??

I like Lin and suyins story too much to change it tbh, so I haven't thought about taang kids.

Here are some ideas though. Since, as we know, they perfectly balance each other out, I think they would actually somehow stumble into being very good parents. Where toph is firm and not enough loving, aang is loving and not enough firm, you know?

I think three kids would suit them nicely. Earthbender, Airbender, and then Earthbender.

Let me quickfire some characters here:

Kipu would be their first. He would be happy, like his name implies. I see him being very spiritually inclined, but still very grounded and even overly skeptical at times. I can see him thinking things through very carefully and being disciplined. I feel like bending wouldn't come as naturally to him as it did to his parents, but once he found his groove in his tween years, he'd be on track to be a master. He would grow up with the most strict childhood because Taang feel like the kind of parents who loosen up their rules with every kid.

Tashi, the airbender, would definitely take after his mother. He'd be smart-mouthed, but still think before he speaks. He'd be observant and quiet until he has something sarcastic to say. But he's definitely the most considerate and empathetic of the three. He would be raised with a strong sense of leadership and responsibility that makes it hard for him to have fun. A nation rests on his shoulders, as well as the eventual training of the future avatar. The death of his father hangs heavy over his destiny.

Anyway, on a lighter note, Diki is all the fun-loving prankster chaos you get when you combine Toph, Aang, and being brought up with two older brothers. She's tough and tomboyish. She laughs in the face of danger and is extremely overly competitive. Anything that can be made a game will be made a game with her. She's also very good at reading other people. This makes her as considerate as it does manipulative. But she uses her powers for good... Mostly.

Anyway, I hope those concepts satiate you! I like to imagine next gen characters in the context that the krew meets you, so here's a bit of ideas for that.

Kipu is a metal bending teacher in Republic City, taking over his mother's role. He helps teach Korra and does his best with bolin. He's reserved but very sweet. He tells lots of stories from his younger years of travel and training alongside the two greatest benders of all time. He and his long-term partners are elder gays for the krew.

Tashi is jaded and always seems exhausted from all of his monastic, government, and familial duties. He and his family train Korra in airbending. He's hard on her and a little offensive at times, but he and Korra become very close.

Diki shows up for some sort of big-fight and absolutely comes in clutch. I can also see her giving unexpectedly profound advice. As a woman, her relationship to Korra would also be very important. Gals gotta stick together and I feel like they would have some deep conversations, and give advice to each other.

These characters are completely free to you to use in any capacity. Ty for the ask, and, again, I hope this is a good enough answer for you ❤️

[jokeroutsubs]

Joker Out ‘Live From Arena Stožice’ - A triumph of unquestionable talent, youthful enthusiasm and dedicated work

ORIGINAL INTERVIEW BY ILKO ČULIĆ FOR RAVNO DO DNA, PUBLISHED ON 08.01.2024 ENGLISH TRANSLATION BY @moonlvster, PROOFREAD BY IG @GBOLEYN123

“Aha, that Slovenian band from Eurovision. Cute guys, but their music is for kids.” Nearly every attempt at explaining the quickly growing phenomenon Joker Out to those older and less informed gets stuck on this kind of reaction.

After the concert album “Live from Arena Stožice”, published by Virgin Records, and a rockumentary of the same name, directed by Mark Pirc, everything will be much clearer and hopefully there won’t be anyone who needs convincing that this Slovenian five-piece have emerged as the most exciting young pop rock band in the wider region, for now maybe even the only ones of their generation capacitated for the biggest venues in the post-Yugoslav area. This is a complete 90-minute recording of their triumphant concert in Ljubljana with 12,000 backing vocals and the right material for a major label deal, which nobody from these parts has been able to do in such a short period.

Yes, of course, Joker Out makes music for kids, or more precisely music for girls, as they always make up a majority of their audience. Photo and video documentation obtained from Stožice doesn’t differ from what was recorded a few weeks later at the Zagreb concerts in Tvornica Kulture, where the only older faces in the crowd were the security guards, accredited reporters and some caring mothers who didn’t want to leave their darling alone in the crowd under any circumstance.

Everything that happens with this band looks like an endless highschool party fueled by high-spirited youthful rock. However, the fact that Joker Out’s music is magnetically attractive to only girls isn’t a handicap, but a huge initial advantage, both in Ljubljana, Zagreb and Belgrade, as well as London and Manchester. The mass teenage hysteria once similarly helped Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly, the early Beatles and T.Rex, and more recently Franz Ferdinand and Arctic Monkeys, with whom rock was briefly youthful again.

On home turf, the famous new wave became quite an important factor of pop culture when it won over a highschool aged audience, and became an exceptionally profitable discographic investment when in big cities it reached even the upper classes in elementary school. In later stages, due to the unlucky combination of unfortunate demographic and discographic processes, we ran out of young bands as well as the youngest audience. Since there were no adequate regional responses to Franz Ferdinand and Arctic Monkeys, a defeatist way of thinking prevailed in the rock world, saying that new generations are generally uninterested in bands with guitars.

Joker Out sprinted into that empty space and simply smashed it. Eurovision was the launching pad for their international career, but the foundation for a sold out Stožice Arena was built two years prior when the band filled Cvetličarna, a venue with a capacity of up to 2000 people, with their debut album ‘Umazane misli’. In terms of the Slovenian rock scene those were already big numbers and irrefutable proof that the winners of Špil Liga in 2016 became serious players in the meantime.

After a phenomenally successful regional and European tour it was Arena Stožice’s turn, so by October Bojan Cvjetićanin, Jure Maček, Kris Guštin, Jan Peteh and Nace Jordan had the required number of played matches and enough confidence in them to transfer all of their current published songs to a concert album, meaning 23 songs in total. So, that includes the complete material from the ‘Umazane misli’ and ‘Demoni’ studio albums, two last years hits,’Carpe Diem’ and ‘Sunny Side of London’, as well as their first song back from their highschool days, ‘Kot srce, ki kri poganja’. When planning some kind of festival gig, they could make a selection and pick out their hits, but at an ambitiously planned 90-minute solo performance they had to play all they have and be very careful not to make a mistake in the song setlist.

For a furious opening, effectively complimented by the guest brass players, the chosen song was their recent single ‘Sunny Side of London’, the only song performed in English. Live it sounds like a final confirmation that Joker Out is an international band and like an excellent announcement for their upcoming spring European tour. The next song is ‘Gola’, the first out of many old favourites and the ultimate Slovenian teenager hit, which started a rarely seen euphoria in the audience.

After that the whole arena thunderously sings along with Bojan to ‘Bele sanje’, ‘Plastika’ and ‘Dopamin’ and ‘Demoni’, and the accumulated energy is just transferred from one song to the next without any oscillation. In the middle part of the concert, however, you can feel that Joker Out’s repertoire lacks a few more punchy songs. At least the fans won’t mind that at all, because with a flashback to their debut song ‘Kot srce, ki kri poganja’ they got an exclusive opportunity to watch and listen to the ex rhythm section with the drummer Matic Kovačič and bassist Martin Jurkovič. Less impressive are the extended versions of ‘Metulji’ and ‘Vem da greš’, where the compact three-minute forms from the first album are extended with guitar solos and stretched out into the too long six-minute versions. The ending of the concert, in which ‘Tokio’, ‘Umazane misli’, their new concert single ‘Ne bi smel’, generational anthem ‘Novi val’ and their biggest hit ‘Carpe Diem’ were incorporated, was performed flawlessly. Joker Out is at the level of the assignment, and ‘Live from Arena Stožice’ is the most complete edition. This concert album represents a triumph of unquestionable talent, youthful enthusiasm and dedicated work, but there’s something else at play.

Fifteen years ago the run-down Kino Šiška, a former iconic meeting place for punks of Ljubljana, was thoroughly remodelled and turned into the city's alternative culture institute. Ten years ago Kino Šiška announced a competition for highschool bands and started Špil Liga, regularly funded by the city. In the third season, Joker Out won Špil Liga. Today, Ljubljana has a band that it can proudly send to every European metropole. Their concert in Helsinki sold out three months in advance. That’s not crazy luck, but a smart cultural strategy.

Rating: 8/10

[seveneyesoup]

*transition can mean in any capacity - medical, social, or some combination thereof

[ormrin]

Humans have the most alien and crazy counting

"Dear alien, according to your base, we humans are using base 22 for common counting, but base 60 according to our common base for counting the time, base 4 or 5 for playing Rock, scissors, paper or that three with addition of the well, four of independent but interconnected bases 8 for playing cards and many various bases for playing anything with rolling dice and we set base 2 for our computers to operate with..."

"You're an alien and completely crazy!"

Dear listeners, the dialogue which was quoted was just a taste of today's lesson. Have a look at this human so called car's UIs. There are speedometers with kilometers meaning thousand meters each, another ones counting in miles meaning appropriately 1,6 kilometers each. There are oil level meters counting relatively, radio receiver with stations seeking in Mhz, car computer CPU and memory speed measured in Ghz, but clock counting the time as was mentioned in the opening quoted dialogue. The switch for the lights have various settings - from all off, through blinking in right or left side, up to shining upfront close or more far - and a special lights for so called "myst", probably because it really looks as some mystical menace. Yes, the terrible weather on Earth is a chapter for itself. Human cars also have a light inside, climatization system and so called catalysts for filtering the worst from the air-damaging exhausting gas.

Many humans are so stupid, that they are promoting or even buying electricity-powered cars. You can imagined how "far" such car can go if the climatization is running. Also recharging more e-cars in one place is above any reasonable human infrastructure. Measurement of battery usage and capacity left relatively to the consumption replaces relative measuring fuel called gas, although it's originally liquid.

Also human solar power plants are also not enough effective nor ecological because of mining ores to getting the metals from them, up to assemble them. And don't forget next to no real recycling.

Don't let me start to explains their mean commercial system! If interested, look at these tables of various currencies conversions. Precious metals, diamonds - and jewellery made from both are also a separate topic.

Humans have more groups of blood - and some combination of them are deadly dangerous for them if infused!

Humans dares to not just keeping various viruses, bacterias and parasite, but they're so stupid thrill-seekers, that they're making a new ones by mutating and breeding the old ones. The old dead Martians, let they souls rest I pace, was wiped while invading Earth - by basic bacterias!

Some human so called count-tryes have double numbered home addresses and all of them have their own com-calling prefixes called inter-niteal tele-ufo-ne prefixes. As you already know, the abbreviation UFO means unidentified flying object and while I understand that humans have hard time spitting our trans-warping transporters, I have no idea why they named her calling craps that way.

What a mess, right?:(

[veliseraptor]

what are some xue yang thoughts youve had recently?

one xue yang thought that surfaced while I was thinking about xue yang thoughts for this ask was about feelings and about how I sometimes see people talking about xue yang like he doesn't experience feelings of love or care or tenderness (for instance the "he doesn't actually care about xiao xingchen, just thinks of him as a toy" line of thought, which I personally...do not agree with, to put it delicately).

and I don't think that's accurate! I think xue yang assuredly experiences the whole spectrum of human emotion; I don't think he is very good at empathy specifically (or possibly, and importantly I say this completely without judgment, doesn't have the capacity for it) but I do think, for instance, that he could learn compassion if he put some effort into it (and someone was willing to help him practice a little). what I think xue yang can't do is identify his feelings, let alone process them in any kind of reasonable or healthy way.

some of this is an effect of emotional disregulation and xue yang feeling everything at 110% all the time (all his emotions, not just anger or whatever, when he goes he goes hard), but some of it I think is part of having this sense of a script for what things look or feel like, and a self-image about who he is and how he experiences the world. so when it comes to, say, love, there's a combination of "love looks like this specific thing and that's not what i have/want" alongside "i don't do love, love is for suckers" and those two things combined resulting in not recognizing the feeling for what it is.

he can recognize other things more easily because they fit more into his self-conception and his experience of them is closer to the script - when it comes to anger and fear he knows what they look like and they're more familiar/a part of who he knows he is (even if he would rather deny the fear and transmute it into anger), and he knows what it's like to feel happy, but when he hits the limits of that horizon then he stops parsing things so accurately. he experiences them but doesn't name them, and this is exacerbated by the fact that xue yang does not introspect pretty much at all. he's just not interested in self-analysis. who has the time for that? he's very aware of what other people see in him, and he does have a very strong sense of self, but when it comes to, like, thinking about the how and why of what he's thinking and feeling, he's not getting into that.

and some of that is because it would be dangerous for him, in a sense; both in terms of "getting caught up in your own head is a good way to be not paying enough attention to your surroundings" and also in terms of a more abstract "it might challenge his self-conception and part of xue yang's resilience is in the solidity of his self-conception, being forced to confront his own contradictions and weaknesses would be devastating and, in fact, is part of what kills him when it happens."

i guess the short way to sum up this post would be "xue yang's reckoning of his own emotions is pretty narrow, and he would probably actually agree with people saying he doesn't feel certain things, but the deal is really that he's bad at identifying them and doesn't really put in the effort to try."

[valtionrautatiet-official]

An introduction to VR multiple units, part 4: Dm12

The Dm12. Lipokas (Slipper) aka Vankka (Stout, Solid) aka Konkka (Bankruptcy), aka Peräkylän Pendolino (Backwater Pendolino... a dear child has many names. These stout boys are currently our only diesel railbuses in use, operating the slow-stopping services on non-electrified routes. They're also our newest multiple units in operation at the time of writing (the Sm6 Allegro trains are newer, but currently not in operation).

A two-carriage Dm12 train in the current livery at Haapamäki, 2020. My photo.

Since I love context, to understand the Dm12 we need to go back over 30 years. Our previous mainstay railbus class, the Dm7, was retired in 1988. Diesel multiple units (DMUs) remained in use on some local services using the Dm9 units (downgraded from the original express services), but these too were withdrawn in 1990. No new diesel multiple units were built to replace either class; instead, services previously operated with DMUs were replaced by locomotive-hauled trains using blue carriages (which were in turn replaced by the new Intercity coaches on many long-distance trains). This resulted in some funny combinations, such as a single carriage being hauled by a single locomotive.

As should have been obvious from the start, not having any DMUs was A Very Bad Idea. Already in 1995 our Pieksämäki workshop rebuilt a second-class blue carriage into a DMU by putting in two bus engines and fitting control cabs at both ends. This single Dm10 unit was used successfully for three years around eastern Finland, but our illustrious leadership decided not to proceed any additional conversions due to the projected relatively short lifespan, instead ordering 16 brand new units from Alstom. The first of these Dm11 units were delivered in 1997... and quickly discovered to be heavier and noisier than specified, and the windshield had an unfortunate habit of freezing so the driver could not see. Already in 1997, we canceled the contract and all units were returned to the builder (reportedly they were eventually sold to Cuba).

Left: The sole Dm10. Photo Nikolas Lintulaakso, Wikimedia Commons. Right: A rake of Dm11's inbound to Helsinki to be returned to the builder. Photo Jarkko Voutilainen, Vaunut.org.

Several new rounds of tenders were held over the subsequent years, none of which resulted in acceptable bids, until finally in 2001 ČKD Vagonka (today a part of Škoda Transportation) in the Czech Republic offered railbuses that fulfilled the specifications of the tender put out on that year. 16 units were ordered, with an option for 20 (which we never took up – a mistake, as we shall see).

A two-carriage Dm12 rake at Seinäjoki, with the first car in the original livery apart from the added green high-visibility tape in the front. My photo.

The Dm12 railbuses finally entered service in 2005-2006. They have a service speed of 120 km/h and a capacity for 62 seated passengers. Funnily enough, they actually weight 8 metric tons more than the Dm11's abandoned due to excess weight. The new railbuses replaced locomotive-hauled trains on the routes Pieksämäki-Joensuu-Nurmes, Iisalmi-Ylivieska, Savonlinna-Parikkala, Jyväskylä to Tampere and Seinäjoki via Haapamäki and Karjaa-Hanko. Due to the better acceleration compared to locomotive-hauled trains, two stations (Oriveden keskusta and Kolho) could be (re-)opened without increasing travel times.

However, it quickly turned out the 16 Dm12's were not enough to cope with the passenger demands on all these services, and most notably Jyväskylä-Seinäjoki reverted to locomotive-hauled trains already in 2007 (but returned to Dm12's in 2011). For reasons unknown to the author, despite the clear need for more railbuses the option for additional units was never taken up, and no additional DMU's of other design have been ordered to date, despite there being more demand than the Dm12 can cope with on many routes.

The middle passenger compartment of a Dm12. Otto Karikoski, Wikimedia Commons.

Perhaps a reason for not building any more Dm12's is their unfortunate habit of catching fire. Between 2007 and 2022, Dm12's have burnt no less than 15 times. The whole class has been out of service due to the fires twice, first in 2012 and again in 2022. One unit was damaged so badly it had to be withdrawn from service entirely. And the fires have not been the only problems with the class, often less than a half of the Dm12's have been in operable condition.

Still, despite the persistent problems, there have been no concreate plans to get new, less combustible railbuses, or even to simply get more railbuses so there would be enough of them to go around. The situation was slightly improved in 2020, when passenger services between Karjaa and Hanko ceased for the duration of electrification works. Passenger services on the route will restart next week, but using Sm4 class electric multiple units.

[serendertothesquad]

Seren's Studies: The Odd Squad UK Trailer

Well, 8 days after my birthday really ain't bad for a belated gift. At this point I'll take what I can get.

Even if it means I have to crawl out of sleep to do it.

*deep sigh*

So you might be thinking, "Hold on, we got a new trailer?" And to that I say yes. Yes we did. PBS grew enough balls to actually give Odd Squad some love during a programming initiative that has absolutely nothing to do with it. And they put it on Vimeo, apparently, which puts all the audition videos that have been unearthed (for OSUK, OSMU, and Odd Squad) in an entirely new light.

But wah wah wah, you didn't come here to read my ding-dong ramblings. You came here to watch me be the biggest loser to ever lose at losing and dissect a 30-second trailer on a weekend. You know how movie trailers stuff all the important bits about a movie into 30 seconds? This is the telly equivalent.

Below the break, I'm going to shred this trailer to pieces, scream, cry, and of course, analyze. Come join me, if you dare.

So I'm going to reiterate a point I made in the Seren's Studies essay for the gadget competition video in regards to Ozzie, in that he's wearing an outfit that looks like it belongs to some kind of Flight department. (And yes, my headcanon about there being a boat that can travel in the sky shall remain strong in spite of this trailer. Whether it will be shot down like a cannonball through a boat that can travel in the sky remains to be seen.)

But anyway. We have him carrying a box (transferring departments?), what looks to be some kind of agent in the back (Security?), and what looks to me like an old Nissan logo against a map (of the UK? yes, of the UK, duh). Off to a hell of a start here.

The trailer doesn't give us the name of this girl -- which is odd, considering she's one of the protagonists -- but just as a refresher: this is Orli, who is from the Canadian side of the Niagara Falls (because of course) and transfers to the UK precinct in order to help with rising oddness rates. My guess is that, while Ozzie transfers from departments, Orli will transfer from precincts. Essentially, she's there to help Americans like myself (and also children, and also parents) understand British terms and culture. Which is fine, because otherwise kids would understand jack about how the United Kingdom does things beyond what's represented in media.

And we have a look at our first villainess! This is The Trifler, named after a British dessert and armed with the power to turn things into...well yeah, trifles. If you've been keeping up with the news, then you're probably aware that a BTS photo of her was found last year when OSUK was getting off the ground. Now, we have her in an official capacity!

I will say that I love the wordplay used here. Combining the British and American definitions of the word "trifle" into a badass introductory phrase is absolutely beautiful and I want more of it.

Haha lol shot from the press release big funy now laugh.

...Wait, hold on, does that mean the image used for the press release was a BTS photo? Because this sure as hell isn't the same angle.

Oh my God.

Not my absolute dumb ass thinking the context of this scene was a welcome party for Orli, only for the celebration to be for a fucking movie opening that got the attention of local news outlets and Eric Stonestreet.

...Okay, the telephone box is great too, and if there's not another Doctor Who reference they can yote in there then we riot, but I- a fucking opening of a movie?

...

Hold on, I'm noticing the Odd Squad logo on the popcorn and the cup.

This is Odd Squad: The Movie opening in the UK, isn't it.

Ah yes. Because I sure would fuckin' love to relive the joy I had when the "Odd Beginnings" two-parter decided to make the movie an in-universe piece of media. Look, I me- you guys had to be there when I recorded the Seren Reacts video. I was taken aback. I nearly fell off the bed. I was tempted to go to the neighbors and sit on their picnic table and cry. And that was when the COVID pandemic was a new thing!

And now I get to experience the hell all over again, four years later, when the pandemic is (largely) over and I'm in my mid-20s.

Look, if they're keen on torturing me like this, then that's how you really know it's a return to form. All they need to do is drop the word "serendipity" somewhere in there and I'll launch myself off the cliff and into the water and hopefully not on a pointy rock.

Normally I'd say how happy I am to see the tubes again after they got one dedicated episode and a handful of appearances and mentions besides that in Season 3, but..."Down the Tubes" is one of my favorite episodes for sleep-talking Oswald alone. And in Season 3, my total count for favorite episodes I can count on only one hand.

Worth noting, though, that in addition to the UK Headquarters being located in an abandoned train station, the tubes are named after the London Underground. Because...y'know, the Tube, and...yeah, they couldn't pass that pun up because they need Britain money somehow.

See, this is how you can tell I'm an Odd Squad veteran.

I can, with about 90% accuracy, pinpoint the context of a scene only seen by few. For example, I can tell you that this is Orli fighting with a woman over tour bus tickets by playing RPS. Because fuck her American money, American money does not net you tour bus tickets to tour the UK and...uh...well, I don't know if Ozzie has any pounds to buy any.

Ah? Aaaaaaaaaahh? Man, I'm good!

Unless Oddmented Reality had some (and please don't ask me, I've never played it), we've now had flying books in every season bar Season 2.

Honestly, that's a sin.

If this means the return of cold opens, then bless them.

It's 12 episodes with 11-minute time limits, though, so I'm a little wary...but bless them. Season 3 had only a select few before they laughed and tossed the concept out, so this is a good return to form.

Also, this is hella good camera work.

I'm...at least inclined to believe this is Ozzie attempting to boost workplace morale by getting a few agents-in-training to cheer.

Which is great, but I'm just thinking of Olympia asking Otis how he feels about his cheerleading skills and and him telling her they're perfect. It works, because Ozzie kinda looks like Otis!

Hey, hey, you guys remember aaaaaaaall the way back in "Zero Effect" where they had that shot of the agents cheering?

You guys also remember the last episode of OddTube S1?

This is like a mishymashy of that and it is glorious.

Also, our first look at the girl who is, by every sense, part of the Flight department. And Onom, even though he got a mention in the gadget-making competition video.

A few folks were asking about this, so I feel the need to clarify that this is a thing in the Oddverse that has been done numerous times before, especially in the first two seasons. You don't wanna blow 10 seconds of airtime on having two agents find the nearest tube entrance, let 'em phase through the floor.

'Tis magic, baby.

I can also predict, with about 70% accuracy, how the OSUK premiere is gonna go.

...

It's gonna end with Ozzie being transferred/promoted/demoted to the Investigation department, isn't it.

Look, the franchise's timeline is a bitch and scares all the neuroscience people at Harvard Medical School, but I did this before with a simple Season 3 trailer and I got a fair bit of it right. When a few OSUK episode titles and synopses come out, then we'll see if I'm gonna reach for the stars or fall hard on my ass.

Okay, I'm inclined to take the logic applied to New York City and apply it here, in that it's too much money and effort and time to edit every piece of signage here into a Shmumber-fied equivalent...

But that's a fucking McDonald's ad up there near the top, and let's be honest, that's one of the most gobsmacking things about the whole damn trailer. We already have a Burger King replacement, so having a McShmumber's is absolutely not out of the question.

(Also, that meal deal is $5 USD. If you're an American, I don't need to explain why this makes me more irrationally angry than it should.)

Besides that, Orli, this is a one-way, two-lane (with possible merger) street, which can absolutely be seen in areas like this in the United States and I don't know why I'm bringing this up since agents cannot and have not been automotively inclined.

"No, that's not odd. It's Britain."

Dumb lil' American I am (who is, in fact, aware how British people drive), but I gave a visceral cough at this line. This is the kind of shit OSMU should have gotten, and failed to deliver.

That aside, though, Ozzie has a bit of a different icon on his shirt now. It's either the London Bridge or a black H, and I know Fergie would cry her eyes out looking at it, bless her soul.

"I'm blue! And if I were green I would die! If I were green I would die, if I were green I would die, if-"

Okay, okay, I had to get that out of the way. I'm sorry. I'm never sorry.

The smartwatches were also something seen in BTS photos back when OSUK was first announced to be a thing. Still running on that Apple technology and crushing creativity.

Perhaps the best sleep paralysis demon I've seen since Yui in the Precure All-Stars F movie.

All right, I'm starting to see the massive differences between this Headquarters and the Headquarters of yore. Keyholes, the blue thing meant to be a simpler copy of the metallic circle structure, the...I mean it do be fuckin' big...

Also, we got our first look at a moving breathing Chef O, who's on promotional material at the very least but isn't exactly a main character. Sort of like what Oksana was: a side character.

Hey, it could be worse. It could be a Ginormouse coming to eat you up for lunch.

(For the non-believers: this is the Oddverse. I'm not explaining shit.)

I see somewhere in the crew of this show we have a boomer who still believes in the usage of the digital camera in the year of our Lord 2024.

No, but seriously. It wasn't believable in 2014 when Otto owned one, and it's less believable now. I've been more frustrated about this than about the badge phones, because there's only so much ironic low-tech stuff I can take before I drop everything and leave.

I was gonna write a joke about how they used to feed cocaine to mice in the 80s for anti-drug PSAs, but someone apparently wrote it for me. Which, unsurprisingly, is not the first time that's happened.

That's on you for not being Odd Squad-savvy.

All of you.

Yes, even Captain O.

-------------------------------------

And that's it. A short trailer, but a hell of a goodie. I'm honestly hyped for this return to form, especially as we approach the franchise's 10th anniversary. Hopefully, the crew has at least learned from its mistakes with Odd Squad Mobile Unit, and will make the most out of these 12 episodes.

And because even this show isn't immune to the curse: if you like what you see here and want more episodes to come beyond the 12 we're getting, watch the ever-loving hell out of this show. Legally, of course. Boost its ratings. The crew is definitely up for making more.

...And donate to your local PBS station if you got a Lincoln or two lyin' around. That too.

Thanks for reading. If you want to view the trailer for yourself, you can do so here: