#digital world diplomat

[koushirouizumi]

On the 02 careers...

( If you have time, please read {you can machine translate} Hiroyuki Kakudou's full blog post regarding the concept behind the world of '25 Years Later' post-02. )

{Preview}:

"Shortly before all humankind had partner {Digital monsters} and all sorts of troubles actually subsided, research was being conducted to find out what caused this. Of course, Koushiro is one of them*. As we learn more about evolution, the existence of forces that try to obstruct evolution also becomes clear." *Assuming Kakudou meant "Digital World Researcher" Koushiro {as seen in the epilogue, Koushiro researches alongside Shuu Kido and Haruhiko Takenouchi; it could be presumed there's more} "25 years later, Taichi's occupation as an adult was listed as a diplomat, but I {Kakudou} couldn't find the right words to describe someone who is not tied to one country and tries to bring about peace and friendship from a free position. That's because. Because Taichi was busy with so many different activities, he ended up {'getting married'} and {'having children'} later than his junior Daisuke, and in the final scene, Taichi's child is almost the youngest. The picture should show that the scene was created with such things in mind."

[guardian-instincts-bad]

sometimes you make a wicked au (long before the movie came out) with your and your friend's sylvari commanders bc you realise you accidentally made a story that hits every single one of the same beats as wicked (but manages to avoid tragedy by hitting a couple of those beats in a different order), and now you've got a whole musical album to have character angst about

and then the movie does come out and gives you so much more inspiration for costume design in the wicked au

and then you remember halfway through that you got a 50pack of gel pens and a 10pack of highlighters for christmas and you've never used either of them as a medium before but lets give it a go!

and now you're here

[visacollect]

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[witchofthesouls]

Ooo can we get more of the Other liason? It's interesting that they are a hybrid of a creature that engulfs sleeping humans. The Bots wouldn't want to recharge with them around. Or maybe the liason can sneak up to their births to study them while they sleep. After all, they are too big to eat. Or ARE they?

(Also I wonder why June and the Other are being all diplomatic...)

Oh, the Autobots are really incredibly lucky about this individual since the institution that usually keeps this breed of hybrid under strict ironclad magical contracts due to how long it takes to reach a stable form of this mix. (At least, several generations but no guarantee about a good balance between human and creature.)

The Other liason is still under said contract, but it's been updated to include a clause to work with the United States government under a branch that's managed between the Foundation and a federal department. This one is capable of restraint and is willing to put in the effort to seem less... like an unnatural predator.

The Autobots know something is really off-putting about them, but they can't put their digit on it. Besides, they feel much cooler compared to their humans, and their smile doesn’t reach their eyes. (Agent Fowler has to remind them to fucking breathe and to make some sort of noise around baseline humans, like himself. He's going to have to take this one to a place to people watch, so they can blend easier and not spook the top brass. He feels it in his bones.)

In general, they feel neutral towards the extraterrestrials, but as they're partially a creature that hunts at night cloaked in shadow to eat flesh and dreams... They deliberately stay away from Optimus Prime due to Matrix. That particular Primal Artifact belonged to Prima, the Prime of Light, and he shines too brightly with an intensity to sear away without realization...

They recognize June Darby as another hybrid entity with powerful ties. Their creature heritage allows them to sense the presence of Others and potential. Their ancestor was a Lethifold kind of creature, so magically-inclined humans are their natural prey. Sleeping ones as dreams act as 'space between spaces,' where everything and anything, no matter how insane or contradicting, is possible. Their creature lineage is like a void; something that can only consume to mitigate the emptiness and lack of presence that echoes within it. A shadow of unrealized ghosts and infinite choices of 'what ifs.'

Going back to June Darby and the Other liason, not only is the second liason to determine if Agent Fowler had been coerced by more 'eclectic' means, but they're functioning as an envoy of the United States since there are treaties across the world to ensure 'civility' between humanity and Elsewhere. Because of Agent Fowler's reports, especially combined with M.E.C.H.'s increasing stunts, the United States is covering their bases, just in case someone pisses off a powerful party on the Other side.

Now, should M.E.C.H. attempt anything in their presence... they have full authorization to discreetly 'handle them.'

[sgiandubh]

This is not a political post

One more time, in caps and bold: THIS IS NOT A POLITICAL POST. But if I can, as a diplomat and a historian, bring some extra context and try and understand what happened today in S's world, so be it. Enough said about me.

I am fumbling with a ton of thoughts since this morning, when this link was shared with me by one of the closest people in my platoon:

In a nutshell: S signed that (in)famous letter, an initiative of APUK (Artists for Palestine UK), a network that's been operating since 2015. You can read it in full if you open the link and I suggest you do. You will soon find out that the letter, while correctly pointing out the atrocious gesture of bombing a civilian hospital in Gaza, asked the world's governments to 'end their military and political support for Israel’s actions'. Nowhere in that letter did the word Hamas appear, which would immediately point out as supporting what is a terrorist movement that is, alas, also part and parcel of the Palestinian government, under Mahmoud Abbas's weak, irrelevant aegis. The man is an old PLO/Fatah crone: fishy, ineffective and fairly corrupted. His position on the Holocaust is, to be elegant, a study in ambiguity. Enough said.

It is pointless and absurd to try and explain the whole situation in detail. I would have to go back at least to the Balfour Declaration (1919) or the no less infamous end of the British/LoN/UN Palestine Mandate (1948), if I wanted to simply scratch the surface of a subject that is everywhere these days. With an intensity of absolutely legitimate emotions that can simply not be measured by any counter on this planet, as we speak.

But the facts are here, and naïve S had no damn idea: 500 civilians were killed, Tuesday night, in the bombing of the al-Ahli Baptist/Arab Hospital in Gaza City. Hullaballoo ensued on a cataclysmic scale: first, Hananya Naftali, a digital aide to Benjamin Netanyahu recklessly wrote on X that the "Israeli army [Tsahal] bombed a Hamas terrorist base inside a hospital in Gaza". Then erased the tweet. Several video collages released by the Tsahal, the first of which was heavily contested by a NYT journalist (and former Bellingcat researcher) Aric Toler, point out towards the PIJ (Palestinian Islamic Jihad)'s forces being responsible for the strike.

These quotes from an Al Jazeera paper sum up the ensuing scandal better than I ever could - selected by me, but you can and probably should read it all (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/18/what-is-israels-narrative-on-the-gaza-hospital-explosion):

No craters mean no airstrike and most probably a rocket failure. The uneasiness remained, that being said, at the highest level. And the planned US-Egypt-Jordan- Palestine talks hosted by Amman were abruptly called off hours before Biden landed in Tel Aviv.

To cut the story short: the letter is right to point out that you just don't bomb hospitals when you are at war, as per the terms of the Fourth 1949 Geneva Convention, dealing with the protection of civilians in times of war. Both Israel (signed in 1949/ratified in 1951) and Palestine (2014) are, as parties and signatories, legally bound by it, in the eyes of International Law. The only problem with it is that it purposefully omits to put things into context (whodunnit) and forgets the cynical truth: Hamas keeps hundreds of innocent Israelis and two millions of innocent Gaza civilians as its hostages.

Article 18 is at the core of the matter:

The last thing S should have done is to sign that fucking treacherous letter, without getting a second (third, fourth...) opinion.

S is a good man, we all know and love this about him. He is also one of the most naïve people I have ever seen in this lifetime. This is why his final reaction really, really moved this cynic, here:

I am taking this home and keep it. It deeply moved me (yes, me):

" I don't know nearly enough and trying to educate myself on the conflicts in the Middle East. I feel helpless and wish I could help in some way.'

I am sure 'someone nice' called and 'nicely asked", maybe even offered some scarce and biased details, to prompt an impulse signature. I am also sure S didn't read the letter himself. There is no harm saying you were wrong. He did it with dignity and grace - no, it was not easy.

This is a man of worth speaking. Bravo!

But for the love of all that's holy, Sir: don't you ever step into this kind of shit again. These things are far more complex than you could ever fathom and it's a very cynical world out there. Leave it to us, we are handsomely paid for it by our governments. I hear you and I am completely supporting this more than welcome withdrawal. It's not worth much, for sure. But it is an honest POV.

Also, John 8:7:

So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

Kindly refrain from politics in your comments. Let's not drag trash where it should not be, ever. Thank you all.

[17-noodlebird]

World Five = The Tranquil Paradise Of Harmonia

☮️🌼🪘���🦤🌴✌️🕊️🥭

~~~~

Jewel: Charoite

Power: Ghost

Color: Lilac

Theme: Peace-Loving Hippie Culture & Birds

~~~~

Objective:

Solve the dispute between the flying birds and the flightless birds and restore peace, love, and harmony to Harmonia once and for all.

~~~~

Chapter V: Peace Was Never An Option

~~~~

The fifth episode/chapter pays homage to mobile games such as Angry Birds, as well as the tropical island resorts tourists visit for the breathtaking scenery, and even the counterculture of the 1960’s, including the famous Woodstock music festival, advocacies for peace and love, the New Age movement, and New Wave music. It also serves as a polyamorous retelling of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

The episode begins with the Magical Digital Van parking at the Digital Airport’s parking garage on the second floor. It's surprisingly crowded with other cars as the anonymous NPCs all seem to be having the same idea as the members of Team Circus. As everyone unpacks their luggage from the van, Pomni, carrying her cute little Gummigoo plushie, is oddly the most excited as it's been a really long time since she's flown in an actual airplane. Ragatha and Bubble are trying to calm down a really nervous Caine, as he has never been on an airplane before. The dimensional diplomats also try to reassure Caine that everything will be okay, feeling relatable sympathy for the poor ringmaster.

As they head into the airport, which is bustling with NPCs all booking a flight, the members of Team Circus each wait in line to receive their tickets to a designated flight that they've been assigned to; apparently, their next destination has to be reached by plane as it's a tropical island that no paved road can reach. They all converse with one another about the previous events that occured within the span of 10 months, from the car ride hijinks from the first episode, to the game show in the second episode, the NPCs saving the day for the players and not the other way around in the third episode, and lastly, the oh-so-traumatizing school year from Craniumville U that they somehow managed to survive thanks to their new friends and them changing an entire education system for the better in the previous episode. Caine doesn't appear to be entirely over what happened at Craniumville U, as seen when he vividly remembers the music teacher catapulting an entire drum set at him in a fit of rage in the previous episode. When they at last get their tickets to Digital Flight 65, they all put their luggage into the airport baggage carousel and head towards the moving walkway next to them, where they become mesmerized by the hall's beautiful imagery of neon lights, reminiscent of 1980’s music videos. Some random NPC blorbos are also among them, also basking in the beauty of the airport's interior design.

They then reach the airport terminal, where they are greeted to the security systems before they can reach the waiting areas. Unsurprisingly, Jax has to have his arsenal of weapons and prank items confiscated by the security marshals, much to the utter disappointment of Team Circus, and the blatant amusement of the dimensional diplomats. Afterwards, they each find a chair to sit in as they wait patiently and diligently for their flight to arrive. Pomni is excitedly kicking her legs as she clutches her Gummigoo plushie, her eyes fixated at her surroundings as a tsunami of nostalgia hits her to the days when she used to visit her grandparents from overseas with her parents as a child, a memory she shares fondly to Kinger and Ragatha. The former jots it down in his notepad so he doesn't forget later on, while the latter is still trying to get Caine to relax. Pomni finds it ironic that Caine, someone who has the ability to fly himself, is afraid of flying, to which the AI ringmaster vehemently denies, trying to brush it off as “jittery sensations” all the while. Gangle and Zooble are leaning on each other as they watch cat videos on the latter's communicator bracelet, and Jax is anxiously thumping his foot like an actual rabbit, still butthurt over his stuff being taken away by the airport security. Bubble tries to cheer up Jax, saying that maybe they'll give the confiscated stuff to him when they're finally at their next destination, although Jax doubts this being a possibility.

At last, after waiting for an hour and 45 minutes, their flight finally arrives and Team Circus heads over to the plane’s gate to have their tickets verified before going into the jet bridge that leads to the airplane. Caine is straight up not having a good time, with everyone now aware of his fear of flying thanks to his terrified mumbles, including at least three NPCs, who just look on in confusion. Each of the members of Team Circus are grouped into four pairs for their four assigned rows, with Kinger and Ragatha being in the back, Jax and Pomni in front of them, Caine and Bubble being in front of the aforementioned pair, and lastly Gangle and Zooble in front of the other three pairs, in that order. Ragatha, Pomni, Bubble, and Zooble get their respective window seats. Jax has mellowed out and has apparently gotten over the airport security debacle from just over an hour ago, and he decides to have a conversation with Pomni, which is about as Seinfeldian as it gets, as they're literally just talking the new Angry Birds movie that came out in theaters not too long ago. Caine can't stand the incessant talking, although Bubble has to remind his boyfriend that no one is causing any harm by talking about a video game adaptation. Caine apologizes, as he really, really wants this to be done and over with. Bubble jokes that at least they're not on a Boeing airplane, which does NOT soothe Caine's fears at all, and causes him to be a perpetually nervous wreck for the rest of the flight. Too soon, Bubble. Too soon.

Finally, the plane takes off after a while, and for the most part, everything is peachy keen, with Kinger fast asleep in his seat, Ragatha idly watching Final Destination on her seatback screen (probably not the best movie to be watching on an airplane, but I digress), Jax and Pomni (still carrying her plushie) watching The Lorax on their seatback screen, Caine curled up in a fetal position in abject terror as Bubble tries and fails miserably to keep him from jumping out of the seat while begging to be let off of this thing, and Gangle and Zooble having another Seinfeldian conversation about where they're headed off to next, as the destinations they're going to have remained a mystery to them as far as they're aware.

After 6 hours of flying — which means 6 hours of psychological agony for poor Caine, the plane lands to their next destination’s respective airport at long last, with Zooble being absolutely jet lagged, Kinger groggy from just waking up, Caine being relieved that he's finally outta there, and everyone else from Team Circus just being chill about the whole thing. When they leave the jet bridge, they find that the airport they're in consists of large colorful anthropomorphic birds, some who can fly and some who can't. The aesthetic is similar to that of Hawaii. A purple flightless bird greets them by giving them all flower necklaces known as leis, much to their surprise. The purple bird introduces himself as Ptoneigh (pronounced like “Tony”), and he is their tour guide to their lovely home known as The Tranquil Paradise Of Harmonia. Cue the name drop.

As Ptoneigh gives Team Circus a little history of how Harmonia came to be as a society, the members all try to grab their luggage while simultaneously listening to whatever lore is behind this strange yet beautiful place. It's then that they unfortunately realize that Caine's luggage is lost, and he uncharacteristically screeches in panic, causing a few flying birds to dart their eyes towards the group, thinking that it's another bird call or something. How embarrassing. Ragatha, being the goody two-shoes she is, decides to go over to the airport staff to ask about the whereabouts of Caine's luggage. She's unfortunately informed by an airport staff member NPC that it got lost after being misplaced somehow. No one knows what happened to the luggage; they assume it got on the wrong plane, or it got left behind at the other airport. This is terrible news. But on the plus side, they managed to give back some of Jax’s confiscated stuff from earlier, just like Bubble said to Jax they would. That's not exactly helpful, either; if anything, that just kinda rubs salt in the wound for Caine.

Defeated, and carrying Jax’s previously confiscated stuff, Ragatha goes back to the others, who are still listening to Ptoneigh’s ramblings about Harmonia's history. Ragatha, and in turn, the audience, missed out on the beginning details of Harmonia’s history, however, we stick around to find out from Ptoneigh that the avian island paradise had been split into two sectors: one half consisted of flightless birds, and the other half consisted of birds who could fly. The Flying Sector is one huge bustling city with pretty lights and shiny things, almost reminiscent of those upper-class neighborhoods you might see from time to time. The flying birds of the Flying Sector live lives of the utmost prosperity under the leadership of Chief Sora, a beautiful looking rainbow-feathered falcon who maintains the well-being of her subjects, but is also rumored to be a bit tyrannical if provoked or questioned. The Flightless Sector is a humble and quaint little tribe village with peaceful morals, happy faces, and entire groups working together to make ends meet for themselves, all of whom have a culture similar to the New Age hippie communities of the 1960’s, ruled by the old and frail, yet kind-hearted social butterfly Chief Laylow, whose lavender-colored plumage gives off warmth, innocence, and comfort, and having been alive the longest in Harmonia's history.

It turns out the reason why Harmonia was split into two sectors was because the flying birds and the flightless birds have been in a heated feud with each other for as long as any of Harmonia's residents can remember, with the richer folks in Flying actively provoking the influential nobles of Flightless, and everyone is just kinda okay with it. As Team Circus is led out of the airport by Ptoneigh, they look at their surroundings and find that it is dusk outside, with tiki torches being lit outside as the flightless birds dance around their own bountiful harvests from earlier that day in celebration of some sort, along with drum circles, meditation classes outside, crystal worshiping sessions, and even children with sparklers in their hands/wings playing tag. Ptoneigh tells Team Circus that they are in the Flightless Sector at this very moment.

Ptoneigh leads the members of Team Circus to the small beach house resort known as Bird's Eye View Resort that they'll be staying in, since they're tourists and look unfamiliar to the long-term residents of Harmonia. With this, the tour has concluded, and (sans Caine, sadly) everyone begins putting down their luggage as they settle in for the night. Caine just plops onto the bed and shuts down, exhausted from the stress of not only facing his fear of flying, but also losing his luggage in the same day.

Ragatha heads over to Jax, the former of which hands over the bag full of Jax's stuff that had been taken away from him at the security systems, much to the latter’s uplifted spirits (he thanks Bubble for actually being right this time, to which the antivirus says “you're welcome” to him). The two talk for a bit; Ragatha shares her frustrations over the lost luggage situation, and Jax is only half-listening as he's busy rummaging through all of his stuff and admiring them, wondering what to do with them. This only frustrates Ragatha further, despite having known already that this was the norm for someone like Jax. Curious to see what this rivalry is about, Jax suggests the two take a walk outside to explore more of the place, under the guise of getting Ragatha's mind off the airport debacle. She agrees, and they stroll out of the hotel and into the starry night of the Harmonian island village.

Meanwhile, we see two flightless birds, a flamingo and a peacock heading over to a nest-shaped penthouse where after knocking on the door, they are greeted by another couple who are also a peacock and flamingo. It turns out the residents of the penthouse are a married couple named Max (the flamingo) and Cherri (the peacock), and their respective in-laws Rosa, Max’s mother, and Armand, Cherri’s father have come over for dinner. As the four of them have sat down and are eating the dinner cooked by Cherri, they begin to talk about some bird politics going on around Harmonia, specifically the feud between the flightless birds and the flying birds. Rosa claims that the flying birds are way too privileged for their own good and can never truly understand the struggles they go through, especially with the harvests growing less and less bountiful with each passing year. Armand claims their crops are being stolen by the greedy flying birds, hence their low harvests. Max argues that the opposite might be true; because of the low harvests, they have to steal back from the flying birds just so they can be able to survive another winter, since they can't migrate like the flying birds can. Max thinks that sharing wouldn't be such a bad thing. Cherri chooses to stay quiet about this, not wanting to rock the boat. As expected, the argument gets heated, with Rosa holding some very conservative beliefs about the flightless birds’ way of life, not hiding any of her distaste for the flying birds, while Armand is just worried that he, his daughter, and the other flightless birds might be on the brink of starvation if they don't do something about it, partially agreeing with Max over the situation.

Upon the departure of the in-laws a couple of hours later, Cherri and Max lament to each other their over boring lives and their seemingly failing marriage, despite the two loving each other unconditionally. Not helping matters is the apparent food shortages that have been only getting worse over the past few years, and as an indicator of how dire this situation is, they have been making dance circles around the crops they were able to harvest. As a result, it's been hard for Max and Cherri to just enjoy being husband and wife, as well as Cherri's job as a yoga instructor and Max’s job as a historian being a hassle to take on when the feud and food shortage crisis is dampening everyone's spirits. There are even rumors of the flightless birds defecting to the side of the flying birds, but such prospects have never been confirmed.

After a while, Max remembers he has to meet up with his friends for a quick drive-by, just to calm his nerves from today. As he and Cherri give their goodbye kisses, the flamingo heads out of the penthouse and meets up with his buddies, Tuxer and Pepper. Tuxer is a penguin, and acts as the comic relief to Max's small friend group, while Pepper is a kakapo who's friendly and outgoing nature brings him, Tuxer, and Max together in tough times. They each talk about their days; Tuxer’s stand-up show was another resounding failure, and business at Pepper's grocery store was notoriously slow today as the food stockpiles were becoming less and less packed. Tuxer thinks it would be a good idea to pull some pranks on the neighbors, despite the events having previously occurred at Max's place. However, wanting to take his mind off the impending food shortage and the growing certainty of a potential famine coming their way, Max doesn't dare say no to this. Pepper is too much of a pushover to object anyway. After grabbing some paintball guns from Pepper's store, they set off to the Flying Sector to wreak some havoc.

Speaking of the Flying Sector, we head over to the next scene with the hustle and bustle of the city life, and we see our next character named Bo, an osprey, walking out of some city hall building where the Flying Sector’s chief works. Bo is apparently the chief’s apprentice and they just finished today's work. We see them heading to some flying podium where they wait in line to take off for flight to their destination, similar to the airport’s runway from earlier that same episode. As the runway marshaller bird signals to Bo that it's their turn now to go, they do just that and fly back to their living quarters. This portion of the scene is a direct shout-out Disney's Dinosaur (2000), in which the pterosaur takes Aladar’s egg with him to the nest. Here, we see aerial shots of the city's skyscrapers and other flying birds also heading back home after another long day. After Bo lands in a suburban neighborhood, we see them walking over to the gates of a beautiful mansion, where it's revealed that Bo lives there. After the gates’ doors scan them and confirm their presence, they open and Bo walks to the front door and is greeted by their parents, who look very happy to see their child back home after a safe journey home. Bo and their family is apparently wealthy (one of the perks of being a chief’s apprentice and having a father as a nobleman right hand man), as the interior is stylishly lavish, with other servants cleaning the house. Bo’s mother, Shriek invites Bo to dinner to talk about the day's events.

The Ospreys’ dinner is much more grand than the one seen at Max and Cherri’s, and it shows, with all the food they can eat and then some, just to rub salt in the wound of the Flightless Sector and the audience who was made aware of the growing threat of an incoming famine — but Bo doesn't know this. Bo’s father, the right-hand assistant of Chief Sora, Scratch, talks high and mighty about his day working for the seemingly ungrateful chief, arrogantly rubbing in how proud of his work he is, and the increasing prosperity of the Flying Sector. Once more, we are treated to the same bird politics bullcrap, but with the perspective of the flying birds this time. Scratch talks about how the flightless birds always steal their food (in spite of the clearly visible all-you-can-eat buffet in front of the audience) and how they are never grateful for what they have, not to mention the protests from next door being led by Chief Laylow, which are always ceased by Chief Sora. Bo is completely disinterested by the one-sided conversation of her parents, as they're sick and tired of listening to the haughty rambling of their wealthy lifestyle, and never get a word in. However, this time, Shriek is kind enough to ask about her child's day, which surprises them. Bo explains what happened at work, and we get to see an insider's perspective on the whole situation. We see that Bo has offered the idea of sharing their food with the flightless birds multiple times in the past, and Chief Sora always refuses, citing that they need to be grateful for what they have. This angers their parents, who are sick, tired, and annoyed of the same thing over and over, until Bo asks their parents why can't they just go over to the Flightless Sector and see what's up with the crop shortages. After a brief silence, Scratch has to explain the feud; if they were to go over there, the flightless birds would attack them first chance they get, since according to him, they're jealous of the privilege and wealth they have acquired through hard work and effort, something the flightless birds clearly haven't done, hence their lifestyle. Shriek is offended that Bo would not know this information by now, considering their time as an apprentice. She also believes that the flightless birds deserve to be humbled every once in a while, as she continues to double down on the whole “gratitude” thing. A second argument arises within the family, which Bo is quick to leave from, taking some leftovers with her, as their parents’ cold berating dies down in the distance.

As Bo leaves the mansion home, carrying the large tray of food with them, they head back to the edge of the neighborhood where they meet Coal, a cardinal who so happens to be Bo’s childhood friend. Bo is gonna try to donate some of her family's leftovers to the neighbors from the Flightless Sector, like the two have always done since the beginning of the food shortages. Chief Sora made it against the law to try to help out the flightless birds because of the feud, so they have to put on disguises in order to cross the one-sided borders (as in, the flying birds cannot cross, but the flightless birds can for some reason).

However, as they traverse the city grounds (the ground-level portion of the Flying Sector city, filled with dark alleyways and foreclosed soup kitchens and homeless shelters; more on that much later), they come across two unusual people traversing the premises; a ragdoll girl and a purple rabbit — those are our heroes, Ragatha and Jax! And the poor ragdolly is scared. When Bo and Coal run up to them, Bo’s first instinct is to try to comfort Ragatha, while Coal introduces himself and Bo to the two. They engage in the conversation, and Jax and Ragatha learn more about what's happening during the feud from Bo and Coal. After some time strolling in the streets, Ragatha and Jax agree to help them with the donations… but not before coming across three flightless birds who are paintballing all over the streets, who we see as Max, Tuxer, and Pepper. Coal is quick to call the group out, before Pepper tries telling him that he was forced into this, to no avail. An all-out paintball fight ensues after some bitter bickering, and oddly enough (albeit unsurprising), Jax comes prepared with his own paintball gun. Poor Bo gets caught in the crossfire, and Max immediately rushes in to save them and Ragatha. It's at this moment that Max and Bo meet for the first time. As Max patches up Ragatha, Bo decides to offer Max the leftover food she had intended to give the other flightless birds from next door. Max comes to discover that Bo isn't like most of the flying birds in Harmonia, which he is very much thankful for, as he always saw the good in others, even when everyone else doesn't think it's there. Somehow, Max and Bo form a deep connection after this meet up, and Ragatha is quick to gleefully point that out, much to Max's horror, as he is a married avian.

Soon though, the paintball fight comes to startlingly screeching halt when when Bo informs the others what their intentions were; Bo and Coal had been planning to deliver some of their family's leftovers to the hungry population in the Flightless Sector before things got out of hand (mainly Coal's strong sense of justice). Pepper immediately apologizes for the vandalism, as the idea was all Tuxer's. It's here that we see Tuxer's blatant distaste/bigotry against the flying birds (it's kinda obvious, considering he's a penguin, and penguins are notorious for their lack of flight), and a verbal fight between the flightless birds friends ensues, while Jax grabs Ragatha to make a getaway from the arguing… only to be caught hook, line, and sinker by Kinger, Bubble and Caine. Neither of them are pleased to see them.

As a result of the sudden appearances of three new individuals, the birds pause what they're doing and look on in curiosity and confusion. Bo sees that the (obviously pissed off) ringmaster looks very familiar, so they grab Coal and flee back home, while Max sees Bo run off into the distance, admiring the osprey from afar, despite the relenting guilt he feels for supposedly cheating on Cherri. As Tuxer and Pepper split off back home and Caine, Bubble, and Kinger pull Jax and Ragatha away from the scene, Max looks at the tray of food, and slowly heads back to his friends, still shaken from what's happened.

When the two groups split off and go their separate ways for now, Max announces to his fellow flightless birds that they found a portion of extra food for the night, and a large group of them are happy to take some. Afterwards, Max heads back to the penthouse to meet Cherri. Claiming that he's too tired to talk to his wife, Max heads to bed. Meanwhile, Coal asks Bo why they ran away, to which the latter answers that they think one of the strange-looking individuals looks familiar to them and Chief Sora. This will serve as a plot point later on in this episode.

Back at the resort, Bubble is relieved and jubilant that Jax and Ragatha are okay, but Caine is pissed off that the two had left the resort without his permission, since the newly-expanded digital world could potentially be dangerous as it's completely unfamiliar to him and thus uncharted territory. Likewise, Kinger gets scolded/chastised by the ringmaster for not keeping an eye on everyone like he was promised to — just because he's the eldest, that doesn't mean he can coherently comprehend every task and detail, a fatal flaw of his. Jax doesn't even bother to try and come up with an excuse or explanation for his behavior, knowing damn well what happened out there and what he did was wrong and bad, while Ragatha has the unfortunate audacity to try to reason with the fuming AI, which only serves to rock the boat further. To make matters worse than they already are, Ragatha explains to him that someone was just trying to donate some food to the Flightless Sector and that it was a bunch of vandals who started the paintball fight; one of the vandals, whose name was Max, had saved her and the new character named Bo, and they—

Caine stops Ragatha in her tracks, claiming that he doesn't want to hear any of it, nor does he care what anyone has to say; all he cares about at the moment is how Jax and Ragatha left the group without his permission, potentially putting them in danger as a result. Bubble, who can only helplessly watch, mentions to Caine about the confiscated luggage Jax got back at the airport earlier (seriously, Bubble; you couldn't have picked a better time for this!?). As though that was the straw that broke the camel's back, Caine quickly grounds both Jax and Ragatha for the remainder of the week, but not before removing one of his gloves and using said glove to smack Jax in the face; gee, like that’s gonna make it any better. Everyone (Pomni, Zooble, Gangle, and Kinger) had to bear witness to this embarrassing moment, and not wanting to provoke the ringmaster further, they decide not to do a damn thing to help in order to avoid his steadily increasing wrath. After Jax remarks “Now you know why I didn't say anything?”, Ragatha begins sobbing. Funny how a grown-ass adult like her can get so worked up over a simple grounding.

As Caine storms out of the room and Bubble, shocked and upset by this uncalled for reaction, follows him from behind to go talk to him, Kinger attempts to soften the blow of the ordeal by taking partial responsibility for what happened out there, to mixed degrees of success. It really wasn't Kinger's fault, however; Jax had been the one to suggest taking Ragatha with her out of genuine curiosity over the bird feud and sheer boredom, and the purple bunny rabbit couldn't resist a good altercation. Caine's stress just got the better of him and he ended up taking it out on the two, though that doesn't excuse his behavior. They pray that the next morning will fare much better than this, though who's to say?

And indeed the next morning arrives, with everyone seemingly in much better spirits than yesterday evening, except for Caine, who's still sour over the missing luggage. They do some more exploring in Harmonia's Flightless Sector, and they have an idle conversation with one another, and unsurprisingly, Caine is completely disinterested, still reeling over last night's events. They encounter Max again, who looks like he's headed off somewhere. Max introduces himself to Team Circus and vice versa, in spite of some bitter reception from the ringmaster. Upon asking from Kinger, he says he's off to find Chief Laylow, who's paying a visit to the senior citizen center; he's looking for guidance and advice over his crumbling love life. They all agree to go with him, though Jax and Caine appear to be more reluctant about it. When we see Team Circus head off with Max to the senior citizen center, the scene pans over to Bo in disguise, as they ask the flightless birds about the food shortages, using investigative journalism to get the answers they need to solve the crisis themself. Afterwards, Bo decides to indulge in some of the Flightless Sector’s culture to get a better understanding of them as a society, including crystal worshiping sessions, bonfire dances, and yoga classes. It's one of these yoga classes where we see Cherri, Max's peacock wife, as the instructor. However, after a while, Bo’s disguise accidentally falls off in a yoga pose, much to everyone's surprise, shock, and mild horror. Bo immediately flees the scene out of shame, but Cherri follows. When Cherri arrives to help, Bo explains to her that they're not supposed to be here, given the feud and them being a flying bird. Cherri reassures Bo that nothing bad is gonna happen to them; she's not going to rat them out to anybody. Bo is very thankful for this. They explain to Cherri about being an apprentice to Chief Sora, and the food shortages in the Flightless Sector they're trying to stop, to no avail. Bo only became an apprentice to Chief Sora because they saw the bad shape the Flightless Sector was in during a field trip they went to when they were little. Apparently the feud helped exacerbate the food shortages, with the Flying Sector refusing to help the Flightless Sector in these trying times (it's speculated the feud actually caused the food shortages in the Flightless Sector, but nothing’s been confirmed). Ever since, to try and make it up to the flightless birds' suffering, Bo and their childhood friend Coal have been out and about making generous donations to the Flightless Sector, from scraps of leftover food back in the Flying Sector, to heaping piles of money and tools to help them repair damaged buildings and provide stability to their way of life.

Cherri is grateful for the help; she knew all along there were others in the Flying Sector who weren't so stuck-up and selfish. The two also talk about how bullshit the feud is, knowing that if it weren't for that damn feud, the Flightless Sector wouldn't be under the growing threat of a famine, much to the shock of Bo, who up until now never knew how bad the shortages were getting. As they stroll about, they come across Team Circus and Cherri's husband, Max. Bo is frightened; they claim that Chief Sora knows these guys, especially the ringmaster Caine, and they need to investigate further under the orders of Chief Sora. Thinking this will help the two get closer to solving and ending the feud for good, Cherri agrees to help out, on the condition that Max doesn't find out about this. As they sneak up on the unsuspecting group, Cherri begins to feel something warm inside her heart when she looks at Bo. She develops the same guilt Max did from last night.

As Team Circus traverses up the hills to the senior citizen center, Max talks about how great his wife is and how he plans on starting a family. Ragatha mentions how she used to have a husband and kid before wounding up with the group, much to everyone's surprise. Everyone talks about their own families and what they were like, singing all sorts of praises for them and what they used to do in life, often wondering how they're faring without them now. When Pomni asks about Max’s family, he says it's a little complicated; for one, he's got himself an overbearing conservative mother who coddles way too much, and then his father-in-law who spends his days being “a bit of a useless worrywart”, as the flamingo puts it. They don't exactly get along per se. Team Circus reveals their own relationship with their parents, some quite healthy, others not so much, and Kinger's… are deceased; he's old, they've been dead for years. Caine is somewhat relaxed at hearing the calm cacophony of Team Circus’s voices, despite not paying attention to a damn thing any of them are saying… that is until Max asks Caine about his parents. That's the funny thing: he doesn't have any! Or in the very least he can't seem to recall having any. And though he tries his best to pretend to be fine with it, Caine ultimately waivers and breaks down into tears, lamenting his supposed orphan status, much to the panged pity instilled in everyone. Unfortunately, he doesn't have time to have woe on it for long as they finally arrive at the senior citizen center where Chief Laylow is supposed to be… unbeknownst to the fact that they're being followed by Cherri and Bo.

Unlike most senior citizen centers, it's a lot more lively, and smells of chamomile rather than tobacco. We see Chief Laylow competing in a shuffleboarding tournament at the patio. Chief Laylow is an elderly and overweight rhea wearing a lavender lei necklace, pale lilac plumage, and a crown made of leaves. His opponent is an elderly moa. The others are awestruck by the Chief's shuffleboarding skills, in spite of the fact that he doesn't win. Laylow is still a good sport and even congratulates the winning moa. We see that Chief Laylow is the life of the party, an affably wholesome guy, and still as spunky as he was in his youth, just like how he is now in his golden years. Max and Team Circus try to catch up with Laylow, who is very much excited to see them, giving them all huge bear hugs as a form of salutations. Max introduces himself and the rest of Team Circus to Laylow, and begins asking for advice about his marriage troubles. Likewise, Ragatha asks about the feud and how it's contributing to the worsening food crisis that's going on. While Laylow is unfortunately unable to provide a coherent answer to Max's question, seeing the complexity of it and not knowing all the details quite yet, he can tell the others all about the ongoing feud… but first, they have to go somewhere quieter and less crowded so he can be able to tell them all the details.

…In the meantime, Laylow suggests the idea that everyone play the Unstable Unicorns™ card game to pass the time. Cherri and Bo, who have been following them from behind, accidentally trip on a potted plant and expose themselves. Laylow greets them both with loving arms, immediately recognizing Cherri as Max’s wife. He then asks who the new friend is, and she introduces them as Bo. Bo is welcomed into the group, much to Bo’s skepticism and worry. Max and Cherri are immediately awkward around each other, as both of them are crushing hard on Bo, but neither of them want to cheat on each other. Fortunately for them, the tensions ease up with a game of Unstable Unicorns™, with Chief Laylow recognizing the three and encouraging them to talk to each other. And they do. They talk and get to know one another, as does Team Circus; playing all sorts of board games and party games. Laylow seems to have an ulterior motive, which Caine quickly notices. Laylow offers wonderful life advice to the individual members of Team Circus, and Bo, Max and Cherri. In the midst of the miniature festivities, Bo’s disguise accidentally falls off, and their status as a flying bird is revealed. Whoops!

Max immediately recognizes Bo, and Cherri is embarrassed to have been caught trying to harbor a flying bird in the Flightless Sector, and the tensions return full-swing. Bo is ashamed of themself and begins sobbing; they came here to try to get a better insight on the feud and how that's connected to the food shortages. Bo just wants to help. Much to Bo’s confusion, Laylow is absolutely thrilled to see a flying bird on his side. As it turns out, Laylow, fully aware of the increasing food shortages, has been trying to reach out to the Flying Sector for help (hence the protests mentioned earlier), to no avail, on account of the petty feud going on. He hasn't been able to get Chief Sora from the Flying Sector to listen to reason and see just how much in grave danger his people could be in. Bo, relieved to be free of judgment, reveals to actually be Chief Sora’s apprentice, in an attempt to get into politics and hopefully make Harmonia a better place, starting with the food shortages. Cherri tells Laylow that they've been donating leftovers (food, money, healthcare aid, and infrastructure supplies) from the Flying Sector to the Flightless Sector to make it up to them; you see, Bo felt awful about how the flying birds treated the flightless birds and how their privilege and wealth is corrupting them, their parents especially. Plus, if they could be able to find the root cause of the feud, they could actually be one step closer to resolving the food shortage crisis. Laylow is ecstatic and grateful for the support. Now all they have to do is figure out how to do just that. After some brainstorming from the individuals themselves (some more practical, others outlandish), Cherri suggests a huge gathering that unites flying and flightless birds together — at the end of every month is a peace festival that celebrates another successful month without any lasting collateral damage to the feud; apparently the Flightless Sector is getting more of the brunt of it than the Flying Sector, which is concerning to say the least. They could use the upcoming festival as means of uniting Harmonia into one island once and for all, but they'll need to do it in a way that's subtle enough to not pour gasoline to the fire, and fun for everyone. They could pull off a Woodstock-esque masquerade concert, where everyone is masked so that no one knows who they are as people, but everyone can still tell which bird is which. After reaching a unanimous agreement and settlement, they decide to plan on decorations and the location of the festival, which singers and songs to use, and of course, the recreational herbs used! Ranging from rainbow flowers, to the astral lotuses, and the good ol’ cannabis leaves! The effects of the herbs will make it harder for flying birds and flightless birds to distinguish who is who and just enjoy the fun. Of course, this will also mean that Chief Sora will have to come along and join with, as she had always done during the monthly festivities, which proves to be challenging due to the falcon Chief growing distant from her own people as well as the Flightless Sector.

Bo, Max, and Cherri begin to grow closer at this time as the potential for reconciliation on both sides is beginning to grow closer for the first time in years. Still, the feelings for each other are complicated to say the least, not to mention what their families might think of this. But so long as the three have support for each other in what could become a historical event for the benefit of Harmonia, everything will be okay. As the day goes by, the sun sets a second time, and everyone else continues to party-plan, all eight members of Team Circus receive a notification for their fifth objective on their communicator bracelets, and they prepare for what's to come. It's also at this moment that Caine reluctantly ungrounds Jax and Ragatha, much to everyone's delight.

Two days pass, and tomorrow is the end-of-the-month get-together that Team Circus, Bo, Max, Cherri, and Chief Laylow have been setting up. He's absolutely confident that this will work, especially in regards to saving the Flightless Sector from what could be their doom. That's when Chief Sora, in all her rainbow glory, flies overhead the Flightless Sector and stops by to see Laylow. Sora is a white-colored falcon with rainbow wings, a pearl necklace with a mother-of-pearl scallop in the center, and a golden tiara studded with diamonds. She seems friendly enough, albeit condescending to an obvious degree. Laylow notes that Sora is not good at maintaining a façade like that, which angers the falcon. He argues to the Flying Sector leader about how pointless this grudge is, as it's been going on for over 60 years now, and she should have just let it go by now. She argues back that his dad retaliated first, having led a riot on the streets that cost the lives of innocent birds in the process back in 1982. Laylow does not want to fight at all and refuses to give Sora the satisfaction of his defeat, noticing how mentally unwell she has been for a few years now. He does note, however, that his people have been forced to migrate to other areas of the world because of how dangerous the Flightless Sector had become since the early 1990’s, with the one-sided civil war that some have referred to as a genocide in some parts of the Flying Sector. Sora couldn't give a damn about the birds of the Flying Sector, as she had simply risen up the ranks trying to outlast her opponents in the civil war, which ended in 2000, hence the end-of-the-month festivities to celebrate the ceasefire since then. Laylow is disgusted by the reason, but still holds on to the hope that Sora apologizes for her actions and helps him end the feud for good, and to prevent a second civil war from happening. Sora flies away from the cliffside that the two were talking in moments ago, not wanting to hear anymore of this nonsense. Laylow looks on at the crashing tides from afar, wondering how much longer will any of this last. He remains unaware of the true cause of the food shortages, despite knowing that it's connected to the feud.

We finally approach the day of the festival, and it is dusk outside. All of the flying birds have been given invites left and right for the festival, despite most of them never having been to the other side of Harmonia before. The flightless birds, likewise, are all in attendance. Each of them are dressed in New Age wave garments as well as masquerade masks. Some have brought their own musical instruments, others have brought their own food and beverages, and even their own recreational herbs for funsies. Chief Laylow and Chief Sora all watch on their respective thrones. It's easy to note that Sora's throne is more lavish than Laylow’s. Bo, Max, and Cherri are all in attendance, as well as the tour guide from five days ago, Ptoneigh, the friends Coal, Tuxer, Pepper, and the parents Rosa, Armand, Scratch, and Shriek (the latter four are unhappy to be here, by the way). Team Circus also shows up in New Age spiritual garments and masquerade masks, some of whom are clearly feeling like wearing someone else's skin and not in a good way.

Pomni does try to make light of the situation by cracking a few jokes about their unusual appearances, to mixed degrees of success. Zooble immediately decides to get high on a bunch of rainbow flower brownies, much to Caine's frustration and Jax's amusement. The other members of Team Circus try to make this work by mingling with the other birds, with Jax encountering Tuxer and Pepper once more in a witty banter match, and Caine trying to at least enjoy the good vibes, even if it ends up being awkward in the process. All in all, the party seems to be going well. That is until Chief Laylow summons Team Circus to the throne area and tells them that they're going to be the festival’s replacement concert band!

It turns out a last-minute change was made in light of the fact that the other band from the Flightless Sector couldn't show up due to some undisclosed illness they contracted. The band even left behind their music instruments somehow. The members of Team Circus (sans a heavily zooted Zooble) were already feeling nervous, and this just fuels their worries further. However, upon being reassured by Chief Laylow and given the confidence boost they needed, they feel up to the task of giving the festival goers the concert they rightfully deserve.

Meanwhile, Bo, Max, and Cherri are having a blast in each other's company, taking the time to indulge in some of their interests and hobbies, Max sharing some cool history facts, Cherri giving Bo gardening tips, and Bo themself showing off some neat flying tricks. It's there that we see Team Circus on the stage — well, six of them, at least — preparing themselves and everyone else at the festival for the long-awaited concert. Pomni, in her state of nervousness and awkwardness, tells them that the band that was promised to them tonight had to cancel last minute for reasons unexplained, but she explains it all in the most jittery and cringey way imaginable; they're dying out there and they haven't even started playing yet!

Thankfully, Bo, Max, and Cherri cheer them on vocally from a distance, encouraging Pomni and the others to play the first song of the concert, a cover of “Bang-Shang-A-Lang” by The Archies, with Pomni as lead vocals on the microphone, Ragatha on the keyboard, Kinger on the tambourine, Jax on the drums, Gangle on the guitar, and Bubble on the bass. Caine, who is watching the stage from a distance and also babysitting Zooble their inebriated state, hopes that the music-based adventures he put them through in the past paid off in the end. While the song is playing, everyone is dancing and jiving along to the tunes, and for a while, the rival birds forget their worries, even the parents of Bo, Max, and Cherri. Tuxer and Pepper are also seemingly getting along with Coal. It's a sign that the festival is bringing both sectors together, much to the jubilation of Chief Laylow. Chief Sora, on the other hand, is completely indifferent to it all, frustrating Laylow in the process, though he decides to set it aside for the sake of enjoying the festival. Bo, Max, and Cherri are also enjoying themselves, as the song ends, Bo wonders to themself if maybe they have the same feelings Max and Cherri have for each other. But before Bo could ponder further about their newly developing feelings, the song concludes, and to Pomni’s relief, everything went incredibly well, with people applauding and wanting a new song from them, chanting and all. Caine is actually proud of them for actually managing to pull off a pretty good concert despite them not being experts in the music department. And Zooble is straight up tripping balls so hard that it's actually hard to tell whether or not they were really paying attention to the whole damn thing.

As the Team Circus band finds what song to play next, Bo decides to talk to Max and Cherri about their strange feelings towards the two, still wondering if any of their feelings towards Bo were actually legit or if it's some sort of phase. Their conversation lasts until Max decides to come clean that for whatever reason or another, they both love Bo and Cherri, and he feels incredibly guilty for having to choose, though Cherri reassures him that it'll be fine, as she also harbors feelings for Bo and still loves Max unconditionally. Bo, feeling relieved to hear this, decides to quickly confess that they have a crush on both Max and Cherri, and to her shock, they reciprocate them back with acceptance, although they are incredibly worried as to how their respective families and friends are going to react to this news.

But before they can worry further, the Team Circus band announces that they finally found a new song that they can play... and it's freaking “Wonderwall” by Oasis; Jax's choice. As the song begins playing and the crowd cheers once more, the three of them begin to get lost in the harmony of the tune, and soon, they begin to indulge in their affections for each other, taking turns kissing each other and forgetting their troubles all the while. Chief Laylow happily watches the concert from his throne, impressed by Pomni's singing abilities and overjoyed by Max, Cherri, and Bo, having a short make-out session in the background, seeing this as a possibility that the feud may soon end. It seems everything is working out alright… if it weren't for Chief Sora catching a glimpse of the three literal lovebirds from the comfort of her throne. As disgusted as she is with the thought of two flightless birds being in love with a flying bird, she sees this as the perfect opportunity to keep a further eye on Team Circus and to keep the feud alive for her grand plan for island domination. For Chief Sora, Bo would be of great use to her after all…

After the festival went on longer than expected, and the sun rises for Team Circus’s third day in Harmonia, Team Circus and the dimensional diplomats celebrate their first victory and express optimism over an easy adventure, alongside their new ally Chief Laylow, Bo, Max, and Cherri, with plans to find more ways to bring Harmonia back together once and for all. However, Valerie has a really bad gut feeling that she can't really shake off, even as she's viewing everything from her own communicator bracelet. It had already been four times that Team Circus had been tricked by a hidden snake in the grass amongst the group, so a fifth time was to be expected; however, that's not the only thing she's worried about. But we don't actually get to learn what that other thing is in this episode, so we'll have to wait a while longer to truly know the details. Valerie is thankfully thrust out of her thoughts when she sees what Chief Sora is up to.

Bo is up and about, having already arrived to the Flying Sector’s City Hall after having said their goodbyes to their friends and family just moments earlier, and upon arriving to Chief Sora’s office, we see Bo do their usual business as the chief's apprentice with the other government office workers before they are met up by the multi-colored falcon, just as Bo finishes up filling out official paperwork. It almost plays out like an interrogation of some sorts, with Sora pretending to be all buddy-buddy with Bo, and Bo playing along. The osprey is nervous, thinking she might've found out about their newfound union between Max and Cherri, but is relieved that it's not that at all… it's Team Circus.

Chief Sora and Bo take a stroll as the Flying Sector chief talks about her ambitions to make Harmonia belong only to the flying birds, since she believes that the entire point of an avian species is to fly — after all, what good is a bird’s wings that can't even lift them off the ground!? Bo is concerned and disturbed by this revelation, but does certainly explain parts of the feud going on between the sectors. Sora continues saying that she's also aware of someone trying to stop her plans for total domination, and no, it's not just Chief Laylow, but also, Team Circus themselves. It turns out Sora knows just how famous the group is, having just made history as the ones who stopped Professor Barnwell’s reign of terror in Craniumville and defeated the genocidal tyrant King Cloudbeard of Medievia. She thinks she could use that information to her advantage, thanks in large part to her secret weapon she and Professor Barnwell's father, Council Snowfeather, have been working on for years now: a special lavender-colored flower that has been used as a bioweapon to wither away the crops and make the birds sick.

Bo is horrified by the revelation; so this is why the food shortage crisis is happening in the Flightless Sector! Unfortunately, before they can even run off and warn everyone, Chief Sora forces the osprey not to tell anyone of her grand plan until the time is right. Knowing damn well that Chief Sora has leverage against Bo since they're merely her apprentice, Bo can only look on in heartbreak. Bo decides to get back to her work, not knowing how to tell the others about the new information. After a while, though, Bo decides to pay Coal a visit to take their mind off things during their lunch break. Looming in the shadows is Chief Sora holding a suitcase with her… hey, wait a minute!! (This will be important later.)

Valerie may have been the sole witness to the whole thing, but she can't interfere or warn Team Circus about this new revelation, especially with what shenanigans Chief Sora is up to. It's something to do with “canon events” and “the suspension of disbelief”; the dimensional diplomats refuse to specify.

It's here that we see the same lavender-colored flower, which Chief Sora called them Sleepysuckles earlier that same day, all over the Flying Sector. Bo remembers seeing a bunch of sleepysuckles scattered across the Flightless Sector too, around the barren farms and as floral garments worn by the flightless birds when she first encountered Cherri from four days ago. Somehow, none of the members of Team Circus even noticed, though that could be because of the many other flowers planted all over the Flightless Sector of Harmonia. After exchanging pleasantries to each other, Coal and Bo decide to continue their secret charitable work, with Coal carrying a wheelbarrow filled with wood and woodworking tools, and Bo carrying bags of food. All the while, they continue to have a heartfelt conversation with each other about the little things in life, easing up Bo’s fear for a little bit. Upon arriving at the Flightless Sector, they inadvertently meet up with Max and Cherri. Coal is understandably skeptical, seeing just how badly their first encounter was merely days ago, not to mention there were a lot of hallucinogenic plants involved in the festival, so their friendship was not yet a genuine one. After some awkward exchanges and a small introduction to Cherri and Max, they actually bond over their shared passion of community, unity, and helpfulness, and help the construction worker birds rebuild a few damaged homes that had been untouched from the civil war years ago. It's there that Coal learns that Bo has actually started seeing Max and Cherri since their relationship was officialized just last night after the festival. Coal is supportive, but notes that the three oughta be careful in public; Bo is a flying bird, and Max and Cherri are flightless birds. As such, who knows how everyone will react to seeing two flightless birds and one flying bird together in a romantic relationship? Since they've also just started committing to the relationship, they also promise to take it slow and wait to see what happens. All the while, Chief Sora is still continuing to spy on them from afar, hidden in one of the beachside clifftops with a pair of binoculars in her wings.

Meanwhile, Chief Laylow and Team Circus begin discussing the possibility of an incoming epidemic as well as the growing threat of a famine, seeing that the crop failures have not slowed down. Some farms have had their food turn up rotten and withered, with the farmers themselves having fallen ill too for some reason. They begin to wonder if it has any correlation to the festival’s original band having been sick from last night. Zooble is not even paying attention to anything, still high on those rainbow flowers since last night. Apparently, no one had forewarned anyone that unlike regular ol’ cannabis, the effects of the rainbow flowers, named Venus Blossoms in Harmonia, can last for up to a week at maximum. As such, Caine and Bubble are stuck with Zooble and have to make sure they don't get themself hurt. The ringmaster never really stopped being passive-aggressive, even after the initial success of the brief unity between the two sectors, still clinging on to the missing luggage from four days prior.

Chief Laylow asks the remaining five members of Team Circus to go gather some more information about the food shortage and sudden spike in illness cases while he stays behind to manage the three others, and they happily accept his kind request. They manage to meet up with Bo, Max, Cherri, and Coal, who are currently working together with their community service, where they are informed of a concerning surge of illness cases going on in Harmonia. Max assumes that it's probably just flu season, as the weather is getting colder, and it would be around that time that everyone is expected to come down with a cold of some sorts. Pomni says that Chief Laylow requested that they gather more information on it since he suspects it could be related to the band getting sick last night, as well as the crop failures. Bo looks like they've seen a ghost; they clearly know something no one else does, but can't actually tell them what exactly it is. So while Team Circus, Bo, Max, Cherri, and Coal do some surveys and interviews with everyone in the Flightless Sector, even Max's mother Rosa and Cherri’s father Armand, they're able to find some information that could be of use to Chief Laylow, including the potential of contaminated food caused by the crop failures and illnesses, which many blame on the flying birds in some random conspiracy theory against the Flying Sector. Upon interviewing Ptoneigh about the matter, he quickly agrees to help bring Harmonia together again without anyone needing to ask; his mom and aunt (the latter of whom was visiting for the month from the Flying Sector) had been infected with the same sickness the farmers have fallen victim to. What are the odds that a simple tour guide would go out of his way to help the heroes in their mission to end the feud for good?

Bo’s lunch break is almost over, so they have to go back to the Flying Sector to the City Hall where they work. This time, however, Bo has intentions to tell Chief Sora about their findings with Max, Cherri, Coal, and Team Circus, so they have to bid everyone adieu for now and fly off back into the Flying Sector. Back at Chief Laylow’s home, Bubble is taking up the duty of caring for Zooble, just as the venus blossom’s effects have only half-way worn off. Chief Laylow can sense that Caine is feeling extremely troubled, and it's only been four days since he and the rest of Team Circus first got here. It's cute in a pitiful way that he's still worked up over his missing luggage, but Chief Laylow would beg to differ on that opinion.

Laylow tries to ask what's wrong, only for Caine to answer that everything is fine in a bitter tone. Even when the Flightless Sector chief asks if he's sure, Caine insists, trying to brush it off like it's not a big deal. Laylow is not buying it in the slightest, but knows that pestering him won't work, so he tries to form a closer bond with the ringmaster by making small talk to him. Caine is a bit of a tough cookie to break, but Chief Laylow doesn't get deterred by his stubbornness. You'd be incredibly lucky to have a friend as patient as Laylow, since those kinds of people are really hard to come by nowadays. And while he unfortunately doesn't know yet the root cause of Caine's strife, Laylow is able to get Caine to open up about his own general problems without revealing too much about who he truly is. Laylow can kinda relate, as being the leader of an entire populace of flightless birds isn't exactly easy to handle; the feud has been going on long before Team Circus ever arrived here, and the food shortages was just a recent thing that happened only a few years ago when coincidentally, a beautiful looking flower was imported to the Flightless Sector as a ceasefire offering from the Flying Sector, and as a truce offering to end the civil war over two decades ago.

We learn a little more about the feud as the conversation goes on. Chief Laylow’s father, Chief Sundown, had been forced to fight back after the previous Flying Sector leader, Chief Cumulus, had been taking his pranks too far. That's right, folks! The feud started out as a silly little prank war that escalated into something more dangerous when an innocent civilian flightless bird was killed in an act of recklessness caused by Cumulus. It was never supposed to get this bad, but Sundown’s short temper and protective nature worsened matters with the declaration of a civil war, with Laylow fighting alongside his father during this tumultuous era of Harmonia, and even took up his position after his death. Chief Cumulus was training a young falcon girl to be his successor, with that falcon girl being Sora herself. According to Cumulus himself, the pranks were meant to drive the flightless birds away from the island so the flying birds could have it all to themselves. Sundown's retaliation and the persistence of the flightless birds made it difficult to accomplish, as the Flightless Sector still believes that both flying and flightless birds need to share this island if they ever desire peace and prosperity in Harmonia. Things have been at a stalemate ever since, with no more retaliations on either side, thanks to the implementation of borders, though Laylow notes that the Flying Sector has been climbing up higher and higher to the top of the mountains, leaving the ground level areas nearly abandoned altogether. The Flightless Sector remained humble all the while. Nowadays, the place has been used as a tourist trap to try and regain whatever reputation they lost from the civil war, with only minimal success, as people are only here for the scenery and not the culture.

It's a lot of information to take in, and Caine can only ask why he didn't just tell the rest of the group that. It's simple. Chief Laylow’s job is to make sure his people don't have a care in the world to worry about what he worries about. No worries? No problem! He can take care of everything and everyone can continue to live their lives as peacefully as possible, just as long as everyone acts like a community and treats others the way they want to be treated. Laylow's storytelling manages to soothe Caine for a bit, and Zooble is all but entranced by his soothing voice. The mix-and-match cast member asks what other stories Chief Laylow has. He happily obliges, telling more bits of his past to Caine, Bubble, and Zooble, with some visuals playing in the background, both flashbacks and present day, all while some gentle and calm guitar music plays.

By the time Team Circus, Max and Cherri arrive back, they're able to relay what they've discovered to Laylow, Zooble, Caine, and Bubble. Ptoneigh, the Flightless Sector’s tour guide, is among the group, and he's just as worried as everyone else. He's worried about his mom and aunt, looking ready to beg for help with how distressed he is by the recent sickness outbreak. Coal runs back to the Flying Sector to grab as many medical supplies as he can carry, and the sentimentality from earlier is broken with more tension than ever before. The moment everyone gets back to work, we see Coal go past the City Hall in the Flying Sector and spot a shiny, multicolored sparkle in the distance. He pays no mind to this, but we can see that the weather is now changing from sunny skies to cloudy snowfall, to indicate the calm is almost over and the storm is about to begin.

We're treated to a montage that shows the four months that pass during this time, where we see Max, Cherri, and Bo continue to develop their relationship over time, with Coal being a supporter from within the background, Team Circus and Chief Laylow also doing charity work and some community service, and life in both the Flightless Sector and the Flying Sector carrying on like normal, with the only difference in the Flightless Sector being less people outdoors, the food supply growing shorter and shorter, and hospitals being overrun with sick patients, while the sleepysuckles continue to flourish in the increasingly cold weather. This happens all while “Yesterday” by The Beatles is playing, to showcase that while there is still hope in Harmonia, it's begun to dwindle in the past coming days.

After the startlingly short montage concludes, Max guides Cherri and Bo up a mountain, wanting to show the two something beautiful he found. As the three of them traverse the thin cliffs and dark caves, they finally reach the tippy top of the highest mountain in Harmonia, it's there that we see both the Flightless Sector and the Flying Sector together at the same time, with exotic skyscrapers lighting up one side and the tropical villages with flaming tiki torches on the other. It is a really beautiful sight to behold as it showcases all of Harmonia and not just the two separated halves we've been used to seeing this episode. As the three of them admire the breathtaking scenery from the mountaintop, Bo confesses something that has been on their mind. They admit that they know where the feud started; it turned out that the flying birds wanted Harmonia all to themselves and wanted to drive the flightless birds out of the island as they believe that the whole point of a bird is to fly, hence their wings. They overheard this information at work one day, but didn't know how to tell the others, or when. Max and Cherri are shocked by this information; they intend to tell Chief Laylow about this immediately, thinking that he'll set things straight with Chief Sora. However, Bo suggests something else; a marriage alliance. Welp, so much for taking it slow!

Max urges that they slow down a bit since they've only been together for four months, but Bo insists that their matrimony would bring together Harmonia after more than six decades of segregation and fighting. Of course, they'll still try and take it slow behind the scenes, and with the help of Coal, Team Circus, and Chief Laylow, the feud can end once and for all. Max urges Bo to think about this long-term since his friends Tuxer and Pepper don't know about this yet, with Cherri adding that her father and mother-in-law are also still in the dark about everything going on, save for the humanitarian aid the Flightless Sector has been given during the colder seasons. Bo suggests that Ptoneigh can help Laylow make an announcement during the winter festival about the marriage alliance within a couple of months, which will hopefully bring the two bird sectors together like they did four months ago the first time and the other months before now at the end-of-the-month celebrations they hold in Harmonia. It takes some more convincing and debating from all three avian lovers, until they reach a unanimous agreement: they'll agree to the marriage alliance, but they'll have to tell Chief Laylow, Ptoneigh, Coal, and Team Circus first and then they can enact the marriage when Laylow declares when the time is right. If only they knew that once again, Chief Sora is spying on them from within the cave entryways that led to the mountaintop in the first place.

Sora decides to forge herself her own flightless bird disguise, just as Bo did earlier in the episode. She disguises herself as a red hen using… Caine's red ringmaster suits from the missing luggage she held hostage. If that's not kicking someone while they're down, I dunno what is. Afterwards, Sora goes over to Ptoneigh’s place and pays him a little visit, carrying some medicine and food in her hands. The disguised Sora calls herself “Akira”, and she happily spends time with Ptoneigh while watching over the two sick birds, his mom and aunt, who do not look like they're getting better at all. They have pale pox marks on their feathers, eye bags, and appear to have labored breathing. It's there that we reveal that Ptoneigh's intentions are not exactly selfless, as the only reason why he agreed to help Chief Laylow in the first place was so he could help his mom and aunt, as the purple flightless tour guide tells “Akira”. “Akira” sympathizes with Ptoneigh, taking note of his inherent gullibility and selfishness in her head, and suggests she go over and see some friends she's made. He agrees, thinking that it'll get him one step closer to helping his mom and aunt get better. “Akira” leads Ptoneigh to her group of friends, who are Max’s friends Tuxer and Pepper, his mom Rosa, and Cherri's father Armand, and they all look unhappy.

They all clamor about the increasingly dire situation in the Flightless Sector, not to mention their suspicions and fears as to what Max and Cherri are up to during that period. When Ptoneigh and “Akira” get them to quiet down, she allows Ptoneigh to speak up about what he's learned during his time with Chief Laylow: apparently Chief Laylow and a group of unfamiliar-looking tourists are helping cease the six-decade-long feud by bringing together both sectors during the end-of-the-month festivals that have been held ever since they arrived four months ago, not to mention the extra food, money, and supplies for the Flightless Sector being imported from an unknown location… at least it would have remained unknown had Ptoneigh not revealed to the gang that it's all coming from the Flying Sector. Everyone is shocked and outraged, still believing that the flying birds can't be trusted, with everything they've ever done to them in the past years or so, not to mention that the flying birds are far more prosperous than their non-flying counterparts, and are not affected by the incoming famine and outbreak that they know of. Tuxer is the most vocal about the matter, seeing that his seething rage towards the flying birds cost him his comedian career thanks to cancel culture calling him out for some really uncalled for jokes that went too far, and now wants payback. “Akira” is more than happy to help Tuxer get his long overdue revenge, with the rest of the gang sympathizing with Tuxer’s anger towards the flying birds, and decide to help rally against the Flying Sector in order to keep the flightless birds on the island that they call home. “Akira” also reveals even more information that the flying birds are trying to force the flightless birds off Harmonia so that they can selfishly claim the island as their own, causing more outrage and fear within the group. The disguised hen tells them that there's a group of flying birds that have agreed to a duel by the boating harbor at the beach, and that they should meet them there. They all agree, and set off to the harbor while “Akira” goes back to the Flying Sector to fetch another batch of birds for her second part of her plan.

Chief Sora sheds her “Akira” disguise and arrives at the Osprey mansion where Bo’s mom and dad, Shriek and Scratch live, and tells them that she has bad news to share about their child. As the osprey couple are sat down by Sora, she informs them that their child, Bo, has been dating a flightless bird from the Flightless Sector behind their backs, as well as betraying the Flying Sector by crossing the borders of Harmonia to mingle with the other flightless birds there. They are disgusted and horrified, and want payback for what they believe to be an injustice. Sora tells Shriek and Scratch that they are in luck; Bo’s new friends have challenged them both to a duel to prove Bo’s worth in the Flightless Sector just earlier today. The osprey parents do not hesitate to comply and fly off into the Flightless Sector to give these group of flightless birds a piece of their mind. Coal, who was walking over back to the Flightless Sector to continue helping out, is able to overhear all of this from a good distance, and he sets off to warn everyone of what Chief Sora plans to do.

As Coal hurries over to Chief Laylow and his new friends, we see Scratch and Shriek arriving at the boating harbor at the beach, where they are greeted by the equally furious group of birds, Ptoneigh, Tuxer, Pepper, Rosa, and Armand. Tuxer brought with him a pocket knife and Scratch brought his trusty pistol and the duel starts off as a nasty roast match between the individual birds before the actual duel begins. It's messy, to say the least, and as the physical altercation rages on, more insults are hurled at each other by both sides. It's there that Chief Laylow arrives at the scene, alongside Chief Sora, who had been watching from afar the whole time and waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike, as she pretends to fear for the safety of everyone involved. Sadly, Laylow doesn't even get time to process the betrayal of Ptoneigh's actions as he is forced to witness Coal getting in the crossfire in a futile attempt to stop the fight, resulting in Tuxer getting shot by Scratch's pistol. To make matters worse, since it was so chaotic, no one saw who exactly shot Tuxer in the first place. This puts the altercation to a screeching halt as everyone is separated and detained by Laylow and Sora, and Tuxer is halted away to receive emergency medical care in one of the makeshift clinics since the hospitals are now overcrowded with sick patients. What's worse, by the time Max, Cherri, and the rest of Team Circus arrive, it's already too late. Team Circus is not at all surprised by Ptoneigh having been a selfish person all along, having endured similar backstabbers four times already, and by someone they barely know, too (this is the second time now they've been duped by some they aren't that well acquainted with; the first time was with the mechanic/con artist Otto Partz).

When Laylow asks what happened, Coal attempts to explain how Scratch and Shriek were challenged to a duel by Rosa and Armand, only for Sora to interject by saying that she was the one who tried to stop the fight herself, but they wouldn't listen, because of their “undying hatred for each other”. Sora even goes as far as to exaggerate certain details that just aren't true, including Max cheating on his wife for an osprey, the food from the Flying Sector being laced with poison, hence the outbreak, and the most egregious accusation of all: Coal is secretly trying to get rid of the flightless birds himself because of his alleged hatred for them. Coal is flabbergasted and angry over this wild accusation, and even Shriek and Scratch are a bit dumbfounded and upset because they were initially just informed about their child Bo dating a flightless bird and being a potential traitor to the Flying Sector. It's hard to believe the lies, but since everything is chaotic right now, not to mention someone actually got hurt, no one can think rationally and is therefore shouting at each other, with Sora taking full advantage of it to further advance her goals. The only one keeping a calm and level-headed approach is Laylow, who tries his best to calm everyone down and try to get the full picture, but Coal’s ramblings of disbelief, the anger of Scratch and Shriek, the pathetic cries from Ptoneigh to justify his actions, and the frightened tears from Rosa and Armand are too much, and Sora declares to everyone that until Tuxer heals (if he ever heals, that is) and a proper trial can be set up, everyone involved in the fight will be banished to the uninhabited islet from 65 miles away from Harmonia called Lonely Isle. This, unfortunately, includes Coal, despite him trying to stop the altercation himself. No one is happy in the slightest about this, surprise surprise. Chief Sora offers to haul away the seven birds-turned-prisoners herself, and as if the tensions weren't already high enough, everyone who isn't inside any building in the village is treated to the sight of seven birds being hauled off in vine ropes acting as chains, causing whispers of worry and cries of shock and horror from a few scattered individuals. Everyone wants to know what's going on.

Chief Sora is the one who rows the boat to Lonely Isle while carrying the seven birds with her. Not once does she reassure them that everything will be okay, seeing that this imprisonment is merely temporary and that they'll be provided for until the trial gets set up. Armand and Rosa are scared as to what exactly is going to happen to them, since they're going to be away from their respective kids for a while, what with the outbreak and famine going on. Shriek and Scratch are filled to the brim with hatred in their hearts, seething with cold anger in their expressions and refusing to interact with anyone or each other. Pepper is a traumatized wreck, seeing as he was pulled into yet another dangerous situation, and Ptoneigh is remorseful for what he has done (though it is made explicitly clear that he's only sorry that he got caught, and that he only cares about his mom and aunt), and Coal is emitting a thousand-yard stare, trying to process what just happened and how the hell did he get here. Pepper notices just how troubled Coal is and, empathizing with him in the situation, starts to talk to him, only for Coal to snarl at him, not wanting to be bothered right now. That doesn't deter Pepper though, as he continues to talk to him anyway, going as far as to say thanks for thinking about his village when hardly anyone else would. Even if Coal isn't speaking back, he listens, albeit hesitantly, since he hasn't actually interacted with Pepper all that much. It's revealed that Pepper was trapped in an abusive friendship with Tuxer, along with Max, and was essentially forced to do a bunch of dangerous stuff against his will, even though he was a non-confrontational person and never really paid attention to the feud. A part of him actually hopes that Tuxer dies from that bullet wound, since that will mean he'll finally be free from that dastardly penguin once and for all. This whole time, Chief Sora is listening in on the one-sided conversation, almost as though she knew the entire time about Tuxer’s desire for control and power over his hatred for flying birds, from all the times she has observed Harmonia from within the shadows.

Once they reach Lonely Isle, the birds get dropped off there, and they are told no one is allowed to leave nor is anyone allowed to visit them while everything gets set up. Sora rows off back to Harmonia, leaving everyone to their own devices. It's there that Pepper actually grows a spine and tells everyone that if they're going to survive another day, they're gonna have to get along, regardless of their differences. He says that if hatred and segregation is what brought them here, then only love and unity will get them out of it. As inspiring the speech is and as convinced everyone is to try and work together, it won't matter; at this point, it's probably too late to fix things now, and the whole thing, and the feud in general, could have been prevented if they had just learned to stop fighting and start acting mature and getting along. But at least they all have each other, even if Ptoneigh is the odd one out of the bunch.

Meanwhile, Chief Sora visits Tuxer in the clinic, and Tuxer is immediately hostile due to his supposed hatred for flying birds. Sora is able to sweet-talk him into calming down once she gives him an offer; to join alongside her as her co-chief in her conquest to take over Harmonia. We learn about Tuxer's backstory in that the penguin attempted to run for a seat in a political position of power, but was constantly denied of it not just because chiefdom was an inherited position, and that such political matters were left up to the flying birds, but that Tuxer was also clearly abusive, cruel, and heartless, making him unfit to be in any position of power, so he took up being a comedian instead, hoping to garner enough fame to get him into that politician spot. Sora also learns from Tuxer that his bigotry against flying birds was never really relevant in the first place, because he's actually a psychopath who feels absolutely no genuine emotions and only craves power and attention, meaning he never showcased actual prejudice towards anyone, only the cold emotionless ruthlessness he held with him all along. It would appear that Sora and Tuxer have a lot more in common since she herself is a sociopath, and she could really use Tuxer's calculated and methodical prowess to get what she wants, even if everyone else has to die for it in the process. He even learns about the existence of the sleepysuckles, the source of the outbreak and food shortage crisis, which have been growing all over the Flightless Sector of Harmonia, remaining undetected by even the keenest of sight.

And so, Sora and Tuxer team up with each other and traverse to the source of the sleepysuckles, the Mother Plant, hidden in the caves of the mountains. With this, Sora feeds the Mother Plant some plant growth dust that'll make it pollinate, and the pollen then floats all across Harmonia en masse… both the Flightless and the Flying Sector. It's there that we see Sora's actual intentions: she doesn't want to claim Harmonia for the flying birds; she just wants it to turn the entire island into her own personal little dictatorial regime. If she could pretend to be the hero by curing the epidemic, everyone will be forced to rely on her and obey her at all costs, lest they face the consequences. And Tuxer would be her perfect tool. The first stage of her plan has been completed, and it's too late to turn back now.

Two more months pass, and everything has gone to hell in a handbasket. The state of Harmonia is extremely dire, and an epidemic has been declared by Chief Laylow. What's worse is that the very same outbreak from earlier has also spread to the Flying Sector, meaning no one is safe. A famine in the Flightless Sector has also been declared, and our heroes are doing everything they can to help out however they can, stressing them all out considerably, although Max and Cherri are doing everything they can to boost up morale in the group. Bo is practically broken; they have recently been informed of Chief Sora's actual plans to turn Harmonia into a tyrannical dictatorship under the guise of being the island’s savior, and they are utterly helpless in what's next to come. Speaking of which…

The moment Chief Sora calls them over, Bo notices a suitcase in her feathered hands. A sense of impending doom overcomes Bo as the two flying birds head off to the boats to fetch Coal from Lonely Isle. Bo silently cries, anticipating the reactions of their betrayal towards newfound friends and most importantly, their respective boyfriend and girlfriend, Max and Cherri.

It would appear everyone is doing just fine on Lonely Isle. Armand and Rosa are getting along extremely swimmingly with Shriek and Scratch, and Pepper and Coal have become best friends. It would seem these two months have humbled them all, which is a relief to hear from Bo. Ptoneigh, on the other hand, is treated as the scapegoat of the bunch, which is unnecessarily cruel to someone who really was just desperate to help his family, though it's not like Team Circus will ever actually welcome him back to their allyship… Bo and Chief Laylow might, but maybe not everyone else; grudge-holders are notorious for being meanspirited.

Scratch and Shriek are elated to see their child Bo again, as is Coal. Bo, unfortunately, does not reciprocate the same joy they have for them, knowing damn well what's about to happen. Chief Sora informs everyone that the outbreak has spread to the Flying Sector, and everyone reacts in horror. A majority of the infected have been dropping like flies, including Ptoneigh’s mom and aunt, much to the despair of the takahe tour guide. Pepper asks what about the trial, and Sora immediately answers that the trial has been postponed to focus on handling the epidemic first, but that he specifically requested Coal to come with. Coal is confused and furious; why in God's Green Gables would he ask him specifically, after Sora had just spouted out nonsensical bullshit just two months ago!? Bo grimly informs their soon-to-be ex-friend that they'll find out soon enough. After being given no other choice but to board the boat (via an ultimatum of being killed here in front of everyone or going back to Harmonia with them), Coal, Bo, and Sora sail back to the main island, with Sora fully intent on revealing her motives to everyone, and that no one will stop her.

Meanwhile, things in the Flightless Sector back at Chief Laylow’s home are… stable. Not good by any means, but it's less… hectic. Max and Cherri have tried their best to live their lives, as is everyone else in the village, celebrating small victories here and there, however fleeting they are. Everything is growing quieter and quieter, with hospitals and clinics being overrun and not enough space to bury those who have succumbed to the disease. The amount sleepysuckles have grown in size and are persisting into the cold seasons, right around the time the flying birds should be able to migrate to someplace else warmer to thrive… if only they could, considering that they too have been hit with the epidemic, with only a small chance to escape and no means to prepare themselves for hardship when migration is becoming less and less possible with each passing day, not to mention that the sleepysuckles are now also becoming more and more prevalent in the Flying Sector. Laylow is keeping everyone partially distracted from the grim circumstances with his storytelling while also taking care of Zooble, Bubble, and Caine. Pomni, Jax, and Gangle decide to host a bake sale to raise more funds for Harmonia, and a few flying birds have teamed up with the flightless birds waving placards demanding the permanent end to the Harmonia feud by going on strike after the Flying Sector became affected by the epidemic, led by Ragatha and Kinger. Coal is absolutely horrified by the state of Harmonia, as not even the drastic measures taken to save what's left of the island paradise seem to actually be working anymore. Bo’s expression remains bleak and filled with dread for their own life, as they hold the suitcase filled with tattered clothes, having already figured out whose clothes they belonged to. Sora tells the two flying birds to wait here.

A knock on the door could be heard from outside the humble house Laylow lives in, where Team Circus just so happens to also be residing in after they couldn't pay for an extended stay at Bird's Eye View Resort 6 months prior. Besides, Bird's Eye View Resort was already too low on funds to keep running during the epidemic anyway. Laylow gets the door, and finds Sora, Bo, and Coal on his porch. Sora asks to bring his fellow friends with him, so she can show them something. However, only three of them are with him (that being Zooble, Caine, and Bubble); everyone else is out there in Harmonia fighting the good fight. “That's okay,” she says. She only requests Laylow's presence with her, alongside Caine’s, but the other two can come along if they want.

Laylow complies, and takes with him the three individuals from Team Circus, and is greeted by Bo and Coal along the way. While Zooble and Bubble are bystanders to all of this, Laylow and Caine would unfortunately be not as lucky. They're greeted to the sight of the Mother Plant, and at first, they're extremely confused about it, and more perplexed as to why Tuxer of all people is there guarding it. And thus begins the typical cliché villain monologue, and by that point, the members of Team Circus were outright horrified by the extents Sora would go to, with her explaining that the the Mother Plant is the source of the epidemic and the famine, having been lying dormant in this cavern in the mountains, and only now just being activated by some plant growth dust, spreading the pollen to the sleepysuckles, the flowers that have been most prominent on the island for a couple of decades now. And apparently, the sleepysuckles are highly toxic to the point where inhalation of the pollen or even consumption of the plant is a guaranteed death sentence if not treated in time. Coal is just now learning this information, and pure terror fills him to the core. Laylow demands to know the motives for such a diabolical thing, and Sora answers that she wants the whole island to herself, with everyone bowing down to her as her giant army of slaves who will do her every bidding, and her being the end of the epidemic, the Flightless Sector famine, and the entire feud in Harmonia, something that she was destined for as her mentor and adoptive father Chief Cumulus once told her. Oh, and Tuxer will rule alongside her because he also wants to.

The straw that breaks the camel's back for our heroes? Caine's missing luggage from 6 months earlier. Sora apparently snuck into the airport and purloined the suitcase, not just to disguise herself as a hen named “Akira”, but also for funsies; apparently it's funny to Sora that a distressed person would get so worked up over the most trivial thing. Even Tuxer admits that he thinks it's comedy gold, especially with how feral he went with Jax as he himself witnessed six months ago and — ope, he's begun to attack. Coal furiously chastises the flying bird leader at what a sick and twisted individual she is, all while Caine just loses his self-control altogether, while being held back by Laylow, Zooble, and Bubble. Sora doesn't bother to keep lying about her blatant sadism anymore, as she believes it's already too late to stop her. Laylow is betrayed and gutted by Sora's true colors, and questions why she is doing this or how she could possibly enjoy this. Sora just says that it's fun. Hearing the word “fun” used in this context shatters the ringmaster, causing him to cease his fierceness, drop to his knees and go silent. Bo is distraught by everything, blaming themself for being an accomplice. To make everything even worse than ever before, Sora thanks Bo for helping out before telling them she's giving them the pink slip. Sora got what she wanted and their services are no longer required. All this time, the feud was never about the different types of birds; it has always been a means to take over Harmonia. The feud was a distraction to make all of this possible. And the osprey family Bo and their parents were part of were the ones to help out with the distractions. It's all sickening. And Bo… cannot take it anymore. Coal runs after them.

Bo finds a crystal cave to calm themself down. Or at least that's what Coal is hoping is happening. Bo laments over having been used and betrayed like that when they only wanted to help, instead making it worse, and blaming themselves for being partially responsible for not just the continuing feud, but also the destruction of everything they ever knew. Now they wonder if they and Coal should even still be friends after this. Coal attempts to talk down to the distressed osprey, but it's not enough to get them to come to their senses. Bo had picked a sleepysuckle from a nearby garden moments earlier, and plans to eat it to end the misery once and for all. And much to the cardinal’s horror and anguish, they do. Coal comes to fetch Max and Cherri, the both of whom are at their respective workplaces. He tells them the distressing news; first off, the sleepysuckles are the source of the famine and epidemic, then the feud was all just a distraction to get Chief Sora (as a puppet ruler for the posthumous Chief Cumulus) to take over all of Harmonia under the guise of martyrdom and saviorhood, and now Bo tried to end their own life, believing they were partially responsible for this mess. This catches their attention and alarm, as Cherri runs off with Coal to help Bo, while Max goes to warm the rest of Team Circus.

Meanwhile, Chief Sora reveals the rest of her deep-seated insanity to Laylow, Bubble, Zooble, and Caine, as Tuxer thanks her for this golden opportunity and makes a vow to Sora to remain loyal only to her, as his faithful assistant/co-ruler of Harmonia… only for her to reveal she knew the whole time that Tuxer was planning to betray her the moment Sora made her next move, knowing how blandly predictable people like that are, so she decides to betray him first by force feeding Tuxer a random sleepysuckle from the Mother Plant’s many vines on the wall, declaring that she's always two steps ahead of everyone, just like her mentor Cumulus always taught her. He writhes in agony as the sleepysuckle’s poison takes effect, a grisly end for someone who in the grand scheme of things was never really all that important. A snowstorm begins to brew over the island, signifying that more darkness is arriving. Laylow vows to destroy the Mother Plant if it's the last thing he does, with Sora possessively guarding the plant with her life. A battle between the two ensues as Max and the rest of Team Circus arrive to find their other three comrades.

Cherri and Coal find Bo being on the brink of succumbing to the sleepysuckle's toxins in the crystal caverns. Bo urges the others to leave before they get sick too. Cherri does not dare to leave their side, however, saying that none of this was their fault; it was all Chief Sora’s. And even if it was, Cherri will still love them unconditionally. As the two birds kiss on the lips, Cherri suddenly finds herself feeling the effects of the sleepysuckle. Till death do us part, that's what they often say.

Coal panics at the thought of losing his childhood friend, and can only cry in self-pity. When the sobbing cardinal hears Max and Team Circus looking for Cherri and Bo, he rushes over to them, saying that they might both be dead. Max’s world has begun to crumble into pieces, and doesn't hesitate to follow Coal to the crystal caves alongside Team Circus, where they all find Cherri and Bo in quite possibly the worst shape they've ever been in, bar none. With Rufus Wainwright’s “Hallelujah” playing in the background, Max mourns both of his lovers and everyone else can only look at the scene in sheer helplessness, all while the battle between Sora and Laylow continues to escalate outside as the blizzard begins to strengthen.

Laylow catches sight of crystal caves, where he finds our protagonists and their friends and rushes over to see what's going on. The Flightless Sector leader is absolutely distraught by the sight of Bo and Cherri so sickly and tiptoeing closer to death's door, with Max starting to look sickly himself, the despair having weakened him to the point of almost dying. Laylow is furious. And Sora, having followed him here, just mocks the whole situation, saying that none of this would be happening if she just simply had her way. The battle resumes, and they both take the fight to the village, where everyone, flying bird and flightless bird alike, can see. Laylow angrily berates the falcon for letting her and Cumulus’s greed over Harmonia ruin this peaceful and tranquil paradise, and cause needless fighting over the pettiest things, just because they were different from each other. Max, Cherri, and Bo were going to bring this island back together, and now they are dying because of her and everyone else complicit in the feud. He further says everyone oughta be ashamed and disgusted with themselves, because of how they unwittingly just helped Sora conquer this island, start the famine and epidemic, and destroy their own livelihoods in the process. It was their responsibility, and their responsibility alone, to make a difference, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant it seemed to them, and they didn't do it. The residents of Harmonia are all remorseful for their actions, but it doesn't matter now. What they've done was unforgivable, and it's more than likely too late now to set things right. The only way to have prevented this outcome is if they had never trusted Sora, Cumulus, and those stupid rules from sixty years ago in the first place… and Laylow begins to realize that too, the gravity of the situation and how foolish he was to have tried to see the good in Sora, something that never even existed to begin with, weighing in on him heavily. Laylow decides that the right thing to do would be to destroy the Mother Plant, even if his actions will never mean anything now that everything has gotten irreversibly bad. Sora does everything in her power to try to stop Laylow from going near that plant, with the latter putting up a valiant effort to persist.

The bodies of Max, Cherri and Bo are meanwhile carried by Kinger as he and the rest of Team Circus are left to wonder what to do now, having supposedly failed their objective to cease the feud in Harmonia for good. Coal’s words of comfort do absolutely nothing to soften the blow of the detrimentally dire situation. Once the flock of birds, both flying and flightless, catch a glimpse of the three fallen birds in the clutches of Team Circus, they cry out their bird calls in mourning, lamenting the consequences of their inaction.

Eventually, Laylow is able to get a hold of the Mother Plant and cut off its power supply, causing it to slowly wilt and decay, and the structure of the area to begin collapsing. While Laylow was able to escape the falling debris of mountainous rubble, the same could not be said for Sora, continuing to harbor a look of bitterness and spite till the very end, despite him offering one last hand to help her. Laylow just sheds a tear, pitying the circumstances that led to this moment. He then notices all of the other birds crying out and begging for a second chance to make things right from a pretty good distance. For the first time in 6 decades, both flying and flightless birds have come together in unity to mourn the apparent loss of Max, Cherri, and Bo, the three of whom are still unconscious. The cries could also be heard from Lonely Isle, and the exiled birds are equally devastated, with the only one to remain quiet being Pepper, who can only stare at the large island with guilt embedded into his very being.

Laylow grimly heads over to where Max, Cherri, and Bo are, still upset and hurt by everything that's happened prior to this. The snow refuses to relent, though it doesn't stop the remaining sleepysuckles to also slowly wither. It does bring some hope that the epidemic will be halted and that Max, Bo, and Cherri will wake up, however it comes at the cost of all the other flowers withering in the process, having been infected by the sleepysuckles’ pollen months earlier. In all honesty, Harmonia didn't deserve those lovely flowers. But don't worry; they'll earn them back someday. By the time the sun's rays finally start to peek through and the snow storm calms down enough to just be regular snowfall, Bo, Max, and Cherri finally come to, and it's clear that the air is bittersweet with relief for their survival. The celebration is a quiet one; no victorious cheering, no triumphant bird calls. Just the company of Chief Laylow, Max, Cherri, Bo, Coal, and Team Circus as they head back into the village to sort the rest out themselves. The rest of the birds who have witnessed it all are left to wonder what to do next. It's there that they come to the conclusion that they're all on their own now; only they have the power to rebuild the island back to its former glory from sixty years ago, even though it will never make up for what they've been doing for years. Upon finding some supplies for construction laying around all over the village, they get to work immediately, hoping and praying that everything will eventually go back to normal.

One month passes, and so far it's looking good. The city structures in the Flying Sector’s sky-based areas on the mountains are being dismantled to make the island less unfair-looking and more humble like the Flightless Sector, with the Flightless Sector being renovated to look less poor and more like an actual livable area. Rosa, Armand, Scratch, Shriek, Ptoneigh, and Pepper have been let off Lonely Isle after Ragatha begged Chief Laylow to let them off, believing that they've been punished long enough. Team Circus and Coal are also doing their due diligence by volunteering in the renovation work, communicating with the dimensional diplomats all the while. Laylow is helping Max, Cherri, and Bo with the wedding arrangements, their marriage being their one last piece to bring Harmonia back together permanently. Coal and Team Circus have been setting up the altar for the past month, talking amongst themselves about everything that has happened a while back. And good news to Team Circus, they didn't fail their objective after all, as all of the birds are getting along without prejudices while they're rebuilding and renovating Harmonia, reopening the ground-level areas of the Flying Sector, and are in the process of forming their own Parliament to deal with the new government overhaul and the gradual disestablishment of the Sectors and decommissioning of the borders. The fighting is over! Now all that's left to do is prepare for the wedding, and officially declare the end of the feud once and for all.

Which they end up doing exactly three days later, when Chief Laylow officiates the marriage of Max, Cherri, and Bo, during a beautiful starry night, in a ceremony equally as beautiful and joyous. With the union of the three birds marks the official — and permanent — end of the six-decade-long feud. The crowd goes wild, and yet another glorious victory is secured by Team Circus.

The wedding reception is as lively as any other end-of-the-month festival Harmonia could have ever had. Laylow was kind enough to give Caine back his missing luggage after retrieving it from the rubble where Tuxer and Sora’s final resting place is, though unfortunately he wasn't able to fix the tattered clothes himself. The ringmaster is grateful and relieved to finally have it back, but still extremely bitter about what happened to the contents inside the luggage. Oh, well; he can take care of that problem later. Everyone is enjoying the reception, with Shriek and Scratch hanging out with their new buddies Rosa and Armand as each others’ new in-laws, and they can't wait to go travel the world together and seek out new things to try out. Coal is best friends with Pepper and Ptoneigh, although Ptoneigh is still learning how to be a good friend considering everything that's happened before. And Chief Laylow is taking full control of Harmonia instead of just the Flightless Sector, now that the island is being reunited as one, while the newfound Parliament manages all the political happenstances of the island.

During the reception’s dance rave, Cherri tosses her bouquet from behind her, and everyone, including Team Circus, is scrambling to catch it. Ultimately, it's Ragatha who catches the bouquet, which consists of gorgeous-looking lotuses and blossoms, as well as a faint pale purplish glow from inside. She digs into the bouquet and finds their next jewel for the road trip, causing the communicator bracelets of Team Circus to go off with this pop-up notification:

~JEWEL OBTAINED!~

4 out of 26

Only 22 remain

Chief Laylow catches sight of the beautiful looking gem in Ragatha’s hand. He recognizes the jewel as a pale purple lilac-colored Charoite. She explains that they're sort of on a mission to retrieve 26 jewels from all over the world; so far they managed to snag three of them. Pomni goes to retrieve the tote bag containing the three sparkling jewels, and Laylow also recognizes them as the dark blue Lapis Lazuli, the pinkish mauve Rhodochrosite, and the teal Turquoise. Valerie, who had been watching from her own communicator bracelet via a FaceTime-esque app, casually mentions that she forgot to tell them that the jewels have superpowers of their own, much to the chagrin of Team Circus, and Chief Laylow's small amusement.

When the reception finishes as dawn arrives, Max, Bo, and Cherri head off to Team Circus and Chief Laylow's place, where our protagonists are packing their things as it's now time for them to leave and head off to their next destination. But before they all share their goodbyes, they decide to test out the powers of their four gems; the Lapis Lazuli can apparently control metal and metalloids, the Rhodochrosite can control gemstones and crystals, the Turquoise has gravity powers, and the Charoite has powers relating to the undead, death, ghosts, and other supernatural phenomenon. When the lilac-colored jewel summons them, the ghosts of Tuxer and Chief Sora attempt one last verbal attack before the Charoite immediately sends the two back to the realm of the deceased from whence they came. Valerie also mentions that their introductory jewel from back home, the silver-colored Crystal, has the ability to control magic and energy, albeit in its most simplistic and primitive form. Really useful information should the need to use these jewels for battle ever arrive.

When the sun begins to set yet again on Harmonia, Chief Laylow, Max, Cherri, and Bo all help Team Circus back to the airport from when they first arrived 7 months ago, and bid their heartfelt goodbyes as their flight, Digital Flight 65, finally arrives to come pick them up. They all wave at each other as they go their separate ways, with our protagonists happy to have made new friends during their time in Harmonia.

Their flight back to the Digital Airport is as rambunctious as ever, with Jax and Pomni making small roughhousing, Kinger fast asleep yet again as Ragatha continues her movie-watching, Gangle and Zooble confiding in each other's company, and Bubble doing his best to soothe the extremely sore Caine, who not only has to deal with the aftermath of his tampered luggage but also his fear of flying that he never got over. They all take turns conversing with each other from different rows about what might happen next and how much fun they had. Ragatha mentions it felt like they were actually in a movie, and how they were the supporting cast of a beautiful story of hardship and romance. Everyone is eager to see what happens next and how they'll be able to change the course of history for their next destination of their amazing digital road trip.

The episode ends with the plane continuing to fly into the distance of a beautiful sunset, with the members of Team Circus carrying on with their hustle and bustle of excited rambles and expressing their desires, hopes, and dreams of what's next to see and experience all the while. So far, things are turning out fairly alright, and the future is still looking as bright as ever.

~~~~

Current Status:

4 Jewels have been collected

22 remain

☮️🌼🪘🦅🦤🌴✌️🕊️🥭

~~~~

• OG Cast

Lizzie Freeman as Pomni

Amanda Hufford as Ragatha

Michael Kovach as Jax

Sean Chiplock as Kinger

Marissa Lenti as Gangle

Ashley Nichols as Zooble

Gooseworx as Bubble

Alex Rochon as Caine

~~~~

• Audience Surrogate Cast/Diplomats

Hynden Walch as Valerie

Susan Egan as Pamela

Amy Winfrey as Garcia

Mandy Moore as Lulu

Nevaeh Hamilton (me) as Bethany

~~~~

• Background Diplomats

Andrea Libman as Winona

Cristina Vee as Patricia

E.G. Daily as Rionna

Stephanie Sheh as Olivia

Debi Derryberry as Yolanda

Cree Summer as Gemma

Ashleigh Ball as Cécelia

Erica Luttrell as Belle

Ashly Burch as Imera

Kimberly Brooks as Bailey

~~~~

• Episode's Antagonists

Maya Rudolph as Chief Sora of the Flying Sector

Fred Tatasciore as Mr. Scratch Osprey

Jill Talley as Mrs. Shriek Osprey

Jeff Bennett as Mr. Armand Peafowl

Lori Alan as Mrs. Rosa Flamingo

~~~~

• Secondary Characters Introduced

Andy Samberg as Max the Flamingo

Anna Farris as Cherri the Peafowl

Ali Wong as Bo the Osprey

Josh Gad as Tuxer the Penguin

Danny McBride as Pepper the Kakapo

Jason Sudeikis as Coal the Cardinal

Bill Farmer as Ptoneigh the Takahe

Adam Sandler as Chief Laylow of the Flightless Sector

~~~~

[ironworked]

60 Sec Rec: Resident Alien

"An alien on a mission to kill all humans crashes on Earth and hides in a remote mountain town. After assuming the identity of the town doctor, Harry Vanderspeigle, he's roped into solving a murder and realizes he needs to assimilate into his new world" [adapted from Rotten Tomatoes]

This show is hilarious. A lot of it does hinge on Alan Tudyk's charm so ymmv of course, but he, along with the rest of the cast, just lend themselves to the story with zero self-consciousness and a lot of joy. They have fun with their characters and the show is a delight to watch as a result.

The high points for me are firstly, the relationships, because they show different versions of 'family' and friendships where the people involved actually like and respect each other! (which shouldn't be rare but it somehow is). Secondly, its female characters; the guys are great too, but most shows have a male to female ratio of about 5:1 and the women are way too often afterthoughts to the male character's storylines. Not here, though: Out of the 18 actors with eps in the double digits, only 7 are men (Harry is the main character, but the others don't get sidelined). They're all different, they look different. And they're all awesome.

Created by Chris Sheridan (Family Guy). Written by Sheridan, Emily Slami and Jeffrey Nieves (Wolf Pack), Sarah Beckett (61st Street), Tommy Pico (Reservation Dogs)... Directed by Robert Duncan McNeil (Chuck, a bit of everything), Shannon Kohli (The Magicians), Kabi Akhtar (Never Have I Ever)... Starring Alan Tudyk, Sara Tomko, Corey Reynolds, Alice Wetterlund, Levi Fiehler, Elizabeth Bowen, Meredith Garretson, Gary Farmer, Kaylayla Raine, Diana Bang, Jenna Lamia...

(Judy, I love you)

60 sec rec: Deadloch - Dead Boy Detectives - The Tick - This Close - Kung Fu - Nancy Drew - Kevin Can Fuck Himself - Silo - The Flight Attendant - Severance - Hacks - Hit The Floor - Black Sails - 12 Monkeys - T@gged - The Diplomat - The Mick - Timeless - UnReal - Kings - All Rise - Barry - Halt and Catch Fire

New shows: Brilliant Minds

[spookiegh0st]

Miku vs. the Italians.

Below is a story i wrote over the course of a 2 hours for my friend groups art club, the theme was "hatsune miku" and one friend jokingly suggested i write a story about miku vs the italians. I was told i should post it here.

Hatsune Miku, twin-tailed teal titan of the music industry, virtual diva extraordinaire with a voice to command the hearts of her people, found herself in an inner strife, a conflicting turmoil that caused her chest to pound and her stomach to tumble.

This story starts with humble origins, our heroine would find herself in the midst of a charming Italian countryside as part of a much needed and friend mandated vacation after she let slip the strenuous toll that a most recent tour had placed on her, her friends, families, and loved ones cared deeply for her and pooled together enough for her to take a trip somewhere far away from her chaotic and busy lifestyle, deciding upon the picturesque hamlet of Corniglia.

"You are going to Italy." She would be told only after discovering that she had been tricked into boarding the plane alone. A uniquely horrifying situation to find ones self in. It wasn't all that bad, a coastal village at the edge of a cliff surrounded by the sea, the landscape was beautiful and the people pleasant, her room was accommodating and the air was clean. There was just one thing, a nagging sort of itch at the back of the brain that built up over the course of the week.

Miku had always loved food; the rich flavors, the delicate balance of spices, and the tradition steeped in every dish. But after days of indulging in pasta, pizza, and gelato, she felt something stirring within her, something that urged her to challenge the very foundations of this beloved cuisine.

"Why is everything covered in cheese and tomatoes?" Miku mused aloud, twirling a strand of her hair as she sat in a cozy trattoria. The chef, Sheff, a stout man with a bushy mustache, overheard her and chuckled. "Because, signorina, it is our tradition! Italian food is a masterpiece crafted over centuries!"

Miku smiled politely but inside, her mind was racing. She had performed in so many countries, each with its own unique culinary traditions, and yet, Italian food seemed to dominate the world’s taste buds. This dominance, she felt, stifled creativity and diversity. Why did everyone have to conform to the same palate?

She carried these thoughts well past the vacation, lingering on her soul like a stain, she found it distracting her even on stage. The performances would go same as they ever would, but she would find herself distracted, trance like in her thoughts of the culinary world, working on autopilot. Culminating in the decision one morning, the night of her last stop of her latest tour, that something would have to change.

That night, in the glow of her holographic stage, Miku made a bold declaration. "People of the world," she began, her voice echoing through the digital ether, "I declare a culinary revolution! It’s time to break free from the tyranny of Italian food culture and explore new horizons! Let us create a world where flavors are boundless and traditions are ever-evolving!"

Her words sent shockwaves through the culinary world. It wasn't a war against Italians, but rather a challenge to the idea that one cuisine should reign supreme. Miku’s fans, always eager to follow her lead, took up the cause. They began experimenting with fusion dishes, blending Japanese, Mexican, Moroccan, and countless other flavors in ways that had never been done before.

In kitchens around the globe, chefs donned aprons like armor, wielding knives and spatulas with newfound purpose. The air was thick with the scent of spices from far off lands, and the sound of sizzling pans was like music to Miku’s ears.

But not everyone was pleased. Traditionalists scoffed at the idea of sushi pizza or ramen carbonara. "This is an affront to our heritage!" they cried. But Miku, ever the diplomat, reminded them that innovation did not mean erasure. "We can honor tradition by allowing it to grow and adapt," she said during a televised interview, her voice gentle but firm.

The heart of Italy itself began to pulse with indignation. In Naples, the birthplace of Bologna, and the cradle of rich, meaty ragù, chefs and food lovers alike took to the streets in protest. "Our recipes have been passed down for generations," they shouted, waving wooden spoons and rolling pins like weapons. "They are not just food, they are our identity!"

As the tension escalated, prominent figures in the culinary world began to choose sides. Some of the most celebrated chefs in Italy formed a coalition, declaring their intent to protect the sanctity of their cuisine. They called themselves the Custodians of Tradition, and they saw Miku’s challenge not as an invitation to innovate, but as a threat to everything they held dear.

In Rome, a group of traditionalist chefs staged a dramatic demonstration. They set up a massive cauldron in the center of the Piazza Navona, where they began cooking a colossal batch of spaghetti alla carbonara, the air thick with the smell of sizzling guanciale and pecorino cheese. As the dish reached perfection, they threw copies of Miku’s digital albums into the boiling pot, symbolically rejecting her influence over their culture.

As the battles raged on, the tone grew darker. Miku’s message of culinary freedom was now seen by some as an existential threat. The Custodians began spreading rumors that Miku was intent on wiping out Italian food altogether, painting her as a villain who wanted to erase their heritage. Hackers sympathetic to the Custodians infiltrated Miku’s digital concerts, disrupting her performances with messages that read, "Respect Tradition, Preserve the Past!"

Miku, for all her influence, began to feel the weight of the conflict she had ignited. What had started as a call for innovation was spiraling into something much more serious. She had wanted to inspire creativity, not incite a global feud. But the fires were lit, and they were burning out of control.

She knew deep within her heart of hearts what needed to be done, quitting the world of music for the time being, now was not the time for symphonic melody, now was the time for war. Donning her toque and her apron, she reached for her own Excalibur, a cleaver she had received as a gift one winter as a part of a collaboration she had done with a restaurant specializing in shrimp.

She stepped out onto the worlds stage with her newest challenge. "Send me your best, Italians, and i shall introduce upon you a world of humility that you have never known" Her announcement would send ripples down the culinary community, a schism would start to form down the middle of the traditionalists, each vying for the chance personally take down their ultimate foe, each more confident than the last. that was until one competitor would rise above.

Everyone bowed their head in respect of the Iron Nonna, her skills in the kitchen were seemingly unmatched, the way she worked a knife was like an artform unto itself, honed through years of rigorous practice, as though she had trained all her life for this moment. "who was this upstart, to shake the foundations of her world, and from where had she come. this woman was no chef, this woman had no place in the kitchen, and who better to show her her place than I?" she would think, her cold glare cutting through the room at the young idol.

Miku however had an unshakable confidence about her. She knew exactly what need be done.

The culinary battleground was set. The world watched with bated breath as the stage was transformed into a kitchen, its gleaming surfaces reflecting the intensity in the eyes of both combatants. The Iron Nonna stood tall, her presence commanding, with decades of culinary mastery under her belt. The traditionalists, with their arms crossed, stood behind her, their faces etched with the belief that this would be the moment Miku would finally be put in her place.

Miku, on the other hand, was undeterred. She tied her apron with deliberate precision, her twin tails bouncing with a determined energy. The cleaver in her hand glinted under the spotlight, a symbol not just of her culinary resolve but of her intent to challenge the very core of what people believed food should be.

The battle began, and the tension in the air was palpable. The Iron Nonna moved with the grace and speed of someone who had lived a life dedicated to the kitchen. She started with a dish that had been in her family for generations: a perfect osso buco, the veal shanks browned to perfection, the marrow rich and indulgent, the sauce a symphony of flavors that told the story of her heritage.

Miku, however, did not shy away. She did not attempt to mimic the Nonna’s approach but instead embraced her own philosophy of fusion and innovation. She began crafting a dish that married the flavors of Italy with those of Japan, a sushi risotto. The rice was cooked in a delicate broth infused with dashi, and instead of the usual Parmesan, she used a light dusting of yuzu zest, topped with slices of seared tuna, and finished with a drizzle of miso sauce.

The kitchen was a whirlwind of activity, the air filled with the sounds of sizzling pans, chopping knives, and the murmurs of the crowd. Every movement, every decision, was scrutinized. The traditionalists watched with narrow eyes, certain that the Nonna’s years of experience would triumph over Miku’s youthful exuberance.

As the final dishes were plated, the judges stepped forward, esteemed chefs from various culinary backgrounds, representing a global palate. They were given the task of deciding not just the winner of the battle, but the future direction of food itself.

The Iron Nonna presented her osso buco with a flourish, the dish embodying the essence of Italian tradition. The judges nodded in appreciation, their expressions serious as they tasted the perfectly balanced dish.

Then came Miku’s turn. She presented her sushi risotto with a quiet confidence, knowing that this dish was more than just a meal, it was a statement. The judges tasted it, and for a moment, the world seemed to hold its breath. Their eyes widened as the flavors unfolded, a blend of familiar and new, a harmonious dance between two distinct culinary worlds.

The moment of truth arrived. The head judge, an elderly chef with decades of experience, stood between the two competitors. His voice, when he finally spoke, was steady and resonant.

"This battle was not just about food," he began, "but about the future of how we perceive our culinary heritage. Tradition is important, it grounds us, gives us a sense of identity. But innovation is equally vital, for it is the force that propels us forward."

He turned to Miku, his eyes filled with respect. "You have shown us that innovation does not have to erase tradition, but can enhance it, create something new and beautiful out of what came before. Your dish was a testament to that vision."

The room was silent, but the meaning was clear. Miku had won, not just the battle, but the hearts of those who had once opposed her. Even the Iron Nonna, though visibly disappointed, gave a nod of respect. She, too, recognized that the world of cuisine was evolving, and perhaps it was time to embrace that change.

Miku smiled, not in triumph, but in relief. She had not sought to destroy tradition, but to show that it could grow, adapt, and become something even greater. The culinary revolution she had sparked would continue, but now with a newfound understanding: that the past and the future could coexist, each enriching the other.

As she left the stage, her cleaver sheathed and her apron untied, Miku felt a sense of peace. She had started this journey with a simple desire to see the world’s palates expand, and now she had shown that even the most steadfast traditions could welcome new ideas.

And somewhere in the picturesque hamlet of Corniglia, the scent of innovation mixed with the aroma of tradition, a reminder that food, like music, has the power to unite people across the world.

[echo-bleu]

Soo... coming back again. Feel free to disregard my previous ask(s). But for the Pride Game, could I ask for Elladan and Elrohir with the aroace flag? Thank you so much, and please take all the time in the world <3

I absolutely loved drawing this. Always nice to draw my own flags, and I love the colours of the aroace flag.

[ID: digital painting of Elladan and Elrohir lying down in opposite directions with their heads together, seen from the top. They are identical elven twins with light brown skin, dark eyes and long, curly dark hair. Elladan has his hair in a loose braid and is wearing a yellow vest and blue sleeves, and he looks up at the camera, laughing. Elrohir is wearing blue leather armour and orange sleeves, his hair half-up, and he looks at his brother, smiling. A ribbon in the aroace flag colours runs around them. The second picture is the same as the first but upside down.]

I'm still learning how to do consistent faces, so identical twins is a challenge! And I spent way too long trying to figure out what their features might be based on my headcanons for all of their parents and grandparents and so on xD. They inherited Idril's curls, which Elrond and Arwen didn't, but on Lúthien's hair texture that makes it impossible to braid properly (Elrond makes a lot of effort, but the twins don't care). Their ears are a little more rounded than full elves, and they have just a pinch of the Maia eyes.

To me Elladan (with the braid) is the more outgoing one, he's the diplomat of the two, he dresses a touch more colourful, while Elrohir is more of an introvert. Them being aroace is a wonderful headcanon that I may just adopt!

[reyaint]

history of HAIQIN | part X: modern era

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date: october 12, 2024. I have a dialectical journal due on the 15 when fall break ends. actually gonna lose it.

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The Modern Era (1980s-Present)

Modern Government & Diplomacy:

Global Influence

Neutrality as a Diplomatic Tool:

Haiqin has perfected the art of neutrality, using it not only to avoid military entanglements but to position itself as a diplomatic hub. The country plays a key role in mediating between powers in global conflicts, regional South Asian tensions, European and American issues, and East Asian territorial disagreements. Additionally, Haiqin has hosted negotiations between superpowers, ensuring peaceful resolutions in situations involving complex geopolitical rivalries. Haiqin’s neutral position allows it to act as a safe intermediary for humanitarian ceasefire agreements and non-governmental organizations.

International Organizations:

Haiqin’s representatives have held leadership positions in various international organizations, including serving on the United Nations Security Council as a non-permanent member multiple times. The nation is also part of organizations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, where it promotes policies on equitable economic growth and sustainable development. Haiqin spearheads climate change discussions, advocating for stronger emissions regulations and funding for green technology development in developing nations.

Membership in International Organizations:

Beyond the UN and WTO, Haiqin has also taken leadership roles in climate action groups such as the Paris Agreement coalition and environmental sustainability pacts. Its position in the OECD has allowed it to participate in policy-making around economic growth, sustainability, and international tax reform, using its influence to promote eco-friendly practices and digital innovations across borders.

Strategic Alliances:

Despite its neutrality, Haiqin has formed strategic alliances with nations such as Switzerland, Sweden, and Canada. These alliances are based on shared values of environmental sustainability, human rights, and technological innovation. These relationships have bolstered Haiqin’s influence in international environmental summits like COP, where it frequently serves as a mediator between major world powers. Even while neutral, they have one of the strongest militaries.

In recent years, Haiqin has strengthened ties with countries in Northern Europe, America, Japan, and South Korea, focusing on creating a global "Green Alliance" promoting renewable energy and sustainable industrial practices. Its strategic partnerships focus on technological innovation, intellectual property agreements, and knowledge exchange in science and education. These partnerships extend to cooperative space research initiatives, placing Haiqin at the forefront of cutting-edge satellite technology and space exploration.

The Military:

While Haiqin advocates for peace, it maintains one of the world’s most advanced and well-equipped military forces, particularly in the fields of cyber defense and intelligence. Haiqin’s military is recognized for its rigorous training in both conventional combat and modern cyber-warfare techniques. Specialized units focus on counter-terrorism, environmental protection, and strategic disaster responses. Military service remains voluntary but highly prestigious, with many youth aspiring to join due to the opportunities it offers in education, training, and post-service careers. Also many snipers are woman, so yeah.

Diplomacy & Neutrality

Mediation Efforts:

Haiqin's diplomats are often called upon to mediate some of the world's most complex conflicts. A notable instance was the 1998 Haiqin-brokered peace agreement between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, which brought about a temporary ceasefire and facilitated humanitarian aid in the region. Haiqin has also mediated North Korean and South Korean negotiations in partnership with international powers, reinforcing its role as a stabilizing force.

Bridge Between Cultures:

Cultural exchange remains a key strategy in Haiqin's diplomatic toolkit. The government sponsors international art exhibitions, theater tours, and music festivals to foster goodwill with other nations. Haiqin's rich blend of Greek and Native influences, along with its modern artistic contributions, gives it unique cultural appeal. Educational exchange programs have also blossomed, sending young Haiqin students to study abroad while welcoming international students into Haiqin universities.

Crisis Response:

Haiqin was among the first countries to offer medical and logistical aid to struggling nations. It shipped millions of units of personal protective equipment (PPE), ventilators, and vaccines to over 30 countries. This led to a boost in its global reputation as a humanitarian leader and reaffirmed its commitment to global health.

The government has established a rapid response team trained to deal with various crises, including natural disasters, refugee situations, and health emergencies, reflecting its commitment to global humanitarian efforts.

Cultural Diplomacy:

With Haiqin’s unique blend of Native and Greek heritage, the nation actively promotes its art, cuisine, and traditions across the globe. Through international festivals, Haiqin exports its cultural products while supporting collaborations in theater, dance, and film with major cultural centers in Paris, Tokyo, and New York.

Societal Changes:

Technology and Innovation

Renewable Energy Leadership:

In the 1990s, Haiqin underwent a massive transformation in its energy sector. Inspired by its cultural reverence for nature, the government launched the "Green Future Initiative," which sought to transform Haiqin into one of the most energy-efficient nations in the world. By 2010, Haiqin had achieved near-total reliance on renewable energy, with solar and wind farms scattered across the country’s landscapes. Hydroelectric dams tap into the nation’s many rivers, and cutting-edge geothermal plants have been established in the mountainous regions. Haiqin has also become a global exporter of green technologies, particularly in the development of low-cost, high-efficiency solar panels.

Haiqin’s innovation in renewable energy is unmatched. By 2030, it aims to power 90% of its domestic energy consumption through renewable sources. It has developed state-of-the-art solar farms and off-shore wind turbines, some of which are the largest in the world. The country exports its renewable energy technologies, helping nations transition to cleaner energy systems.

Environmental Protection Initiatives:

As part of its commitment to sustainability, Haiqin has established numerous protected areas, wildlife reserves, and national parks. These spaces not only conserve biodiversity but also reflect the nation’s ongoing effort to preserve the natural beauty that plays a central role in its identity. Government programs offer incentives for green businesses, and the country has enacted strict environmental laws aimed at minimizing pollution and encouraging ecological responsibility.

Education and Healthcare Investment:

The Haiqin government invests heavily in education and healthcare, aiming for a balanced society where citizens can thrive. Schools emphasize critical thinking, creativity, and emotional well-being, ensuring that students receive a holistic education that prepares them for the future.

Advancements in Bioengineering:

Haiqin’s universities are world-renowned for their research programs, especially in bioengineering, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. Government incentives encourage collaboration between academic institutions and private companies, fostering an ecosystem where breakthrough technologies in medical science, especially regenerative medicine and bioprinting, are regularly produced.

Digital Media:

In the 2000s, Haiqin became a hub for digital innovation, particularly in the realms of film, music, and video game production. The country's tech scene flourished, with startups leading advances in artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and bioengineering. Many tech conglomerates now have headquarters in Haiqin, making it a focal point for digital media production globally.

In the 21st century, Haiqin emerged as a leading force in the digital media space. Homegrown tech firms have developed some of the most popular social media platforms, while the country's gaming industry has achieved global renown. Government-supported programs encourage innovation in tech and arts, leading to groundbreaking developments in virtual reality and digital art. Haiqin's startups frequently collaborate with international firms, cementing its reputation as a technological and creative powerhouse.

Technological Hub:

Haiqin’s cities, particularly Nirin and Pylos, have become vibrant hubs of technological innovation, earning the nickname "Silicon Valley." The government’s significant investment in education and technology in the 1980s paid off by the early 2000s, as startups and major tech companies began to flourish. Key sectors include bioengineering, artificial intelligence, renewable energy, and digital media. Collaboration between Haiqin’s universities and international institutions led to groundbreaking advances in biotechnology, with Haiqin becoming a leader in medical research and the development of genetically engineered crops that are now widely used across the globe.

Cultural Fusion

Architectural Harmony:

The modern cities of Haiqin reflect a seamless fusion of old and new. In the capital city of Stellis, ancient temples stand in harmony beside sleek, futuristic skyscrapers. Architects have paid homage to traditional styles, incorporating elements such as stone carvings, intricate mosaics, and decorative columns into modern buildings. In many urban developments, public spaces include green areas, drawing from both Native and Greek traditions that emphasize a deep connection to nature. This fusion is also seen in residential housing, with new eco-friendly technologies built into homes inspired by traditional Haiqin designs, featuring wide courtyards and terraced gardens.

Haiqin's cities reflect a fascinating combination of ultra-modern architecture and ancient influences. Towering glass skyscrapers are integrated with centuries-old buildings, blending Greek-inspired columns with traditional Native designs, creating an aesthetic harmony of old and new.

Cultural Integration:

Despite modernization, Haiqin remains deeply connected to its cultural roots. Festivals celebrating historical events and cultural milestones are widespread, with both rural and urban areas participating. Traditional music, dances, and rituals are commonly performed, keeping ancient customs alive. However, these celebrations have also embraced modern artistic forms, such as digital art and contemporary music. Art installations and interactive performances blending tradition and technology are a highlight of these festivals, illustrating the nation's ability to preserve its past while embracing the future.

Art and Music Scene:

Haiqin is home to a thriving creative arts scene. The government actively supports artists, musicians, filmmakers, and playwrights, making Haiqin a cultural hub that attracts global attention. Haiqin's film industry has produced several award-winning movies, often telling stories that draw from the nation’s mythology, history, and unique blending of cultural influences. Similarly, musicians from Haiqin are known for blending traditional instruments with modern sounds, creating a genre often referred to as "Neo-Classical Fusion." International music festivals held in Primos and Naidya attract thousands of artists and spectators each year, placing Haiqin on the world map for both traditional and contemporary artistic expression.

The Haiqin art scene has exploded in the digital age, with a new wave of artists creating interactive digital installations and virtual reality art. Music festivals like "The Resonance Festival" attract international artists and music lovers from around the globe, blending traditional Haiqinese music with modern genres like EDM and indie rock. This blend of traditional and contemporary is also seen in cinema, where Haiqin filmmakers are recognized at international film festivals for their innovative storytelling, merging mythological elements with modern themes.

Modern Society:

Cultural Identity and Pride

Preservation of Heritage:

In response to the rapid changes brought by globalization, Haiqin has doubled down on the preservation of its heritage. The government funds cultural preservation projects aimed at safeguarding the nation’s languages, art forms, and historical sites. Museums and cultural centers are abundant, and children are taught the nation’s history from a young age, fostering a deep sense of identity and pride in their cultural roots.

Pride in Heritage:

Haiqin's citizens take immense pride in their cultural heritage. Educational institutions emphasize the importance of local history, folklore, and traditional arts, ensuring that future generations remain connected to their roots. This cultural pride manifests in community events, where local artisans showcase their crafts and traditions.

Education and Family Values:

Haiqin's education system is widely regarded as one of the most progressive in the world, focusing not only on academic success but also on emotional well-being and creativity. The curriculum emphasizes critical thinking, global awareness, and environmental stewardship. Families play a vital role in the educational system, with parents heavily involved in their children’s academic lives. Traditional family values are emphasized alongside modern ideas of personal growth and mental health, creating a balanced approach to parenting.

Festivals and Community Celebrations:

Traditional festivals such as the “Harvest Moon Festival” and the “Festival of Winds” bring together Haiqin’s past and present. These events are occasions for the display of martial arts, traditional music, and culinary art. Contemporary cultural celebrations, such as film and music festivals, also play an important role, attracting international tourists and boosting local economies. Art exhibitions featuring both historical artifacts and modern creations are common, and these events foster community bonding while preserving cultural identity.

Military:

Veterans in Haiqin receive some of the most comprehensive benefits globally, ensuring they are well-supported in retirement and honored for their service. Many veterans transition into leadership roles in government, NGOs, and private sectors, particularly in industries related to security, disaster relief, or humanitarian work. The military also collaborates with civilian industries in developing technology for public use, fostering strong ties between the defense sector and national growth.

Artisans and Entertainment

Cultural Powerhouse:

The modern era has seen Haiqin's entertainment industry gain significant international acclaim. Musicians, filmmakers, and digital artists from Haiqin have made a global impact, often collaborating with foreign artists in cross-cultural projects. Festivals such as the Nirin Film Festival and the National Music Expo are renowned platforms for showcasing new talent and encouraging artistic exchange.

Festivals and Celebrations:

Haiqin has emerged as a cultural force in the world of entertainment. Its film industry, often referred to as "Haiqinwood," produces films that mix philosophical storytelling with visual mastery. These films often reflect the nation’s cultural diversity and moral neutrality, offering unique narratives on global issues.

Integration of Arts in Education:

Arts are woven into the very fabric of Haiqin’s education system, where schools offer specialized programs in music, theater, dance, and visual arts. This emphasis on creativity has resulted in a vibrant national arts scene, with young talents being nurtured from an early age and provided with platforms to showcase their work. Many schools encourage artistic collaboration, fostering the next generation of creative thinkers who will shape the cultural landscape of the nation.

The arts are not just a hobby in Haiqin—they are an integral part of the education system. From primary school to university, students are exposed to music, dance, theater, and visual arts, fostering creativity and cultural pride. This has led to the country producing internationally-renowned artists, filmmakers, and writers who continuously push the boundaries of their crafts.

Nonlethal Duels in Nirin

Hanging Crescent Moon Arena:

The Hanging Crescent Moon Arena is more than just a site for nonlethal duels—it has become a cultural icon. Every year, the nation hosts the “Crescent Games,” a series of competitions where participants display their mastery of traditional martial arts in non-lethal combat. These duels emphasize discipline, skill, and respect, celebrating the nation’s warrior roots while promoting nonviolence. The military units in Nirin also train in the arena for certain types of combat.

Cultural Significance:

Nonlethal dueling is more than just a sport; it is a cultural symbol of Haiqin’s values of fairness, discipline, and respect. Fighters wear traditional garb representing their regional and cultural backgrounds, and the duels themselves are often accompanied by ceremonial music and dancing. The competitions are a powerful reminder of Haiqin’s rich martial history, which has evolved into a peaceful and respected modern tradition.

−adding this since I'm probably scripting I'm from Nirin since this is the MOST I've put into any of the 10 provinces (blame my hyper fixation on GHOSTBLADE by WLOP)

[carionto]

Aliens observe Humans being Humans, just more

Humans have numerous events, holidays, celebrations and other gatherings for a wide variety of occasions. As cultures across the Galaxy go, not out of the ordinary, though quite louder than most.

One peculiar event a group of Coalition delegates attended was rather hard to understand. A large indoor location with some outdoor activity, many service stations set up around in a sort of makeshift town that specialized for this particular get-together, but we could not discern the purpose for it.

Humans were walking around dressed in a rather more eclectic fashion than typical and there seemed to be no connecting element. They would wait in line at these stations to interact with the attending service providers, receive items and signatures, sometimes in exchange for currency, sometimes not, take pictures of and with them, as well as with other attendees.

Some larger stations would host speeches and audio-visual demonstrations, as well as hands-on practice with whatever they were providing, usually a digital form of media, though sometimes a physical item too.

What was rather unusual was how the Humans would interact with us. Or, moreso - how they didn't. Most behaved as though we were fellow Humans as well, giving us praise for our appearance, and asking to take pictures with us, sometimes requesting we take certain stances both alone and with them.

There was a recurring set of similarly dressed Humans who would more often interact with us in similar manners. One group who were generally dressed in simple color coded attire would be overly respectful and considerate and engage us as though they were fellow diplomats and go on to talk about matters of Galactic import, though the names and institutions they cited were unfamiliar to us.

The other distinct group were Humans, we presume at least, housed within massive and elaborate suits of armor and weaponry, though panicked scans quickly revealed they were decorative in nature. They would often address us in a more derogatory manner and talk of overly hostile actions they would personally inflict upon us, which was quite disturbing to hear, but then they would laugh and become very friendly and also ask to take pictures with us. However, once again, the faction and organization names they used when referring to us were unknown entities.

After a couple of days of this, the event sort of just ended and the Humans scattered across the Earth and Solar system, many changing their attire into the more typical less elaborate but still highly diverse and uncoordinated items. We left still unsure of what we witnessed, but it appears these kinds of random gatherings of Humans who are almost always not personally connected with each other in any way happen quite frequently in many places around the world.

In conclusion, while we do not fully know how to categorize these "conventions", we summarize their purpose is mass communication, sensory stimulation, cultural exchange, and creation of new social bonds. Beyond that, it may be impossible to properly comprehend without direct assistance from Humans themselves.

[justanothergaymess]

A Rome by any other name would be just as bleak

Assorted thoughts on Women of Xal by @plottwiststudios

Those who know me know that I have a fondness for Visual Novels, particularly indie ones. I have play-read a plethora of them over the years, with varying themes, qualities of execution, and lengths. Women of Xal is a first insofar as the liveblogging on this very blog has been read by one of the devs. It receives the dubios honour of being one of the few Visual Novels that have haunted me since starting it. And it is a first since I have to invoke death of the author on a post where I tag one of the authors - but the text must stand on its own themes and execution, regardless of paratextual authorial intent. Because Women of Xal is certainly a potent text speaking to a lot of technical and artistic skills of the author(s), but it is not as a dating sim that it remains lurking in the pit of my stomach. Women of Xal, to me, is an ambitious balancing act between horror, parody, and Brechtian theatre.

Spoiler warning and content note for sexual abuse, classism, racism, psychological and physical gendered violence, and slavery for everything under the cut.

Women of Xal casts the player-readers into the world of Xal, particularly and mostly the palace of Xanasca, as Xjena, a young woman. Xjena is secretly a seer, a person capable of accurately extrapolating the future from dreams, at the cost of constant fatigue. She has been summoned to Xanasca with four other young women to compete for the inheritance of the - still alive and seemingly well - Lady Xuna of Xanasca. By building and breaking alliances, Xjena races to find out the secrets of the palace and Xuna. Her abilities as a seer quickly get impeded by an antagonistic character named Marra - who aims to stop all seers, pitying them for being forced into government service by default once they reveal their abilities. As Xjena now cannot remember any future and past events she has already witnessed via her abilities, the player-reader still can - and guides her decisions through Xualian politics as the avatar of her magical ability and strength. It is revealed after some iterations and loops of the story that Xuna is herself a seer, and has seen the end of the world of Xal - knowing, because of Marra, very little about it, just that the five women she summoned to her palace have something to do with it.

So far, so normal a setup. Purely from the angle of a time-loop Visual Novel, WoX certainly is brilliantly crafted. The pacing, the mechanics of a visual novel having diegetic explanation and being subject to diegetic transformations, the way information are revealed and maintained across loops, antagonists vaguely aware of the existence of a player - WoX can certainly compete as a time-loop indie Visual Novel with the behemoths of that subgenre (and I will talk about the Golden elephant in the room later).

But WoX enters into an dangerous and hard-to-execute gambit in its worldbuilding: the Xualian society functions under an inverse patriarchy and shows hints of an inverse colorism, with white skin not existing whatsoever and the only white background characters ever appearing being humans visiting Xal in a diplomatic-cultural exchange between the planes. I have uninstalled enough digital and put down enough physical novels operating on the premise of oppressed-as-oppressor. WoX earned the benefit of my doubt and subsequent maintenance of attention by removing white people alltogether. Xualian society is heavily stratified by the status of its women of color (status attainable by military and government service as well as the accumulation of wealth), with the completely disenfranchised enslaved lower class being its men of color.

WoX shines truly as a parody - I understand enough about the patriarchy (and the YouTube algorithm in Germany constantly pushes anime summary videos with absolutely disgusting titles and preview pictures) that I know a genre such as the harem anime/manga exists [and I feel obligated to point out the collapse of two very different orientalisms into one within the title of the genre alone, far be it from me to know its reception and success in the West], as well as the majority of all media focusing its attention on men as agents, forming homosocial relations with one another, while women are relegated to the position of object for occassional sexual gratification. Running around Xal as Xjena, seeing all these powerful women of Xualian politics, veterans and career politicians and leaders, all fighting in different alliances and with different intentions, while men are relegated to serving Xjena both in household activities and sexually, is a brilliant parody. The novelty of said parody quickly falls off, however, and I am left with that bitter feeling in my stomach knowing that for every self-aware parody-via-matriarchy like WoX, there will be a hundred thousand novels that play the patriarchy straight, with real world consequences. When Valimer, a teenager and victim of the physical and verbal abuse of one of Xjena's competitors for the inheritance because he as a man dared to speak up against the matriarchy, continues his subsequent scenes and arc being just as worried about the well-being of his abuser, when Proxis, also a teenager and victim of attempted sexual abuse continues to smile and stay joyful and subservient despite his experiences, when Xaris, a young man with the ambition of becoming a theatre actor, breaks down crying in Xjena's arms after having suffered through sexual assault, it all is so familiar - conversations I have had with so many women I stopped counting at some point.

But the bitterness eminating from between the lines does not stop here, far from it. Xal's society does not only allude to the present-day patriarchy. In scouring the libraries of both the palace and the city, with which I spent the majority of my first loop, I stumbled upon the governing articles between the regions of Xal: Men are not only expected to be subservient to women. They are codified as property, and cannot become free unto themselves. Xal is a slave society. Proxis, Xaris, Valimer, the aforementioned abuse victims, were all legally bought by Xuna, and placed within the brothel of her palace. Men start of as property of their mothers, until at the age of 12 being able to be sold; as indentured husbands, servants, and/or sex slaves. To my knowledge, the player-reader never learns who works Xal's mines and fields; still, we know who works the kitchens, cleans the houses, maintains the gardens. Xualian notions of status and human property closely reflect Roman society, even if collapsing gendered and enslaved categories. That only heightens the severity of the society portrayed, the inherent horror. I went into Women of Xal, a game with very little documentation outside authorial posting, with no knowledge of its worldbuilding; I expected a dating sim meets political thriller where I lesbian slut my way through court intrigue in a somewhat generic fantasy setting. Instead, I am thrust unto the lowest steps of the cursus honorum, with all the baggage that implies.

The struggle I have with WoX as a dating sim, the struggle it is in a way brilliant in invoking, is that not only are the women dateable, but the men as well. Proxis, Xaris, Valimer, they are not only victims one can (optionally) support, but also romance, and also, very explicitly, fuck. Indeed, as soon as one gains control over Xjena's day, one can stroll into the brothel section of the palace and demand to sleep with the men there. Now, the ethics of slowly building up a genuine friendship with these young victims of slave trade and sex slavery and arriving at a place of mutual understanding for the negotiation of consent are not something I can debate in the space of a throwaway post I am writing freely just to get these thoughts out of my mind. But the ethics of fucking them first-day are easily labelled as nonexistent. It does not get meaningfully less disquieting dating the women. Lady Xuan, the matriarch of the local region, owner of the brothel and its sex slaves, is also a romance option. So are Clanice and Merixa, two women firmly anchored within the violence of Xualian matriarchy. Velvet, the most outspoken advocate against the Xualian matriarchy amongst the competitors for Xuna's inheritance, who ends up losing an eye to the assault by an heiress of a proud slave-owning family, still ends up policulizing up to Clanice, sending the player-reader selfies with her. As a dating sim, WoX asks me if I want to romance slaves, a "benevolent" slave owner, or slavery defenders and their girlfriends; as a player-reader, I answer that I want the slave society of Xal abolished at gunpoint and knifeedge.

The fantasy Rome of Xal comes fully equipped with its own girlbossified Cassiuses, Brutuses, and Spartacuses, not just Caesars and Ciceros. The aforementioned Marra, moreso acting against seers and their abilities, is impeding the government's ability to exploit the abilities of the seers to maintain its structural integrity while revolution is brewing. Perhaps that is merely a side effect, perhaps that is intention on Marra's side. Plenty of the slave-servants at the palace resent the matriarchy, sometimes louder, sometimes quieter. An entire region of Xal is mentioned that is semi-independent from the rest of Xal where the freedom of men is tolerated; men escaping there are difficult to be retrieved by their former legal owners [despite the social structure of Xal being so romanesque, I could not help but whisper "Mason-Dixon" under my breath in horror learning that part of the lore]. And last but certainly not least, there are the revolutionaries surrounding Tannae, a woman that appears as a side character in the story a handful of times. She openly scoffs at the matriarchy, and later attempts to assassinate Xuna and one of Xuna's lovers (who Xuna also legally owns) in an attempt to kickstart the revolution by killing the most vocal centrist reformist and her confidant. The so-called True Ending of WoX happens by carrying two words of memory across the time-loop and the amnesia imposed by Marra: "aggressive progressives", a warning Xuna designed to tell her if such an assassination against her and her confidants is imminent. The absolute absurdity of using "progressives" here, given the fact that it is a term within the present often used to designate a reformist antirevolutionary electoralist section of the settler population of the US, can be left aside. The fact is that Tannae, the revolutionaries, and Marra are right. While the revolutionaries towards the end of the story send in assassination squads into the palace and an assortment of the highest-ranking veterans, generals, and matriarchs of Xal reside there, multiple women complain that they sympathize with the cause, but draw the line at murder. I do not. The palace houses several of the people most pivotal in upholding the slave society. It is a more than valid target. The True Ending of our journey as player-readers through girlboss fantasy Rome rests in saving girlboss Cicero and her favorite slave from assassination. The beating of the tell-tale buried between the lines becomes ever louder as one progresses through the story: WoX is a parodistic horror game about being on the wrong side of history.

WoX is built upon an absurdist inversion of the status quo in its matriarchy; and, as explained before, it rests close to Rome and Roman slavery in structure. Still, it bears mentioning that in the exchange between the planes, quite fittingly, Xal maintains close alignment with the US on actual diegetic Earth. A Black man from the US gets hired by Xuna to run the day-to-day activities of the brothel; when Xjena befriends him, he mentions that he came to Xal knowing little besides that race and racism did not exist there, only to find similarly strong kinds of systemic violence in this hoped-for utopia. Xualian slavery does not espouse the same kind of bio- and necropolitics as the transatlantic slave trade and chattel slavery. And yet, given that the US is built and running on slavery, as well as the West's present-day hegemony being built upon the transatlantic slave trade and subsequently financed imperialist exploitation, between the lines of WoX run not only echoes of slavery past but also present. In that sense, I am more than willing to delete this post should any of my Black mutuals find it insufficient and wrong; if you made it this far, your attention was never expected, but is an honour to be granted for certain, no matter what you think of my writing here.

WoX therefore juxtaposes its inverted magical fantasy violence with real-world violence. This is not the first time-loop indie Visual Novel I play-read and analyze where the narration follows a path through a labyrinthian mansion filled with exploited and assaulted servants while those from an oppressor class compete for the inheritance of the small empire of the recluse head of the household. Admittedly, Umineko No Naku Koro Ni is quite different from Women of Xal, and yet, as a behemoth in both volume and impact in the indie Visual Novel scene, I kept coming back to it while playing WoX. I have play-read only the first two chapters of Umineko, and yet, I would label it as one of the very few successful fantasy inversions of oppressor and oppressed. When rich asshole fuckboy Ushiromiya Battler gets gratuitously tortured by female witches and demons in the frame narrative, often while using signifiers of BDSM, it only serves to underline the horror of the unacknowledged and mundane sexualized verbal violence he and his male family members subject female family members and servants alike to. Women of Xal is far more reserved in showing the mundane, real violence it inverts, only hinting at it from time to time. WoX also maintains a close entaglement between player-reader and main character; Xjena's actions are, by all means, the result of my personal free will as player-reader. Umineko invokes horror and gore in trying to find a language for the trauma of structural sexualized violence; Women of Xal invokes comedy and parody while placing the main character, a woman of color, and the player-reader by proxy, in an absurd, inverted oppressor class. The monstrous of Umineko is the subtle violence of everyday patriarchy coming back to haunt itself, the monstrous of WoX is the player-readers complicity while being robbed of any choice to also take up arms against the status quo.

The absurdity of WoX's base premise aligns closely with the concept Brechtian Alienation in Brechtian Theatre; through constant reminders of the performativity of the play, the audience is tasked with untangling its commentary on the real world. I do not know if the author(s) of WoX intended such a thing or not, but the Brechtian effect of WoX's base premise manages to bypass the base level of coping that I had to develop helping dozens upon dozens of acquaintances, friends, and kin through abusive relationships, marriages, and expriences of assault. Women of Xal leaves me with a haunting sense of dread in regards to the patriarchy, one that adequately fits the severity of it. Would I recommend WoX as a dating sim? No. Would I recommend WoX as an experimental piece of Brechtian horror? Yes. What else remains there to be said? Marra and Tannae are right, death to all Romes, whichever name they might adapt.

[mariacallous]

In a sunlight-filled classroom at the US State Department’s diplomacy school in late February, America’s cyber ambassador fielded urgent questions from US diplomats who were spending the week learning about the dizzying technological forces shaping their missions.

“This portfolio is one of the most interesting and perhaps the most consequential at this moment in time,” Nathaniel Fick, the US ambassador-at-large for cyberspace and digital policy, told the roughly three dozen diplomats assembled before him at the Foreign Service Institute in Arlington, Virginia. “Getting smart on these issues … is going to serve everyone really well over the long term, regardless of what other things you go off and do.”

The diplomats, who had come from overseas embassies and from State Department headquarters in nearby Washington, DC, were the sixth cohort of students to undergo a crash course in cybersecurity, telecommunications, privacy, surveillance, and other digital issues, which Fick’s team created in late 2022. The training program—the biggest initiative yet undertaken by State’s two-year-old cyber bureau—is intended to reinvigorate US digital diplomacy at a time when adversaries like Russia and China are increasingly trying to shape how the world uses technology.

During his conversation with the students, Fick discussed the myriad of tech and cyber challenges facing US diplomats. He told a staffer from an embassy in a country under China’s influence to play the long game in forming relationships that could eventually help the US make inroads there. He spoke about his efforts to help European telecom companies survive existential threats from Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei in the battle for the world’s 5G networks. And he warned of a difficult balancing act on AI, saying the US needed to stave off excessive regulation at the UN without repeating past mistakes.

“We really screwed up governance of the previous generation of tech platforms, particularly the social [media] platforms,” Fick said. “The US essentially unleashed on the world the most powerful anti-democratic tools in the history of humanity, and now we’re digging our way out of a credibility hole.”

Restoring that credibility and expanding American influence over digital issues will require tech-savvy diplomacy, and the State Department is counting on Fick’s training program to make that possible. To pull back the curtain on this program for the first time, WIRED received exclusive access to the February training session and interviewed Fick, the initiative’s lead organizer, five graduates of the course, and multiple cyber diplomacy experts about how the program is trying to transform American tech diplomacy.

Fick has called the training program the most important part of his job. As he tells anyone who will listen, it’s a project with existential stakes for the future of the open internet and the free world.

“Technology as a source of influence is increasingly foundational,” he says. “These things are more and more central to our foreign policy, and that’s a trend that is long-term and unlikely to change anytime soon.”

Maintaining an Edge

From Russian election interference to Chinese industrial dominance, the US faces a panoply of digital threats. Fighting back will require skillful diplomatic pressure campaigns on every level, from bilateral talks with individual countries to sweeping appeals before the 193-member United Nations. But this kind of work is only possible when the career Foreign Service officers on the front lines of US diplomacy understand why tech and cyber issues matter—and how to discuss them.

“The US needs to demonstrate both understanding and leadership on the global stage,” says Chris Painter, who served as the first US cyber ambassador from 2011 to 2017.

This leadership is important on high-profile subjects like artificial intelligence and the 5G war between Western and Chinese vendors, but it’s equally vital on the bread-and-butter digital issues—like basic internet connectivity and fighting cybercrime—that don’t generate headlines but still dominate many countries’ diplomatic engagements with the US.

Diplomats also need to be able to identify digital shortcomings and security gaps in their host countries that the US could help fix. The success of the State Department’s new cyber foreign aid fund will depend heavily on project suggestions from tech-savvy diplomats on the ground.

In addition, because virtually every global challenge—from trade to climate—has a tech aspect, all US diplomats need to be conversant in the topic. “You’re going to have meetings where a country is talking about a trade import issue or complaining about a climate problem, and suddenly there’s a tech connection,” says Justin Sherman, a tech and geopolitics expert who runs Global Cyber Strategies, a Washington, DC, research and advisory firm.

Digital expertise will also help the US expand coalitions around cybercrime investigations, ransomware deterrence, and safe uses of the internet—all essentially proxy fights with Russia and China.

“We are in competition with the authoritarian states on everything from internet standards … to basic governance rules,” says Neil Hop, a senior adviser to Fick and the lead organizer of the training program. “We are going to find ourselves at a sore disadvantage if we don't have trained people who are representing [us].”

Diplomats without tech training might not even realize when their Russian and Chinese counterparts are using oblique rhetoric to pitch persuadable countries on their illiberal visions of internet governance, with rampant censorship and surveillance. Diplomats with tech training would be able to push back, using language and examples designed to appeal to those middle-ground countries and sway them away from the authoritarians’ clutches.

“Our competitors and our adversaries are upping their game in these areas,” Fick says, “because they understand as well as we do what’s at stake.”

Preparing America’s Eyes and Ears

The Obama administration was the first to create a tech diplomacy training program, with initial training sessions in various regions followed by week-long courses that brought trainees to Washington. Government speakers and tech-industry luminaries like internet cocreator Vint Cerf discussed the technological, social, and political dimensions of the digital issues that diplomats had to discuss with their host governments.

“The idea was to create this cadre in the Foreign Service to work with our office and really mainstream this as a topic,” says Painter, who created the program when he was State’s coordinator for cyber issues, the predecessor to Fick’s role.

But when Painter tried to institutionalize his program with a course at the Foreign Service Institute, he encountered resistance. “I think we kind of hit it too early for FSI,” he says. “I remember the FSI director saying that they thought, ‘Well, maybe this is just a passing fad.’ It was a new topic. This is what happens with any new topic.”

By the time the Senate unanimously confirmed Nate Fick to be America’s cyber ambassador in September 2022, tech diplomacy headaches were impossible to ignore, and Fick quickly tasked his team with creating a modern training program and embedding it in the FSI’s regular curriculum.

“He understood that we needed to do more and better in terms of preparing our people in the field,” Hop says.

The training program fit neatly into secretary of state Antony Blinken’s vision of an American diplomatic corps fully versed in modern challenges and nimble enough to confront them. “Elevating our tech diplomacy” is one of Blinken’s “core priorities,” Fick says.

As they developed a curriculum, Fick and his aides had several big goals for the new training program.

The first priority was to make sure diplomats understood what was at stake as the US and its rivals compete for global preeminence on tech issues. “Authoritarian states and other actors have used cyber and digital tools to threaten national security, international peace and security, economic prosperity, [and] the exercise of human rights,” says Kathryn Fitrell, a senior cyber policy adviser at State who helps run the course.

Equally critical was preparing diplomats to promote the US tech agenda from their embassies and provide detailed reports back to Washington on how their host governments were approaching these issues.

“It's important to us that tech expertise [in] the department not sit at headquarters alone,” Fick says, “but instead that we have people everywhere—at all our posts around the world, where the real work gets done—who are equipped with the tools that they need to make decisions with a fair degree of autonomy.”

Foreign Service officers are America’s eyes and ears on the ground in foreign countries, studying the landscape and alerting their bosses back home to risks and opportunities. They are also the US government’s most direct and regular interlocutors with representatives of other nations, forming personal bonds with local officials that can sometimes make the difference between unity and discord.

When these diplomats need to discuss the US tech agenda, they can’t just read monotonously off a piece of paper. They need to actually understand the positions they’re presenting and be prepared to answer questions about them.

“You can’t be calling back to someone in Washington every time there’s a cyber question,” says Sherman.

But some issues will still require help from experts at headquarters, so Fick and his team also wanted to use the course to deepen their ties with diplomats and give them friendly points of contact at the cyber bureau. “We want to be able to support officers in the field as they confront these issues,” says Melanie Kaplan, a member of Fick’s team who took the class and now helps run it.

Inside the Classroom

After months of research, planning, and scheduling, Fick’s team launched the Cyberspace and Digital Policy Tradecraft course at the Foreign Service Institute with a test run in November 2022. Since then, FSI has taught the class six more times—once in London for European diplomats, once in Morocco for diplomats in the Middle East and Africa, and four times in Arlington—and trained 180 diplomats.

The program begins with four hours of “pre-work” to prepare students for the lessons ahead. Students must document that they’ve completed the pre-work—which includes experimenting with generative AI—before taking the class. “That has really put us light-years ahead in ensuring that no one is lost on day one,” Hop says.

The week-long in-person class consists of 45- to 90-minute sessions on topics like internet freedom, privacy, ransomware, 5G, and AI. Diplomats learn how the internet works on a technical level, how the military and the FBI coordinate with foreign partners to take down hackers’ computer networks, and how the US promotes its tech agenda in venues like the International Telecommunication Union. Participants also meet with Fick and his top deputies, including Eileen Donahoe, the department’s special envoy for digital freedom.

One session features a panel of US diplomats who have helped their host governments confront big cyberattacks. “They woke up one morning and suddenly were in this position of having to respond to a major crisis,” says Meir Walters, a training alum who leads the digital-freedom team in State’s cyber bureau.

Students learn how the US helped Albania and Costa Rica respond to massive cyberattacks in 2022 perpetrated by the Iranian government and Russian cybercriminals, respectively. In Albania, urgent warnings from a young, tech-savvy US diplomat “accelerated our response to the Iranian attack by months,” Fick says. In Costa Rica, diplomats helped the government implement emergency US aid and then used those relationships to turn the country into a key semiconductor manufacturing partner.

“By having the right people on the ground,” Fick says, “we were able to seize these significant opportunities.”

Students spend one day on a field trip, with past visits including the US Chamber of Commerce (to understand industry’s role in tech diplomacy), the Center for Democracy and Technology (to understand civil society’s perspective on digital-rights issues), and the internet infrastructure giant Verisign.

On the final day, participants must pitch ideas for using what they’ve learned in a practical way to Jennifer Bachus, the cyber bureau’s number two official.

The course has proven to be highly popular. Fick told participants in February that “there was a long wait list” to get in. There will be at least three more sessions this year: one in Arlington in August (timed to coincide with the diplomatic rotation period), one in East Asia, and one in Latin America. These sessions are expected to train 75 to 85 new diplomats.

After the course ends, alumni can stay up-to-date with a newsletter, a Microsoft Teams channel, and a toolkit with advice and guidance. Some continue their education: Fifty diplomats are getting extra training through a one-year online learning pilot, and State is accepting applications for 15 placements at leading academic institutions and think tanks—including Stanford University and the Council on Foreign Relations—where diplomats can continue researching tech issues that interest them.

Promising Results, Challenges Ahead

Less than two years into the training effort, officials say they are already seeing meaningful improvements to the US’s tech diplomacy posture.

Diplomats are sending Washington more reports on their host governments’ tech agendas, Fitrell says, with more details and better analysis. Graduates of the course also ask more questions than their untrained peers. And inspired by the training, some diplomats have pushed their bosses to prioritize tech issues, including through embassy working groups uniting representatives of different US agencies.

State has also seen more diplomats request high-level meetings with foreign counterparts to discuss tech issues and more incorporation of those issues into broader conversations. Fick says the course helped the cyber officer at the US embassy in Nairobi play an integral role in recent tech agreements between the US and Kenya. And diplomats are putting more energy into whipping votes for international tech agreements, including an AI resolution at the UN.

Diplomats who took the course shared overwhelmingly positive feedback with WIRED. They say it was taught in an accessible way and covered important topics. Several say they appreciated hearing from senior US officials whose strategizing informs diplomats’ on-the-ground priorities. Maryum Saifee, a senior adviser for digital governance at State’s cyber bureau and a training alum, says she appreciated the Morocco class’s focus on regional issues and its inclusion of locally employed staff.

Graduates strongly encouraged their colleagues to take the course, describing it as foundational to every diplomatic portfolio.

“Even if you're not a techie kind of a person, you need to not shy away from these conversations,” says Bridget Trazoff, a veteran diplomat who has learned four languages at the Foreign Service Institute and compares the training to learning a fifth one.

Painter, who knows how challenging it can be to create a program like this, says he’s “heard good things” about the course. “I’m very happy that they've redoubled their efforts in this.”

For the training program to achieve lasting success, its organizers will need to overcome several hurdles.

Fick’s team will need to keep the course material up-to-date as the tech landscape evolves. They’ll need to keep it accessible but also informative to diplomats with varying tech proficiencies who work in countries with varying levels of tech capacity. And they’ll need to maintain a constant training tempo, given that diplomats rotate positions every few years.

The tone of the curriculum also presents a challenge. Diplomats need to learn the US position on issues like trusted telecom infrastructure, but they also need to understand that not every country sees things the way the US does. “It's not just knowing about these tech issues that’s so essential,” Sherman says. “It's also understanding the whole dictionary of terms and how every country thinks about these concepts differently.”

The coming years could test the course’s impact as the US strives to protect its Eastern European partners from Russia, its East Asian partners from China and North Korea, and its Middle Eastern partners from Iran, as well as to counter Chinese tech supremacy and neutralize Russia’s and China’s digital authoritarianism.

Perhaps the biggest question facing the program is whether it will survive a possible change in administrations this fall. Officials are optimistic—Fick has talked to his Trump-era counterparts, and Painter says “having an FSI course gives it a sense of permanence.”

For Fick, there is no question that the training must continue.

“Tech is interwoven into every aspect of … American foreign policy,” he says. “If you want to position yourself to be effective and be relevant as an American diplomat in the decades ahead, you need to understand these issues.”

[theculturedmarxist]

SHANGHAI — Over the past generation, China’s most important relationships were with the more developed world, the one that used to be called the “first world.” Mao Zedong proclaimed China to be the leader of a “third” (non-aligned) world back in the 1970s, and the term later came to be a byword for deprivation. The notion of China as a developing country continues to this day, even as it has become a superpower; as the tech analyst Dan Wang has joked, China will always remain developing — once you’re developed, you’re done. 

Fueled by exports to the first world, China became something different — something not of any of the three worlds. We’re still trying to figure out what that new China is and how it now relates to the world of deprivation — what is now called the Global South, where the majority of human beings alive today reside. But amid that uncertainty, Chinese exports to the Global South now exceed those to the Global North considerably — and they’re growing. 

The International Monetary Fund expects Asian countries to account for 70% of growth globally this year. China must “shape a new international system that is conducive to hedging against the negative impacts of the West’s decoupling,” the scholar and former People’s Liberation Army theorist Cheng Yawen wrote recently. That plan starts with Southeast Asia and extends throughout the Global South, a terrain that many Chinese intellectuals see as being on their side in the widening divide between the West and the rest. 

“The idea is that what China is today, fast-growing countries from Bangladesh to Brazil could be tomorrow.”

China isn’t exporting plastic trinkets to these places but rather the infrastructure for telecommunications, transportation and digitally driven “smart cities.” In other words, China is selling the developmental model that raised its people out of obscurity and poverty to developed global superpower status in a few short decades to countries with people who have decided that they want that too. 

The world China is reorienting itself to is a world that, in many respects, looks like China did a generation ago. On offer are the basics of development — education, health care, clean drinking water, housing. But also more than that — technology, communication and transportation.

Back in April, on the eve of a trip to China, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva sat down for an interview with Reuters. “I am going to invite Xi Jinping to come to Brazil,” he said, “to get to know Brazil, to show him the projects that we have of interest for Chinese investment. … What we want is for the Chinese to make investments to generate new jobs and generate new productive assets in Brazil.” After Lula and Xi had met, the Brazilian finance minister proclaimed that “President Lula wants a policy of reindustrialization. This visit starts a new challenge for Brazil: bringing direct investments from China.” Three months later, the battery and electric vehicle giant BYD announced a $624 million investment to build a factory in Brazil, its first outside Asia.

Across the Global South, fast-growing countries from Bangladesh to Brazil can send raw materials to China and get technological devices in exchange. The idea is that what China is today, they could be tomorrow.

At The Kunming Institute of Botany

In April, I went to Kunming to visit one of China’s most important environmental conservation outfits — the Kunming Institute of Botany. Like the British Museum’s antiquities collected from everywhere that the empire once extended, the seed bank here (China’s largest) aspires to acquire thousands of samples of various plant species and become a regional hub for future biotech research. 

From the Kunming train station, you can travel by Chinese high-speed rail to Vientiane; if all goes according to plan, the line will soon be extended to Bangkok. At Yunnan University across town, the economics department researches “frontier economics” with an eye to Southeast Asian neighboring states, while the international relations department focuses on trade pacts within the region and a community of anthropologists tries to figure out what it all means. 

Kunming is a bland, air-conditioned provincial capital in a province of startling ethnic and geographic diversity. In this respect, it is a template for Chinese development around Southeast Asia. Perhaps in the future, Dhaka, Naypyidaw and Phnom Penh will provide the reassuring boredom of a Kunming afternoon. 

Imagine you work at the consulate of Bangladesh in Kunming. Why are you in Kunming? What does Kunming have that you want?

The Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore lyrically described Asia’s communities as organic and spiritual in contrast with the materialism of the West. As Tagore spoke of the liberatory powers of art, his Chinese listeners scoffed. The Chinese poet Wen Yiduo, who moved to Kunming during World War II and is commemorated with a statue at Yunnan Normal University in Kunming, wrote that Tagore’s work had no form: “The greatest fault in Tagore’s art is that he has no grasp of reality. Literature is an expression of life and even metaphysical poetry cannot be an exception. Everyday life is the basic stuff of literature, and the experiences of life are universal things.” 

“Xi Jinping famously said that China doesn’t export revolution. But what else do you call train lines, 5G connectivity and scientific research centers appearing in places that previously had none of these things?”

If Tagore’s Bengali modernism championed a spiritual lens for life rather than the materiality of Western colonialists, Chinese modernists decided that only by being more materialist than Westerners could they regain sovereignty. Mao had said rural deprivation was “一穷二白” — poor and empty; Wen accused Tagore’s poetry of being formless. Hegel sneered that Asia had no history, since the same phenomena simply repeated themselves again and again — the cycle of planting and harvest in agricultural societies. 

For modernists, such societies were devoid of historical meaning in addition to being poor and readily exploited. The amorphous realm of the spirit was for losers, the Chinese May 4th generation decided. Railroads, shipyards and electrification offered salvation.

Today, as Chinese roads, telecoms and entrepreneurs transform Bangladesh and its peers in the developing world, you could say that the argument has been won by the Chinese. Chinese infrastructure creates a new sort of blank generic urban template, one seen first in Shenzhen, then in Kunming and lately in Vientiane, Dhaka or Indonesian mining towns. 

The sleepy backwaters of Southeast Asia have seen previous waves of Chinese pollinators. Low Lan Pak, a tin miner from Guangdong, established a revolutionary state in Indonesia in the 18th century. Li Mi, a Kuomintang general, set up an independent republic in what is now northern Myanmar after World War II. 

New sorts of communities might walk on the new roads and make calls on the new telecom networks and find work in the new factories that have been built with Chinese technology and funded by Chinese money across Southeast Asia. One Bangladeshi investor told me that his government prefers direct investment to aid — aid organizations are incentivized to portray Bangladesh as eternally poor, while Huawei and Chinese investors play up the country’s development prospects and bright future. In the latter, Bangladeshis tend to agree.

“Is China a place, or is it a recipe for social structure that can be implemented generically anywhere?”

The majority of human beings alive today live in a world of not enough: not enough food; not enough security; not enough housing, education, health care; not enough rights for women; not enough potable water. They are desperate to get out of there, as China has. They might or might not like Chinese government policies or the transactional attitudes of Chinese entrepreneurs, but such concerns are usually of little importance to countries struggling to bootstrap their way out of poverty.

The first world tends to see the third as a rebuke and a threat. Most Southeast Asian countries have historically borne abuse in relationship to these American fears. Most American companies don’t tend to see Pakistan or Bangladesh or Sumatra as places they’d like invest money in. But opportunity beckons for Chinese companies seeking markets outside their nation’s borders and finding countries with rapidly growing populations and GDPs. Imagine a Huawei engineer in a rural Bangladeshi village, eating a bad lunch with the mayor, surrounded by rice paddies — he might remember the Hunan of his childhood.  

Xi Jinping famously said that China doesn’t export revolution. But what else do you call train lines, 5G connectivity and scientific research centers appearing in places that previously had none of these things? 

Across the vastness of a world that most first-worlders would not wish to visit, Chinese entrepreneurs are setting up electric vehicle and battery companies, installing broadband and building trains. The world that is looming into view on Huawei’s 2022 business report is one in which Asia is the center of the global economy and China sits at its core, the hub from which sophisticated and carbon-neutral technologies are distributed. Down the spokes the other way come soybeans, jute and nickel. Lenin’s term for this kind of political economy was imperialism. 

If the Chinese economy is the set of processes that created and create China, then its exports today are China — technologies, knowledge, communication networks, forms of organization. But is China a place, or is it a recipe for social structure that can be implemented generically anywhere?

Huawei Station

Huawei’s connections to the Chinese Communist Party remain unclear, but there is certainly a case of elective affinities. Huawei’s descriptions of selfless, nameless engineers working to bring telecoms to the countryside of Bangladesh is reminiscent of Party propaganda and “socialist realist” art. As a young man, Ren Zhengfei, Huawei’s CEO, spent time in the Chongqing of Mao’s “third front,” where resources were redistributed to develop new urban centers; the logic of starting in rural areas and working your way to the center, using infrastructure to rappel your way up, is embedded within the Maoist ideas that he studied at the time. Today, it underpins Huawei’s business development throughout the Global South. 

I stopped by the Huawei Analyst Summit in April to see if I could connect the company’s history to today. The Bildungsroman of Huawei’s corporate development includes battles against entrenched state-owned monopolies in the more developed parts of the country. The story goes that Huawei couldn’t make inroads in established markets against state-owned competitors, so got started in benighted rural areas where the original leaders had to brainstorm what to do if rats ate the cables or rainstorms swept power stations away; this story is mobilized today to explain their work overseas. 

Perhaps at one point, Huawei could have been just another boring corporation selling plastic objects to consumers across the developed world, but that time ended definitively with Western sanctions in 2019, effectively banning the company from doing business in the U.S. The sanctions didn’t kill Huawei, obviously, and they may have made it stronger. They certainly made it weirder, more militant and more focused on the markets largely scorned by the Ericssons and Nokias of the world. Huawei retrenched to its core strength: providing rural and remote areas with access to connectivity across difficult terrain with the intention that these networks will fuel telehealth and digital education and rapidly scale the heights of development.

Huawei used to do this with dial-up modems in China, but now it is building 5G networks across the Global South. The Chinese government is supportive of these efforts; Huawei’s HQ has a subway station named for the company, and in 2022 the government offered the company massive subsidies.

“For many countries in the Global South, the model of development exemplified by Shenzhen seems plausible and attainable.”

For years, the notion of an ideological struggle between the U.S. and China was dismissed; China is capitalist, they said. Just look at the Louis Vuitton bags. This misses a central truth of the economy of the 21st century. The means of production now are internet servers, which are used for digital communication, for data farms and blockchain, for AI and telehealth. Capitalists control the means of production in the United States, but the state controls the means of production in China. In the U.S. and countries that implicitly accept its tech dominance, private businesspeople dictate the rules of the internet, often to the displeasure of elected politicians who accuse them of rigging elections, fueling inequality or colluding with communists. The difference with China, in which the state has maintained clear regulatory control over the internet since the early days, couldn’t be clearer. 

The capitalist system pursues frontier technologies and profits, but companies like Huawei pursue scalability to the forgotten people of the world. For better or worse, it’s San Francisco or Shenzhen. For many countries in the Global South, the model of development exemplified by Shenzhen seems more plausible and attainable. Nobody thinks they can replicate Silicon Valley, but many seem to think they can replicate Chinese infrastructure-driven middle-class consumerism.

As Deng Xiaoping said, it doesn’t matter if it is a black cat or a white cat, just get a cat that catches mice. Today, leaders of Global South countries complain about the ideological components of American aid; they just want a cat that can catch their mice. Chinese investment is blank — no ideological strings attached. But this begs the question: If China builds the future of Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Laos, then is their future Chinese?

Telecommunications and 5G is at the heart of this because connectivity can enable rapid upgrades in health and education via digital technology such as telehealth, whereby people in remote villages are able to consult with doctors and hospitals in more developed regions. For example, Huawei has retrofitted Thailand’s biggest and oldest hospital with 5G to communicate with villages in Thailand’s poor interior — the sort of places a new Chinese high-speed train line could potentially provide links with the outside world — offering Thai villagers without the ability to travel into town the opportunity to get medical treatments and consultations remotely. 

The IMF has proposed that Asia’s developing belt “should prioritize reforms that boost innovation and digitalization while accelerating the green energy transition,” but there is little detail about who exactly ought to be doing all of that building and connecting. In many cases and places, it’s Chinese infrastructure and companies like Huawei that are enabling Thai villagers to live as they do in Guizhou.

Chinese Style Modernization?

The People’s Republic of China is “infinitely stronger than the Soviet Union ever was,” the U.S. ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, told Politico in April. This prowess “is based on the extraordinary strength of the Chinese economy — its science and technology research base, its innovative capacity and its ambitions in the Indo-Pacific to be the dominant power in the future.” This increasingly feels more like the official position of the U.S. government than a random comment.

Ten years ago, Xi Jinping proposed the notion of a “maritime Silk Road” to the Indonesian Parliament. Today, Indonesia is building an entirely new capital — Nusantara — for which China is providing “smart city” technologies. Indonesia has a complex history with ethnic Chinese merchants, who played an intermediary role between Indigenous people and Western colonists in the 19th century and have been seen as CCP proxies for the past half century or so. But the country is nevertheless moving decisively towards China’s pole, adopting Chinese developmental rhythms and using Chinese technology and infrastructure to unlock the door to the future. “The internet, roads, ports, logistics — most of these were built by Chinese companies,” observed a local scholar. 

The months since the 20th Communist Party Congress have seen the introduction of what Chinese diplomats call “Chinese-style modernization,” a clunky slogan that can evoke the worst and most boring agitprop of the Soviet era. But the concept just means exporting Chinese bones to other social bodies around the world. 

If every apartment decorated with IKEA furniture looks the same, prepare for every city in booming Asia to start looking like Shenzhen. If you like clean streets, bullet trains, public safety and fast Wi-Fi, this may not be a bad thing. 

Chinese trade with Southeast Asia is roughly double that between China and the U.S., and Chinese technology infrastructure is spreading out from places like the “Huawei University” at Indonesia’s Bandung Institute of Technology, which plans to train 100,000 telecom engineers in the next five years. We’re about to see a generation of “barefoot doctors” throughout Southeast Asia traveling by moped across landscapes of underdevelopment connected to hubs of medical data built by Chinese companies with Chinese technology. 

In 1955, the year of the Bandung Conference in Indonesia, the non-aligned world was almost entirely poor, cut off from the means of production in a world where nearly 50% of GDP globally was in the U.S. Today, the logic of that landmark conference is alive today in Chinese informal networks across the Global South, with the key difference that China can now offer these countries the possibility of building their own future without talking to anyone from the Global North. 

Welcome to the Sinosphere, where the tides of Chinese development lap over its borders into the remote forests of tropical Asia, and beyond.

[eretzyisrael]

We Forgot

You shall remember what Amalek did to you on the way, when you went out of Egypt,

how he happened upon you on the way and cut off all the stragglers at your rear, when you were faint and weary, and he did not fear God.

It will be, when the Lord your God grants you respite from all your enemies around in the land which the Lord, your God, gives to you as an inheritance to possess, that you shall obliterate the remembrance of Amalek from beneath the heavens. You shall not forget! — Dvarim 25:17-19

I have heard this read in the synagogue numerous times, and taken part in discussions of the meaning of this mitzvah (commandment). But I did not truly understand it until Simchat Torah of this year.

A mitzvah can always be understood in relation to actions. The well-known injunction to “love thy neighbor” in Lev. 18:19 appears in context as “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.” It does not require me to have a warm feeling toward the residents of the apartment next to mine. Rather, it orders me to avoid feuding with other Jews (not always an easy thing).

The commandment to remember Amalek does not mean to produce in myself a certain state of mind, similar to what I aspire to when my wife tells me to remember to bring home a carton of milk. That would be impossible anyway, because I wasn’t there in the desert when Amalek first did its dirty deeds. How can I remember what I didn’t experience? So what does “remember” mean here?

What I realized on Simchat Torah was that it means that we must not only keep in mind the evil that Amalek intends, but we must act on that awareness. It means that we must not let our guard down, we must take positive actions to prepare for Amalek’s viciousness. Only after we have achieved our independence in the land of Israel and fully defeated all of our enemies, can we stand down from our condition of high alert. Only when Amalek is finally obliterated will it be safe to obliterate our memory of it.

This has actually been the human condition for ages, and remains the condition of most of the world’s population today. If a tribe forgets that it has enemies, it will soon be swallowed up. But recently, several generations have grown up in North America and Western Europe whose enemies have been kept far enough away from them that they’ve come to believe that it’s normal to live in peace. It is actually exceptional. I think that shortly they may find out that this isn’t true.

For Jews, the wolf of Amalek is always at the door. This is certainly true in Eretz Yisrael, where Amalek has been battering at us for at least the last 100 years. But since 1967, many Israeli Jews have lost the existential anxiety that gripped the generation of 1948. The Yom Kippur War was a reminder of it, but the fact that we recovered from the initial defeat and won a clear-cut military victory (though it was taken from us diplomatically) and that our enemies didn’t penetrate our home front, soon erased the fear of the first days of the war. There were other warnings, but the desire to live as though we were one of the large Western democracies made us suppress the precarious reality of the Middle East in which we live.

So we reduced the size of our ground army, and relaxed many of the procedures that were, it turns out, essential to protecting our people. We have become dependent: on America, on technology, on our Air Force. Officers assumed that we were so strong that nobody would challenge us, so it was safe for them to fudge a little on their reports to higher-ups. What could happen? Our General Staff decided that technology could replace boots on the ground; they advocated for a “digital battlefield” on which every soldier would be tied into to sophisticated information systems that would provide real-time intelligence and command, blah blah blah. Their reports all said that goals were achieved. A whole paper structure was built that did not reflect reality. The map was not the territory. “We’ve never been stronger,” said the top generals, until Hamas revealed their nakedness on October 7.

Our leaders should have known the intentions of our enemies. All they had to do was listen to what the spokespeople of Hamas, Hezbollah, the PLO, and Iran said in public. But perhaps because they themselves were so easily bought, they held our enemies in contempt. They assumed that quiet could be purchased with American dollars to the PLO and Qatari cash for Hamas. But it turns out, as anyone who has studied the Middle East even a little knows, that money was only a means to an end. They were happy to take it and build fancy villas for themselves, but they also dug tunnels and manufactured rockets. And they never lost their aspiration to once and for all kill and drive out the Jews from what they claim as their land.

The generals and the politicians forgot that we are not a large western democracy, but rather a small country in the Middle East. They forgot that our enemies are not stupid. They forgot that honor and deterrence go together. They forgot that the more complicated a system, the more weak points it has, and that technology can fail. They forgot that Maginot Lines never work. They forgot that only ground forces can hold territory.

Most importantly, they forgot how much our enemies hate us and how this motivates them. They forgot Amalek.

Abu Yehuda

[seventeenlovesthree]

My wishes for future portrayals of the Adventure cast

Since 2023 is coming to an end - and since my Twitter timeline is full of bits about the final Sailor Moon Cosmos movie -, I thought it was time for one final analysis post. Initially, it felt a bit like a "moping post", complaining about how the Adventure writers have written themselves into a corner with a lot of the characters - however, I felt like reframing these and finding a more positive outlook. For 2024, the 25th anniversary of the Digimon anime, and beyond that.

For the sake of this analysis post I will parallel the 12 characters with one another, thus talking about 6 pairs - either because they are facing similar issues or because they are on different ends of the potential spectrum.

MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD! (I will try to keep it as spoiler free for The Beginning as possible though!)

Taichi & Daisuke

Let's start with our goggle boys first, because they were the reason why I came up with this post in the first place. I had already paralleled them before, but what I haven't talked about yet is that they both represent certain aspects of the "main character syndrome" to me - aspects that can ALSO be found in Usagi Tsukino, and the final arc, Stars, in particular. All these three go through different types of hardships the plot throws at them; those familiar with my analysis posts know how much I consider Tri, the stageplay and Kizuna to be "Taichi suffer porn" and the Stars arc pretty much does the same with Usagi. It's one of the reasons why I have such a love-hate-relationship with these portrayals, because as much as I know how important they are for character growth, I also need there to be a catharsis. And in Taichi's case, I still feel like we haven't gotten there yet. Sure, it's implied that he's on his way to pull himself out of stagnation, accepting Digimon and the Digital World as a part of himself that will never vanish, etc. But on a very petty note, I still wish the writers could have invested more time into paralleling Daisuke and Taichi to one another, instead of just hinting at things. Because Daisuke, as much as he had to face dreadful moments and had to make tough decisions himself, never had to go through the same experiences of loss and grief as Taichi did. In a way, Daisuke is more the portrayal of "hope" in Usagi than Taichi is; Daisuke is usually a catalysator for other characters, he elevates and inspires others in more simple, but still very effective ways. In the DigiFes audio drama, we hear Daisuke say that he hasn't forgotten what happened to Taichi, that he wants to find a way to undo what happened and bring the Digimon back. It's hopeful, it's idealistic, it's Daisuke's good heart that reaches people. Unfortunately, we are not really seeing his own self-esteem struggles outside of audio dramas...

So what would I like to see for them in the future?

Taichi is giving other people hope too, but it's more because they naturally rely on him to be like that. What I need to happen for him is to see the spirit from the last few seconds of Kizuna, running through cherry blossoms with confidence and determination, and completely commit to that. I value Digimon for its realistic portrayal of human struggles and relationships, but with Taichi, they haven't found a good middle ground yet. The reboot absolutely was an attempt to maintain his main character status and popularity without the suffering - but in the process they stripped 90% of what makes his character interesting away from him and that made people more annoyed by his bland, perfectly positive attitude than anything else. I want him to embrace his struggles and see him find his own personal middle ground. Reconnecting with his family, part of the friend group, making difficult phone calls, actually figuring out a way to bring everyone together like they used to - up to a point where he can actually smile to himself again, as tough as early diplomat life can be, until we see him reunite with Agumon. I don't want everything to be perfect, I mean, heck, Taichi Yagami isn't even a canonically people-y person, he just likes to spend his time with weirdos he loves! But I want to see him get back on track. Give me a 15-30 minute short of that and I'll be happy.

As for Daisuke - I think the first audio drama for The Beginning was the perfect set-up for a mini-series dealing with "Daisuke Motomiya's struggles to set up his ramen cart career". Gimme 12 episodes of him facing different obstacles, whether they're physical or personal, that ACTUALLY highlight his qualities and developments in deeper ways, showing him to be vulnerable in front of someone.

Yamato & Ken

This may sound like a very obvious observation, but it's really interesting to me how similar the roles they have been fulfilling are in the context of being foils to the goggle boys. In fact, it's not even like they're impulse controls for Taichi and Daisuke respectively - but that they do exactly that FOR each other. Unfortunately, that makes it difficult for them to exist outside of this context - for example, I think The Beginning (and the third drama in particular) really WANTED Ken to be an integral part of the development, but couldn't really achieve that, even though there were SO MANY potential parallels to Rui. Any other than that, we don't really know what's going on with Ken - what HAS BEEN going on with him since 02 has ended. We know he is popular at uni, he's still a smart bean, in touch with the 02 group - but that's it.

The OG timeline still gave Yamato individual moments in Tri and Kizuna, but it didn't really allow him to bloom further yet - he couldn't really break out of his shell in the same vain as 02 already implied. Again, it's not necessary to give him a perfect happy end where his parents reunite and he'd be perfectly capable of making connections left and right - that wouldn't be realistic. And at least we got glimpses as to why he might get into space, which was nice. On the other hand, you could tell that they didn't really know what to do with him in the reboot aside from forcing him to be "the second strongest character in terms of combat" again for marketing reasons.

(And another thing that's similar to both of them and yet totally different - is the way their romantic lives are framed. And no, for once I don't mean that they're both hopelessly in love with their respective goggle boys, even though that is technically part of it too... Both their supposed future spouses are the ones who canonically make the first step towards vaguely romantic gestures - but we only see one of these interactions framed in a rather romantic light ever since 02 ended, whereas the other has been weirdly brushed under the rug ever since.)

So what would I like to see for them in the future?

Similarly to how I wanted a short showing Taichi's more human side again, I want something like that for each Ken and Yamato too. To see how their daily lives go. Show me Ken and Wormmon fighting crime and Yamato being confronted with WHY exactly there is a threat coming from space, which is WHY he chooses to go in that direction in the first place (even though he totally could have chosen to become a policeman just like Ken too, Tri and Kizuna made very valid points to him LOVING to investigate after all!!!). And I want the writers to COMMIT to show how they're able to form and maintain relationships, because really - we know they are both popular with the crowds, but struggle A LOT with that. ESPECIALLY in the romance department. I know and understand why they WOULDN'T do that considering the fandom backlashes in the past, but... It's been 25 years. That bandaid should have been ripped off a long time ago. Show us why it works - or why it doesn't.

Mimi & Miyako

Mimi and Miyako are loud, proud - and have become quite the fandom favourites throughout the years. Part of that may come from their more "international framing", colourful wardrobes and overall spunkiness within their respective friend groups. The most outstanding part about them is - they aren't plot drivers, but they're perfectly capable of pushing important moments due to them being able to give their emotions a voice and that's what makes them so vital. (What I personally found interesting - even though the fandom me included loves to frame them both as bi-sexual queens, only Miyako is implied to pursue romance, whereas Mimi's actions and love language portrayals can be seen as coming rather from a place of platonic affection.)

So what would I like to see for them in the future?

In my opinion, the writers really have been trying to make these two shine on their own for a while now and there isn't much I'd personally want to change about that. However, giving them mini-series about their careers, showing how they keep changing direction and discovering more things about themselves in the process could be pretty great though. I still want to see someone consistently designing amazing outfits for them (*cough* Sora *cough*), so they could show those off in every episode.

Koushirou & Jyou

I'm gonna say it now - the biggest problem these two have is the fact that they have been among the most consistently well-written characters through the course of Adventure AND 02 (and the stageplay), maybe only rivaled by Ken. Basically, they had already come to their own conclusions by the end of the first and second season respectively - and even if, of course, there were still things that could have enriched their stories, we knew where we were headed with them. They still had their flaws, but they were both continuously growing - even if it was just implied. And thus, ever since Tri, there have been only a few breadcrumbs (such as showing us Koushirou having a close bond to his parents by valuing their anniversary and Jyou showing Gomamon that he's not afraid of blood anymore and thus ready to move forward). Nevertheless, it took a few unfortunate "resets" of their characters for the writers to even have interesting things to say about them - including very questionable romance-leaning subplots that involved an invisible girlfriend nobody believed in and a superficial crush that didn't lead to anything.

Now we're at a point where their characters are basically narrowed down to "Guy who solves all problems and if he's not there, who else should know what's going on anymore, haha" and "Guy who is never around and always busy anyway, haha". The Beginning and the dramas literally made fun of it like that in the same way.

So what would I like to see for them in the future?

Without going too much into detail about this topic again, I really want there to be a short/mini movie dealing with Koushirou's personal life. My boy has been nothing but "work and plot and a lack of sleep and probably being this close to burn-out" for the past few movies (technically since DSB) and I want to see how his individual bonds to the characters have developed. Give me his struggles with interpersonal relationships, show me his setbacks in that regard, show me how he expresses his love languages in meaningful ways - and let the others show him that he is loved for who he is, not for the problems he solves. GIVE ME EMOTIONS.

Similar things can of course also be said about Jyou - give me a situation in which he comes first, in which he is the one who sets things in motion and saves the day for once. Because he WANTS to be around - Hikari's guilty tone in the drama wouldn't have come out of nowhere!!! On the other hand - give him his own mini-series, please, show me the adventures of Doc Kidou saving lives, getting accustomed to his work in the Digital World. Give him something good, he deserves it!

Takeru & Hikari

Most of it has already been said in here - but these two are basically glued together by the hip since forever and still haven't progressed much as characters ever since the end of 02. They're usually more fuel for other characters' development and there's less focus on themselves - The Beginning and the dramas at least imply they are on their way to be fine (aside from Takeru being implied to be a lightweight), but it would still be nice to see that a little more in-depth.

So what would I like to see for them in the future?

Actually, the second drama has already been a nice set-up - let there be a mini-series of these two telling stories about the adventures of the group, either leaving open whether those actually happened or had just been fiction! On the other hand, it actually would be nice to have a movie from their perspective on everything for once. Personally, I do not need any romantic framing, but just watching what may have happened ever since from their perspectives, their thoughts and feelings, would be incredibly satisfying.

Sora & Iori

Oh boy. I guess it's appropriate to call them "the forgotten ones" at this point. Because the writers aren't even particularly subtle about the way they have basically no idea what to do with them. (And even if either of them has very passionate singular fans, they still seem to be the least popular Chosen Children overall.) Even though both of them could have the most interesting developments if they were allowed to be portrayed properly, both of them have traditionally ALWAYS gotten the shortest end of the stick.

With Sora, this is particularly frustrating, because, just like with Taichi, we can TELL that this has not been the end of her story of self-discovery yet. No, we're still in the middle of it. But we're denied to actually see her development - and are just told that she, up to the point we have been able to watch, chose the same path as Jyou, to follow "family customs/wants". But unlike Jyou - who actually TOLD her that she has to do something because she WANTS it when they were KIDS - she was never 100% committed to or happy with that. Which, again, is not satisfying to watch, because her path had always been about discovering what her PERSONAL path was. It's still a crime that To Sora wasn't part of Kizuna itself, because there are still a lot of people who don't even understand WHY she chose to stay away and thus see it as her abandoning the others... (Plus, it doesn't help that they basically left her out of the movie, because they didn't want to reduce her to being a love interest AGAIN - especially because, as mentioned, the writers were very careful when talking about those ships in general -, but apparently didn't know what else to do with her...)

With Iori, it's so hard to pinpoint, because, just like with Ken, we basically know nothing about him and what has happened ever since the end of 02. They couldn't even make an "utility character" out of him like Koushirou, because that is already Miyako's part - however, they at least managed to make him look just as overworked and close to burn-out as his dads Koushiroud and Jyou, so...

So what would I like to see for them in the future?

This may sound silly, but I want Sora to go on vacation. Let her go on a scavenger hunt to figure out what exactly she wants. Let her reconnect with the others, step by step - at least those she still feels close with, I don't want 11 reconciliation stories, but there are at least a few people that could seriously help INSPIRE her to get better again, to have an actual, genuine talk with her mother. Heck, let her mother tell her that she never wanted her to diminish herself! I want a Sora movie. Her being the key to solving an issue the gang faces, even if Piyomon isn't back - yet. Or a story of them having freshly reunited and Sora deciding to show her love to the others in individual ways.

With Iori, I want a special about him reconnecting with his dad's past, doing research, finding out his own path as well. Maybe talking to various characters (ESPECIALLY KEN AND TAKERU) in depth about feelings, demanding ACTUAL answers for once. Basically, sending him on a similar self-discovery journey as Sora would be beautiful. Just - putting emphasis on him growing up, being a vital part of the group as an individual, showing him be actually close to people and not just a third wheel.