#event press release example

[thegabriellahere]

Get a Detailed Idea of a Press Release for Events to Get a Better Result

Get a press release example for event before distributing one. With a better idea, you will get the chance to grab the attention of your target audiences easily.

Events businesses are very much hectic when it comes to arranging everything from the scratch. If you are in this business, then you would be the responsible person who has to take care of everything. You have to deal with every little thing like the guest list, venue, decorations, vendors, and publicity also. When you are arranging an event, you have to give equal importance to publicity too. Otherwise, you won’t be able to achieve your goals.

A press release is one of the most important things while conducting an event. When you are trying to make a press release, you have to mention the significant things about your event that are going to take place. By doing so, you will get the opportunity to grab the attention of more people. Before publishing, you can check out a few press release example for event to get a flawless result.

So now let’s know more about what is a press release. A press release is formal writing that is sent to news sites and media outlets for the use of promotions. In this brief writing, you can add all the whereabouts of the event and all the other details that a reader must know about the event and the company. Along with these, you have to know that there are two kinds of press releases that are used for events:

Press release before the event: these are the writings that are distributed before the event. These are also sent along with the press kit, so they gain more attention from everyone.

Press release after the event: a press release after the event is used for distributing to media companies to provide all the inside information of what has happened in the event.

To create an ideal press release, you have to follow a few things. Those are-

Add Five W’s:

The five W’s are one of the most important things about a press release. These W’s stand for who, what, where, when, and why. When a reader is reading a press release they will need answers to these questions. In a more elaborated way, these are-

Who?: In this portion, you have to add who is organizing the event and who is hosting the show. Along with these, you can also include who is going to be present at the event.

What?: In this section, you have to add what is the event about to give an idea about the event.

Where?: Another important thing you have to keep in mind is that, where the event is being held. Try to give a proper location of the event to provide better information.

When?: Don’t forget to add the date and time of the event for the readers.

Why?: It is a very important thing for the readers to that why the event is taking place. You need aware of its purpose.

Along with these, you can also add press release quotes of famous personalities. It will help you to make an impact on the readers. It will make the process easier for you and you will get the chance to influence the readers.

All these tips are applicable when the event is going to happen. But you also have to follow this pattern, even when you are writing a press release that has already taken place. In that case, you have to write the press release in the past tense and fulfill the requirements according to it.

Let’s Find Out More About How to Write a Press Release-

Follow the Pattern of a News Article:

When you are writing a press release, you have to give it a look like a news article. This way you will get the chance to grab the attention of journalists and might get a full article on news sites. Other than that, it is formal writing so you have to present like news and you cannot use any ornamental words. Thus try to come up with a brief yet impactful writing.

Don’t Use Casual Language:

As you know it is formal writing, thus you cannot use any casual words in the writing. Do not try to create something complicated and always go for simple writing that is easy to understand for the readers. Along with these, you have to keep another thing in mind, you cannot use extra adjectives or any adverbs. It can make create a negative impact on everyone.

Write in Active Voice:

While writing a press release, try to avoid using passive voice. Always write in an active voice because it is much more effective are powerful. This way you will influence the audience in an easy way.

Add Contact Details at the Bottom:

In conclusion, you have to give the contact details of the company and along with that, you can also give a contact person number for any further requirements. Therefore, if one tries to reach out to your company then they can contact you through this. These few things also help to build the trust of the readers with the company. So you have to look out for such things, which will make your press release and event more successful.

Now get an idea of an ideal press release, here is a press release format for an event-

Company name

Contact information

Add the date of the release

A catchy title before getting into the press release

Write all the information that you need to tell your audience. In this part, add the 5 W’s

Add a conclusion for the closure

So, this is how one can efficiently write a press release for an event. Follow these effective tips to get a better impact on the audiences in an effortless way.

[ahaura]

(Oct. 26) The White House is deliberately smearing the Gazan Ministry of Health's reports of the death toll in Gaza as means of genocidal denial, saying that the "'so-called' Ministry of Health is [...] not reliable." But the Biden Administration has cited the Ministry of Health as recently as last year.

This is not the first time the United States has engaged in genocide denial on behalf of an ally.

Highlighted on Twitter, from The Representation of the Holocaust in the Soviet Press, 1941–1945 by Corinne Ducey (pub. 2008) [Link] (Sci-Hub)

The American and British press also shared a widespread mistrust of Jewish eye- witnesses. Although the Anglophone press reported on stories released by the Soviets or smuggled reports from Jews trapped in Eastern Europe, these stories were ‘not worthy of complete trust because Jews were “interested parties”’. The press tended to believe non-Jewish sources over Jewish sources and ‘generally during these years, whenever the Pope or other leading Christian religious leaders spoke out on the Jews’ behalf [. . .] their comments garnered more attention than a similar story coming from a Jewish [. . .] source’. As late as January 1945 an official from the Refugee Department of the British Foreign Office wrote, ‘Sources of information are nearly always Jewish whose accounts are only sometimes reliable and not seldom highly coloured. One notable tendency in Jewish reports on this problem is to exaggerate the numbers of deportations and deaths’.

In November 1943, W. H. Lawrence of the New York Times travelled to Kiev for an inspection of Babi Yar after the Soviets had retaken the city, and filed a sceptical story about the massacre. The article includes phrases such as ‘it is the contention of the authorities’ and, when referring to eyewitnesses, ‘who said they participated’ or ‘the story was told by’. Lawrence visited the ravine personally, but still found it difficult to accept the Soviet version of events. He states that he saw only a bone or two, a handbag, some hair and ‘that there is little evidence in the ravine to prove or disprove the story’. He therefore concludes that ‘On the basis of what we saw, it is impossible for this correspondent to judge the truth or falsity of the story told to us’. Alexander Werth notes in his book about his experiences with the Red Army, Russia at War, that the BBC turned down his report on Majdanek because they could not believe that Nazi Germany had taken its racial policies so far. Werth also quotes the response of the New York Herald Tribune to the report on Majdanek: ‘Maybe we should wait for further corroboration of the horror story that comes from Lublin. Even on top of all we have been taught of maniacal Nazi ruthlessness, this example sounds inconceivable.’

The Ministry of Health has published the names of over 7,000 Palestinians, including almost 3,000 children, killed in Gaza. The full report can be found here.

[canmom]

music and narrative {[0]}

so. as part of the ongoing music researches, I've for a while wanted about the relation between music and narrative. that's going to be a long project! but to begin with I wanted to run down the examples I know, and maybe solicit a few more~

now, on some level, nearly any song has some degree of narrative. your basic love song introduces us to some characters - singer, object of their affection - and furnishes them with emotions and desires. moreover, music can play a role in a narrative without literally relating events - indeed, the art of soundtrack design is definitely a subject I want to look into at some point. even songs addressed directly at the real world, such as political songs, construct some kind of narrative.

however, for these purposes, I'm interested in songs that go a bit further in the direction of telling a fictional story, especially when those link together into whole albums (sometimes called a concept album, though this is a slightly broader concept). which can work in a lot of ways!

for example, Janelle Monae's The ArchAndroid tells a sweeping scifi story of an android fleeing an oppressive society and becoming an unintentional figurehead of revolution. it sketches out a wide-reaching set of influences in constructing a scifi world, but you'd be hard-pressed to boil it down into a simple series of events - it prefers to leave a lot to interpretation. by contrast something like Splendor & Misery by clipping. deals with kinda similar subject matter - a scifi story, an escaped slave, artificial intelligence - but with a different musical approach and perhaps a slightly clearer narrative arc; sometimes directly narrating the thoughts and actions of characters, or slipping into memory, but also drawing less direct musical parallels with e.g. gospel tracks and slave spirituals. both excellent albums - both solve the problems of conveying a story musically in different ways.

of course, the largest pool of examples here comes in the context of musical theatre, and further back opera. (the exact transition from one to the other is something I'm going to need to research). particularly interesting to me are sung-through musicals such as Les Misérables, in which there's no spoken sections in between the songs. this restriction means the songs (and staging etc.) have to do all the work of conveying the events of the story.

there's a lot to be said about the various traditions of musicals (for example). there's even more to be said about the history of opera - both the Western traditions and other musical traditions that have been given the label such as Chinese opera. but that will have to wait for later day in the project because otherwise this entire post would be a huge list of musicals, and I want to try and wander all over the shop.

what I'm most curious to find is music that tells a story all on its own - no actors or staging, but more similar to oral narration. of course, in the present era, music is often released along with videos, and these can tell quite elaborate stories that will become part of the overall 'message' communicated by the song, so the lines are a bit blurry! but since the aim of this series will be to look for ways to convey narrative using music, I'm looking for examples where the music does most of the heavy lifting.

music that tells stories is something with a looong tradition in folk music, pretty much the world over. in Europe, the ballad was a common form for it, a word that survives into the present. it seems that most cultures have had some kind of tradition of wandering itinerant musician-poets - for example, at various points in history, there were biwa hōshi in Japan (pictured) and griots in West Africa, medieval Europeans had minstrels, the Celts had bards, the Occitans had troubadors...

moreover, work and marching songs such as sea shanties would also have a certain degree of narrative to them, in addition to their main function of keeping a group moving in time.

in modern times, people will sometimes attempt to reconstruct how this kind of music and lyric poetry would have been performed. you can naturally only go so far with the archaeological evidence, but I'm fond of Peter Pringle's recordings of segments of the Epic of Gilgamesh, using period instruments if not necessarily a period musical style!

in the modern age of recorded music, these traditions have become much more niche, but there are still artists who use music as a vehicle to tell a fictional narrative. (fair warning: I'm a huge nerd, so most of the examples I know are like, supreme nerd shit. also about ten years ago I was given an assortment of metal from a friend which included a bunch of what I'm about to put below.)

to begin with I've naturally got to talk about my friend Maki Yamazaki (Dr Carmilla) and the band she founded but later left, The Mechanisms. They tell a story of a sprawling gothic scifi universe, with the band playing the role of travelling space pirates who observe the (invariably tragic) tales that unfold. The Mechanisms' music starts as folk song pastiche, but gradually gets more original, although narratively they keep the approach of crossing over mythology with genre storytelling (fairy tales as space opera, arthuriana as space western).

The Mechanisms got a significant measure of international fame washing back after their frontman Johnny Sims got really big on some podcast or something.

Maki's solo music as Dr Carmilla took things in (from a narrative sense) a more abstract direction, using elaborate production and an incredibly textured sound to tell a (so far!) fragmentary story of the tragic space vampire Dr Carmilla and her doomed relationship with another vampire Lorelei (for example). And I'm gonna have lots more to say about them all, in the future, but this is just an overview so let's not get ahead of ourselves!

In a related vein (though I'm much less familiar with them) comes indie band Decemberists, who often create narratively driven songs - for example, The Mariner's Revenge Song depicts a sailor's motivation for extracting bloody revenge on someone who wronged him, with the actual violence conveyed by an energetic instrumental break. A subject that reminds me of the Clockwork Quartet, now long gone, who managed to record just three of their songs from a larger project, yet stand out as way more interesting than most of the steampunk milieu - with for example The Clockmaker's Apprentice giving a very fun antihero-revenge narrative to the ticking beat of a clock, and The Doctor's Wife a compelling tragedy of desperate medical science.

There's definitely something in common with this type of storytelling and the subgenre termed rock opera, which has a pretty long history going back to the late 60s (SF Sorrow by Pretty Things and The Story of Simon Simopath by Nirvana, thanks wikipedia), with notable examples including some incredibly popular albums like Pink Floyd's The Wall (which was adapted into a partly animated film using animations by Gerard Scarfe, c.f AN86) and My Chemical Romance's The Black Parade. In many of these, the connection between songs and narrative is fairly abstract and metaphorical - most of the examples mentioned are about the psychological arc of one character.

Calling this a genre or subgenre is kind of a stretch recently - just in those four examples we see a pretty wide range of musical styles, so it's more like an approach to album writing. Still, for want of a better word, there's definite overlap between this 'genre' and musicals. For example, the history on wikipedia cites The Rocky Horror Picture Show as an example of rock opera, which in my head it's just a musical. (Anyway, exactly the taxonomy of regular opera/libretto, rock opera and musical theatre is not that important anyway, because we want to look at the techniques of all of them!)

A more direct narrative comes in the work of The Protomen, who have the 'no way that would work' premise of creating a huge, dramatic, emotional story based on the plot of the Mega Man games. By putting the focus on the tense relationships of the fought main characters (scientists Light and Wily and robot boys Proto Man and Mega Man), and their sense of rejection and betrayal by the broader society, they somehow pull it off.

Moving gradually in the direction of (progressive) metal, we encounter Ayreon, whose entire career has been telling psychedelic and occult stories of time travel, aliens, warnings projected into the past, out of body experiences, and the history and direction of humanity. I'm not sure if all of their albums fit together into one big story exactly, but certain ideas seem to keep coming up - for example, future societies or aliens sending warnings to humanity to fix our shit before it's too late. In some of their albums (e.g. The Electric Castle) they follow the device of having each member of the band play a character in an ensemble cast, bringing it a bit closer to something like a radio play.

Also in metal land we find the rather unique project Charlemagne: By The Sword and the Cross, best known for that time Christopher Lee shed the blood of the saxon men. This is using music as a vehicle for a (more or less) historical story, featuring an old Charlemagne (Lee) reminiscing on the various awful things he did over the course of his life. Apparently they made a sequel to this album, which I never realised!

As well as history, metal also likes to lean on literature and poetry. For example, Kamelot (classed, apparently, as 'Power Metal') have a rather fun adaptation of the story of Faust into two albums, Epica and The Black Halo. Iron Maiden famously took on the Rime of the Ancient Mariner in a 13 minute song. And that's not even to get into all the songs dealing with Tolkien.

Moving on from metal before we start listing a hundred songs about vikings, it's worth looking more broadly for music about history, since it's a pretty major overlap with fictional storytelling! For example, the Boney M song Rasputin tells an incredibly catchy account of the assassination of Grigori Rasputin. Another rather more charged example comes in Nakam by Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird, about the unsuccessful paramilitary plot to poison six million Germans as revenge for the Holocaust.

If you go looking, you can find an impressively long list of historical songs compiled by 30 users of lyrics website Genius - though many of these I feel don't really count, since they were describing contemporary events when they were written.

Of course, there is a heavy overlap between this subject and political songs - in many cases the historical subjects are invoked to comment on the present. For example, Wernher von Braun by Tom Lehrer was written at a time when von Braun was leading the US space programme. In many cases, the songs simply invoke a historical event to express a feeling, assuming you already know what happened. Others may recount events more or less directly, before seguing into a verse or two at the end about why it matters now. Most of the songs in this list focus on recent (20th-century) history, sometimes they reach further back - mostly to talk about colonialism.

Historical songs can also be quite oblique. For example, Mili's song Salt, Pepper, Birds and the Thought Police is about the life of Korean poet Yoon Dong-ju, but you wouldn't necessarily know it from the content of the lyrics unless you were already familiar with Yoon's life. More on Mili in a moment - most of their songs are more fictional.

One thing I'm curious about is whether there are examples of more historical fiction in music, which tries to imagine the thoughts and feelings of historical characters... well obviously there's Hamilton, and perhaps that illustrates why there aren't a lot more songs about non-recent history, because the vibes can be off.

Storytelling is still a powerful mechanism even in a contemporary, political song. Take Construção by Chico Buarque - the story it tells is of the pointless death of a construction worker; with the lines ingeniously remixed over the course of the song, this turns into a wider illustration of the ruthlessness of the system that killed him. Its lyrics are absolutely fucking genius, even if you don't speak Portugese.

Speaking of language, most of the examples I've covered so far are in English, since well, that's my native language. It's naturally a little harder to access a story in a language you don't speak, but in these days of subtitles, we kinda can! So for example I can encounter projects like MILGRAM, something of a combination of music project and voting-driven story, in which we are introduced (by character song) to a number of characters facing execution - and then invited to vote on who should die. Heavily illustrated, it is somewhere vaguely in the space between album and straight-up anime.

I mentioned Mili already, but many of their other songs have a strong narrative arc to them, and sketch out the contours of a fictional setting. For example, one of their best-known songs is world.execute(me), which portrays the failure of a bdsm relationship between an AI girl and her creator. Which is relatively grounded by Mili standards - other songs depict for example the relationship of a jiangshi and a mad scientist cooking food, or a witch reanimating a knight with scientific methods to kill on her behalf.

And I think that will suffice for now. But we are of course only scratching the surface - this is by no means supposed to be an exhaustive list but I'm sure there's stuff that I'll be kicking myself for not mentioning. Mostly, however, this is a request for recommendations - particularly, of music from genres I haven't addressed in this post, and especially non-English languages, or that convey their stories in especially creative or unusual ways.

This project will likely be a long time in the works - it's something of a supplement to the Music Theory Notes (for science bitches) series - but my aim will be to pick out a few of these to examine how they go about conveying narrative through songs. Because I think that's kind of one of the big things I want to do with music.

ok canmom out i gotta go play some music. see you next time!

[hummussexual]

BY ABBY MONTEILApril 30, 2024

More than 60 LGBTQ+ organizations are calling for broadcasters, competitors, workers, and viewers to boycott 2024’s Eurovision Song Contest following the competition’s decision to include Israel in this year’s event, which takes place in Sweden.

Support for the boycott has come from LGBTQ+ organizations around the world, including QPEN in the United States, Queers in Palestine in Palestine, Pride in Protest in Australia, and Dyke March Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

“Israeli soldiers wave rainbow flags atop the ruins of Palestinian homes destroyed by the Israeli military in Gaza — a cynical attempt to rebrand Israel’s genocide as an act of queer liberation,” the boycott’s organizers said in a press release statement.

The statement likely refers in part to a viral November 2023 post from the state of Israel's official X account, which showed an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier standing amidst rubble it what was reportedly northern Gaza holding a Pride flag that had “In the name of love” written on it in English, Hebrew, and Arabic. The post said that the soldier is “a member of the LGBTQ+ community” who “wanted to send a message of hope to the people of Gaza living under Hamas brutality.” The post was criticized by LGBTQ+ advocates for being a prime example of “pinkwashing.”

The statement continued: “Allowing Israel to participate in Eurovision — an international pop cultural event with a massive LGBTQ+ audience — further contributes to Israel’s desperate pinkwashing attempts.”

The groups’ press release noted that although Eurovision excluded Russia the day after the country invaded Ukraine, similar measures have not been applied to Israel following the January International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling that it is “plausible” that Israel is committing acts of genocide in Gaza. While the ICJ stated that it would proceed on South Africa’s case charging Israel with violation of the 1948 Convention of the Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the court did not order Israel to stop its military operations. Since Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel that killed 1,200 and took 250 hostages, Israeli military actions have killed over 34,000 Palestinians in Gaza and injured more than 75,000 Palestinians.

This isn’t the first time that artists and LGBTQ+ organizations have protested the international music competition’s inclusion of Israel. Back in 2019, over 100 LGBTQ+ groups endorsed a Palestinian call for a boycott of that year’s competition, which took place in Israel, following what Amnesty International described as “deliberate attempts” to kill and maim Palestinian civilians participating in protests in Gaza.

This past January, more than 1,000 Swedish musicians, including LGBTQ+ icon Robyn, called for Eurovision to exclude Israel from the 2024 competition in an open letter to the European Broadcasting Union, who said in a statement to Billboard that the Israeli public broadcaster KAN has met all the competition rules for this year and is eligible to compete.

Later, in March, over 1,900 queer artists and organizations called on the UK’s Eurovision contestant, queer actor and musician Olly Alexander, to boycott the competition out of solidarity with Palestine.

Eurovision 2024 is set to begin on May 7.

[small-z24]

Love in the Shadows Pt. 1

Summary:

Azriel's mission takes an unexpected turn when he encounters Y/n, a mysterious woman in a dangerous situation. The events of that night not only save Y/n's life but also change Azriel's forever.

Word count: 735

Warnings: None

Rescue in the Shadows

Azriel moved through the dark streets of Velaris with practiced ease, his shadows cloaking him from sight. Tonight's mission was supposed to be straightforward—gather information on a suspected rebel group stirring trouble in the lower districts. But as he approached the dilapidated warehouse where his sources indicated activity, something felt off.

He paused, his shadows whispering of danger. Quietly, he slipped into the shadows, becoming one with the darkness as he surveyed the scene. Inside the warehouse, he could make out several figures—armed and tense, their voices hushed but urgent.

And then he saw her.

She was bound and gagged, fear evident in her eyes as she was shoved to the ground. The leader of the group, a tall, scarred male, circled her like a predator.

"This one thought she could steal from us," the leader sneered. "But we'll make an example out of her."

Azriel's blood ran cold. He had seen this group before—ruthless, unforgiving. He had to act quickly. Silently, he assessed the situation, formulating a plan. He couldn't afford to make a mistake; her life depended on it.

His shadows moved ahead of him, snaking into the warehouse and creating small disturbances to distract the guards. In the confusion, Azriel slipped inside, his eyes never leaving the woman.

With a swift, calculated move, he incapacitated the nearest guard, his blade silent and deadly. One by one, he took them down, his movements a blur of efficiency. Finally, only the leader remained.

The leader turned, too late to react as Azriel's blade pressed against his throat. "Leave," Azriel hissed, his voice a low, dangerous growl. "And never return."

The leader's eyes widened in terror before he nodded frantically. Azriel released him, and the man fled, stumbling over the bodies of his fallen comrades.

Azriel's focus shifted to the woman. He knelt beside her, his hands gentle as he removed her gag and cut the ropes binding her wrists. "Are you alright?" he asked, his voice softer now.

She nodded, her eyes wide with a mix of relief and gratitude. "Thank you," she whispered, her voice trembling. "I... I didn't think anyone would come."

Azriel offered a reassuring smile, helping her to her feet. "You're safe now. Can you walk?"

"I think so," she replied, leaning on him for support as she took a tentative step. "Who are you?"

"Azriel," he introduced himself, his shadows retreating slightly, allowing her to see him more clearly. "I'm with the Night Court."

Her eyes widened in recognition. "I've heard of you. The Spymaster."

Azriel nodded, his expression serious. "Let's get you out of here. Can you tell me what happened?"

As they made their way out of the warehouse, she recounted her story. She had stumbled upon the rebel group's hideout by accident, and when she realized what she had found, it was too late to escape. The group had captured her, intending to make an example out of her.

"You were very brave," Azriel said, guiding her through the quiet streets. "And very lucky. Not many would survive an encounter with them."

She glanced at him, her eyes filled with admiration. "I was lucky you found me."

Azriel felt a warmth spread through his chest at her words. "I'm just glad I was there in time."

As they reached the safety of the Night Court's borders, Azriel knew this night would stay with him. Not just because of the danger, but because of her—their courage, their resilience. He felt a connection to her, something he hadn't expected but couldn't deny.

"Thank you, Azriel," she said again, her voice stronger now. "For everything."

Azriel nodded, a small smile playing on his lips. "You're welcome, Y/n. And remember, you're not alone anymore. If you ever need help, you know where to find me."

In that moment, under the stars of Velaris, a bond was formed. One that would grow stronger with time, forged in the shadows but destined to shine brightly.

Author's Note: Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into how Azriel and Y/n's paths first crossed. Feel free to leave comments and let me know your thoughts!

[keymetaphor]

It is time for me to post what I lovingly call my

“Overly Complicated Mechanism” Theory.

I originally wrote it right after Cat, but Amane trying to commit homicide again reminded me of its existence, and then I forgot about it until now. Anyway…

In short, my theory is this: Milgram’s preventative measures for violence against the Guard could be bypassed if the prisoners used an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine.

With Kazui’s first interrogation, it was heavily implied that the way Milgram actually stops prisoners from attacking the Guard involves a mental block, similar to hypnosis. This means the “invisible barrier” is very likely a result of their muscles locking up from brain signals that force them to stop before they hit the Guard.

The main piece of evidence for this comes from Kazui’s first interrogation, where he tested the limits of the Guard’s, uh… guard. Kazui’s attempt to restrain Es ended with his body suddenly losing strength, as if he himself became opposed to the idea of restraining them.

With Milgram’s themes of reinforced and rejected thoughts, I believe the most plausible explanation is a type of mental block instated in the prisoners’ psyches that prevents them from completing actions with the intent to harm or restrain the Guard. (Of course, it’s possible there really is just a magical barrier, but given the results of Kazui’s little experiment and Milgram’s emphasis on altering thought patterns, I think it’s unlikely.) My most pressing question about this is whether the mental block prevents a prisoner from carrying out any action with harmful intent toward the Guard, or if it only stops direct actions.

For example, say Muu wants to hit Es on the head with a rubber mallet. To accomplish this, she comes up with a design for a convoluted mechanism that effectively removes her from the act of wielding the hammer itself. For the sake of consistency, we’ll say the sequence of events is as follows:

Someone tips over a cup. The cup hits a rubber ball, which rolls down a ramp and hits a series of books set up like dominoes, which all fall one after the other. (I don’t have time to do a full illustration right now, but here’s something I sketched out really quick as a visual reference.)

The last book falls off a table onto the pedal of a trash can, which opens the lid and sends a tennis ball flying. The ball knocks over a metal water bottle, which releases the string held in place beneath it.

The string is tied to the rubber mallet, suspending it in midair above a doorframe. Releasing the string also releases the mallet, dropping it directly onto Es, who is (hopefully) standing underneath the doorframe.

There’s enough steps in the sequence to remove Muu as the one dropping the hammer. However, she would still be acting with the intent to harm the Guard. So, would she be unable to complete the action due to the mental block? If the answer is yes, as I theorize, then this obstacle can be bypassed with another workaround: telling someone else to do it for her.

If she tells Haruka that activating the mechanism will release confetti, and she obscures the mechanism enough that he will be unable to discern the actual purpose, (e.g., covering it with a curtain,) then Haruka would be able to activate it because he is acting without ill intent. Since he is fully convinced that the mechanism will release a shower of confetti, he can activate the chain reaction where Muu would be stopped by the mental block.

This leads to another possible obstacle, though. Would the mental block prevent Muu from building the mechanism in the first place? Since she is making it with the intention to cause harm to the guard, would she be unable to create it? It all depends on just how deep the mental block runs.

Based on what we’ve witnessed so far, I’m guessing that the mental block doesn’t extend quite that far. As seen with Fuuta, Kotoko, and Kazui, (and now Amane as well,) the prisoners are still capable of acting with the intention to harm Es; the mental block just stops them from completing the action. In other words, they can try to punch Es, but they’ll be forced to stop right before hitting them. Similarly, Kazui’s attempt to restrain Es was possible at first, but he quickly lost the strength to do so.

It is likely that Muu would be able to build the mechanism in the first place, but attempting to activate it in order to hit Es would result in either her suddenly losing the strength to do so, or another “invisible wall” where her muscles lock up right before she can tip the cup over.

If Muu lies to Haruka about its true purpose, however, Haruka will be able to activate the mechanism in her stead, and the hammer will successfully hit its mark, provided Es is standing in the right place.

So here’s how they could kill Es with a banana peel…

[sgiandubh]

Just a boy and his guinea pig

I am absolutely sure that this fandom has also long seen and dissected childhood pics of These Two.

For example, this one - taken somewhere around 1985 and released in Waypoints - I always find it very moving: must be the beanie, for once:

But not this one, of this I am 1500% sure:

Just a boy and his guinea pet pig, at the Balmaclellan Gala Day, on September 5th, 1992. That day, he didn't get any prize at the pet show judged by Mrs. Reagan ('of The Brae', not Nancy), but the local press informs us 'all other competitors (...) were given a highly commended rosette'.

Perhaps he kept it, who knows?

The event was covered in detail by The Galloway News, in its September 10th, 1992 issue:

And before you start screeching and shuffling and humming: I also have a wallet and I am not afraid at all to use it. Respectfully and discerningly.

Do I have more? Just try me.

[rambleonwaywardson]

Clegan Olympics AU - All-Around

Basically part 7 if we're going in order. Catch up via this Masterpost

AU Summary: Paris 2024 Olympics. Gale is on the U.S. equestrian eventing team, Bucky is a U.S. gymnast, they meet on the plane to Paris, and a love story ensues.

Author's Note: This is kinda long but splitting it didn't seem right. We have a lot happening: Bucky confronting his past; fluff; hurt/comfort; a bit of spice; we have Bucky and Curt's bromance; Bucky and Gale's romance; sports; celebrations; two idiots falling in love while the whole world watches. Buckle up y'all.

---

Three up three count. 

That’s the rule for Olympic gymnastics this year. For the team event, each country can send five gymnasts. For the U.S., that’s John, Curt, Croz, Brady, and Alex. But only three athletes compete on each apparatus, and all three of those scores count towards the team’s total. Gymnasts looking to qualify for a specific individual event must compete that event during the team competition. Croz, for example, is one of the best in the world on parallel bars. The U.S. wants him to qualify for individual events on parallel bars, so he does parallel bars during qualifications and team finals. Croz additionally goes up on pommel horse for the team competition, Brady on floor and rings, and Alex on vault and high bar.

Gymnasts looking to qualify for individual all-around, on the other hand, must go up for all events in the team competition. That’s John and Curt, the strongest male all-around gymnasts in the United States. 

This means that John and Curt both did all six events for qualification. Floor exercise, pommel horse, rings, vault, parallel bars, and high bar. Then they did all six again for team finals. They’re about to do all six again for individual all-around. And then they have individual events: Bucky on floor and rings. Curt on vault and high bar. Croz on parallel bars. 

That’s five days total of men’s gymnastics competition in Paris. Bucky is competing across five days. Twenty events total. Little to no break in between.

It’s nothing he hasn’t done before, right? He’s young. He’s strong. He’s America’s best male gymnast, plain and simple. He earned his place here because he’s capable of doing this. He did it in Tokyo. He can do it again. Right?

Even after destroying his leg less than two years ago. 

Right?

There’s a full house in the stadium tonight for men’s all-around. The gymnasts are heading into the fifth of six rotations, and Bucky is trying to push past the fatigue in his knee as he waits his turn on floor. One of the U.S. coaches is working on it, pressing his thumbs around the joint in a way that causes some disconcerting crunching sounds. It makes Bucky squirm in discomfort even as he feels the tension release. Curt is bouncing from foot to foot beside him, headphones in and the hood of his U.S.A. Gymnastics hoodie haphazardly over the back of his head. No care in the world.

Bucky wonders how that can be. How can Curt feel so calm? So confident? When he feels… like this?

There’s a certain moment when you are overwhelmingly sure that something is about to go wrong. Maybe you have no idea what, but something. A dread fills your being like an ominous shroud. You push it away. You hope to God it’s wrong. It’s just nerves. Just fear. Just exhaustion. Things that have no place on the gymnastics floor. 

‘We never thought we’d see John Egan at the Olympics again… a year ago, learning how to walk again… said the pain was excruciating…’

Bucky’s coach pats his leg, and Bucky sits up with a groan, bending and straightening his knee. With practiced fingers, he puts on his brace, securing the straps and double checking every one. When he stands up straight, he shifts his weight, testing the joint. It’s tired, but when is it not? 

He claps Curt on the shoulder and heads over to floor, where he’s about to be called. His head isn’t on right, he can tell. The lights of the stadium are too bright. The murmuring roar of the crowd crashes in his ears like waves breaking in the wind. There’s a camera right in his face, and he knows there’s one behind him, too. Watching. The whole world, watching. Everyone in this room.

Watching.

Because the world loves a good comeback story. And they also love to see what happens when a comeback story becomes less of a comeback and more of a… one last stand. No matter what happens, they get a show.

‘John Egan’s great comeback… a year and a half ago… destroyed his knee… thought he was done… had to learn to walk again… can’t imagine… what a comeback’

Bucky shakes his head, runs a hand through his hair, blows a hot breath through his nose. It’s floor. It’s his best event. Even with a stumble or a step out of bounds, his difficulty score is miles ahead of many athletes here. He’s got this.

‘Shocking… brave… incredible… inspiring’

Just one minute. Just six tumbling passes with a couple of non-acrobatic elements thrown in. Piece of cake.

His eyes scan the stands, but they’re too packed. He doesn’t know if Gale is here. He doesn’t know where he’d be if he were. 

He wishes Gale was here. 

‘Should’ve ruined his career… couldn’t even walk… no one but John Egan… a shocking comeback’

He needs Gale to be here, and if he didn’t know cameras were laser focused on him he’d smack himself in the head because come on he’s done this his whole life without Gale Cleven watching. 

But Gale stills him in a way that no one ever has. And looking at the blue spring floor in front of him, he feels anything but still.

‘What a comeback’

“On floor exercise, John Egan!”

The announcer’s voice rings through Bucky’s head at an earsplitting pitch that makes him wince. It’s too loud too loud too loud. He doesn’t know if it’s the crowd, or if it’s the memories pounding at his head or the way his leg feels like it’s not a part of him anymore or if there’s just something wrong with him. What if he can’t do it anymore?

What if he can’t do it ever again? 

His chest feels tight, but he salutes the judges anyway, sets himself up in the very corner, his heels on the white lines marking the boundary. Stand up tall, chest out, deep breaths. And then he runs across the diagonal in powerful, bounding steps.

He launches himself into his first tumbling pass, a triple twisting double back layout, the most difficult in his routine. The most difficult, perhaps, in any routine here. It’s one of the highest valued passes in men’s gymnastics, and he is one of few in the world to ever compete it. There was a long debate over whether or not Bucky should omit the pass from his routine post-injury, but he insisted he keep it, instead dialing back a couple of his other passes. He prides himself on this skill, and the world loves to see him do it. 

The world loves a hero, just as much as they love a comeback. 

He sticks the landing. He can imagine the commentators describing it, saying how incredible it was, noting how much power he can still get on that knee. It is an incredible pass, and he does it well; he knows that. He can’t count how many videos he’s seen of himself, the commentators exclaiming “Gymnastics 101 baby! Fly high and stick the landing” when he completes another impeccable routine. 

He sets up the next skill, a combination pass. He feels the dread deep in his chest, and he doesn’t know why. 

It’s so damn loud. He feels the impact shooting up his bad leg with every step. He launches himself into the air.

The world spins around him, or maybe he spins around it. It’s off. It’s not right. He’s mid-air and it’s not fucking right.

Why isn’t it right? Why can’t he find the ground? Why won’t his body listen to him? Why-

His knee crumples on impact, sending him to the ground, blood rushing through his whole body with such determination that he can hear it pounding in his ears. The crowd gasps. Curt yells his name. The pain explodes through Bucky’s entire body, and he screams. 

–

That’s how he wakes up: screaming. 

There’s someone standing over him in the darkness, hands on Bucky’s shoulders, shaking him gently.  “Bucky, Bucky it’s okay,” Curt says. “Wake up. It’s okay.”

Bucky gasps, drawing in deep burning breaths that catch in his throat and make him choke. His eyes are burning, his ears still ringing with the rush of the crowd in an echoing stadium. Curt is staring down at him, though, all concerned and worried and shit. Bucky hates that he’s looking at him like that, but he desperately doesn’t want Curt to leave, either. His hand on his shoulder is the only thing bringing his heart rate back down to something resembling normal. 

Curt doesn’t leave, though. He doesn’t even think about it, and Bucky knows he wouldn’t even if he asked him to. He stays right there. He stands beside Bucky with a hand on his shoulder, waiting for Bucky’s breathing to calm. He stays right there, just like he did every time Bucky woke up the exact same way in the hospital, with pain coursing through his entire body and fear gripping his mind. 

Curt was right there with him when it happened. He and Croz were two of the first people at Bucky’s side when he went down at Worlds. He watched it all happen with his own eyes from beginning to end, a snapshot sequence of events that is imprinted in his brain in slow motion and fast-forward at the exact same time. He remembers how perfect the routine was before everything went to hell. A routine that would’ve secured John Egan another world title. He remembers the terrifying crack of a bar snapping, Bucky’s body hurtling uncontrollably through the air, his ear-piercing scream ringing through a stunned-silent stadium. He remembers the absolutely sickening visual of Bucky’s leg bent all wrong as he lay unconscious on the mat. 

Curt was right there, an unwilling witness to it all, even when Bucky wasn’t. When the initial shock cleared, he didn’t think, just ran for all he was worth to Bucky’s side. He kneeled there with Croz, on the floor somewhere too far away from the high bar that Bucky had prematurely dismounted from, and he stared down at Bucky’s face. Eyes closed, covered in sweat, blood seeping slowly from the back of his head. His leg twisted out of shape in an impossible position. Curt remembers his hands shaking, hovering over his best friend’s still body like they knew they needed to do something but they couldn’t figure out what.

It still makes him sick to think about. It still haunts his own dreams. 

Curt didn’t even finish the competition that day, demanding instead that he be taken to whatever hospital Bucky was heading to. He refused to leave, even when the nurses and doctors told him that only family was allowed in. 

“I am his family,” he protested. He sat in that waiting room, slept in that waiting room, lived in that waiting room until a nurse took pity on him and let him in to see Bucky. He talked to his friend, even though he wouldn’t – couldn’t – wake up at first. When they moved Bucky back to the states, Curt hardly left his side. He sat with him, talked to him, stayed with him day and night. He woke him up from nightmare after nightmare, even when he was having nightmares himself. He sat on the edge of Bucky’s bed and wrapped his arms around him, trying to put him back together. He stayed. Even once Bucky was well enough to be angry at the whole fucking world and tried to push him away, he stayed.

Curt never gave up on him. Not once. Bucky isn’t sure he’s ever properly thanked him for that. 

But even now, here Curt is, waking him up from a nightmare that had him screaming in his sleep. Curt was up and at his side in two seconds flat without a second thought. Bucky doesn’t even think to be embarrassed or try to brush it off or act like it’s not a big deal, even though it’s the first time it’s happened in months. That’s how familiar this is. 

“It’s okay,” Curt says again. John might be the only one in the world that knows how soft Curt can be. Sassy, carefree, devil-may-care Curtis Biddick. And yet he’s been Bucky’s rock. 

Bucky’s breathing is slowing. He closes his eyes, trying to let go of the tension gripping his body. He reaches a hand down towards his knee beneath the thin comforter, and he finds it intact. He’s not in any pain, at least no more than would be expected from competing over and over on a joint that was surgically reconstructed months ago. A little fatigued, sure. But that’s his normal now.

“Sorry,” Bucky sighs, opening his eyes again. 

Curt shakes his head, slowly drawing his hand away from Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky tenses again at the loss of contact, but he forces himself to breathe. 

“Nothin’ to be sorry for.” Curt shrugs. “This week. It’s a lot.” He knows. He’s been there every step of the way on Bucky’s recovery. This is the most he’s put his leg through since he came back to the sport, and he’s only about halfway done here. Curt would be lying if he said he doesn’t hold his breath and pray to whatever gods may be listening every time he watches Bucky fly through the air, waiting for the moment the world shatters again and hoping against hope that it never comes. He knows that’s what the dreams are about, and he’d be lying if he said he isn’t terrified that Bucky came back too soon. 

“You okay?”

Bucky nods, rubbing a hand over his face. “Yeah. Yeah, I just- I’m…” he groans. Curt is the only person in this world that he can be honest with about this. “I’m worried, Curt. What if…” He can’t say it. He just saw it, felt it, heard it in his dreams, real as if he’d lived it. 

“I know.” Curt squeezes Bucky’s shoulder again. He doesn’t say anything else about it. There is nothing he can say that will make this better. You’ll be okay, is a guarantee he just can’t make. They both know it, but that’s the risk Bucky has decided to take. All he has is the work he’s put in in the last year. All he has is his raw skill, his own trust in himself, the sheer determination to make it through. 

So instead Curt says “Try ‘n get some sleep. You’re gonna need it.” And that has to be enough. 

—

“Where r u sitting???” Bucky is sitting on one of the barely padded folding chairs that lines the perimeter of the stadium. He doesn’t usually spend much time on his phone during competitions – usually he spends most of the time he isn’t on an apparatus stretching, talking to his teammates or coaches, or watching other athletes – but with the few free moments he has, he’s pulled his phone out of his bag to text Gale. The nightmare is fading bit by bit, but it’s still nagging at him.

Gale is here, though. He promised Bucky he’d be here during their date in Paris last night.

Bucky: 1, Nightmare: 0.

“You’re so whipped,” Curt teases. He’s on the floor in front of Bucky, using a foam roller on his upper back. 

Bucky rolls his eyes and nudges Curt off balance with his foot, earning him a slap on the ankle. “Just sayin’,” Curt says as he gets the foam roller back underneath him. “Never seen you like this before.”

“Like what?”

Curt doesn’t even hesitate. “Happy. He makes you happy. Not like the other assholes you’ve dated.”

Bucky doesn’t really know what to do with that insight. But when his phone buzzes, his eyes dart straight to the screen with such speed that he knows Curt is probably right.

“Three rows up, in front of floor.” Then another message pops up. “Croz is waving his arms and yelling like a maniac.”

Bucky smiles and looks up across the stadium, squinting to try to see through the bright lights. He and Curt are currently still over by the high bar, directly across from floor, and will make their way over there for the next rotation any minute. Sure enough, there’s Croz jumping up and down in the stands a few rows up, calling out Bucky’s name. Bucky snorts and waves, encouraging Croz to sit the fuck down and stop earning the wrath of spectators around him. It looks like Gale might be smiling back, but Bucky can’t really tell. He imagines he is, anyways, in that soft and unassuming way that he has as he raises a hand in a shy wave.

Bucky makes a heart with his hands, holding it up high, nothing shy about it. Gale really does smile, then, shaking his head. 

“Now the cameras really will be on me,” the next text says.

Something about that makes Bucky happy. Part of him wants everyone to know that Gale Cleven is here for him. He sends back a heart, followed by “Thanks for being here,” and then he shoves his phone back into his bag, slings the bag over his shoulder, and gets to his feet. He and Curt are being called over to floor with a handful of other athletes in their group. 

By the time it’s his turn, Bucky is worried he’ll psych himself out. He keeps waiting for that feeling of dread to pop up, but it just doesn’t. Every time he thinks too hard about it, his eyes drift over to Gale in the stands, right there. Every single time Bucky looks, Gale is looking back. And every single time, Gale gives him a sweet little smile.

Gale stills him in a way that no one ever has, and if Bucky accomplishes what he thinks he might today, he thinks he’ll have Gale to thank for it. 

Bucky rolls out his neck, bends over to triple check his brace, and he takes a breath. 

His nightmare was not all-knowing, it turns out. First of all, Gale is here. Even better, floor is his third rotation today – following parallel bars and high bar – not his fifth. Curt isn’t hopping from foot to foot with his headphones on like a boxer while Bucky gets ready. And Bucky’s knee isn’t sore and in need of chiropractics… yet. The roar of the crowd isn’t crushing him under its weight, and his ears aren’t ringing in a way that makes everything feel like it’s happening in slow motion.

The announcer calls his name as he walks onto the floor, and he feels excited rather than terrified.

He completes his first pass, that same double layout with three twists, and he lands with a small hop back that he knows will likely be a one-tenth deduction. But that’s a very small price to pay for a massive element that demands so much power and will hopefully secure his lead. Fly high and stick the landing, he thinks to himself, even though that line gets on his nerves every time he hears it. Then he completes his second pass, his third, his fourth. Men don’t get music on floor. No dancing, no fancy footwork, little artistry. It’s just him, the floor, and his acrobatic skill. Strength and grace, all at once.

Before he knows it, he’s on his last pass, a triple full, and he puts it to his feet. The crowd erupts around him, and Bucky pumps his fist, yelling “Let’s gooo!!!” before he jumps off the spring floor. Curt assaults him in a massive hug the moment he’s down, jostling him in his excitement, and absolute relief floods through Bucky’s body.

Three rotations down. Three to go.

Predictably, on U.S. television, the cameras frequently pan to Bucky and Curt, even when they aren’t up on any events. The commentators discuss their skills, their athletic journeys, their training, and also their personal lives. Predictably, they are far too invested in John Egan.

After Bucky survives pommel horse – his most hated event – and comes away unscathed with a decent enough score, he’s officially hit the point in the competition when he’s tired as hell and sweating out nearly everything he drinks. His hair is just about plastered down with sweat, and he has half a mind to dump his water over his head. As he and Curt wait around for the fifth rotation, they walk around near their seats, stretch here and there, and run through their routines in their heads. Curt has his headphones on and is holding his arms out, down, back, out again, mimicking his holds on still rings.

In an effort to stay cool, Bucky has pulled his competition shirt (essentially a men’s leotard) down over his shoulders so it’s bunched at his waist, leaving him in nothing but competition pants with his highly muscular and very sweaty upper body on full display. A cameraman zooms in on him, and Bucky sticks his tongue out and flexes his left bicep, showing off the Olympic rings tattoo that he’d gotten after Tokyo. Curt joins him all of a sudden, headphones dangling around his neck. He wraps his left arm over Bucky’s shoulders and flexes his right, showing off his own rings tattoo. Then he leans in close to the camera as the cameraman zooms in. With his free hand, he points at Bucky. “This is the man!” he says. “He’s gonna do it!”

Commentators, reporters, and the public alike will note how at ease Bucky seems today. How this loose and laid back attitude is the typical John Egan that they knew before his accident. How the beloved bromance between John and Curt, two of America’s best, is back in full force. “We’re seeing such confidence from John Egan,” they’ll say. They’ll laugh when he makes faces and grins at the camera, and the world will fall in love with him all over again.

The cameras follow John as he discretely pulls his phone out of his bag, glancing at a text. He smiles and bites his lip, and for a moment everyone watching from home will wonder what on Earth the message could have said. But then Bucky sets his phone down, walks a few steps forward, and looks up at the stands. His eyes lock right onto Gale Cleven, who’s looking right back at him. Bucky blows him a kiss, the cameras catch Gale’s blush, and that definitely gives people something to talk about.

Bucky returns to his chair, and Curt waits until he looks at him to make a gagging noise. Bucky flips him off and goes back to his phone. The text says “You’re being very distracting, looking like that.”

“Nothing you haven’t seen before,” Bucky sends back, followed by a winky face. Then he adds, “Nothing you can’t see again.”

“Is that a promise?”

“I’m all yours babe. As soon as I win this medal.”

“You might not have another event in you after today.”

“Don’t worry. I’m a highly trained athlete in peak physical health. I’ll show you how flexible I can be.”

Bucky watches the three little dots appear, and then go away. Appear. And go away. He stares at his screen for a moment, then looks up at Gale, who is also very pointedly staring at his screen. Finally, Bucky’s phone buzzes again. 

“Mon dieu.”

“Hey Bucky,” Curt says, coming back over to stand beside him, voice quiet so the cameramen can’t pick it up. He’s holding his own phone and stifling laughter. “Croz wants you to know that Gale blushes very very easily. And while entertaining, you might wanna quit the sexting before people catch on to what exactly you’re textin’ about.” 

“I’m not sexting,” Bucky says indignantly, and belatedly realizes that he said it just a little loud. Their coach glances over and eyes them curiously, no doubt praying to God that that wasn’t caught on camera. 

“You’re definitely sexting,” Curt insists, biting his lip to keep from grinning at how ridiculous this is. “Dude, we’re at the Olympics. Not cool.” 

Their coach looks over again, this time with a look of warning. The two athletes both snort, trying very, very hard not to break out into laughter.

Bucky rolls his eyes and shoves Curt away. “You’re almost up you idiot.”

–

Going into the final rotation, Curt and Bucky are both in a position to medal. Bucky’s leading, and Curt’s in third. There’s a palpable tension in the air as the whole stadium waits to see how this is going to pan out. Two U.S. medalists in men’s gymnastics is unheard of at the Olympics, and an American hasn’t won all-around since Athens in 2004. But Bucky seems like he just may eke out a gold medal over the Japanese gymnast in second, and Curt is holding the line against the Russian behind him. They don’t want to get too excited until it’s all over, but they keep sharing nervous and exhilarated glances as they wait their turn on vault. This might happen. This could happen.

Bucky’s fairly certain Curt will hold his own and get that bronze. He’s one of the best vaulters here and everyone knows it. Basically, as long as he doesn’t fall, he’s got it in the bag.

Bucky holds his breath as he watches Curt sprint down the track, spring up off the springboard, and make good hand contact with the table before flying up high into the air. His vault is the most difficult one being done in this whole competition, and it happens in the blink of an eye. Three flips and a full twist, something that seems almost superhuman, and Curt does it like it’s absolutely nothing. His feet hit the ground, and he has just the littlest hop back before slowly standing up straight. His face is completely expressionless as he salutes, like he can’t even believe what just happened. But the whole stadium starts cheering, on their feet, and only then does Curt take a deep breath and let out a celebratory yell. He throws his hands up in the air as he steps off the mat, encouraging the audience to celebrate with him. 

Bucky practically assaults him when he walks off, and Curt all but jumps into his arms. Bucky is yelling “You did it! You fuckin’ did it!” as he slaps Curt on the back.

Curt’s grinning, still breathing hard as Bucky lets go of him. He puts his hand on Bucky’s shoulder. “Go finish this thing.”

When it’s his turn, Bucky stands at the end of the vault track, looking at the table ahead of him. He leans down and checks his brace. Vaulting with the brace is about the most uncomfortable thing ever (other than, well, breaking the leg in the first place). But he isn’t ready to risk doing this without it yet. “You better keep it the fuck together,” he says to his leg. “I’m counting on you.” If he wants gold, this vault has to be just about perfect. There’s a very slim margin between him and the current second place gymnast.

He can hear Curt already yelling “Let’s go Bucky!” as he mentally prepares himself. He salutes with a nod, more to himself than to the judges, and then he runs. His knee is tired, he can feel it, but he pushes the thought away. Now is not the time to get distracted. 

Last night was just a dream. This is real. This is what counts.

He’s been doing this vault for years, and he knows the moment his hands hit the table that he got it right. He launches himself off the table and into the air, and there’s not even a fraction of a second to think about what he’s doing. His body simply knows what to do, following muscle memory and rotating through the air to complete two and a half twists.

The entire stadium erupts in a whole cacophony of noise, and Bucky slowly realizes that he stuck the landing flawlessly. Not even a step. He can barely even straighten his legs to get through his salute before he collapses to the ground on the mat, first to his knees, and then onto his back, the adrenaline coursing through him in overwhelming pulses of energy that thrum through his whole body.

“Bucky?” Curt calls from the side, worried for just a moment. But then Bucky pumps both fists up into the air and Curt takes a deep breath in relief.

“LET’S GO!” Bucky bellows, even as he’s heaving oxygen into his lungs, trying to slow down his heart rate. 

After a few long seconds, he hops nimbly to his feet and raises his hands into the air again, waving to the audience cheering his name.

–

Bucky can admit it. He almost cries when he climbs up onto the top of the podium and the Star Spangled Banner resonates through the stadium. He stands there with a gold medal around his neck, and he holds it up for the photographs. A phenomenal Japanese gymnast won silver, and he and Bucky congratulate each other. Curt stands on Bucky’s other side, showing off the bronze, and neither of them can really believe that they’re standing here right now. Together.

Once they’ve stepped off the podium, a reporter pulls Bucky and Curt aside for a quick interview, asking them about what this means to them. For the very first time, two American men have medaled in all-around, and it happens to be them, best friends, practically brothers. 

“This is- this is just amazing,” Bucky says, shaking his head as he looks around at the crowded stadium. Curt’s arm is slung around his shoulder. “I mean, did you see this guy’s vault? This man is insane.”

Curt snorts in disbelief, even though he does tend to think very highly of himself. “Don’t let Bucky fool ya,” he says. “He’s basically a superhero. And he’s usually a hell of a lot less humble.”

The reporter laughs and asks them both a few more questions. At some point, though, she becomes aware that Bucky’s attention has shifted. His focus is up on the stands, at a point somewhere above the floor. 

Gale Cleven is there, looking right back at him. Bucky takes a deep breath, a smile drifting its way across his face, and he waves. 

“There’s been a lot of talk about you and Gale Cleven,” the reporter says, taking the opportunity to bring up what everyone wants to know.

“Yeah,” Bucky says absently, still looking off towards the stands. Curt pinches him, making Bucky flinch and glare at him, but it gets his attention. “Yeah,” he says again, this time far less lovesick.

“Everyone’s dying to know more about you two. Is there something there?”

Curt scoffs and Bucky elbows him. He gives the reporter a smile that is much more practiced. Kind, but far less genuine. “Yeah,” he says. “There’s somethin’ alright. Gale’s… well. Gale’s amazing. Gale’s-” he shakes his head. 

I love him. Those are the words his brain wants to spit out, and it sends him reeling for a minute, shocked by his own mind. His whole body fills with exhilaration and fear. God, what is he doing? 

He looks back over his shoulder, knowing Gale can’t hear him and has no idea what’s going on. Bucky bites his tongue. “Yeah, there’s something there,” he repeats instead, and that’s all he’ll say.

–

“Alright, here’s the deal,” Curt says when he and Bucky are back in their shared room, both showered and changed. “We did somethin’ fuckin’ incredible tonight. And we are going to celebrate. But. But but but. Because I am your best friend and your favorite person in this whole world, and I know you’ve been-” – he makes a vague hand motion to Bucky’s whole body – “ahhh all fuckin’ day, I will do my duty as wingman.” 

Bucky’s eyes go wide as he chokes on a sip of water and splutters, trying to respond. But Curt holds his hand up. “We’ll celebrate tomorrow. Tonight, I’m gonna get outta here. Go have some fun with the boys. Or maybe find some ladies. Or gentlemen. Or both. And you are gonna get nasty with your boy toy.”

“Curt!”

Curt shakes his head. “Just, like, don’t do anything kinky on my bed, okay?”

Bucky stares at him, honestly a little mortified, before shaking his head and pointing a finger at his friend. “Don’t lecture me about what’s kinky.” Curt literally just insinuated a possible orgy in the Olympic Village.

Curt just winks at him. “Make sure he’s real careful of your leg. You’ve still got two more days of competition.” Then he opens the door to leave, only to find said boy toy right on the other side, hand raised as if he were about to knock. “Oh hi Buck,” Curt says. He glances back at Bucky with an eyebrow raised. That was faster than even he expected.

“Hey Curt,” Gale says back with a friendly nod. “Congratulations. You looked amazing out there tonight.”

Curt smirks at him. “I think we all know who you were really watchin’ out there.” Gale bites his lip awkwardly and Curt saves him the embarrassment, stepping past him and out the door. He turns around on the other side to give Bucky an excited thumbs up, and Bucky huffs, shaking his head. And then Curt’s gone. Leaving Bucky standing in the middle of the room, staring right at Gale, standing in the doorway.

“You can come in,” Bucky tells him. He still feels off-kilter from the whole I love him revelation, but he shoves it out of his head as Gale nods and steps inside, closing the door carefully behind him.

Bucky can barely even spare another thought before he finds himself pinned against the wall, Gale pressed to him, desperate lips on his. Taken by surprise, Bucky honest to god moans at the sensations overtaking his whole body the moment Gale so much as touches him. His hands find their way to Gale’s waist. One of Gale’s is on Bucky’s shoulder, the other pressed to his solid chest, pinning him to the wall, and Bucky is already breathless.

“You… were… fucking… incredible,” Gale whispers against Bucky’s lips between kisses. His hands are gripping the fabric of Bucky’s shirt, and Bucky is questioning why he even bothered to put it on in the first place because it's only been a few minutes and he’s already pulling it back over his head, throwing it to the floor. 

Gale runs his hand up Bucky’s bare chest, his fingertips light and tender and possessive at the same time. It makes Bucky shiver involuntarily, and the corner of Gale’s mouth quirks up like he discovered a fun new trick. Bucky kisses him again, tugging at the hem of his shirt. “Only fair,” he whispers, repeating back Gale’s words from several nights ago. He briefly wonders how it’s possible that it’s been less than two weeks of knowing this man. How can that be true when it feels like finding each other was the answer to some grand cosmic question written in the stars? 

But then Gale’s shirt is dropping to the floor beside his own and all thoughts in Bucky’s head fly right on out. As he told Gale earlier today, it’s nothing he’s never seen before. And yet Bucky completely blanks when faced with Gale, half naked in front of him, ready and beautiful and just asking Bucky to do unspeakable things to him. Bucky wants to… he doesn’t even know what. He wants to bite. He wants to kiss. He wants to touch. He wants it all. 

“You’re so fuckin’ beautiful,” he says before he moves in to nip at Gale’s neck, running a hand up his side. His other dips down to Gale’s ass, pulling him closer, and Gale chuckles quietly. 

“Me?” He asks. “God, John, what about you.” His fingers move to the back of Bucky’s head to grip his hair, tangling into the wild curls there, still a little damp from showering. It makes Bucky dizzy with want as Gale presses their lips together again, rocking his hips forward against Bucky. 

But just as Bucky is getting lost in how amazing that feels, Gale pulls away. Bucky chases after his mouth, wanting Gale’s soft lips back on his, but Gale leans his head back, drinking Bucky in with hungry eyes. “J’ai envie de toi,” he murmurs. 

Bucky goes still at the words and stares into Gale’s eyes, seeing nothing but arousal and undeniable want. He has no idea what that means but holy shit does he like the way it sounds. Gale presses his hand to Bucky’s cheek, then trails his fingers across his collar bone, his shoulder, and down his bicep. God, Gale loves his biceps. He stops at the Olympic rings tattoo, fingertips hovering over the dark ink. 

Bucky smiles crookedly at him, flushed and still leaning back against the wall. His hair is messy and sticking up in all directions where Gale twined his fingers through it. “You get to get one too, now.”

Gale tilts his head. “Hadn’t really thought about it.” His hand drops away, but Bucky laces their fingers together instead. Pressing his other hand to his chest, he pushes Gale back, towards the bed (his bed. Very very pointedly not Curt’s). 

Gale grunts as the backs of his legs hit the edge of the cardboard bedframe, but Bucky is still guiding him backwards, pushing him down onto the mattress. Gale falls back onto his elbows, then onto his back, and Bucky is hovering over him, pressing Gale’s hand into the mattress beside his head. “You should,” he says. 

Gale blinks up at him, lips parted and eyes dark, too lost in Bucky to remember what they were talking about. 

“The tattoo,” Bucky laughs. “You need to get the rings. You’re an Olympic medalist now. Welcome to the club.”

“Shouldn’t I be congratulating you here?” Gale asks, his eyebrow raised. He motions vaguely to Bucky on top of him. “Olympic gold medalist John Egan.”

“Did you forget? You fell asleep after winning your medal.”

Gale blushes and seriously? That’s all it takes? Bucky’s obsessed. 

“Sorry,” Gale huffs.

“We’re celebrating each other,” Bucky tells him. He lets his fingers trail idly down the middle of Gale’s torso, following the line of his abs. 

Gale looks at him, searching his eyes for something, and Bucky wonders what it is. He wonders what Gale sees when he looks at him. 

But all he says is “Where should I get it then?”

Bucky grins, kissing him deftly on the lips. “Let’s see.” He runs his finger lightly across Gale’s collarbone, like Gale did to him before. Over his shoulder. Down his bicep. A touch that looks innocent but is anything but. His lips follow, pressing delicate kisses all along their path. He bites down softly on Gale’s muscled bicep, teasing. “This is always a good spot. A lot of us get them right here.” He nips again, his tongue flicking out to lick at the reddened skin, and Gale bites down on his lip as he watches Bucky move over his body.

“Or here,” Bucky adds, pressing his lips to Gale’s forearm. Then his wrist. Then he shifts over to his torso, letting go of Gale’s hand. Gale inhales sharply when Bucky says “here?” and starts sucking at the delicate skin over his ribcage until it’s red and swollen and a small bruise is blooming at the surface. Gale watches, finding he likes it. Part of him wants Bucky to mark him up and claim him, and it feels heavenly, making him squirm in pleasure. Bucky trails kisses all the way down Gale’s side to his hip, where one of his hands has once again made its home, holding Gale still with a tender sort of firmness that makes him feel weak.

“You uh… you might be onto something,” Gale breathes shakily as Bucky sucks another mark into being on his lower abdomen. He lifts his head, trying to look at Bucky even though all he can see now is messy hair that he wants to grab. So he does. He buries his fingers in Bucky’s hair and gently presses his face to his stomach, a silent request to please, please keep doing that. 

Bucky smiles against his skin, and Gale lets himself relax into the mattress, staring at the ceiling above with a heady and weightless satisfaction. He feels Bucky’s fingers fumble at the button of his jeans, followed by the zipper being pulled down. Bucky tugs at the waistline, his lips pressing lightly lightly lightly down down down until all of a sudden there’s teeth nipping at the sensitive spot right above the waist of Gale’s underwear, and he gasps in surprise. “I don’t think I’ll be getting a tattoo down there,” he pants. 

Bucky pauses and looks up at Gale to make sure he hasn’t overstepped. Maybe he read this wrong. Maybe Gale doesn’t want to go further. But the only thing on Gale’s face is pure want, and goddamn. It makes Bucky’s heart stutter, the way Gale is laid out for him. The pleased and needy noises he makes when Bucky touches him. The way he looks, cheeks flushed, so perfect. Bucky’s mind is already jumping ahead to where he wants this to go, what Gale will look like in other positions, with Bucky touching him in other places, laying on this bed with all of his clothes off instead of just his shirt. But he forces himself to take it one step at a time. He rubs his thumb soothingly over Gale’s hip. “Well,” he rationalizes. “We really should explore all possible options.”

Gale takes a deep, gratified breath as Bucky pulls his jeans down, letting them fall to the floor with another gentle kiss to his bare hip. 

He really can’t argue with that.  

---

---

For those interested: Curt's vault, done by Asher Hong, 2024 Olympic trials Bucky's big tumbling pass, the Shirai III Bucky's vault, done by Brody Malone, 2024 Olympic trials

[nevermindirah]

I'm a lucky duck who lives in one of the markets getting the limited release of Dandelion! Per Nat's request here are my thoughts to tide you over until it's more widely accessible.

As I said in my immediate reaction post, KiKi Layne was built for the big screen. This movie is full of gorgeous closeups of her. And medium-sized shots, and distance shots, and ok maybe it's just me, but bless this movie for making her a singer-songwriter-guitarist, because this means there are so many lingering closeups of her hands, and oh mY GOD NOT TO BE A LESBIAN (gender-neutral) BUT >:)))))))))

I could look at KiKi Layne all day, and now I could also listen to her sing all day. Her voice is beautiful and so expressive. She said in press leading up to it that she was nervous to share her singing voice and maybe that had something to do with just how expressive she is as a singer. Maybe sharing that is more intimate for her than the on-screen nudity this movie also has, and which is also compelling as hell.

This pro review notes that KiKi contributed to the music writing, which is so cool! It also acknowledges that much of the dialogue isn't quite right, often a little too like an essay or a headline to be organic for these characters, while getting at how forgivable that is in a movie whose soul is in the music and the visuals and the chemistry.

Somewhat miraculously for a movie with a white writer-director whose skill isn't primarily in dialogue, about a Black lead in a mostly-white place, it's conscious about race without being didactic. Dandelion is wary of going to white redneck territory for a music competition, and there's a sequence where microaggressions turn into shitty petty crime, but she's also not the only Black person in the sea of likely [redacted] voters. The movie does get a touch didactic about the struggles of women in creative industries, so maybe it wasn't a product of careful effort so much as Nicole Reigel's limited perspective, but the result works. Antiblackness isn't The Conflict of The Movie, simply a shitty part of the background radiation of Dandelion's life.

The music is so damn good. Soundtrack album here! Though the album tragically leaves off two of the movie's best songs: the stunning final number where Tracy Chapman vibes meet Prince, and a cover of 90s white boy song Hey Jealousy that starts off as mere pleasant background track introducing us to KiKi's voice and turns into a sleeper thematic tornado. Once you've seen the movie go look at Hey Jealousy's lyrics and backstory so you can join me in screaming about it and these characters.

Dandelion is a little movie, marvelously so. It's about just a few people in a short time in their lives. I hadn't thought about it like this until now but there are several thematic as hell shots of one or two characters shown tiny and off to the side amid sweeping rocky nature. The artsy shots of flowers superimposed on emotive faces aren't my taste but the overwhelming scale of the landscapes really spoke to me and now I'm realizing this is why.

There's a thing about some side characters wanting to be the biggest band in the world that's kind of an example of the clunky dialogue and kinda perfect for how wonderfully small this movie is. It doesn't matter where Dandelion's career goes after this. These scant few weeks of her life make for such a rich story on their own. This moment in time matters, even if these events don't turn out to have any more effect on the characters' futures than they do on the timeless mountains and prairies of South Dakota.

Fandom people are probably more likely to connect with this movie than the average non-musician viewer because of something that baffled me about a review I wildly disagreed with. Apparently some people can watch this and not understand how fast two people can develop deep intimacy and attachment despite barely knowing each other, just because they make art together. I don't understand how that reviewer didn't understand. You make art with someone and you're in each other's souls. It's intoxicating to collaborate with someone who gets what you're trying to say with your art and helps you make something that best captures the ineffable but crystal clear thing you're trying to say.

Not so intoxicating that you can no longer make rational decisions — but, well, in a way maybe it's the more rational decision to keep chasing the high of drift compatible creation, even when the person you've found to be your musical brain twin is maybe a not great choice in other ways.

Purely for Book of Nile reasons this movie is a damn gift. Tons of shots would be so easy to swap out one scruffy white boy's face for another. (Though Thomas Doherty is the same height as KiKi, which I personally enjoy, it's fun to have variety.) So much of the lyrics are extreme bait for gifsets and fic titles. (Tiny for the movie but very big for the BoNers spoiler: SHE LITERALLY CALLS HIM OLD MAN.) The first two thirds of the movie I kept thinking how perfect this plot would be as a BoN musicians AU — until a twist where I was both so pissed on Dandelion's behalf and internally screaming BOOKER WOULD NEVER.

As I was watching the final scenes I kept waiting for a thing to happen that didn't happen, a certain way of resolving the romance. The ending we do get left me yearning a little. But starting a few hours after leaving the theater the yearning subsided and now a week later my satisfaction with the ending has fermented into a yearning only to listen to that last song on loop forever. (WHY is it not on the soundtrack. I mean, TRACY CHAPMAN MEETS PRINCE.)

One more thing before I go. Dandelion is another thrilling expansion of the repertoire of KiKi's characters in terms of vibes and aesthetics. She looks so different than Nile in a theoretical mirror image outfit of practical boots and jeans and an oversized borrowed button-down thrown over a tee. None of KiKi's other characters, not even gentle Tish, would look so at home in delicate florals, doubly so when they're paired so effortlessly with a comfy denim jacket. And KiKi's physicality here is unique to this person: Dandelion, Theresa, a guitarist. Wholly unlike Margaret the dancer or Nile the warrior. Maybe someday Nile will grow locs like Dandelion's though.

In conclusion: watch Dandelion! I'm as glad I saw this in theaters as I was glad I watched Don't Worry Darling at 1.5x in a small corner of my laptop and only slowed it down for Kiki's scenes. The limited release is real limited, alas, but if you have access to a biggish tv to stream it on I'd strongly recommend making that effort. Both for the landscapes and those gorgeous closeups of Kiki's face.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from EcoWatch:

Researchers from Tel Aviv University (TAU) have studied free-ranging fruit bats in a colony in Egypt to answer the long-standing question of whether animals have complex cognitive abilities previously thought to exist only in humans.

The study focused specifically on mental time travel, episodic memory, delayed gratification and planning ahead, a press release from TAU said.

“For many years, the cognitive abilities to recall personal experiences (episodic memory) and plan ahead were considered exclusive to humans. But more and more studies have suggested that various animals also possess such capabilities, but nearly all of these studies were conducted under laboratory conditions, since field studies on these issues are difficult to perform. Attempting to test these abilities in wild animals, we designed a unique experiment relying on the colony of free-ranging fruit bats based in TAU’s I. Meier Segals Garden for Zoological Research,” said Dr. Yossi Yovel, a lead researcher of the study and a professor in TAU’s School of Zoology and Sagol School of Neuroscience, in the press release.

The study, “Time-mapping and future-oriented behavior in free-ranging wild fruit bats,” was published in the journal Current Biology.

“Episodic memory is the memory of our individual experiences. In animals, people talk about episodic-like memory which is the ability to remember what-where and when an event happened. We show that bats remember how much time (when) passed since they visited a specific tree (what) at a specific location (where),” Yovel told EcoWatch in an email.

The research team surmised that bats who depend on fruit trees to survive would need to develop the ability to track food availability both spatially — where trees are located — and across time — when each tree produces fruit.

“We think that fruit bats map time in order to keep track of available fruit. For example, they know that if two weeks have passed since their last visit to one kind of tree, then there will be no food on that tree, but if only one week passed there might still be food. We show that they plan their visits according to such reasoning,” Yovel told EcoWatch.

To navigate landscapes with numerous nectar and fruit trees, the bats would also need to be able to mentally track resources so that they could revisit them at the right time.

[eretzyisrael]

ByGabe Kaminsky

“It was a lesson when imam told me to go speak to people,” Walz also said at the event. “I have pushed back through my whole career on the demonization of Islam, on the demonization of immigrants. … In this space, Imam Zaman is right on this, there is Islamophobia, there is a hatred that is being stirred.”

Zaman, who is the director of Minnesota’s Muslim American Society, asserted on Oct. 7, 2023, that he “stands in solidarity with Palestinians against Israeli attacks” after 1,200 Israelis were killed by Hamas terrorists. His organization, which has a related chapter that once came under fire following children at a 2019 event it hosted calling for murdering Jews, said on Oct. 7 that it “reaffirms its unwavering support for the Palestinian people in their struggle against the Israeli occupation.”

Zaman’s social media history includes sharing a link to an article on a website in 2015 for a pro-Hitler film called The Greatest Story Never Told and, in one 2016 example, an official press release issued by Hamas. The press release mourned the death of an Islamist leader in South Asia who was executed after being convicted of war crimes.

In a Friday statement, the Anti-Defamation League said Zaman “has a troubling history of playing into classic anti-Jewish themes and justifying violence against Israel.”

“Given his hurtful remarks post-Oct. 7, and absent any recognition of the pain he has caused the Jewish community, we urge all public officials and leaders to avoid meeting with him in the future,” the Anti-Defamation League told the Washington Examiner. “Those who have met with Imam Zaman should clarify that they don’t agree with his toxic views about Jews and the Jewish state.”

[prettycottonmouthlamia]

With long running franchises you sometimes run into an issue I call the "Eternals Problem" after thoroughly boring and disappointing Marvel movie The Eternals. The Eternals are a group of very powerful beings, I think they're some kind of extraterrestrial in the movie, who live for a very long time. This presents a potentially huge problem for the narrative, as your movie has come out after the big final confrontation to prevent someone who doesn't know how population growth works from committing a mass killing, so often times stories with these characters will be set before the big event so as to leave a gap.

The Eternals is not. The snap has already happened by the movie, and there's basically no explanation for why they didn't get involved. It's really a sign of shitass writing but it more gives an example about the importance of temporal relevance when you're discussing power level. The more important and/or powerful a character is, the more pressing it is that they are not just "missing" from the timeline. Magic the Gathering also runs into this issue with Tovolar, a big werewolf pack leader on Innistrad who has been about for quite a long time but is entirely absent during the plane's big climatic sudden Emrakul event. It's shoddy writing.

I've been thinking about this because of the Abyssal Hunters. We aren't given, as far as I can remember, any definitive dates on when the three Seaborn events happen, but given that these three basically do not show up in the story and the Kazdel Military Commission and almost any reference to the Sarkaz in general do not appear in IS3, it's pretty safe to say they come after the entire main story (which also puts some temporal placement on Grani's event and the first Siesta event). This makes sense, the Abyssal Hunters are very powerful and it avoids the potential dumb arguments about whether Gladiia could 1v1 Sanguinarch or something.

I'm glad that the timeline isn't really set in stone. We do have some definite dates for when things happen (hello Vigna module???) but there's enough flexibility that our minds can fill in the gaps and have some temporal elasticity, and the Zelda fandom has kind of soured me on the topic of timelines in general b-

hold on what the fuck do you mean they released an official timeline

fuck. post cancelled i guess

[askagamedev]

Do games deal ensure all gamepad or keyboard inputs are processed? Input devices are polled anywhere from 125 to potentially 1000 times a second, but games often update 30 to 60 times a second. Say a gamepad sends button data 120 times a second, and the game runs at 30 fps. A player could tap and release a button in between two game frames. Does the game ignore the button in that case? Does it queue it up? If so, what happens when the queued up buttons conflict (i.e. jump, then crouch)?

The answer to your question is "The game generally swallows extra inputs", because that's what makes the most sense. Inputs are parsed by checking controller state from frame to frame. A "button pressed" event is going from "button up" state on frame N to "button down" on frame N+1. A "button held" state is going from "button down" on frame N to "button down" on frame N+1. And "button released" is "button down" on frame N to "button up" on frame N+1. This is how it goes and this is how it has to be because we're building games for humans with human reaction times and human cognitive processing, rather than machines. For competing inputs, we choose a hierarchy of what trumps what. Fighting games, for example, usually have the fierce punch trump the light punch when pressed simultaneously.

Imagine that we did process all those button presses. What could we feasibly do to differentiate them to a human being who takes 200 milliseconds to process that they pressed a specific button and to prime themselves for a visual reaction to that button? There's no visual representation that humans could comprehend that could meaningfully differentiate 120 button presses in a second from 119. In game dev, we're typically not trying to reward or encourage a large number of button presses within a given time frame. We're trying to encourage player execution, which means pressing with intention and timing windows in order to get the results the player wants from the system. This is a much easier and accepted showcase of skill among humans than who can press buttons the fastest.

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[beautifulpersonpeach]

HYBE stocks are down so that means investors didn't believe HYBE's payola mediaplay of Jimin renewing his contracts. ONLY RM SIGNED HIS CONTRACT. It's shameful how you ot7s try to force people to doubt Jimin. Forcing people to think staying with the company after all the sabotages is good for him are we in upside down land? Well no and the stocks show it. Armys swallowed the purple koolaid but the investors live in the real world.

***

Please stop sending me asks like this.

Your ask is a very good example of something my friends and I were just talking about. This is the thread (linked here) that prompted our conversation.

Please read it.

HYBE is down ~5% in the hours following the contract renewal news.

Anon, I don't know how old you are or if you have your own bank account, but nobody who knows what they're doing looks at stock movements in isolation. It's a relative metric, by definition. And here's a few things that have happened in the last 48 hours that explain what stocks moved relative to:

The Market - All major Korean stock indices are down on the mixed resolution by the US Fed this week. It's a trend consistent with market movements in every country that does significant trade with the US and/or denominates trade in USD.

The Index - The index for entertainment companies (ex gaming) on the KRX is down ~3.5% over the same period.

The Peers - HYBE's closest peers for our purposes, i.e. JYP, SME, YG, Kakao, etc, are down on average ~6.5%. YG is the outlier here down ~13%. Excluding YG, the average return over the same period is HYBE's peers being down ~4.5%.

At market open following HYBE's contract renewal news there was a massive options call with a volume of about 8K at depressed prices relative to yesterday's closing. By its characteristics it's likely an event-triggered options call made for profit-taking. This is normal for retail and institutional investors who trade in liquid names. Excluding the options volume, HYBE's actual stock performance over the same period, is that they're down ~2.5%.

Meaning, HYBE actually outperformed their peers and the index (ex gaming) following the contract renewal news. The total entertainment index (including gaming) was only down ~1.9%, and so HYBE underperformed that index when you include gaming companies. But that's not a peer group that's usually considered for k-pop companies anyway.

So the stock movements you're referring to, are in effect showing the opposite of what you think.

*

This might be hard to believe, but I'm actually very neutral on HYBE. I have my own opinions about how they run their business, how the sub-labels are managed, etc. But when I see things I don't like, I don't go looking for any sliver of disjointed information to uphold my previously held belief. It's a sign that you're a living, breathing, thinking being, when the introduction of new information challenges a perception you have, you're able to meaningfully deduce the implications, and arrive at a more informed conclusion.

The new piece of information we received in the last 24 hours, is that HYBE's board has approved the resolution to renew BTS's exclusive contracts. Given the size of the payout to BTS, this is a customary requirement to finalize the renewals process. For the nature of company disclosures like this, there's the expectation of a time lag between when a deal is announced and when it closes, but the fundamentals of the deal do not change. The time lag is typically to hash out technicalities and to allow for other considerations (which we know in this case involves limitations due to 2seok's military service), but the fundamentals of the announcement do not change else HYBE will be charged for misrepresentation in their disclosures and for market manipulation at the Board level.

Basically, if HYBE was not at least 100% sure these renewals would be completed, that press release would literally be corporate suicide.

The quality of conversations here would be so much higher, whether in akgae or ARMY circles, if people actually knew what they were talking about.

Please don't spam asks like this in my inbox again. Take those ramblings to a blog that can tolerate it. I have extremely little patience for akgaes in general.

[duchessofostergotlands]

What do you think of the argument that royals do a lot of behind the scenes work that's not counted. Danish press is talking about how Fred has only worked 19 days since his coronation about 100 days ago. Personally I don't know what to say about that. A royals job is to be a representative in public, I highly doubt Fred is the one doing ceo type work for his patronages like the royal run. So whats do you think is going on with him?

I don't really support that argument for a few reasons:

Firstly, all royals do work behind the scenes. To use the UK as an example, people often say William and Kate's low numbers are ok because they do work behind the scenes. But Anne can do 400 engagements while still doing behind the scenes work. What would make people believe she's not doing anything other than rocking up at events? lol.

Secondly, as you say, the "behind the scenes" work isn't quite what people think. They don't do the leg work to plan events, they don't usually have any formal leadership role in the charities they run, they aren't personally writing the captions on their Instagram pages. There is other work that goes into these events but a large proportion won't be carried out by them personally, they just give the rubber stamp. However...

...the third and most important point is that even if we say that all of those things above are incredibly important, the royals choose not to share them. They choose not to put them in the royal calendar. They choose not to release pictures of them. And there might be very good reasons for that. But the reality is that if we are trying to come up with some data which we can use for comparison, we have to have some kind of inclusion criteria. We don't know how much work they do or don't do from day to day behind the scenes so we cannot establish any kind of figure. We have to use the data they give us.

So basically I don't think that the work they do behind the scenes is worthless or unimportant by any means. But I also don't think that we can make it a factor when we look at engagement numbers because we just can't put a number on it in any fair way.

As for Fred, you can't really compare engagement numbers across different families - we covered that in Episode 95 of the podcast - so it's difficult to establish his levels. But the articles I saw weren't particularly critical of Frederik, they were just commenting. He's only been monarch for 100 days and time will tell what kind of monarch he'll be. Ultimately the Danish people will decide. What I think of his work rate - what anyone who isn't from the Kingdom of Denmark thinks about his work rate - is secondary to what Danish people think about it so something might seem low to me but until the Danes get upset it's not really my place to tell them how to feel.

[accio-victuuri]

Another week of them being suspicious in scheduling when their projects/works are released. Our best example so far is the timing of Bobo’s 3 films released vs GG’s 3 dramas so far. Look, we know that these things are planned out, especially for films and dramas — there are people who decide on that and ZZ & WYB’s don’t give the last word. Once they are done filming and all, it’s basically in the hands of other executives.

9/19 in the evening, around 7:00 PM fans noticed that Wind & Waves weibo account has updated and it went on hot search. Then XZS posts a bit later, a goodbye post to Shengyang + SBMS. So it’s like, Goodbye to SBMS era and it’s time for something new from WYB.

The next day, 9/20 : XZ had a livestream show for Loreal Pro in the evening. Nothing much on WYB’s side, only that Wind and Waves weibo shared IQIYI’s post, generating more excitement for it.

9/21, Redmi Note 13 press conference. WYB did not attend that in person but it’s still interesting that this is sandwiched between XZ’s “live events”. 9/20 = loreal and 9/22 = dove.

Anyway, the big thing for 9/21 ( and the reason that pushed me to make a post ) is the IQIYI conference. We already knew beforehand what time Wind & Waves material will be out. 10:30 and 10:35. They did post it on time and who posted after??? XZ. for Gucci. He had to, because Gucci will have a show in the evening.

For those who don’t follow posting times a lot, and in particular, XZ this may not make sense. But to those who do you may be one who 👀 on this. ZZ usually posts on his Weibo, when related to brands, during his birthday kadian 10:05 or 10:10. Sometimes 10:30. But he shared it by 10:45, making sure (allegedly) that he doesn’t coincide with the posts from WYB’s drama.

And well, 9/22 GG will have the Dove Chocolate appearance and I think Liuliumei on 9/24. If something comes up about WYB on 9/23 I will 🔪🔪.

This kind of pattern sometimes break for other things, especially with brands, since they endorse alot. Those cannot always be in sync but when it matters— we notice the timing.

When I think about it, I sometimes feel like we’re speculating too much but there’s been so many times it happened. not just this year or week. Maybe there is something going on behind the scenes in the industry where they don’t let certain people “compete”. Who knows. Since i’m a cpf, I will take this as candy. LOL. It’s an unspoken agreement between their teams. Bjyxszd. ❤️💛💚