#he started saying something about how he wanted to build real communities not virtual ones

[desertedvault]

that drunken left-wing friend who misinterprets what you said and uses it as a jumping off point for an apparently uninterruptable speech against your idea which totally misses the point

[caspianjames]

Having Young Royals brain rot now about August??? I think he’s often made out to be the villain and he’s really,,,not??? Did he do a shitty thing? Absolutely. Do I think he’s a bad person? Absolutely not. He’s incredibly well written and I think in a lot of ways he’s very easy to empathize with. Here’s why.

That kid has pretty much everything going against him. Canonically he’s what? 17? 18? His dad is dead, he clearly doesn’t have a good relationship with his mom or stepdad, he’s clearly never had a safe space to process his dads death and work on recovering, he’s relying on stimulants to get through school, the girl he likes decides to date him but only cuz she can’t get his cousin, he has virtually no caring adults in his life, he’s bankrupt and terrified that the only semblance of normalcy he has left (hillerska) will be ripped out from under him. That kid is a fucking mess and absolutely the consequences of this mean he’s going to lash out. He gives so many warning signs that he’s not doing okay too. But so, to break this down point by point:

1. His dead died in a rather horrific manner, his mom moved on but clearly was not around to make sure that her son was okay. He’s often referred to a stupid or prideful for not wanting to give up part of the family estate so he’s not bankrupt except that’s the only thing he has left of his dad. And it’s not even his fault he’s bankrupt, he’s a kid!

2. Not having a safe space to process his dad dying is sort of visibly a given, but actually to take that one step further I think he DID have a safe space. It was Erik. And then Erik died and this kid truly has nothing, not even Wille because he was more interested in Simon than paying attention to what August was going through (which isn’t Wille’s fault, he hardly knew August and clearly had different values and stuff from august. But watching the show I get the feeling August is really looking to be someone meaningful to Wille and Wille just,,,really doesn’t like him). He said this in a roundabout way to Felice, too, when he was jealous of her relationship with Willhelm. It was something like “you’re my girlfriend, you’re supposed to comfort me so that I can comfort him.” Which I think is a two fold thing where firstly, no one realizes how hard Erik’s death hit him and how much he needs someone to tell him that stuff is going to be alright, but secondly, the last thing we see Erik tell him is to take care of Wille. So now he also feels like he’s failing to do that. And Willie, the one person who he could relate to about Erik, hardly wants anything to do with him.

3. I am SO interested to see where the plot will go with the meds he’s relying on. I don’t think it’s ever actually made clear if he thinks he DOES have ADHD or whether he’s just using the meds to cope but either way it’s a problem that shows he doesn’t have adequate support, you know? Even the school counsellor dude was just like “ok guess ur gonna walk out of my office bye then” instead of altering the headmaster or his parents or a teacher he trusts or ANYTHING. And, as the season progresses he gets more volatile. Why? He’s out of meds (and, whether or not he actually has ADHD and needs meds, that means he’s low on dopamine and is going to start doing stupider stuff to get his brain to reward him). (Side note, given the role ADHD and also substance abuse plays in the series I really, really hope they do both concepts justice)

4. Felice dating him even though she has no interest. No hate to her for that, honestly, I don’t think she was really interested in anyone except making her parents happy with her. She’s under a whole different kind of pressure. But august? He clearly really likes her and is trying hard with her, until everything sort of falls out of his grasp nearer the end of the season cuz he thinks she’s in love with Wille and is otherwise not coping well at all.

SO ALL THAT leads up to him outing Wille, which we see from Wille’s POV but never really from August’s, right? We see Wille yelling at August about how he was supposed to be able to trust him, but honestly I think from August’s POV Wille broke that trust first. We said already that pretty much the only thing August had left going for him was Hillerska, and by extension his friends and community there. When Wille wants them to make Alex take the fall for the drugs to save Simon, he literally exposes August and basically rips that away from him sooner than August is ready for, because now all the boys know that he’s bankrupt. In Wille’s mind it’s not a big deal - it’s a means to an end and he already knows he’s asked his mom to cover August’s tuition. It’s a very calculated but very smart move.

Except that Hillerska is all that August has left, and in a sense, Wille takes that away from him. Can you imagine how horrible that would feel for August from someone he trusted?? And honestly there is nothing more dangerous than someone who has been wronged and feels like they have nothing to lose. You can tell when Sara sees August at the computer. He doesn’t make up a story, he doesn’t care. He just wants to hurt Wille back in the only way that he can regardless of the consequences.

I don’t even think he’s homophobic or anything, either. He took the video initially to make fun of Wille with, and then when he realized what it was he didn’t say anything. But in that moment that was the one thing he had on Wille that he could weaponize because he knew it would be taken badly by the general public. 

And then he gets the call of his tuition being paid and you can see reality crash down around him when he realizes rationally what he’s done.

Anyways. My conclusion is. This poor kid has literally no one looking out for him. Like, not a single person. And that’s what happens, you know? No one does horrible things or irreparable damage to themselves or others on a whim. There’s almost always a build-up of hopelessness or anger that has to overflow first. This is a real life thing. This shit is preventable. And I really, really hope we get to see that with August. I hope we get a redemption, but an honest one. Because no matter what led to his actions, they still have real consequences. I hope the show creates a storyline where we see him getting what he needs from the adults around him while also having to deal with the consequences of his actions. 

[mrsgiovanna]

Don Giorno x Fem! Reader

This story has been steeping in my head ever since @abbabycchio created this prompt, I hope I did this justice 😅.

No warnings, just fluff 😍💭🐞💜

Word count: 1508

The ambience in the grand ballroom was delightfully festive- soft light dancing about the glittering crystal chandeliers, the happy chattering of the partygoers mingling with the clinking of glasses and the music in the background, and the delicious scent of Giorno’s expensive cologne overtook your senses as he gracefully spun you around on the dance floor.

“Wow, you’ve gotten really good at this, everyone is practically staring at you,”

“Well practice makes perfect, we’ve been to enough of these events as it is. Come, let’s give them a show,”

Before you knew it, Giorno spun you around and caught you in a low dip, his face mere millimeters away from your own. Feeling every pair of eyes on you both, he smirked and brought you back to your original position just as the song had ended, earning many impressed murmurs from the other attendees.

“After all these years you still get flustered? I told you, I’d never drop you or let you fall,” said Giorno, through the laughs he was trying to suppress. You knew the real reason for your skittishness, but you wouldn’t dare let him know.

You had known Giorno ever since you were assigned to his elite guard when he had taken over Passione a few years ago. Your stand ability was very useful… you were able to disarm an attacker in under 10 seconds, and if the situation became really dire, you could dismember them in a minute, without so much as a hair left behind. In short your ability was terrifying. But Giorno seemed fascinated by it, you were a walking contradiction, so soft and bubbly on the outside, but something dark and menacing had to be lurking in your soul for such a stand to manifest. So he had reassigned you himself and slowly started to understand the nuances of your ability.

You excused yourself for a moment to go to the ladies room to freshen up your makeup, you were utterly exhausted, but when Giorno asked you go with him, you couldn’t refuse. Despite knowing that Giorno’s ability made him virtually untouchable and the fact that both Mista and Fugo were there as well, you still felt more at ease knowing that you were there to personally protect him.

When you rejoined the party you found Giorno nursing a drink on his own, so you took the seat next to him.

“What’s the matter? Why are you sitting here brooding on your own?” you ask, playfully mimicking the expression on his face.

“Is that really how I look? I’m fine though,” explained Giorno. He was just about to continue the conversation when you had let a small yawn escape your lips.

“Gosh, I’m sorry Giorno, what were you going to say?” you say, trying to coax the comment out of him.

“You’re exhausted, we should leave, come on, the car should be waiting for us,” said Giorno with a snap of his fingers, signaling the concierge to ready things for your exit.

“No, no, don’t worry about me, I’m fine, nothing a little caffeine can’t take care of. Besides, we still have to wait for Fugo and Mista, they haven’t emerged from that office yet,” you argued. All protests proved useless though, as Giorno sighed dramatically before picking you up and heading to the exit.

“You know I hate having to repeat myself, you’re clearly tired, we can wait for those two at the villa, at least you’ll be a bit more comfortable there.” There was a bite in Giorno’s voice that told you not to argue with him. As he gently set you down on your feet, the car drove up to you both. The drive back to the villa was a quiet one, the young Don focusing his attention outside, while you looked at him, noting how he had matured in the few years since taking over Passione, the soft innocence in his face being replaced with a mature handsomeness. He’d also gotten a lot taller and broader, experiencing a growth spurt that took everyone, including himself, by surprise.

“Thanks for looking out for me, it’s sweet, I appreciate it,”

“You’d do the same for me, it’s only natural,” he replied, his attention still focused on the moving scenery outside the car.

“I know… still… Are you angry? You’ve been like this since earlier on, I’m sorry, I didn’t want to upset you, I just didn’t want you to stop yourself from having fun on my account,” you apologized. Little did you know that Giorno was actually troubled by his own behaviour, and found it difficult to face you without his own face turning a rosy shade of pink.

“Don’t apologize, you did nothing wrong, I guess my lack of sleep is getting the better of me as well. I’m sorry,”

You finally arrived at the villa, and followed Giorno to one of the lounges. You threw yourself onto the comfortable couch and started to take off your heels, while he pulled off his bow tie and undid the top buttons of his shirt, sighing in relief.

“I’ll brew us some coffee, it seems like we both need it,” offered Giorno, which you accepted with a polite smile, while checking your phone for any communication from Mista or Fugo. You were concerned but also knew how powerful they both were so you decided to put your head down and relax for just a few moments.

Giorno walked in to find you huddled in one corner of the plush couch, the chill you felt evident in the goosebumps visible on your exposed skin. Getting a soft blanket and his laptop, he covered you so that you wouldn’t be cold any longer, and settled down next to you to work quietly while you slept, not wanting to disturb you, but also not wanting to leave you alone.

Every now and again, you would wriggle around and murmur something unintelligible, until you had somehow found yourself snuggled up to Giorno’s arm. Gazing at you affectionately, he decided to give in to his own exhaustion, put away his work and comfortably wrapped his arms around you. A content hum escaped his lips before he quickly fell asleep as well.

A few hours pass like that, with you blissfully unaware of what, or rather, who you were using as a comfortable pillow, until the room was bathed in ambient morning light. You wake up to a hand gently drawing circles on your arm, enjoying the gentle touch in your half woken state, until, a pang of panic set in when realized exactly where you were, you sprang upright, fully awake and aware of your situation.

“Buongiorno tesoro mio, did you sleep well?” asked Giorno, the slight smile he wore being evident in the lightness of his voice.

“Giorno, I’m so sorry, I feel mortified… I… oh my God, you’re my boss… just fire me please… better still, I quit, so this will be my…” you rambled on, until Giorno cut you off as he also sat upright next to you.

“Tesoro… would you just calm down? While having you quit would work in my favor for what I’m about to ask you, I reject that… resignation? If you could call it one… either way, I’ve been meaning to do this for a while now… so here goes-Would you like to have dinner with me? Maybe tonight? No mafia business or anything, just you and I, out on a date,”

You could feel your heart pounding in your ears, and you felt as if you’d forgotten how to breathe as hopeful green eyes searched your face for a positive answer. Building up the courage to look at him, your heart calmed down when you saw how earnestly he looked at you. The man in front of you wasn’t Don Giovanna, he was just a kind, handsome gentleman asking for your company… he was just Giorno.

“I’d really like that Giorno, thank you for asking me,” you said with a softer voice than usual, trying to contain the bubbly feeling in your chest.

“Great, then that’s settled, I’ll pick you up at six,”

Just as you were about to speak, you hear a commotion coming from the direction of the front door, realizing it was Mista and Fugo returning.

“Wow, took you guys long enough, what happened? Are you guys okay?” you asked, relieved that they both returned safely.

“Yeah, we’re fine, just exhausted… what are you even doing here?” replied Mista, speaking through a yawn.

You and Giorno exchanged a glance, smiling knowingly but chose rather to stay quiet. You were both saved from having to entertain any more questions from the complaints of Mista’s sex pistols.

“Alright, alright, you guys need some sleep and sustenance, I’ll make you guys some breakfast while you rest…”

“I’ll help you,” offered Giorno, wanting to spend more time with you.

And with that you both left the room, quietly enjoying each other’s company in that sweet domestic scenario, all the while thinking about what could transpire later on.

[kherohi]

Newcomer’s impression of Nijisanji (October 2020)

When I first started watching Nijisanji clips at the start of October 2020, it only took me a few days to realize that there was no coming back - barring a life-changing event, there was no way I would stop watching them in the next few years.

I decided to go through the Nijisanji official website with my one-week’s worth of clip-watching and record my thoughts on each liver so that I would have something to look back on. My knowledge back then was completely based off the clips I watched, so it’s interesting to see how absolutely skewed some of my impressions were.

I also added some of my current thoughts now that I’m one year in. Maybe next year I’ll look back and wonder how the heck I ever thought some of these things.

Disclaimer: I’m not thinking too hard when I write this stuff. It’s opinion, not fact.

Below are the livers that I could recognize and name on the official website. I’ve kept the name as I remember them, so some of them might be nicknames depending on how I knew them.

(The entries were written progressively from one week to one month of starting to watch Nijisanji.)

Tsukino Mito: She’s the Iinchou! She seems to have been around for a long time. She’s very popular. Since she’s been around for a while, she has inspired other people to join Nijisanji. One of these is Kenmochi Touya, who she self-proclaimed as her son. I don’t know much about her content, but she has a nice voice and it seems that she can sing as well.

I didn’t yet know just how influential she was, but I knew enough to include it in the description. Although I don’t really watch her, I do occasionally check out clips and it’s interesting to see what she comes up with.

Himawari: She’s cute and stupid! In the Dokuzuhonsha family she’s the older sister. She’s very positive. Though I’ve seen her often in collabs, I haven’t seen many clips of her own content. I can’t add much except for her airheaded-ness. She has great sibling interactions with Kuzuha.

This description was clearly based on watching Dokuzuhonsha clips, haha. But I still agree about her positivity! Now I think of her as hard-working and very kind!

Sasaki Saku: She is well-known for her panda outfit, but she has different outfits now. She can be quite ruthless... though that’s a common trait among Nijisanji livers. Although I can’t think of anything in particular to say about her, I do like her and if there’s an interesting looking video with her, I’d like to click it.

Why did I have an image that Nijisanji is ruthless? For that matter, I wonder what clip gave me the impression that Sasaki is ruthless. Well, she can be blunt and a bit of a brat.

Kuzuha: This famous guy. He’s a vampire - he’s lived for a long time. He’s socially awkward and makes sudden non-sequitors in his solo streams. He forms a unit called ChroNoiR with Kanae. He sings by himself and with ChroNoiR. In the Dokuzuhonsha family he’s the younger brother. After collabing with Ritsuki and the awkward conversations that ensued, the weather deck was created. His video thumbnails mostly look the same (red). His streams primarily have to do with gaming. He’s fun to watch and he’s good at games.

I pretty much agree with this one. I watched a lot of Kuzuha clips in my first week, so the impression was pretty accurate. Congrats on 1M subscribers! He’s going far!

Kanae: He’s a person that bullies people in a comedic way. Lots of people like him, but they are understandably wary of him because he has a tendency to use his friends as bait. He has a psychopath side that he plays up to scare others. He’s very calm most of the time, but can get heated in FPS. His character is someone with amnesia. He’s never uncomfortable - he can take things as they come. He’s friends with Kuzuha. He’s also very good at games. He can lie with a straight face. I really like his videos. I’d like to watch more. His cat plush is Roto.

There were definitely a lot of clips of Kanae playing pranks on people. It ended up being half of this description lol. I can’t say it’s wrong, but there’s certainly more to Kanae than pranks. Now he gives me a feeling of motivation for self-improvement.

Lize: I’ve seen her in a few collabs. I like her design. I haven’t seen her enough to form a proper opinion and haven’t started diving into her content at all. She’s cute though and I would be interested in seeing what she does.

I still haven’t watched her too much even after all this time, but now I have the impression that she has interesting talks. Also, she likes Mito.

Ange: I’ve seen her a few times. Not a huge impression, but she seems fun and plays off well with others possibly? I would be interested in watching more of her.

“plays off well with others” - she’s a bit awkward, but that makes it more fun to watch. Her interaction with male members is funny to watch.

Shiishii: She’s cute! a cute voice too! I don’t think I’d watch her solo, but I think she would be good in collabs. I don’t know much about her.

Kinda rude to say I wouldn’t watch her solo? Though true enough, I have just been watching her in collabs. Too many livers in Nijisanji. >_<

Utako: I saw Mayu look through her profile, so I know about her love of BL, shota, and all degeneracy like that. Any video with her about those topics are bound to be fun. That’s what I like about Nijisanji! Shotacon allies with Akina.

I’ve only come to learn more about her degeneracy, and it’s consistent with my expectations. I only hear about them on the side though - haven’t gotten to the point of actually watching the streams.

Ryushen: Gender: unknown. Ryushen is cool, though I haven’t seen too much of them. I haven’t thought of watching any solo content for Ryushen. Probably would only watch if it was a collab with someone else I know.

I recognized Ryushen enough to think they were cool, but I didn’t mention singing at all!? How did I manage that?? Now Ryushen = good at singing and interesting content to me.

Ars: She is very very shy. She’s also cute though. She has a very cute voice. She seems to have a master-disciple relationship with Ex Albio based on Minecraft. Their interactions are very entertaining. Would like to see more of it.

There’s been some amount of Ebimaru content, past me would be happy - present me is happy. I watch her Minecraft streams occasionally. She’s really good at building stuff.

Yashiro: IT employee! A totally normal human. His streams seem pretty mellow... well, the only one I say was a fetish-adding dice game... But it was very fun! In the Dokuzuhonsha family, he’s the dad. He’s pretty conscientious and responsible. He also got drunk and fell asleep on stream. I like watching him, especially when he has fun with the other adults (Kagami, Chaika, Yumeoi)

I agree with this description. That fetish-adding dice game stream sure was fun. I’d nearly forgotten about it. I feel the need to mention rhythm games though.

Chihiro: She is very good at APEX. She was in a tournament with Kanae and Kuzuha as teammates and they got pretty far. She can be serious which shows how much she cares. She has a cute voice. I would click a video with if it looked interesting.

Chihiro = APEX. It only takes a week to figure that out huh.

Hoshikawa Sara: I know her from Minecraft collabs with Kanae. They’re like siblings. She’s always laughing. Her voice can be kind of annoying, but that’s the sort of annoying little sister vibe she gives me. She likes teasing people by calling them papa (Kanae and Yumeoi). When I watch her I know the tension will be high.

I still agree with this. The papa teasing is reserved for Yumeoi though. She has a lot of covers out though!

Kagami Hayato: CEO of Kagami Industrials/whatever company. Fans love giving him money. He gets easily flustered. He always speaks politely. He gets teased a lot and I like watching him as he gets teased and tries to stop it. He’s very pure. That all said, he does have a violent side (as expected of Nijisanji). In Ark, he wanted to start a war and really went all in for that. When he played Forest with Yumeoi, he got used to killing stuff. He also likes metal and has a great scream. I like how he is with the people he debuted with. He’s like a papa. He also sings and has model building streams. He’s not good at playing FPS. He feels a bit of rivalry with Chaika, but admires him. Also, Minecraft underground.

This description was just a dump of all the clips I watched about him wasn’t it? Haha, the first half is a good description still. I still like his voice and gap.

Debi Debi Debiru: A god? A devil? In any case, Debidebi Debiru is basically a religion? a cult? They are pretty small. They have a very unique voice. Beyond that, I don’t really know too much about them. They seem to have been around for a long time. A senpai to others.

What was I thinking when I wrote this? Well, now Debi is just a koala to me. A really impressive 3D though.

Belmond Banderas: This guy is a man among men. Awesome deep voice. He’s got a very cool vibe - I think lots of people must think he’s cool. I don’t know too much else. I’ve seen a few videos with him in them. His voice is so deep! He once had a collab with Sasaki Saku in Minecraft?

He’s not only cool, but nice too! But the strongest impression is still his voice.

Gundou Mirei: I know her mostly due to her ship with Kanda - GunKan. She’s a teacher in the virtual world and real world. She was once found out by her students since she uses the same voice. She likes money. She’s a tsundere type. GunKan is a popular ship. Hoshikawa ships them and at least once pretended to be their child.

lol I don’t remember why I wrote that she likes money.

Mayuzumi Kai: His character is a hacker. His greeting is Domo. When he first joined Nijisanji he did streams where he read through the Nijisanji members’ profiles to get to know them. He was tied with Debidebi as best communication skills by Nijisanji staff. He’s got a really calm demeanor. Low energy. His English pronunciation is very good. He’s the type to play tricks on his colleagues, it seems (summer festival with the puff fish). He is a group called BLUE with Ars and someone else... Lize? I like what I’ve seen of him so far. He wants to be more popular with female viewers.

It started off well. Then Blues... It’s Uiha! Uiha is the third member! I clearly just picked a character with a somewhat blue colour. I also didn’t seem to be aware of the whole 2434 system thing yet. Now I see him as someone interesting and responsible. I sometimes listen to his zatsudan before sleeping since he has such a calm voice.

Hanabatake Chaika: He wears a maid outfit. He’s very eccentric. He references Jojo a lot. He’s on good terms with Kagami. He seems to be pretty successful. He even has his own card. His streams seem fun, especially his 3D streams. There seems to be a fluffy pink thing that he interacts with in 3D streams.

The mention of his 3D streams is good! Agreed!

Dola: A fire drake. In the Dokuzuhonsha family, she’s the mother. She’s good at singing and dancing. She’s weak to horror, but not as much as Kuzuha. Her famous quote is “o cha wo nomimasu”. She has a nice dynamic with Yashiro.

Another description that was written mostly based on Dokuzuhonsha clips, I believe. And the o cha wo nomimasu clip.

Joker: I only know him from the twister game. He seems to talk about dicks a lot?

I fell for the Joker reading. It’s Joe Rikiichi! Also, this is what happens when you try to describe someone with only one clip. Now he’s someone too cultured for me to understand. And he has a really good singing voice.

Ex Albio: The hero! He’s apparently quite lucky. He gives off the vibe of a main character who starts out clueless but gradually gets stronger. His Minecraft arc with his master Ars is very entertaining. His content seems to be very fun. I would like to watch more videos about him... In particular, I’m curious about his Minecraft house.

This is very based on Minecraft videos. But somehow I also knew about his luck. Recently, I have been enjoying his kusoge streams, so I definitely agree that his content is very fun. He somehow makes stupid games look so fun (I absolutely won’t play them myself though).

Kenmochi Toya: The lolicon master! Though it appears he’s also okay with shotas. He’s often shipped with Gaku as Togabito. He loves lolis. He does some skits with himself (Touko, Marshmallows). He’s an entertaining guy to watch. He made a bet with an artist vtuber and got her to make a loli stream. He’s good at tetris.

So much loli in this description lol. The shota mention is from Aki. That last comment about tetris is absolutely just from the clip with Shigure Ui. I’ve been watching more Kenmochi lately - he is very entertaining to watch. He keeps my attention easily when I watch him.

Alice: She seems to have been around for a while. All I know about her is that she’s learning how to play the acoustic guitar, so Kuzuha declared her as a guitar rival.

Now I know her as the liver that’s more popular on Bilibili than Youtube.

Saegusa Akina: His dream is to go to Budokan. He’s a huge Kanae fan and hangs out with him off stream often. He’s a shotacon. He sings well. He’s paired with Aizono to make Benizuwaigani. Their first meeting was very teetee and they ate cake and exchanged gifts on Christmas eve. Very teetee. He apparently calls Shellin master in Minecraft. I’m curious about that.

I pretty much agree with this, but there should be more emphasis on how good he is at singing!

Yumeoi Kakeru: He’s ranked 1st among Nijisanji staff for best communication. He’s very well-spoken. In Forest streams with Kagami, he shows off his psychopath side by happily killing all manner of living beings. He enjoys teasing too. He also sings. I don’t know much else, but I enjoy watching him.

Again, why is the singing an afterthought? His identity is singer songwriter after all. I also need to mention his machine gun speech though.

Kazaki Morinaka: She’s a loli but can also transform into an adult form. That’s the extent of my knowledge.

This is true. I mostly know her personality from Morigusa collabs and I also like her singing now too!

Ibrahim: The oil prince. He’s a merchant type. He likes money. His place is Minecraft has elaborate architecture. He sometimes plays with Kanae and Kuzuha which is where I first saw him. He joined the Alpha Slayers in ARK after some water disputes. He’s a pretty interesting guy overall. He’s got text-to-speech for his superchats.

I really like Ibrahim now! He’s seriously a really nice person. He’s also somehow able to be really cute! I like how his streams are straightforward and interesting. I like how he interacts with his viewers too. He gives a close sort of feeling.

Melissa: I saw a video with her playing FPS with Kanae maybe? But I don’t remember much about her.

Whoa! How is there not a single mention of singing?? Also that was probably the clip with Kuzuha I was thinking of. But no singing???? Now, it’s pretty much all that I know her for. Her singing voice is actually amazing!

Fuwa: His character is a host. He can sing well. I’ve listened to his Call Boy? a bunch. I actually haven’t watched many of his videos, but would like to look into him more eventually.

I’ve gotten hooked on Fuwa! So I’ve definitely looked into him more! I still really like Call Boy. I absolutely loved his 3D though! I watched it so many times! And I can’t even count the amount of times I’ve listened to the 3D live song clips that he uploaded separately. His personality is so good! His expressiveness and energy! I also really like how hard he tries and how he always tries to do his best to make his viewers happy. He streams so much that I can’t keep up with him too well though. x_X

Ririmu: She has a very unique voice. Her character is a demon or devil maybe. Something supernatural. She has a pairing with Uzuki Kou. I don’t watch her though, so I don’t know much else. She has a unique voice.

She’s a succubus! I’ve watched a couple of streams with her. Not enough to get a good grasp of her character, but Pacific Ririmu was hilarious! I got to see a lot of different interactions there, but considering the rules of the stream, it isn’t exactly reflective of her true interactions with others.

Ritsuki: She’s a very elaborate builder in Minecraft though she started as a beginner. Her character is an alien, so she experimented on stuff. She likes to create things that will be used by everyone like the summer festival location. She’s a good girl. A bit shy. It was during her collab with Kuzuha that he first used the weather deck. I’d like to see more of her Minecraft creations.

I haven’t seen much of her Minecraft still!! Her museum is really impressive though.

Shellin: His character is a detective. He looks cool. He seems good with people. For some reason he was a protected person in ARK and he got kidnapped by the Alpha Slayers. Shellin can be really loud which contrasts with his soft voice. He talks to himself even when alone. He’s funny to watch, but I can’t find many videos with him.

Right now, I’m looking forward to whatever he’s planning for the 3D debut. The most I’ve seen him is from the Iiheya netto radio. Or does narration for Lever Gacha count? I like his interactions with Kaida! In general I like how excited he gets.

Mashiro: I don’t know much of him other than the fact he’s male but looks as cute as a girl. And he did some kind of RTA for some action game?

He’s cute for sure. And he’s also always doing something horror-related.

Kanda: He’s very cool. He’s hardworking and honest. Though he might be best known for GunKan, my first encounter with him was a subbed clip of him talking with Mayuzumi about how he wanted to be more popular with female audiences and his interest in voicing BL. I admire his drive to improve himself. He also has a background with being bullied, dropping out of school, experiencing a terrible work environment, until he finally went back to school and enjoyed it everyday. Going back to GunKan, their interactions are very fun and there’s always so much energy in their interactions. It’s fun to see his eyes. Also, he’s friends with Mayuzumi.

Kanda is really cool. His control over how he presents himself is really impressive and almost scary. I can’t forget how in his presentation about how to speak clearly he said that you should always know what you want to say before you speak.

Uzuki Kou: I haven’t watched many videos of him. He’s a bit strange. He’s got a pairing with Ririmu. Together they are apparently pretty twisted. Beyond that, I don’t know too much about him.

I still don’t know too much about him, but he’s apparently good at speaking. Also nabe rap.

Shiba: The dog. That’s all I know.

The cute dog. Also has IRL stuff going on.

Aizono Manami: The other half of Benizuwaigani! She’s a maid. She’s really nice. She can put up well with others. She gives a big sister kind of feeling. I actually don’t know that much about her individually since most of what I see of her is in context with Akina.

I’ve seen her a bit since, but I can’t think of much else to add.

Fumi: I know her name and face. I feel like I should respect her for some reason, but I don’t remember. She is part of Sanbaka alongside Hoshikawa and someone else. She gets along well with Kanda. I don’t know much about her.

That last sentence there really couldn’t be more right! Sanbaka??? Neither of them have anything to do with that! I clearly somehow got it mixed up with Orihimeboshi somehow. What a mysterious entry... Now I know a bit about her from Fukeizai.

Nagao Kei: He’s loud and chaotic, but he’s also surprisingly smart. His loud voice is also good at singing. Actually, his streams are apparently very loud too. His voice is a bit nasally and it also sounds like Ibrahim’s voice. He’s very childish when he’s with VALZ, but with his senpai he’s more serious. He memorized the Keep talking and don’t explode manual. I want to watch that one. I also want to listen to his covers. I’d like to know more and more about Nagao Kei!

Nagao = sontaku. I have listened to his covers since and I’m interested in how far he’s going to take his lore. He comes up with a lot of unique stream ideas.

Gwelu Os Gar: A married man! He’s got a statue in Minecraft and Ark. He’s a fun guy in the collabs I’ve seen, but I don’t know much about him.

He’s somehow always involved in some interesting plan. Right now, I’m rooting for his 10-year-old PC. Endurance stream to 1M let’s go!

Suzuki Masaru: He’s a shota. He was once in a collab with Utako and Akina... that was interesting. He once came across Kanae’s slave ranch in Minecraft. Kanae was scary. Recently, I found out that Masaru has something to do with Kai Mayuzumi’s lore.

The shota that’s good at ASMR... that sort of introduction from the gasbag race is now imprinted in my mind. On the side, I also think of him as a member of Raindrops. I don’t think I’ve actually watched any of his streams (ASMR aside...).

Kasumi: She’s graduating. She’s involved with Mayuzumi’s lore.

She graduated right as I got started watching Nijisanji. I think I did see her very last stream back then.

Kaida Haru: He’s finally here! I’ve been very slowly adding to this, so it’s already be 1 month - almost - that I’ve been watching vtubers. Just about three weeks now. Kaida Haru is the one I decided to support. He has a good face and voice.

What about Kaida do I like? First of all I need to talk about his face and voice. He’s also good at guitar and singing and his taste in music is pretty similar to mine, so I know a lot of the songs he sings. His voice can be very loud and he plays with his voice a lot to make sounds. He’s bullied by a lot of people, but that’s just their way of getting along with each other. It shows how loved he is. He’s overall a really nice guy and he’s quite considerate. He can be serious too. Also, he apparently gets flamed easily.

One thing that makes me realize the passage of one year is the position of Kaida in this list. This list was ordered by the number of subscribers. Last year this time he didn’t even have 100k and now he’s got over 300k! It’s nice to continue supporting him for the past year, and I’m a happy fan. He does a lot.

Fushimi Gaku: He is friends with Kenmochi Touya and together they make Togabito. Some people ship them but they don’t especially like that. I don’t know too much about Gaku though.

Peace! I checked out OhaGaku once or twice and his Togabito stuff a bit. He feels like a nice senpai. Although I don’t really watch him, whenever I come across him (like in totsumachi) he always seems like a cool guy.

Aki Suzuya: I don’t know her

*him. Apart from Kenmochi’s obsession with him, I still don’t know him. I really, really like his cover of flos with Kenmochi though.

Kitakouji Hisui: She’s extroverted - very able to talk. I don’t know much of her. My image of her is from dogeza for breaking the lantern tree of Kaida.

She has a really cool adult form/outfit!! She also sings well. I think she’s interesting but I admit I haven’t seen much from her in the past several months.

Genzuki: This genius! He can sing, compose music, mix music, edit video, play games. He’s so powerful! Multiple instruments! Genius! He’s good at talking! Entertaining. I’m curious about the lore too. He also has a scary story about his memory. But I really like him. He’s got a very vocaloid-based library of music so very nostalgic! <3

I still admire his music so much! I’ve listened to all of his piano streams and they are very inspiring. His music stream lengths can go for a scary long time. Just listening to him talk is interesting especially when he talks about music.

Natsume: She seems nice. A good person. I know her most for the lantern tree story. She’s very cute. She just got a new outfit today.

I haven’t learned much else about her.

Kyoko Todoroki: I saw her in the singing relay. She seems nice, though I don’t know much about her.

Thanks to NijiFes, now I know she has a really good sense of fashion. And she can draw well. I haven’t seen much else of her though.

Gilzaren: I don’t know much about him, but his voice doesn’t match his model. He can also sing. I’ve listened to his songs.

I’ve managed to watch him live! It feels like an accomplishment. I’ve also spotted him in comment sections. It’s like seeing a unicorn.

Harusaki Air: The prince. He doesn’t stream much, probably because of his RL job.

I like watching him for casual streams. Since I know he has a day job, there’s a bit of a feeling of “casually playing games after work” that I like to imagine.

Naruse Naru: He does the voice drama club.

And he’s super good at Mario Kart! He’s also really cute and has a good voice. He’s been getting more popular! I still need to listen to some of the voice drama club - I’ve only listened to a couple.

Of course, there were a bunch of livers that I couldn’t name. Some are understandable, and others I wonder how I could have missed them.

Era Otogibara

Lulu Suzuhara

Kaede Higuchi

Roa

Toko Inui

Rin Shizuka

Mikoto Rindou

Rion Takamiya

Sister Claire

Kana Sukoya

Keisuke Maimoto

Rena Yorumi

Nui Sorciere

Meiji Warabeda

Machita Chima

Tamaki Fumino

Kokoro Amamiya

Furen E. Lustario

Petit Ratna

Fuyuki Hakase

Eru

Uiha Aiba

Tomoe Shirayuki

Levi Elipha

Ema August

Riri Yuuhi

Ichigo

Mugi Ienaga

Marin Hayama

Sou Hayase

Sayo Amemori

Eli Conifer

Youko Akabane

Mao Matsukai

Luis Camie

Moira

Naraka

Mahiro Yukishiro

Haruka Onomachi

Hoshizora Kirame

Yamagami Karuta

Miyako Seto

Hina

Momo Azuchi

Sango Suo

Rine Yaguruma

Kohaku

Akane Asahina

Tsumugu Kataribe

So here are my current day thoughts (very quickly written):

Era Otogibara: Graduated.

Lulu Suzuhara: Graduated.

Kaede Higuchi: Deron. She’s very rough. I mostly know her singing and the part that leaves an impression is the screaming. Also she did an anime OP.

Roa: I have only ever seen her through clips... Will she return?

Toko Inui: Super nice voice! She can sing live incredibly well!

Rin Shizuka: I get the impression she streams alone often? She does stream on twitch.

Mikoto Rindou: She is good at singing, she has a good voice (narration and speaking), she is athletic enough to dance and do a cartwheel, and she is cute. Even though I think all of this, I still haven’t really watched her, haha...

Rion Takamiya: Ojou. She’s pretty fun with Debi. I also like when she played around with Fuwa’s radio.

Sister Claire: Dogma is good. She has a very angelic voice. Our seiso representative in Nijisanji.

Kana Sukoya: Crazy smart. And how is she able to do everything she does??? Just doing nursing alone should be crazy, but to stream and sing and voice act too?? It’s only understandable that she decided to take a break to focus on her studies even though with the rate she releases content it doesn’t really feel like a break.

Keisuke Maimoto: He has some pretty intense stories (from watching clips). It feels like he’s someone with a lot of life experience.

Rena Yorumi: Magician! I like her! She’s got fun interactions in Minecraft and ARK. SMC is cute too.

Nui Sorciere: I don’t really watch her, but she plays RPGs a lot is the impression I have. Sorry, but I can’t help but think of “haitenakunaidesuka??”.

Meiji Warabeda: I know her best as a member of Raindrops. I don’t know much of her other activities as a liver.

Machita Chima: Freesia! No, but she has a really wonderful voice and a very cute design. I’ll tune into her utawaku occasionally.

Tamaki Fumino: Noraneko. At first, I would question the veracity of claims of her happenings, but now I’ve come to accept them.

Kokoro Amamiya: Dragon Girl. She’s cute and I like how she interacts with Kaida in contrast to that cuteness, haha.

Furen E. Lustario: Her design is very cool. She is really excitable which is fun to watch.

Petit Ratna: She does ASMR... I don’t watch her much, but my earliest impression is probably from when she invited Kuzuha in ARK.

Fuyuki Hakase: She can sing well. I really like her Gunjou. I don’t watch her actively, but I have had her minecraft streams play in the background before.

Eru: I am not going to even try her full name. I know her as a member of Raindrops. I’m sure there’s more to her, but I really haven’t watched much of her... I feel like I remember something APEX though... (You can say that about almost any Nijisanji liver though).

Uiha Aiba: Will she come back to streaming? What happened with the lore?? But her 3D debut was amazing and her constant singing and dancing covers are very impressive. They come out at such a pace that I haven’t been able to keep up so there are a bunch I haven’t seen.

Tomoe Shirayuki: She’s beautiful. All her MVs have really good art. Partly due to her 3D debut, I can’t help but think of her as an S...

Levi Elipha: She has a really powerful voice! And yet the gap with her normal speaking voice is so cute! The way she acts is also cute.

Ema August: She drinks a lot... for some reason that’s what I think of her. She has an adult form too.

Riri Yuuhi: She’s really cool. If you asked me for who the cool girl of 2434 is, it’s Riri.

Ichigo: I don’t know much about her. She doesn’t seem to be too active?

Mugi Ienaga: I don’t know much about her either. I’ve listened to some of her songs, but her part in Unknown Mother Goose is the one that I really remember.

Marin Hayama: Her mouth is always open in my mind. I wonder why? But I don’t know much about her. In the song werewolf I remember she had pretty dark lyrics.

Sou Hayase: She’s got a really cool singing voice! Apart from her singing, I probably see her the most in B-grade Variety.

Sayo Amemori: Another one who doesn’t stream much. I caught one of her streams live and I didn’t know what she was talking about. The quality of the video was really low though. Apparently that’s normal for her though, so I feel like I got the authentic experience.

Eli Conifer: She can play the flute. She went all out in the Koshien Siren tournament. She seems to do the thing where she duplicates herself to sing very well. Her voice is very cute.

Youko Akabane: I know her most for KanaeYou, but she seems like a nice person. Apart from those interactions, I see her sometimes in ARK clips.

Mao Matsukai: Very energetic! Her 3D debut showed off a lot of different appeal points. Her chat seems to like to bully her.

Luis Camie: A phantom thief?? She plays off well with Shellin. It’s fun to see their interactions, though I’ve only seen a couple. She has a bit of an airheaded kind of entertaining appeal.

Moira: The goddess. I don’t know much about her. She does seem nice and able to talk well. It looks like she gets along with her generation.

Naraka: Apparently her voice sounds like Maaya Sakamoto? I remember her singing is nice. She took part in VSaikyou I believe, but I don’t really watch her.

Mahiro Yukishiro: I recall she isn’t that popular, but I have heard some of her singing. I feel like I don’t see her stream that often?

Haruka Onomachi: She tries hard to appeal to English speakers. She also does ASMR. I don’t really watch her, but her on screen translator is interesting.

Hoshizora Kirame: I believe she’s good at drawing. I still don’t know much about her though.

Yamagami Karuta: A tengu! She has the image of being very pure though. I also don’t really watch her so I can’t say too much.

Miyako Seto: Photography club. She’s a fan of Kuzuha... but I don’t really watch her so I can’t say much.

Hina: She writes scripts. I don’t think she streams much at all anymore.

Momo Azuchi: She had a redesign at one point. I haven’t watched her.

Sango Suo: Absolutely amazing acting ability. I’ve seen a few examples where she acts with others and it’s very impressive. I haven’t seen her solo streams though.

Rine Yaguruma: I don’t know much about her.

Kohaku: Mela! is a banger. Unfortunately I don’t know much about her aside from that.

Akane Asahina: She’s been releasing a lot of high quality covers in high frequency and she makes a lot of effort to reach out to western fans. I’m not watching her, but I’m rooting for her success.

Tsumugu Kataribe: Library ghost. Will she ever stream again? (Have never seen her before).

[citylightsbooks]

The Motor of the Essay: Rachel Kushner in Conversation

This is an excerpt of a free event we held in conjunction with Litquake for our virtual events series, City Lights LIVE. This event features Rachel Kushner in conversation with Dana Spiotta celebrating the launch of The Hard Crowd: Essays 2000-2020, published by Scribner. This event was originally broadcast live via Zoom and hosted by our events coordinator Peter Maravelis. You can listen to the entire event on our podcast. You can watch it in full as well on our Youtube channel.

*****

Dana Spiotta: I know that everyone's going to ask you these questions about writing fiction versus nonfiction. And I read somewhere that you said, with your novels, you begin with imagery more than an idea or a character. With the nonfiction, there is a range of pieces about writers and specific books to journalism--like the prison story and Palestine--and then there’s the ones that are personal essays, right, like the girl in a motorcycle. So I guess they might all have different origins. But where do you begin with that? And how is that different as a process from what you write in fiction?

Rachel Kushner: Yeah, so it is kind of a different process for me, although I sometimes feel guilty to try to make declarations about which is harder, or how one does one thing, because you know, for some people, the essay is what literature is.

For me, fiction is more difficult. And so in a certain way it's what I've signed on to do with my life, because the process can be so mysterious and fickle and unreliable. And I'm waiting to catch a wave, or get the drift and then try to figure out how to sustain it, and then how to change it in order to sustain it. Managing so many different things at once is a very curious hermeneutic, because you need to know where you're going.

But then you also need to let happenstance inform you. I think some of the ways that we are challenged, and how we learn in our lives and also as writers, are by having encounters that we did not anticipate or predict, and that happens in fiction. And then you're kind of in a "taking mode" and you know exactly what's for you and you go with it and you run.

Essays are a little different for me. I mean, obviously. Time is shorter. But usually the motor of the essay is a sprung sentence. I come up with one sentence that is doing something in the syntax and it's making something sort of declarative. And it's kind of a gambit. And it needs to be followed by another. And sometimes I'll have a whole paragraph like that. And those paragraphs will just be floating in the void of the potentiality of the essay that I haven't written yet. And I don't sweat, like, "How am I going to link this to that?" yet. Because I just know by instinct that they're both going in. And if I put them in the essay, then they are interrelated by virtue merely of their proximity to each other. Then I start to build links.

Some journalism is a very different process. Like you mentioned, for the piece that I wrote, originally for the New York Times Magazine, about prison abolition and the carceral geographer, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, they said it can be any length and made it long. So you know, it was like 20,000 words. And it was my version of that essay, and it probably was a pretty good essay. But I think the weakness in it was that I was not speaking to their audience. And they really--you have written for the New York Times Magazine--they want to be able to countenance everything you say, sentence by sentence. It's not like writing an op-ed, where you just say your thing and then people can fight it out in the comments. They want to be fully on board. And I wouldn't want to have to do that all the time.

It's extremely difficult, because you have to keep remembering how to bring in somebody who may have wildly different ideas about how society should be organized, and not seem polemical, not seem pushy. It's a kind of seduction I think that really benefits from collaboration with an editor. It's arduous, it takes time. That essay took two years to write, but because the subject matter was important to me, ultimately, I decided it was worth it.

Dana Spiotta: Yeah, it's such a great essay. And I learned so much from it.

Peter Maravelis: When you're writing about events and feelings from decades ago, how do you return to the experience? What takes you back?

Rachel Kushner: That's a really great question. So, you know, with some of these essays, like the first essay in the book called “Girl on a Motorcycle,” which is about the Cabo 1000--a no longer existent, illegal motorcycle road race where you span the Baja in the course of a day--was the first thing that I ever published and I wrote it 20 years ago. And after looking back over it, in order to put it in this book and to improve upon it, I opened it up; I wrote a new beginning and a new ending. There are so many details and scenes in that essay that I never, ever would have remembered had I not written them down when I was much closer to the meat of that experience.

But there are other essays like the title essay which I just wrote quite recently. I'd put the book together, and I knew it was going to be called “The Hard Crowd.” And then I just basically sat down and wrote this essay. And I think, you know, as maybe you're telling a story, or going through your life, sometimes things really do sort of trigger the release of a memory. And Proust has this conception of two different kinds of memory that he calls voluntary memory and involuntary memory. And voluntary memory is the kind of fixed story that you tell, you know, "Oh, he's telling that story again," meaning it's a kind of sclerotic, hardened account that, for Proust, doesn't really have any real artistic or intrinsic wealth to it. Whereas involuntary memory is maybe when you would smell a perfume that you haven't smelled in 30 years and it reminds you of this or that. And I think that writing itself can activate involuntary memory, because you start to see into spaces you haven't seen in a really long time.

Like when I was writing this essay, I somehow ended up talking about Terence McKenna, and remembered that I'd seen Terence McKenna give this lecture at the Palace of Fine Arts. And then I saw the Palace of Fine Arts and him on the stage and where I was sitting, and who was in the audience. And so then I mentioned in the essay that this noise musician who I don't know, but I knew who he was, was sitting right in front of me. And that was a funny thing because the New Yorker called him and asked, "Were you at a Terence McKenna lecture in 1991." “Yeah, I was.” I mean he probably thought like the FBI is after him or something. I can start to see things and details in pretty haunting detail, particularity once I'm starting to build the framework that will allow those kind of involuntary memories to come up to present themselves.

Peter Maravelis: Do you feel that maybe kids who grew up in a certain era share communal memories, like growing up in San Francisco in the 70s is full of shared moments and scenes?

Rachel Kushner: Yes, I do feel that, but I would maybe even particularize it to not just an era, but to kids who grew up in a certain world within San Francisco. And I'm going to just be blunt: it's the kids who went to public school in San Francisco in the 70s and 80s. We all traversed a world together, and the particularity of that world. I'm not saying that it's special or different. Everybody has a world that they traversed, and that stays inside of them as memory. And ours is ours. And those who experienced it do feel bonded, I think, for life, in a way. And it's something I've thought about a lot since that essay was published in the New Yorker because of the number of people who reached out to me and wanted to talk about their own memories of this same world that we shared.

Peter Maravelis: In the New York Times review, Dwight Garner mentioned the phrase: “At the party, she was kindness in the hard crowd," from the Cream song "White Room." Is that in fact where your title came from?

Rachel Kushner: It is. I mentioned that in the title essay, it all becomes clear, or at least somewhat clear where I heard that song, and why I made it the title of this book. It's a good line.

To see upcoming events at City Lights bookstore in San Francisco, check out our complete calendar.

[nitewrighter]

would you ever write a drabble for the MEKA squad? Happy holidays!

Tfw you really want to give Overlord they/them pronouns (because nonbinary characters aren’t just robots, Blizzard!!) but the Wiki is he/him, so you’re like “Okay he’s he/they.”

...this originally started out as a one-off gag and then mutated into this. Have fun.

------

It had been a long day of being slumped behind desks while government officials bickered through translators for the Meka squad. They were in Russia for what was supposed to be a “Joint Defense” conference discussing the applications of sharing Meka and Volskaya technology to better defend against the Gwishin and the Siberian Omnium, but communication had quickly broken down. Russia, it turned out, didn’t take too well to Korea granting citizenship to Omnics with only a handful of the EU restrictions (”and not even the UK restrictions!” one politician had blustered.) The Meka squad itself had been scoffed off as “celebrities” and “mascots” and so the day was ending with D.Va, D.Mon, and Casino standing around the hotel lobby. D.Va was scrolling through her phone next to a roaring fireplace while D.Mon stooped over her shoulder,  and Casino leaning against the hotel bar, examining some vodka in a shot glass and ready to pretend it definitely tasted like something other than burning to impress the cute bartender. The three of them perked up at the sound of the lobby elevator dinging and Casino knocked back his drink and suppressed a wince as a blue-clad figure waddled out of the elevator and into the lobby.

“Woah,” D.Mon blinked a few times as she and D.Va walked over.

“What--woah,” said Casino, still blinking a few times through the vodka still burning the back of his throat.

“What?!” muffled the waddling shape in blue.

“Is...uh... that really you under there, Seung-hwa?” D.Va tilted her head, trying to hold in snickers.

“I have a low cold tolerance,” Overlord’s voice was muffled through their scarf. He was a veritable sausage of a long puffer jacket, and apparently heavily layered even under that by the way his arms were spread away from his torso, and clumsily thudding around in heavy boots. A fur-lined trapper hat virtually swallowed their head and nearly all of their face was covered by a scarf.

“You’re T-Posing,” said D.Va.

“I’m not T-posing!” muffled Overlord indignantly

“...I wanna try something,” said Casino, stepping forward.

“Don’t be mean,” said D.Mon, furrowing her brow.

“I’m not,” said Casino.

“What are you doi--” Overlord started but Casino put his hands on the outsides of Overlord’s arms and pressed down, trying to push Overlord’s arms to the sides of their torso. Casino pulled his hands away and Overlord’s arms sprang back to their previous spread position. Casino snorted.

“Ooh! Let me try!” said D.Va, quickly walking up and pressing Overlord’s arms down to their side as well and letting them spring back into place.

“Okay that’s enough--” said D.Mon.

“We should get some selfies in--!” said D.Va.

“Can we just get going?!” said Overlord.

“Can you walk?” said Casino, quirking an eyebrow.

“Yes I can walk,” said Overlord.

-----

“Waddled” was a closer word for it.

“...are they still behind us?” said D.Va as she, D.Mon and Casino walked down the sidewalk.

Casino gave a glance back to Overlord practically duckwalking, their arms bouncing slightly at their sides since it apparently took physical effort to move them from their positions in a normal walking manner.

“He’s still behind us,” said Casino, smirking slightly, “Kind of reminds you of those penguin documentaries, March of the Mek--” He got elbowed by D.Mon.

Admittedly as they walked through the streets, all three of them had flashes of jealousy towards Overlord for being so bundled up. Russia had a cold that sank deep past the skin and made them starkly aware of every injury they had ever received in the Meka program, feeling old fissures in bones. It was past Christmas but not yet New Year’s, and lights and decorations still hung on some buildings. The city was a hodgepodge between stately old pre-crisis buildings, more modern skyscrapers, and several massive industrial-looking defense bases armed with massive long-range anti-aircraft turrets. The massive Svyatogors stood sentry at the city’s borders, surveying the city and beyond it with a sort of lumbering casualness that made you believe they were simply fully living giants rather than piloted mechs. D.Va watched as one turned its head slowly.

“...kind of glad the deal fell through,” muttered Casino, following her line of sight, “Can you imagine those ugly things in Busan? Gross.”

“...I could see myself piloting one,” said D.Mon.

“You would,” said Casino.

It wasn’t too long of a walk from their hotel to the park, and King was waiting for them at the wrought iron gate marking its entrance. He was scrolling through his phone while backlit by the blue, white, green, and pink lights being diffracted through the massive ice sculptures dotting the park behind him. The park was noticeably more crowded than the streets, a mix of locals on dates and tourists admiring the ice sculptures.

“What took you guys--” King started but then glanced at Overlord plodding along behind them, “Nice coat.”

“Thanks,” muffled Overlord.

Despite the crowds, the Meka squad’s walk through the park was quiet, pausing to look at different ice sculptures, getting hot smoky tea with a hint of orange peel from a little kiosk. Aside from Casino, who was only wearing earmuffs over his sleeked-back white hair, the five of them pretty much blended into the crowd. The subject matter of the ice sculptures ranged from whimsical and natural forms such as narwhals and giant flowers with real petals and blossoms suspended frozen inside them, to more technically impressive architectural forms of famous buildings from around the world and reproductions of classical sculptures, to a large collection of propagandistic figures of Svyatogors, fresco reproductions of posters, and Omnic crisis heroes. D.Va paused to see a line had formed next to an ice sculpture of a heroically flexing Aleksandra Zaryanova, glowing in pink, with tourists and locals alike eagerly posing and flexing next to it.

“...maybe you’d get a statue if the deal hadn’t fallen through,” D.Mon spoke next to her.

D.Va huffed. “I don’t know if that’s what I want people to remember me for,” she said quietly.

“Mm, yeah saving the city multiple times is nothing compared to the rush of gaming tournaments,” D.Mon said teasingly.

“...gaming tournaments mean everyone’s safe,” said D.Va and the teasing expression on D.Mon’s face was wiped away. Wordlessly, D.Mon slipped her arm through the crook of D.Va’s elbow and pulled her close.

“I know they’re wrong, here,” D.Va went on, “I know the omnics who live in Busan aren’t like the Gwishin--they aren’t the same---but what if the Gwishin finds a way to control them, somehow? There was that incident in Giza...” she shook her head, “But then I feel like a big jerk for thinking that! Like that’s not fair!”

D.Mon just leaned her cheek on the top of D.Va’s head. “I wish I could say there’s an easy answer for it. Most of the time I just worry about flying and keeping the team alive and let everyone else sort that junk out.”

“...we saw how they sort it out,” muttered D.Va, “They don’t. One side wants to put them all in a trash compacter and the other side wants to treat them like people so it all gets broken down country by country, but no matter what we’re all scared. And--I remember being a kid--and my dad taking me down to the basement when the air sirens went off, and giving me his old Fujita-Via with his pirated Starcraft port, and his noise canceling headphones that were too big for me, but I could still feel the house shaking--”

“Hana--” D.Mon squeezed her arm slightly.

But if I kept playing... it felt further away,” said D.Va, “Playing used to make it feel further away.”

“...and now we play to keep them away,” said D.Mon, quietly, “...you’re not alone, you know,” she added.

“I know I’m not--” D.Va started.

“But you’re not the only one who’s gone through stuff like that--that’s literally why we’re all here,” said D.Mon.

D.Va blinked a few times. 

“I’ve been talking to Dae-hyun,” said D.Mon and D.Va gave an exasperated huff, but D.Mon pushed further, “He’s worried, too. That night when you overclocked your reactor---”

“I had it handled!” D.Va said quickly, before catching herself, “We--we had it handled. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without--”

“Without Dae-hyun,” said D.Mon, “And I know it’s different with him, there’s no stupid pro-gamer egos, he’s not in the field like we are---But... is it that unfair of me to ask you to trust us like you trust him?”

D.Va glanced down.

D.Mon pressed her lips against D.Va’s snowflake-flecked hair, more of a nuzzle than a kiss, before gently pulling her along to the next ice sculpture. “At least hang out with us more. We have pit crews, you don’t have to keep pulling late nights tweaking Tokki.”

“Yeah, but I’m--”

“Picky,” D.Mon smiled, smoothing snowflakes away from D.Va’s hair with a smirk, “I know.”

D.Va sighed and leaned against D.Mon, “...I’ll try,” she said, quietly, then thought for a second, “I’ll make it a New Year’s resolution! Hang out with you guys more! Get away from the garage...”

They were making their way to an art nouveau-looking sculpture of a woman holding a pouring out swirling water when their comms buzzed. D.mon pulled her comm from her pocket.

“Guys, we need to regroup,” Casino said on the other end.

“What’s going on?” said D.Mon, “Call from headquarters or--?”

“Casino lost Overlord and we accidentally kidnapped a small Russian lesbian,” King’s voice sounded flatly on the other line.

“You lost Overlord too!” Casino argued.

“What--” D.Mon stammered, “How did you--”

“Just meet us back at the narwhal,” said Casino, before clicking out of the call.

D.Va and D.Mon exchanged glances.

“We don’t have to--” D.Mon started.

“Yes we do,” said D.Va, squeezing D.Mon’s arm and dragging her through the crowd. The narwhal sculpture was back towards the front of the park, and the crowds made it slow going, but they were able to find Casino, King, and what looked like Overlord’s heavily-layered t-posing figure next to them.

“What do you mean you lost Overlord?” said D.Mon, “They’re right--”

The figure, with some effort given the thick layers of their clothes, took off their trapper hat to shake off a shaggy asymmetrical bob and pulled down their scarf to reveal a convex nose.

“Not Overlord,” said D.Va.

The girl with the shaggy bob said something in Russian and pointed at Casino.

“We got into a really dense crowd back at the svyatogor sculpture,” said King, “My audio translator app says she thought Casino was her girlfriend from behind.”

“It’s mistranslating ‘girlfriend,’” said Casino, flatly.

“It’s really not,” said King.

“...which means Overlord must be following someone he thought was Casino!” said D.Va.

“Stunning powers of deduction,” said King, adjusting his glasses.

“Well, where was the last place you saw your girlfriend before?” said Casino, looking at the girl.

King rapidly tapped something into his phone. “G’dyeh te pahsled--” he started reading before going, “Fuck it--” and hit a button on his comm. The phone fired off a phrase in Russian and the girl shrugged. She paused, then said something questioning in Russian and pointed at D.Va.

“Can you say that again?” said King holding his phone up to her.

The girl repeated her question more slowly and the phone translated the phrase, “Is that D.Va, from the holos?”

“...uh...” D.Mon seemed hesitant to reveal their identities after such comfortable anonymity but D.Va cut in.

“Yes, I’m D.Va, do you know where our friend is?” she said, and the phone translated for her.

The girl almost squealed but managed to control herself and cleared her throat. “Big fan,” she managed in thickly accented english, gesturing at herself.

“Look just text Overlord and we’ll get this mess cleared up,” said D.Mon, looking at King.

“We’ve been texting them. No answer. I don’t think they can feel the comm buzzing through that coat,” said Casino.

“Look, I’m sure he’s already figured it out and is on his way back to us,” said D.Mon, “Overlord pilots the most complex mech out of all of us, he can control the movements of 27 airborne mini-drones simultaneously, I’m pretty sure he would notice pretty quickly if he was following some Russian chick and not Casino.”

All of their phones buzzed at once and they flipped them open to see their groupchat.

0verl0rd: HELP.

0verl0rd: ON A TRAIN.

0verl0rd: RUSSIAN LADY WASN’T CASINO.

0verl0rd: DON’T KNOW WHERE I’M GOING.

DeeVaaaaaa: WHY ARE YOU ON A TRAIN!? 

K1ng_Soo: Literally when did we say we would get on a train.

0verl0rd: I DON’T KNOW I WAS JUST ROLLING WITH IT.

0verl0rd: NOT CASINO LADY IS YELLING AT ME IN RUSSIAN NOW.

Casi_no: How did you not notice they were speaking Russian before?

0verl0rd: THIS HAT IS REALLY THICK AND IT WAS HARD ENOUGH KEEPING UP.

Yuna-Mon: Okay just stay calm and stay where you are.

Overlord: AGAIN I’M ON A TRAIN.

The Meka squad glanced up from the group chat and looked at Overlord’s thick-coat look-alike, whose phone suddenly buzzed. Through the thickness of her own coat it took her some effort to pull it out and answer it. They watched as she argued in Russian for several minutes, then turned to talking very quickly in Russian for another, minute, then laughing, then she gave a glance to the Meka squad, cupped a mittened hand over her mouth and spoke into the phone a bit more quietly and excitedly, before apparently reaching a satisfying conclusion, peppering in what sounded like a dozen pet names, and then ended the call. She gestured at King to hold his phone up to her and spoke Russian into his translator app.

“My Nadenka and your friend are heading to Vasily’s--our usual spot in Dumskaya,” the translator app’s automated voice made her easy tone sound much more halting, “You can pick him up there. Maybe grab drinks, yes? Big Meka fans! We love D.Va!”

King was apparently feverishly web-searching Dumskaya but D.Va said, “Great! Lead the way!”

The girl patted her mitten against her thick coat, “Uliana,” she said,

“...Hana,” said D.Va.

The girl made another high-pitched sound but caught herself, cleared her throat, and managed to get control of herself again. “Come on!” she said, waving them across the park. D.Va and Casino followed, but King and D.Mon hung back, slightly.

“Sounds like a recipe to wake up in a bathtub full of ice,” muttered King under his breath.

“I’m sure they don’t need ice with all this snow,” said D.Mon with a slight smirk. “It’s going to be fine.”

“And if it’s not?”

“Well I guess there will be a messy international incident concerning the ransoming and eventual brutal murders of Korea’s primary anti-Gwishin defense force, is that the conclusion you want me to jump to?” said D.Mon.

King opened his mouth, then furrowed his brow and readjusted his glasses.

“We grab Overlord and get out,” he said firmly.

“Mm-hmm,” D.Mon nodded her head.

-----

Vasily’s was a dive bar but it wasn’t a dive bar. It was warmly lit, had a handful of floral-patterned Slavic tchotchkes, some granny-chic doilies that suggested the place served lunch and tea, and a long garland of fake pine dotted with pink ornaments trailing along the wall. There was definitely a lived-in feeling to the place, but it was offset by an almost persnickety cleanliness. As King pushed the door open, he readjusted his glasses, finding the bar brighter than expected. It was virtually empty, but Overlord was sitting at the bar, having shed his thick coat with the trapper hat in his lap. He was apparently gesturing with several overturned shot glasses on the bar counter and talking to... Casino?

King gave a quick glance to Casino, who was still standing next to him, then glance back at Overlord and his bleach-blonde companion and snorted as she turned her head.

“She does look like you from behind,” he said to Casino.

“Shut up,” said Casino.

“Nadenka!” Uliana called out and then excitedly pointed at D.Va before unzipping her own thick puffer coat and hurrying over for a pecking cheek kiss from Nadenka.

“Sorry for mix-up, Meka Squad,” Nadenka looked over at the four of them.

“You speak english?” said King.

Nadenka made an ‘eeehhhh’ gesture with her hand, “Not very good,” she said with a shrug, and then elbowed Uliana, “Better than this one, though. She didn’t tell you?”

“Ah!” Uliana scoffed, “Hey!” She admonished her in Russian but Nadenka just gave her a smug smirk. 

“I was telling her about that amphibious gwishin mech back in the fall, remember that?” Overlord swung around on their barstool, eyes bright, “The crawler?”

“Yes, we all remember the crawler,” King said quickly, “Now, we should get back to the hotel, before you wander off after another random woman who looks like Casino from behind--”

“But I’m not finished yet!” said Overlord.

“Is true,” said Nadenka, “I want to hear rest of story. I think little blue guy should be D.Va, yeah?”

Uliana gasped as if her girlfriend had just spoken blasphemy, but Overlord just beamed smugly and D.Va snickered a little. 

“...we can stay for the story,” said D.Mon.

“What?” said King, “But--”

“And shots,” said Casino.

“Shots!?” King repeated.

“They got snacks, here?” said D.Va, “Kind of want something salty.”

“Hana--!” King was pressing his fingertips to his forehead but Uliana was already flagging down the exhausted looking bald bartender and feverishly talking to him in Russian. D.Va was able to make out the words ‘D.Va’ and ‘Meka Squad’ in her rapid rant. Within seconds shot glasses and little doily-skirted opened mason jars of pickles were being set out on the bar. “...this isn’t happening,” muttered King, but D.Mon just bumped her shoulder into him. 

“Come on,” she said, “Think of it as... ‘regional immersive research for the Meka program’s future collaborative efforts.’“

“...I’m writing all of you up to our CO,” said King flatly before Casino held out a filled shot glass to him and he sullenly took it. 

“Is this that glitz and glamour you guys are always heading off to?” said D.Va, pushing herself up onto a barstool. 

“It might be,” said D.Mon grinning and taking a barstool next to her, “If you came with us more often.”

“New year’s resolution,” said D.Va, crunching one of the bar pickles.

[lunarr-rrose]

Advantages Of Joining A Mastermind - Fernando Angelucci

https://u109893.h.reiblackbook.com/generic11/the-storage-stud/advantages-of-joining-a-mastermind/

For Fernando, one of the reasons why he is finding a lot of success and starting to exponentially grow his different business is because of his ability to stand on the shoulders of giants, to leverage other people, and the network.

For him, one of the most important things is joining the Mastermind group. Specifically, a Mastermind group that is not geographically tied to your little market.

What is a Mastermind group?

This is a collective of individuals in the same industry and in Fernando’s case, it’s the real estate business. They get together quarterly and between those 3 to five meetings each quarter they also communicate through zoom or phone calls.

The great thing about these Mastermind Groups is you can leverage the expertise of the other experienced and smart investors.

And, the Mastermind Groups always bring in the greatest keynote speakers.

If you are interested to know more about Fernando’s experience in joining Mastermind groups just keep watching this video.

Fernando O. Angelucci is Founder and President of Titan Wealth Group. He also leads the firm’s finance and acquisitions departments. Fernando Angelucci and Steven Wear founded Titan Wealth Group in 2015, and under his leadership, the firm’s revenue has grown over 100% year over year. Today,

Find out more at

https://www.TheStorageStud.com

https://titanwealthgroup.com/

Listen to our Podcast:

https://thestoragestud.podbean.com/e/advantages-of-joining-a-mastermind-fernando-angelucci/

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

So, one of the reasons why I've been finding a lot of success and, you know, really starting to exponentially grow my different businesses is because of my ability to, stand on the shoulders of giants and to leverage other people and the networks. So, one of the things that I think is super important is joining mastermind groups, specifically mastermind groups that are not, let's say geographically tied to like your little market. And one of the reasons for that is because, you know, then people are less willing to share. So, what is a mastermind group? A mastermind group is, a collective of individuals in the same industry or similar industry. So for me, it's real estate. We get together in person once a quarter. And then, throughout in between those three to five day meetings each quarter, we also do zoom calls, phone calls.

We run through, you know, best practices. And the nice thing about these mastermind groups is a, you can leverage the expertise of other super smart investors. With these investors, you know, you have people, you know, multiple minds, will always help bring up the collective, a rising tide raises all ships. And not only can I leverage these guys for tips and tricks that I see them presenting on, but another thing that's really cool is these masterminds will also usually bring in some really cool keynote speakers. So the way that the mastermind format is for most of the masterminds of my part of, is you come to the mastermind and then you'll have 30 minutes to an hour to present on a topic that is a gift. So, here is my gift to the group. Here's something I think will benefit you not only from a business standpoint, but it can be personal.

It could be from health, you know, a health angle. Half of the presentations we found are about business. The other half are about life and how to go through life as an investor or as an entrepreneur. Then, at the end of that ask, or the end of that 30 to 60 minute presentation, you'll usually have a slide or two saying, here's what I'm struggling with. Here's what I'm stuck on. Here's what I need help with. And then, everyone in the group will say, Hey, I can help you out with that. I've done X, Y, Z, or, Hey, I can't help you out, but I know this gentleman he's done this six, seven times, let me connect you with him and maybe he can help you solve your problem. So, it's all about this abundance mentality. This Go-Giver mentality, how when you give to others, it usually comes back tenfold.

The cool thing thing about this mastermind too, is because of the high caliber of investors that are in there. Usually you need to be doing 50 plus deals a year, just to get nominated, to get in. And once you get nominated, then you need to have people vouch for you. You need to go through a series of interviews. They look through your financials, they look through your transaction volume to just, you know, prove that you're actually doing what you're saying you're doing. So, once you get in there, because it's a high caliber group, because it's usually got a pretty high cost to attend these meetings they can bring in these heavy hitter, third party consultants, experts in each have their own fields. So recently, one of the things, one of the investors they brought in, or one of the consultants they brought in his name was John Burns.

And he is this research kind of economist, and he specifically focuses on single family homes, multi-family homes, build the suit, build to rent. And a lot of the large hedge funds and private equity funds will actually pay him for his services to get his reports and to get kind of what he sees in his crystal ball. So, one of the things that John was seeing as far as this crazy market that we're in. So, for those that haven't been kind of living under a rock in the real estate world, we're in the very interesting time, where one we're in the middle of it pandemic. So, just logically you think, okay, we're in the middle of the pandemic, that's going to trigger a recession. That's going to trigger home sales to drop and prices to drop.

But, what has actually happened is the exact opposite, because of this pandemic, people are deciding not to sell, not to trade up in their properties, causing a very artificially low inventory, because there's artificially low inventory. There's less number of sellers, but there's still the same amount of buyers, or if not more buyers, and this is causing artificial price increase. So, over time, what we've seen in the last six months is, properties are selling off. I mean, off the shelves quickly for way above what typically say 18 months ago, I thought they would sell for what they would be worth. You know, we're seeing 10, 15% increases on these ARV's. Not because of extra work was done to the house, but just because there's no inventory and people are really desperate to find a home that say has a home office or an extra room so that, you know, they're separated from the kids or they have a separate space that they can go work from, as opposed to, you know, working from the kitchen countertop or the living room, you know, coffee table, they want an actual place because they can't go into work right now.

They're working virtually. One of the things that John was saying is that, you know, we see this price pressure is going to continue for quite some time here. You know, he's still seeing rising prices in Q1, Q2 and Q3 of 2021, with maybe some starting to fall off in Q4 of 2021 or Q1 of 2022. So, very interesting to have these, you know, these experts that, if I were to try to go pay for John Burns services on my own, I'm sure it would cost an arm and a leg, but because we have a group of, you know, 140 investors from around the country. And I guess now, even around the world, because we have some international members as well, we can all pool our resources to bring in these heavy hitters, these huge experts to come teach us or to enlighten us on what's going on in the market.

Some other keynote speakers that I've seen recently in some of these groups are Chris Voss, which is a master negotiator. He worked for the FBI as a lead hostage negotiator for 10 years and created a system on how to negotiate with hostages, but which is also applicable when it comes to any type of negotiation, you know, your entire life is a negotiation. So, that was super cool. They brought in Mike Michalowicz, the guy that wrote the book, Profit First on how to get businesses to manage their money appropriately and how to take chips off the table and stash up an emergency reserve. So, really cool, really grateful that I'm a part of these groups. I've learned so much from them, every time I joined one of these groups. It's a little bit overwhelming, but very quickly you start seeing your trajectory of growth, just exponentially increasing because, you know, you're, you never want to be the smartest person in the room.

I actually prefer to be the dumbest person in the room, because that means everybody around me has a ton of information, a ton of value and knowledge to offer me. So, I really recommend if you're just getting started in real estate, or if you're just getting started as an entrepreneur, you know, make sure that you're spending a lot of time and networking with these individuals that are at the next level. You know, if you're here and everybody that you hang out with is down here, you're going to become, you know, the average of the five or six people that you hang out with the most. But if you're here and everybody that you're hanging out with and working with is up here, then just naturally over time, that's going to bring you up to these levels. The nice, another thing about these masterminds that are really cool is, the level of trust that gets created from being a part of these groups, these communities, because this trust is there and we're being vulnerable and we're telling people what our issues are.

And instead of just trying to beat our chest and say, Hey, look how cool I am. But just being very honest and straightforward with everybody, with what your issues are and how, you know, if anybody has ways to help you solve them, is this innate level of trust that gets formed, which allows you to do deals on handshake agreements. And I know that's super crazy to say, especially in this day and age, when everybody wants to sue and there's, you know, 40 pages of paperwork just to buy a pen from somebody it's ridiculous, but that has helped foster these huge relationships. I've raised a bunch of money in these groups. I've helped other people raise money in these groups. I found deals in these groups. I've sold deals to these groups. Just really awesome things. I really recommend that you get involved in some of these, that the two masterminds that I'm a part of right now.

The first one is called, Collective Genius, and it's a cross investment mastermind. So, there's a single family home guys. There's multifamily home guys. There's self storage. There is assisted living, there's notes, there's seller finance guys. It just land flippers, anything having to do with real estate, you name it, it's there. And the cool thing about that is, when you can look outside of your lane, you can start learning things from other industries or other asset classes that you can maybe apply to your asset class that may be novel in your industry. So, that was super cool, really love those guys. Absolutely wonderful group. The next group that I joined as well is, The Self Storage Mastermind. So, this is an asset specific mastermind. We only talk about self storage, not really any other asset classes. But it's kind of the same format where, you know, it's not only about business, it's also about life.

You know, we're in this together. If all you do is work, work, work, you know, on your deathbed, I've never heard of somebody saying on their deathbed that they wish they worked more, right? Usually it's a, I wish I had learned how to operate life, how to spend time with my family and friends, how to really be super efficient with my time. So, that I can spend my off time or my downtime with my family and friends with people that matter. So, I really loved that mastermind as well, bunch of trust. The guy that runs it actually mentored me. Taught me how to get into self storage. And he's actually partnered with me on a deal already in the past, pretty large deal. So, really excited to be a part of those, and excited to see what's what's coming in the future.

So, that'd be my recommendation to you. If you're looking to scale quickly, if you're looking to get better at your business, if you're looking to network with high level individuals, you know, you're going to have to pay for that, right? Because that's how you keep all the people that shouldn't be in the room away. You have to price it to a level that only people that are successful enough to take one of these big checks and write them each year to be a part of these masterminds are allowed in the room. So, you know, be prepared for that. But what our businesses do is we have a separate bank account, where that bank account is funded each month with a portion of our profits. And that bank account is specifically for mastermind, for travel, for basically that learning and knowledge and helping to continue the growth cycle of our companies as well as individually, as investors or as owners of those companies. So, stay tuned. I'll come back with some more tips for real estate investors and entrepreneurs in general. In the meantime, if you have any questions, feel free to drop it in the comments, or shoot me an email or come to our website and connect with us that way.

[justsomewritingsandshit]

The Struggles of a Male Veela (Part 5 - Selene’s Got A Date)

Louis Weasley x Soulmate!OC

Length: 3190 words

Warnings: soulmate!au, altered ages of next gen, female OC, Hunter Parrish as Louis, fxf date, mentions of sAd bOI hOuRs

Part 5 of this series | Masterlist | Part 4 | Part 6

Selene has never been fussy when it comes to dating – for her, (so long as the person expressed an interest, didn’t seem oddly clingy, or overly possessive) anyone was game. So, when the attractive Mari Singh (of Ravenclaw house) asked her out… well, she said yes.

Mari and Selene had been ‘classroom friends’ for years, so she had supposed it wouldn’t be too uncomfortable. Their rapport was friendly enough, and Mari was an attractive girl, so there was no real reason to say no.

Plus, Selene happened to know that she was the first girl that Mari had asked out since her coming out over the summer. Selene felt that she had a sort of duty to treat Mari to a wonderful time, setting a good example of what Mari should look for in a partner, should she choose to date again. Too many people let themselves be in bad circumstances, simply because it’s all they knew, and Selene wouldn’t let Mari’s kind soul be one of those. Selene wished she’d had a person do the same for her, when she was younger. It would have saved her a lot of broken hearts.

In the end, the two girls arranged it for their date to be the first Hogsmeade trip, which was on the last day of the month. The two of them were going to end up spending their entire time there making awkward but friendly conversation, and drinking butterbeers – there was never much to do in Hogsmeade, after all.

If anyone was asked to go off and experience Hogsmeade, they’d come back and say that it felt as if the village had been unchanged for hundreds of years. Contradicting that analysis was the known fact that many of the buildings were only two decades old, as some of them had to be repaired after the war. And, the war memorials and plaques in the middle of the village were only a few years old themselves.

Despite the newer builds, the town was one of the oldest magic-only communities in the United Kingdom – there were much older communities in remote areas of South America, Asia, and in concealed tribes all throughout Africa, though. There wasn’t much to the small town, just a joke shop, a sweet store, a few small trinket shops, a pub or two – basically; nothing much for the teens whose only chance at an off-campus activity was a monthly trip there.

So, yeah, dating at Hogwarts was kind of the worst.

Louis didn’t find out about the date, until what he would consider the last minute.

On the eve of Halloween (a Friday that was surprisingly mild for the season), Selene and Louis found themselves once again at their usual haunt – a large, wooden table located in the back of the ginormous hall that was the library.

Said teens were staring intensely at the parchments clasped in their respective hands. Louis’s happened to be a letter from his mother, a long winded one that was reminding him to try and ‘stretch’ in his veela form weekly – the fact that she went on to describe how it may feel similar to a female’s period was why he was contemplating an attempt at trying to burn it with his gaze. Selene’s parchment held the notes that she’d taken down in Charms earlier that day – at that moment, they weren’t making any sense to her.

“Louis? This new Charms stuff, I don’t get it. Help me out over here?” Selene’s interruption was received warmly by Louis, as Fleur Weasley (nee Delacour) had, in her lengthy letter, began to describe the severity of her monthly flow to her teenaged son.

“Go ahead.” Louis eagerly ditched his parchment to the side, one-hundred-percent ready to never read it, ever again. “Was it the wandless stuff we started this week? On Tuesday?”

Selene sent him a confirming nod, going into her dilemma, “If I’m casting a charm like ‘protego totalum’, how am I supposed to control what I’m casting it on? It’s, uh, pretty important that it’s cast on the right thing.”

Louis was momentarily distracted by the way her brows furrowed together in obvious confusion, sending his mind spiralling. By the time he managed to force his stupid veela brain to focus, he realised that he had succeeded in the task of being weirdly silent for close to a minute. If there was a wizard-god, then Louis prayed to them that Selene would just think he was seriously contemplating her question and coming to a slow conclusion. “I guess it could be one of those charms that are always going to require a wand. Or, you can just think super hard while casting.” Louis let out a breathy chuckle.

Entertaining this thought, Selene muttered, “I don’t know what wizard-kind did before they realised they could use a wand.”, as she flipped over her parchment.

It hadn’t been a real question, but none the less it had amused Louis to think up an answer to it. He chuckled, crossing his arms on the table to rest on, “I can just imagine it was a bunch of people awkwardly performing ‘accidental magic’, like when we were kids.”

His words caused Selene to laugh too, as she pictured people in old-timey clothes waving their arms accidentally and setting something on fire. “The first person to use a wand must have been like; ‘what?’!” Selene’s face got slightly warmer, as her breathing was interrupted by her chortles, “They were like ‘Bartholomew,” Louis had to cover his mouth in order to hide the snort of laughter he produced at Selene’s excellent impression of the ‘Bloody Baron’. His uncle’s impression was nothing on hers. “Thou hast pick-ethed up a stick, which doth work well-eth’ at mastering thoust powers’.”

Both of them had stomach cramps, trying to contain their laughter. Louis had tears building up in his eyes, and his face was turning red. Selene had doubled over, laughing mostly silently, the only sound being her inhaled breath and the slapping of her had against her knee. Their ‘quiet’ laughter was eventually drowned out by the librarian’s shrill cry of, “Get out of my library if you’re not going to follow the rules!”

Hurriedly, the two of them pack up all their belongings, erupting into occasional giggles every time the two caught each other’s eyes. They burst from the library’s entrance, and the Gryffindor and Slytherin stumbled along the large corridor. By the time they’d reached the end of the long hallway, they both decided it was best for them to start making their way to their respective common rooms.

There was calm silence for ten minutes.

Eventually it was broken. “So…” Louis’s shoulders were hunched over a little, his hands looking as if he’d shoved them as deep as he could, into the pockets of his school trousers. Making himself look smaller was his main way of coming off across nonchalant. However, the only thing he looked, was uncomfortable. “The, uh, first Hogsmeade trip is tomorrow. Are, um…” He paused to inhale some confidence, “Are you going to go?” Louis wanted so bad to shout out, to ask (or even beg) her to go with him on this trip. The sixth-year could imagine it now; the two of them wander the lanes of Hogsmeade together, their noses getting redder the longer that they’re out in the cold… their breath visible and intermingling, as they get closer and closer… maybe, a kiss? Oh, Louis wanted nothing more than that.

“Yeah, I-” Selene argued with herself. She shouldn’t have felt uncomfortable (awkward?) telling Louis about her upcoming date… and yet, she did. Which was absurd, because they were friends! “Uh… Actually, I have a date.” Merlin, Selene’s stomach squirmed. She felt awful admitting this to Louis, even though there was no need to, at all. Her nerves made her ramble, “With Mari Singh, from Ravenclaw. I think she’s in your Transfiguration class?” Selene went on, her mouth moving a mile a minute, but Louis heard none of it.

The blonde boy felt like he’d been physically hurt, despite knowing he certainly had absolutely no true right to feel as pained as he did. Selene Morgenstern was his soulmate, sure, but she didn’t know that. He hadn’t informed her that destiny (and, he guesses; his veela instincts) had fated them to be together. Plus, he was pretty sure that he hadn’t let on about his romantic feelings towards her either.

The Slytherin was her own person, and as such; allowed to date whomever she wanted…

But Louis was allowed to be upset about it. Even if it was irrational to be so. Boys (well, really, he’d insist that he was closer to a man, now) could be emotional too! However, he wasn’t going to expose said hurt feelings to Selene. He was upset by her words, but they were just friends… just friends, even if he did have different sentiments towards her.

Everything Louis Weasley had been taught by his family as a child was blooming into fruition in this moment; good friends support their friends – no matter the personal consequences.

As if the gods above had granted him lee-way, Louis’s turning to go up to the Gryffindor Common Room was fast approaching. “Well, uh, you have a great time! I’ll see you later!” Hastily exiting the situation seemed to be the only way to end this conversation, plus Louis was finding that his eyes were quickly filling with tears, and he didn’t want Selene to see them.

“Uh, thanks, Louis! See you!” Frantically waving at the back of the already turned-away boy was not the way a cool and collected Slytherin behaved. For love of Merlin, why was she acting like this? In true Slytherin sentiment, Selene ignored the way her stomach clenched up the moment Louis was out of sight. “Ugh, I need to get more sleep.”

Louis spent that night clutching his pillows tightly to his trembling body, desperately trying to not burst into his veela form. It was exhaustingly difficult to hold on to his human form, as his veela’s desire to fly away from all the pain he was facing was almost too powerful. The teen was virtually bursting at the seams, due to the effort it took to hold back this side of him.

His heart felt like it was under an intense pressure, as if it was being compressed. And his skin was positively feverish! Every pore along his body was asking for relief. Every muscle fibre itching for some form of freedom that only his veela form could give to him.

And to think, Louis had bitterly mused to himself, all this because I’m jealous. Louis knew, deep down, that he had no true reason to be jealous, or hurt, or sad, or angry. Selene was not his. Not his girlfriend, nor anything more than his close friend! The girl was her own woman. One who can decide for herself who she wants to love, and whom she wants to date.

Still… His acknowledgement of this fact did not miraculously send him into recovery.

Louis remained lonesome and feverish through the night.

There was a problem with Selene’s date.

Or, rather; there was a problem with Mari Singh – well, not really.

Okay, so the issue was with Selene. She was positively sure that there were a dozen other places she’d rather be, than on this date with Mari. The Slytherin clearly did not feel one iota of a romantic stirring towards the bird.

Now, that’s not to say the other girl was not lovely! Mari was smart, pretty, and rather funny - an all-around kind person.

Still, Selene found herself wishing that she was not the one opposite the Ravenclaw in the Three Broomsticks. And, that wasn’t to say it was an awful date! Not at all. It was a… nice affair. They talked over a butterbeer, and giggled at each other’s stories... And, yes; the conversation had been (sometimes) intelligent and (somewhat?) interesting.

Selene just felt like something was missing from it all, though.

“I was like; ‘why does this always happen to him?’!” Mari let out a chortle at her own story. It was a rather long-winded, yet deeply hilarious, anecdote of her families’ latest vacation. Her father apparently fell off a dinghy that the whole family had been sitting in, right into the arms of what may have been a hairy man (or, perhaps, a large bear), whilst not even in the water yet. “Anyway…”

The two female students had slowly been making their way back to the castle. And, now they were standing at the crossroads of where they’d each have to turn away to go to their separate common rooms.

Before Mari could even say anything else, Selene had to be honest with her, “Mari, I had a nice time today, but, uh, I have to be frank with you… I like you as a friend, Mari, but I-” Selene paused, to place her hand on the Ravenclaw’s shoulder and to carefully choose her following words. “I, um, I don’t feel for you, romantically that is.” Mari’s face began to crumble, “I’m sorry, but I had to be honest with you. It would be cruel for me to get your hopes up like that. You’re my friend but sparing your feelings now would only hurt you later. Right?”

Mari mulled the words over, but finally nodded her head softly.

Selene removed her palm from the other girls’ shoulder. She felt obliged to offer up some information that might soften the blow she’d just been dealt, “Plus, it wouldn’t be fair to Naomi…”

Mari’s head tilted to her left, “Gnomes?” It was a cute nickname Mari had for her roommate, fellow Ravenclaw Naomi Gardener. “W-Why would it be unfair to her?”

Selene heard the thinly veiled excitement in her voice. It was well-known within the female population of their respective year-group, that Naomi Gardner fancied Mari Singh. It was true that pretty much everyone knew that, but only Selene heard said information first-hand from Naomi. “Well, Naomi may have mentioned something to me… But it’s probably best to ask her about it.” She leant forward, pressing a friendly peck to Mari’s cheek, “Thank you for a lovely time, Mar.” Sending a wink to the girl, Selene began to walk away. “I hope we’re still friends, Mari! Good luck!”

Louis didn’t expect to see Selene the next morning.

Not because he assumed that something… like that... would happen between the two girls. No, not at all! Rather, Louis was surprised to see Selene, since he had decided to try to avoid her altogether.

Also, the idea of seeing her in the boys’ bathroom was incredibly surprising.

“Um, hello?”

Carefully, Louis angled his entire body away from the approaching teenaged girl. As quick as he could he tucked himself away and buttoned up his trousers. Due to his complexion, the flush on his cheeks was all too visible. Even knowing she could see the blush; he tried his best to act casual as he walked over to wash his hands. Selene was in his peripherals the entire time.

“So,” Louis shook his hands out, getting them dry enough to wipe against the fabric against his thighs – he didn’t even think about using his magic or wand to dry them. “Uh, what brings you to the men’s bathroom?” Before he could embarrass himself, he tucked his hands into the back pockets of his trousers. It was an attempt to seem casual.

Selene let a faux look of sadness creep onto her face, “Well, when I saw you practically running down the hallway when you saw me coming, I figured I should check on you.” She rested her shoulder on the wall to her right, “After all, I am a good friend.”

Louis’s was sure that his heart was going to jump out of his chest. Even though he knew that she was being a nice person, a great friend, his veela hindbrain was absolutely screaming at him. Surely that meant she was accepting the bond! Checking on her mate, right? Merlin! Louis had to snap himself out of those thoughts, because they weren’t facts. He knew first-hand that not thinking truthfully only damaged your own feelings.

“I- I just,” Louis was tongue-tied now. How exactly could he explain that he didn’t want to hear about her amazing date with bloody Mari Singh? “Well-”

Selene cut him off, not wanting to hear any of his poor attempts at lying to her, “I wanted to vent to you, about my date last night.” She rushed out first, before pausing. The Slytherin was gathering herself, choosing her next words carefully. “It was alright.”

The male noticed the lack of enthusiasm in her description of the event. His stomach lurched in awkward excitement.

She let out a quiet laugh, “You know… I was going to talk to Emmaline about it all, but-” Her head lolled to the side as she thought hard, “But I don’t know, I just-” Eventually, Selene pushed off the wall she was leaning on and strolled closer to the him. “I guess I just really wanted to talk to you.”

Louis was sure that he wasn’t breathing. “Oh.” In fact, he was pretty sure that he hadn’t been breathing for Selene’s entire speech. “Okay. Yeah... Alright.” Taking his hand from his pocket, he gestured over towards the exit of the bathroom, “Shall we, then?” Yes, that was normal. If only his heartbeat could chill out, too.

Luckily for them, there was only one first year in the otherwise empty hallway. Said single first year awkwardly still stood, deer-in-headlights-style, as they witnessed the two elder teens exit the boy’s’ bathroom together.

“So,” Louis was trying his best to seem calm, “It didn’t go well?” He paused, before clarifying, “Your date, I mean.”

The two of them were back in the school’s library. It was during a shared free period of theirs, and like always Selene and Louis were nestled together at their table. Heads were pushed closer to one another than strictly needed, both attempting to talk as quietly – they were in fear of the librarian, who had already given them both the most scathing look when they’d walked in talking.

“No, it was fine.” Selene answered him, her lips twisting into a grimace as she thought over the date, “Nothing awful, it just - it didn’t feel right.” She played with the quill in her hand, “I guess when I’m on a date, I want it to feel nicer than a ‘fine’ or ‘alright’.”

Louis nodded, understanding what she meant. “True.” There was silence as the blond wrote down a sentence or two on his parchment. He could feel the tingle of Selene’s eyes watching him do so. “So,” He began again, “No second date, then?”

Selene averted her eyes from his form, pretending that she didn’t catch him observing her from the very corner of his eye. “Not with Mari, no.” She looked down to her work, and unbeknownst to her Louis did as well.

Both had smiles on their faces.

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[jeanvaljean24601]

The Umbrella Academy’ Season 2 Preview: Where Are the Hargreeves Now?

When “The Umbrella Academy” drops its second season on Netflix on July 31, it won’t find the Hargreeves as a united front fighting to stop the apocalypse — at least not right away. Instead, it’ll find the siblings thrown six decades back in time, separated and, in some cases, building their own lives apart from each other.

At a recent virtual junket, the cast and creator Steve Blackman previewed the second season, which was loosely inspired by the “Dallas” limited series of Gerard Way’s comic book and picks up after Five (Aidan Gallagher) throws the Hargreeves back in time to escape the apocalypse Vanya (Ellen Page) spawned in 2019. However, Five’s attempt to save them does have its hiccups, dropping them separately in Dallas over a three-year period from 1960 to 1963. It also messes with the timeline, causing another impending doomsday and involving complications with the assassination of John F. Kennedy — all things the Hargreeves will have to worry about once they get back together.

Blackman says he wanted to make it a bit “challenging” for everyone to find everyone once again, with some building new lives for themselves in the past, forging relationships with new characters, while others drop into Dallas later.

“Klaus starts a cult, Allison gets married, Luther finds a surrogate father,” he says. “It was really important to develop those stories. They were tricky, because you know, each of those new characters had to sort of still work within our world until the family finds themselves again and sort of regroups, probably even stronger than they did in Season 1.”

Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman) is among the first to land, falling into Dallas in 1961 at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. In addition to being separated from her daughter and siblings and having lost her voice at the hands of Vanya at the end of Season 1, she also has to deal with “the reality of having a Black woman literally fall into the ’60s in the segregated South.” Allison is, Raver-Lampman explains, initially in shock. android tv box

“She might not know exactly where in the world she is, but I think she knows exactly where she’s not supposed to be because of the color of her skin,” she said. “Coming from the 21st century, I’m sure she has faced, you know, prejudice and microaggressions, and racism on some level. But immediately being threatened because of the color of her skin, I think, and legally not being allowed to be places — it has got to be absolutely terrifying.”

“I think she’s at a low in so many ways,” Raver-Lampson adds.

Luther (Tom Hopper), too, is dealing with “a big shock to his system.” Once something of a leader for the family, Luther’s now the driver for the owner of a burlesque bar, who becomes a father figure to him. While it’s an adjustment, Hopper says it presents an opportunity for Luther “to find his own identity outside of the academy,” and to learn what it’s like to have to work to make a living.

“I think he realizes that he was a bit too power-hungry, I suppose, and a lot of the decisions he made weren’t the best ones,” Hopper says. “It’s a big come down to Earth for Luther, I think, but also it’s something that he needed.”

Vanya, meanwhile, doesn’t even have the opportunity to process her actions at the end of Season 1 — because she’s almost immediately hit by a car and suffers memory loss, which is something of a blessing and a curse. She’s taken in by a family, finds a new love interest and, while she’s confused and lost, Page says it presents the opportunity to see a “very different” Vanya.

“She’s released a lot of emotion and repressed trauma, so we find her in a space that’s much lighter. She’s much more open, able to connect to her emotions,” she says. “I think of course it’s difficult for her because she’s feeling like, does anybody care? Is anybody trying to find me? And feeling lost in that sense. But in so many ways, she’s way less lost than she was in the first season.”

Diego (David Castañeda) drops into Dallas in 1963, and is thrown into an asylum because of his seemingly delusional claims of Kennedy being assassinated. He finds a friend in a new character named Lila, which turns into a Bonnie & Clyde-esque partnership, and also has a purpose to work toward.

“We find him lost, trapped in an insane asylum and obviously with a purpose of trying to maybe change the timeline, having the capability of proving his father wrong and also maybe understanding him a little bit,” Castañeda says. “And then everything just kind of goes bonkers when Five decides to show up again.”

Five is the last to land, and in the meantime, his siblings have done “considerable damage” to the timeline, Gallagher says. He’s left with several fires to put out, trying to stop the end of the world in the ’60s, while also needing to get back to 2019 and prevent the apocalypse there.

“He just gets progressively more and more stressed and as his anxiety builds up, so does the chaos behind his eyes,” he says. “That was very fun as an actor to see that sort of bubble over and really take over Five, and him really succumb to his suppressed insanity.”

The only two Hargreeves who start off together are, for obvious reasons, Klaus (Robert Sheehan) and the late Ben (Justin H. Min). They’re the first to land in the past, giving Klaus time to, well, become a cult leader. Although it might seem like he’s thriving, being an icon has it’s drawbacks, he’s realizing.

“The novelty of being adored and worshiped by all these thousands of people has sort of very, very quickly worn off and he realizes that being number one, if you will, is a real drag,” Sheehan says. “He’s sort of back to escaping again. It’s like sobriety was his cult in the first series, you know, and drugs was his escape, whereas his escape in the second series is just running with his legs.”

And although Ben is inevitably tied to Klaus because of the latter’s ability to communicate with the dead, Min teases that Season 2 will see him come into his own a bit, especially after Klaus and Ben combined their powers at the end of Season 1 to save the day. x96 max plus

“I think through the evolution and progression of Klaus’ powers, Ben gains a lot more agency and independence in the second season and is able to really fight for what he wants,” Min says.

And will audiences finally learn about Ben’s backstory and how he died? Min says “there are some hints” to what happened — but of course, he can’t reveal much.

“If I say anything more, I will be — ” he says, before Sheehan finishes for him, “assassinated. Like John F. Kennedy.”

[signaturedish]

I really liked Detroit but didn’t get as much context? Maybe I’m just oblivious but could you explain it a bit more?

Let me just start out by saying I enjoyed playing DBH, I thought the fanon was fun, and any criticism I have toward the creators and the game have nothing to do with fans of the game.

You not agreeing with my perspective isn’t something you need to stress about. This is a no judgment zone.

THAT SAID. I could bitch about dbh for an eternity lol, it’s just a disaster on so many levels.

I’m going to regurgitate some points you can find carefully explained (with visual aid) in the Mother’s Basement video I linked in my other dbh post if you want to take a peek at that as well.

DBH is very clearly an allegory for minorities discriminated against in American history. It’s similar to Bright in how blatantly tied their metaphors are to American civil rights issues.

It’s in the rhetoric the rebel androids use, it’s in the symbolism you choose through Markus, it’s in the direct comparisons characters draw in-universe. Markus can (depending on your choices) paraphrase MLK on multiple occasions- one very memorably since in that same sentence he insinuates that humans are inherently inferior, violent, naturally opposed to harmony and will never accept them. Kind of the antithesis of what I Have a Dream stands for.

The fact that David Cage doesn’t seem to respect the references he’s using to communicate the android=minority idea to the audience is an issue all on its own without taking into account the world building.

Relating a fictional people’s suffering to a real one isn’t new at all. Even if it’s distasteful, it’s fast and effective shorthand to get an audience onboard with what is, in reality, a very socially complex issue that takes time to explore in a foreign society.

But David Cage’s world building is so poor- I’m pretty sure the world was built AROUND the shorthand and not the other way around. You can point to anything in the game to see this- laws and normalized behavior. Sale practices and common rhetoric. Almost every facet of the world hinges on logic that doesn’t make sense when ironed out.

It’s so incredibly flimsy when removed from the real world context it desperately needs to even camouflage as coherent that the writers straight up forgot to prove to the audience that androids are actually alive.

Sure- there’s a stupid twist ending where Amanda laughs maniacally and declares the entire revolution to be a conspiracy (which is so nonsensical I don’t even need to debunk it). But that’s a ‘treat’ for major fans to find.

The generic storyline most players see requires you function under the assumption that androids are alive to receive good endings and positive reinforcement (like from menu girl). This isn’t a major hiccup for players because the androids are so heavily related to real minorities and their suffering is so comically malicious that most people follow along and empathize. But that doesn’t mean it’s not one of the biggest failures you can possibly achieve as a writer for this kind of story- they didn’t even seem interested in trying to justify the androids’ humanity. They just are.

It’s only if you’ve already accepted them as Jewish analogs ala armbands and concentration camps that you consider shooting murderous janitor and prostitute androids immoral and not on par with unplugging a rogue lawn mower.

The only suggestion offered in the general storyline besides waking up with a soul is that it’s a virus that simulates emotions androids are not equipped for. Considering the amount of androids snapping and murdering people without remorse, the existence of a self destruct rather than an emergency shut off or reboot like virtually every other tech device on the planet, and that Markus spreads ‘emancipation’ through a wireless transfer- randomly growing a soul seems the lesser probability here.

So here we’ve got a civil rights allegory that is missing the point of the real world message and movement when it’s not actively insulting minorities by simply existing. And its conclusion fails to prove that androids have humanity, which implies so many ugly things about the oppressed people used for the initial comparison.

And I’m pretty sure it was all one big accident because no one editing thought to mention how Not Cute it is to explicitly tie the struggle of black people in America to naturally subservient inhuman laborers. :/

It’s 2 am and I’m probably rambling now so I’ll stop here. Thanks for asking, hope you can understand my complaints about their total abuse of context now even if you may not agree with me.

[dailyaudiobible]

09/17/2020 DAB Transcript

Isaiah 25:1-28:13, Galatians 3:10-22, Psalms 61:1-8, Proverbs 23:17-18

Today is September 17th welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I'm Brian it is great to be here with you today just like it is great to be here with you any day. It is a great to be alive upon the earth no matter how crazy things get upon the earth. The life breath of our Father is within us. We are here. Our ears are open, and we invite the Holy Spirit to speak through the word of God as we do every day. And, so, let's dive in. We’re reading from the English Standard Version this week. Isaiah chapter 25 verse 1 through 28 verse 13.

Commentary:

Okay. So, in the book of Galatians, the letter to the Galatians from what we read today we…we arrive at justification by faith. And that's a theological term for sure. And…I mean…you know our eyes can glaze over with theological concepts easy enough. I like them…I love them actually, but it's easy enough to…that it becomes cliché - justification through faith. But what is the essence here? And…and we’ve been talking about how Paul was controversial and we’ve even been kind of putting ourselves in the position of his hearers to understand like how complex and how difficult it would've been for them to embrace what Paul is saying and why they thought he was a heretic, but we should understand that this could not have been an easy road for Paul. We met Paul when his name was Saul and when we met him he was persecuting people who believed in Jesus trying to stamp this message out, even being present at the first…the first recorded martyrdom, that of Stephen, where Saul’s there holding everybody's cloak while they’re killing, like throwing rocks at Stephen until he dies, which cannot be a good way to go. Paulk’s on his way to Damascus to continue the same, right, when he meet…when he meets Jesus. And, so, you can only imagine like the complete rewiring of a whole system that you have given your life to, the just…the complete disruption of it all for Paul so that he has to go and just really examine what it is he believes as it's being revealed by Jesus. And, so, we can see why Paul would start at the beginning with Abraham and move forward. And we can see why things would start to click for Paul, once he does that because he begins to realize there isn't any action, there isn't any kind of obedience to a certain rule or set of rituals that is gonna make us righteous before God. Maybe if somebody could actually live into those things, maybe God is saying, “okay, if you can do all this then you can be righteous, but nobody can, nobody could. So, that can't be the endgame.” So, Paul goes back to the beginning of the story, he goes back to Abraham, he finds out Abraham believed and that belief, that faith in God and what God had said, that trust in the experience that he had had, that this was real and wasn’t gonna be stolen from him, that God had spoken to him, and he believed it, that was counted to him as righteousness. And righteousness was Paul’s goal. That's why he was such a strict Pharisee. That's what they were trying to do, obey the law and be made righteous before God ultimately. So, Paul’s like, “hang on”, basically, “hang on. Abraham didn't have a law to obey and he still was made righteous before God.” In fact, and as we read in our reading today, “the law didn't come for 430 more years. So, what about all those people? Like were they able to be made righteous through faith in God? Because that was the only way. There was no rituals, there was no system of organization…organizing the people around something. They believed and were made righteous. This is the origin of justification by faith.” And, so, then, having that laid out, having that perspective unpacked, then Paul says, and I quote him, “is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.” It's back to his original, his…his constant argument. The law shows you that you are impossibly separated from God and dying that way unless you can achieve it, like unless you can live a perfectly. But you can't and Abraham didn't either. He believed. He believed. He trusted God. And, so, for Paul, he’s like “that's all we have to do here. Like, that's the long and short of it. We have to believe and allow that belief to transform us because we are experiencing the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is transforming us from within and leading us forward into life.” I mean we could just…you know…put an exclamation point there or whatever, and just go, “there, that's the story, like that's what he’s saying”, because that is what he’s saying. We just have to acknowledge based on all of the back story that we have…that we've entered into is that, as good of news as this was it was like too good, right? Like too good, too simple. Like “really, that's it. I believe and then I die, and I’m resurrected, and I relax. I…I…I fall into the soft pillow of grace and I am then enveloped by the arms of the one that I can now call Father, Abba, God, the God that I'm so afraid of, that I'm following all of the rituals to try to…to try to stay on His good side. The hoops that I'm jumping through, the levers that I'm pulling, the recipes that I'm building, the stew of my life that I'm trying…trying to whip up, all of that's not gonna get me there, like that doesn't do anything? All I have to do is believe and let God transform me?” That is good news friends. That is the good news. And it was difficult good news for many to embrace. And then we gotta look in the mirror. What recipes are we making? What rituals are we following? What hoops are we jumping through? What levers are we trying to pull to get the same thing to get the attention of God and try to stay on His good side when it's all done? All we have to do is believe and fall back into it, ease back into it. Yes, yes, we have to fight the flesh. Yes, we have to live into sanctification. Yes, it requires a lot of things, primarily endurance, but we’re not in this alone, we’re not navigating alone. It's done. Our Father loves us enough to…enough to be so intimate with us that He dwells inside of us. He is within us. It is His work of sanctification. It is His work of conversion. It is His work of restoration and renewal. It's not our work. We keep trying…we keep trying to be made righteous. We can't. We can’t be made righteous. We can believe and become righteous because of the gift of God that is constantly at work within us. May we live into this good news. May this good news accelerate inside of us the transformation happening, moment by moment, day by day step by step as we continue our journey through life with our Father.

Prayer:

Father You are so good. When we understand this, You are so good. And, so, much that You have made available to us through faith we’re still trying to earn and we’re still feeling guilty every single step of the way because we can't earn it. When You have to find moments of exasperation, I suppose You don't, Your God, but You have to have these moments where it's, “like my darling, my son, my daughter, my precious one, You don't have to do this, it's done. Let's enjoy being together. Let's enjoy life together. And as You live into this and it transforms You then You will be doing what You're supposed to be doing. You will be shining brighter than You can possibly know.” Help us live into this. Come Holy Spirit, well up from within us. Help us to live this today. We ask in the name of the risen Christ. Amen.

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And that's it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hi everybody it’s Carla Jean from Promp Nevada I’m calling with praise report. Many of you remember that last year I was divorced from my husband of 25 years and at the beginning of this year I lost my job and I was homeless and he allowed me to stay in his guestroom and we rekindled our relationship and on Friday, September 11th on what would’ve been our 27th wedding anniversary we were remarried. I know that many of you had prayed and I’m just so thankful for this community. And today on the 13th Brian read from second Corinthians 13:11, “rejoice, strive for full restoration. Encourage one another. Be of one mind. Live in peace and the God of love and peace will be with you.” Thank you, my brothers and sisters for encouraging me, for being of one mind, and for living a life of peace. Please know that I pray for all of you every single day. I love you and I’m just rejoicing. God bless. Bye.

Hi this is Paul from Wales my DABber name is Why I Follow Jesus 365 which I run on Facebook but today I was out on mission again. I’m just grateful for the way that following the DAB has absolutely changed my life over the last five years. And saw another two people saved this morning. That’s either the 28 or 29. Got three people in the message book waiting to discuss Jesus. Be praying for them for a while. And just want to give a praise report. God’s at work. It’s fantastic. It’s going brilliant and none of this would’ve happened if I hadn’t started with DAB. And it’s just changed my life to walk the walk and be encouraged. That’s were called to do. And as much as giving mission and telling people God loves you and has a perfect plan for your life it really is about us learning to be obedient. And until we do as He tells us people won’t be saved and it’s just hopefully an encouragement for somebody no matter the difficulties in the challenges. And the other fantastic thing is I learned this week to really follow the Holy Spirit’s guidance in my personal life over things like buying cars. And none of that what I even have attempted to consider before DAB. So, thank you bless you take care stay safe in America, terrible what I’m seeing on the news. You’re in my prayers. Take care.

[Singing starts] dear God please help all the people that are in the fire. Please help them to be safe and not to get hurt. Please help them to know that you’re with them. Dear Lord, we love you so much. Dear Lord, we love you. You’re in our heart. We’re in yours too. Please help other people to learn about you [singing stop’s]. Thank you.

Hi, DABbers this is Kari from California I am also a longtime listener in the first-time caller. Today is Monday the 14th I was just listening to the prayers and Sue’s from California I heard your prayer and just wanted to call and thank you for calling in for the first time to ask for prayer for your family. I was so touched by your message and will be praying for you and your family but also just encouraged by the faith that all of you have as you’re in the midst of all these challenges and a lot of unknown. You are standing strong in your faith and your encouragement has encouraged me and will encourage others. So, Lord we just lift up Sue’s and her family Lord. We lift up her husband who’s on hospice now and we just ask for Your intervention Lord. Be with the family as they walk through this time with him. Lord lift up Sue’s and ask that You would just take this depression away Lord, that You would flood her with Your peace and encourage her for her daughter and this cancer Lord. We ask for a miraculous healing. We rebuke this in Your name Father, and we claim healing for her daughter that she wouldn’t even have to start this chemo in October. And for her son, whatever is going on there that he’s not ready to share Lord that we also ask for healing for him. We ask for healing for Sue’s colon and we just ask Your grace and peace and mercy on this family. DABbers I love you all. Thank you for this community. Have a blessed day.

Hi, good morning this is Jeanette from Denmark. I’d really appreciate some prayer. I have recently had a virus and my body’s been trying to get back to normal after it. And I take some medicine to help keep my immune system up and when that is playing together with an infection it usually means I don’t sleep very well. I want to share what the Lord comforted me with last night while praying, that, yes, He is our God who sees us but He’s not a human being like people who only can look. He’s our shepherd who sees us through everything. When Abraham’s son Ishmael was together with his mother, the Egyptian slave in the desert, God didn’t just let them go. He sent an angel to provide water and encouragement. And our God is the very best shepherd we have. He’s more powerful than everything that is around us, no matter what it is. I love you guys over in the states. I am…I’m praying for you guys during the election season. Remember to guard the door of your heart. Be careful what goes in your eyes and your ears and have peace. The Lord sees you. The Lord knows you and He loves you.

Hi, Brian hi DABbers this is Emily in Seattle. I haven’t called in a while. I just wanted to let you know that things are good. Things are really good. I’m still dealing with my vision loss and that isn’t fun but everything else in our life can be summarized in one word, grace. The grace is abounding more and more in these last days and I pray you guys feel His grace as much as I do and are experiencing His grace even through all the hardships that we’re going through in these last days of COVID and everything happening in the world. And I just wanted to let you know that I love you all very, very much. God bless you guys so, so much. Keep listening to the DAB. Keep out there with your faith. Keep the faith going. You got this. I love you all. Bye.

[scripttorture]

Torture in Fiction: The Umbrella Academy: Episode 1-6

I tried to start this saying I was only going to review episode 2 which has a prominent torture scene. Several hours later I am… significantly closer to the end of the series. So I thought I may as well include what I’ve watched.

The Umbrella Academy is a Netflix original series based on an independent comic book. With great acting, excellent music and a cast of deeply flawed characters it was (I understand) quite a hit.

I’m enjoying it a lot more then I thought I would. It’s violent but it’s also ridiculous in a way few stories but superhero comics tend to commit to. There’s a 60 year old man stuck in the body of a thirteen year old after travelling to an apocalyptic future and being in a thirty year relationship with a mannequin. And I just- I love comics.

This series feels very much like a superhero comic book on screen. With all the good and the bad that goes with that concept.

But I’m not here to tell you what I think of the superhero genre and it’s relationship with violence. I’m rating the depiction and use of torture, not the series itself. I’m trying to take into account realism (regardless of fantasy or sci fi elements), presence of any apologist arguments, stereotypes and the narrative treatment of victims and torturers.

Umbrella Academy is the story about a group of very damaged people with super powers. Adopted as babies (born in extraordinary circumstances) by a millionaire ‘adventurer’ six of the Hargreeve children were raised to be superheroes. The seventh, apparently without powers, was isolated in a world of talking chimps, robots and extraordinary abilities.

The story starts with Reginald Hargreeve’s death and the five surviving children (including one who’d been living on the moon, apparently for years) meet for the funeral. In the course of this ‘Five’, teleports back from the future.

While the story overall focuses on the way an emotionally abusive and neglectful upbringing effects all of the major characters I’m going to be focusing on the clear instances of torture in and solitary confinement in some of the episodes.

Both Luther and Five are subjected to extreme solitary confinement. Luther is isolated on the moon for four years, Five is isolated as the last person alive for several decades.

Five stops up in a donut shop late at night and sits next to a tow truck driver. They have a brief conversation and the driver leaves. An armed gang then attacks Five. He kills them and two more people (Cha-Cha and Hzael) are sent after him, apparently by the same organisation.

Believing they’re looking for a man in his 50s they go after the tow driver. They torture him and while they eventually believe that he isn’t Five, they continue to torture him to get information on Five. The driver tells them everything that happened the night before.

Later Cha-Cha and Hazel mount a raid on the Hargreeves estate looking for Five. They don’t find him but they manage to capture his brother Klaus.

Klaus is an addict (what he takes is not explicitly defined) and talks to dead people. The two are linked throughout the story with the heavy implication that Klaus avoids sobriety in order to escape his powers.

Klaus is tied to a chair for about a day and a half. He’s beaten, strangled and ‘waterboarded’. (Cha-Cha calls it waterboarding but didn’t actually carry it out properly. I’ve assumed that was for the safety of the actors).

Klaus escapes and shows no mobility problems after being cut off the chair. He then spends several months in 1968 (as you do). On his return his mental health problems seem to be no worse then they were before he was tortured.

I’m giving it 0/10

The Good

The actual forms of torture shown in The Umbrella Academy are reasonably realistic. They’re not always accurate to the time period or place, but when time travel is involved I’m willing to let that slide. The electrical torture shown, with a battery and bulldog clips, could be taken directly from Alleg’s accounts of his experience at the hands of French troops in Algeria. The stress positions and strangulation are shown realistically. And while the waterboarding isn’t shown realistically I think it was done this way to protect the actor and allow him to breathe.

The Bad

I’ve covered solitary confinement before. The estimated safe period for most people is about a week. While both Luther and Five has a strong sense of purpose during their confinement (and this seems to be a protective factor) that wouldn’t help a lot when they’re confined for such an unrealistically long period. At four years Luther should be a complete mental and physical wreck. At several decades including puberty, Five shouldn’t be able to interact normally with people and should be more obviously mentally ill then Klaus. Both of them are shown without symptoms and this downplays the damage of torture that’s routinely depicted as harmless.

Umbrella Academy shows torture ‘working’ with victims giving up accurate information if only you know how to hurt them. This isn’t true. Torture can’t result in accurate information. This kind of misinformation encourages torture in real life.

Klaus’ response to torture is to thank his torturers for inflicted pain with the strong implication that he’s enjoying being tortured. It’s implied that he’s turned on by pain so ‘can’t’ be traumatised or hurt by torture. This is ridiculous and insulting to both the BDSM community and torture survivors. BDSM practitioners don’t stop feeling pain and they aren’t immune to trauma. There is a world of difference between a consensual and non-consensual encounter. Personally I think this kind of portrayal is akin to suggesting that victims can’t be raped because they’ve previous enjoyed sex. It’s unacceptable.

Klaus is held in a stress position for at least a day. This is a survivable time frame but on release he should have significant mobility issues and should have needed help escaping. Instead he’s perfectly capable of making his way out with a heavy time-travel device. He can walk and move his arms freely. This completely ignores that the way he was held is torturous.

Neither Cha-Cha nor Hazel show any of the mental health problems typical of torturers. They’re portrayed as competent and able to investigate effectively, even though they torture. Torturers are not good investigators and torture consistently undermines effective investigation. Realistically a character can be one or the other, not both.

Cha-Cha and Hazel are also depicted as good fighters and generally skilled. In reality torture produces a deskilling effect in torturers, they get worse at what they do.

Cha-Cha and Hazel are shown as obedient to their superiors, only targetting people who have information or are ordered as targets. This isn’t how torturers operate. They disobey orders, ignore superiors and target a wide array of people who usually have nothing to do with anything the torturers are supposed to investigate.

No one in the series so far has shown any long standing mental health problems as a result of torture or isolation.

No one has shown any memory problems as a result of torture or isolation.

The end result is that the series suggests torture doesn’t have any long term effects at all.

Overall

I think this series really highlights something I’ve been saying a lot on the blog: It’s very easy to find realistic depictions of how torture is carried out and it’s very hard to find realistic depictions of the effect it has on people.

These episodes, and I suspect (from what I’ve seen) the series more generally handles torture terribly. It’s unrealistic and it’s parroting a lot of tropes that either excuse torture or belittle survivors.

That didn’t get in the way of me enjoying the series outside of these scenes. There are a lot of great characters and character moments.

But none of that excuses this senseless repetition of torture apologia.  

For a series that works so hard to highlight the effect of childhood emotional abuse it downplays the effects of physical abuse at every turn.  

It uses torture as a short cut in the plot. It portrays torturers as smart and restrained badasses.

It basically does virtually everything I advise writers not to do.

And this comes about simply by repeating the same old genre tropes without bothering to look up the subjects involved.

There are other ways to have your bad guys find out the information they need to know. There are other ways to establish them as terrible people.

There are realistic ways to show people resisting torture, which don’t diminish the pain they suffered.

I think what I want to stress most of all is that this apologia is unnecessary. It doesn’t add anything to the story. The fun stuff, the super heroics, the ridiculous time travel escapades and carefully choreographed fight scenes can all happen without apologia as the background noise.

For once- I’m not really mad. I’m disappointed. That these tropes creep into genre after genre, put down roots and keep coming back up. The mainstay of this story wouldn’t be any different if they took out torture or even used it in a more realistic way.

Five’s isolation in an apocalyptic wasteland doesn’t last. He’s picked up by an agency of time travellers and offered a job. This could have happened more quickly, especially since the time he spends alone and the time he spends with the agency are both poorly defined.

Luther’s trip to the moon functions to build a wall between him and his siblings. And again, that could have happened in a much shorter time frame.

Cha-Cha and Hazel could have just interviewed the tow truck driver for their information. They’re shown conducting successful interviews later.

Klaus’ resistance could have been framed as natural and there are several points in his dialogue already that could have supported that. The story could have used the fact that Klaus genuinely does not know where Five is.

In the end The Umbrella Academy’s use of torture is a waste of narrative space. None of these torture scenes are essential to the plot and every single one of them is handled badly.

It’s an example of a narrative that wasn’t prepared to commit to showing the consequences of torture.

We can all do better.

Edit: I forgot the full title. Oops.

Available on Wordpress.

Disclaimer

[sciencespies]

Meet the Scientist Studying How Cell Phones Change Societies

https://sciencespies.com/nature/meet-the-scientist-studying-how-cell-phones-change-societies/

Meet the Scientist Studying How Cell Phones Change Societies

Smithsonian Voices National Museum of Natural History

Meet the Scientist Studying How Cellphones Change Societies

July 21st, 2020, 6:00AM / BY

Juliana Olsson

Joshua Bell is the curator of globalization at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. He is working on a new exhibit about the global history of cellphones. (Smithsonian)

Dr. Joshua Bell is a self-described people-person. It’s why he transitioned from archaeology to cultural anthropology when he realized he was more interested in the people around him than the objects he was excavating. So it’s no surprise that while working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, Bell misses daily interactions with his colleagues at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. But as a curator of globalization, he’s been paying attention to how people are staying connected during this period of isolation — particularly through mobile devices.

As part of the “Meet a SI-entist” series, we caught up with Bell to talk about globalization, how anthropology is changing and his shifting feelings about cellphones.

What do you do at the Smithsonian?

I’m a cultural anthropologist which means if people do it, I can study it. For the last 20 years, I’ve done field work in the Purari Delta of Papua New Guinea documenting, witnessing, interacting and collaborating with the people there. But my official title is Curator of Globalization. It gives me an opportunity to rethink our collections in interesting ways. For example, our collections from the 1928 New Guinea Sugar Cane Expedition help tell the story of how New Guinea has played a role in global history, because it’s where sugar cane was first domesticated. Many people wrongly think of Papua New Guinea as remote and outside of time, but I try to show how this is a false narrative and the region still plays a global role.

But like many of my colleagues, I wear a lot of hats. I’m also acting director of the National Anthropological Archives and the director of the Recovering Voices program, which aims to connect our collections to Indigenous and Native American communities to help them document and revitalize their languages and traditions. This is especially important for groups facing language and cultural erosion in the face of globalization. A lot of great projects have come out of the Recovering Voices program, like the Mother Tongue Film Festival and the Tuku Iho project.

For two weeks in 2017, the museum hosted the Tuku Iho project, a pop-up Māori event that included live tattooing, dance performances, and canoe-making. (Joshua Bell, Smithsonian)

What excites you about working at the Smithsonian?

The depth and breadth of the collections always blows my mind. For me, the collections represent people, places, histories and ways of being. I’m interested in how we can work with communities to share these stories — particularly of people we haven’t heard about or from before. There’s nothing more profound than working with people who are gracious enough to come to the museum and collaborate to unpack the histories and knowledge in our objects.

I feel incredibly privileged to be able to work at the museum. It’s a job I don’t take lightly because it comes with a lot of responsibility that requires humility, especially as a white male curator whose job entails being a steward of all this diverse cultural material. At the museum, we engage with a wide, diverse audience, and communities can and do come to us and say “hey, you’re representing us wrong.” We have to get it right, so it’s a job that keeps me and my colleagues very honest and open. And it takes a lot of time because we have to build trust.

After working with Māori canoe makers through the Tuku Iho project, Bell collaborated with Hawaiian canoe builders in 2018 to re-lash and 3-D scan a canoe given to the Smithsonian by Hawaii’s Queen Kapiolani in 1887. Left to right in the foreground: Joshua Bell, Ray Bumatay and Alika Bumatay. Left to right in the background: Les Matiu, Dino Morrow, Alexis Ching and Bryce Motu. (Smithsonian)

You’re working on an exhibit about cellphones, which seems like an odd topic for a natural history museum. Could you tell us more about it?

When I started working here in 2008, the iPhone had just come out. It struck me how smartphones embody globalization, because they’re made of materials from many different places and they connect users around the world. That planted the idea in my head for an exhibit that would show all the people, places and supply chains that are bundled up in cellphones, and examine how these devices affect us personally and socially.

Along with revealing the hidden connections between people in cellphone production and usage, I also wanted to make sure that everyone who works on the show is included in the exhibit. I’m tired of the “lone curator” narrative. Revealing hidden labor in museums is something that I am invested in as an anthropologist.

Bell appeared on the Smithsonian Science How webcast to talk about the natural and cultural history of cellphones. (Smithsonian)

Have the pandemic and the protests changed the way people are using cellphones? Or changed your view of them?

I’m not sure that the pandemic and recent demonstrations have changed how we use cellphones, but this moment has allowed us to appreciate their capabilities more. I have always viewed cellphones ambivalently: they’re amazing tools that connect us to the world, but at the same time this connection raises concerns about privacy. In light of COVID-19 and the current protests though, I now view our devices in a much more positive light. How profound is it to be able to see and talk to your loved ones on video during quarantine? Or — as with Darnella Frazier’s film of George Floyd’s murder — to document abuses of power and share world-changing moments in real-time? One of the stories we’re focusing on in the upcoming exhibit is the Black Lives Matter movement, and how cellphones have this ability to amplify the impacts of protests.

This ties into the exhibit’s idea of “unseen connections.” We are all interconnected through what we consume, what we watch and by living on the same planet. Often, it takes something breaking down to reveal these ties and how important something is in our lives. If your smartphone stops working, you’ll notice all it does anew. A similar thing is happening now in the country where COVID-19 and the protests are making us look closely at our society. They’re exposing big systemic wrongs and fault lines that have been too long overlooked. These events are calling us to bear witness — and hopefully pushing us to change.

We’re living through challenging times. Is there anything that makes you optimistic for the future?

Definitely the next generation. I haven’t been able to join the protests because of my own worries about COVID-19 and having small kids, but seeing young people standing up in big and small ways has been profound. Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch said in an interview that to protest is patriotic, so to see everyone out there makes me proud and very optimistic that when I’m old, young people will show us the way.

Bell works with Natural History Research Experiences intern Maris Jones in the museum collections. (Smithsonian)

In anthropology, we always learn not only from our elders but also from those who come after us. I’m very excited to see what the next generation of anthropologists — who are living through the pandemic and involved in the protests and very active in Black Lives Matter — can teach me and how they will push the field in different directions. This is why I teach and mentor interns. For as much as I help my students, I’m always learning from them.

Meet a SI-entist: The Smithsonian is so much more than its world-renowned exhibits and artifacts. It is a hub of scientific exploration for hundreds of researchers from around the world. Once a month, we’ll introduce you to a Smithsonian Institution scientist (or SI-entist) and the fascinating work they do behind the scenes at the National Museum of Natural History.

Related stories: Get to Know the Scientist Reconstructing Past Ocean Temperatures Meet the Scientist Studying How Organisms Become Fossils Get to Know the Scientist Studying Ancient Pathogens at the Smithsonian

Juliana Olsson is an exhibit writer and editor at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. Her favorite aspect of the job is getting to share her passion for the natural world with museum visitors (and occasionally getting to go on fossil digs and try out virtual reality headsets). Her least favorite part of the job is battling writer’s block. Before joining the Office of Exhibits, she received her Master of Arts in Museum Studies from Johns Hopkins University.

More From This Author »

#Nature

[euphoriacrossing]

Euphoria is just coming right along.

Our new bridge and campsite opened today. As well as my house moved to it's more permanent spot and i got a lighthouse for us! I love lighthouses so I am pretty excited about that one.

I can't recall feeling so happy about something as I feel about this stuff now and I almost feel bad that I can't share it with my two closest friends who don't play video games and who are struggling with things lately. This has helped me so much, and I feel so blessed that I have something like this to help pull me out of bed and gives me something that makes me feel productive.

I hate to say it but in ways it's been on par with how getting a dog was for me... just in SOME ways, and definitely not to that scale in a lot of other ways. And don't get me wrong, I'm not bored of my dog, but he has bonded with my mom in a way he never will with me and I don't know when or how that happened, but it means for his ultimate happiness I have to let her have most of his time. Which can be the opposite of soothing, at times, I feel bad and jealous. So don't get me wrong, having a dog will always be better and I'd absolutely do anything for him, but Animal Crossing is helping me now in a lot of the ways that he used to when I first got him and he still needed me. That is saying something HUGE because that clearly and obviously changed my life for the better.

For right now at least, I feel like this is a game changer (lol) for me. At least for my mental health. Obviously it can do nothing great for my physical health, but at this point, I don't even know what can.

And this game not only has me waking up excited, but I feel like it really nurtures my creative side with everything you can do to make the town better. I have big, costly plans, and it's gonna take a few bells but everytime I earn enough for one project to be done I get to feel accomplished, and I get to be creative in deciding what to do. Plus it's just FUN. It's a game, but it's more than that, too.

One of my favorite features though is finally being able to send mail to friends. I wish there was an actual post office, sure, but I have a lot of fun sending mail in real life in hopes of making people smile. Same concept in Animal Crossing. Plus it makes it easy to share cool finds with people on other Islands. I imagine for couples and families it's especially cute to leave a little note and virtual present for a loved one. But just between friends it's pretty cool too, to just send the unique stuff you find day to day. Like I was looking for roses and my friend sent me some. So I sent her a cool fountain. So she sent me some extra oranges. I'm about to send her something EXTRA special maybe, so I hope she'll like that. It's just a really fun, cool feature and it's one I frankly thought would never be in the game. There is actually a lot of ways communication has been made better, like being able to type from your phone, or send instant messages (I think, haven't done it yet) to your BEST friends. And I think this is how these games SHOULD be, but I honestly never expected it to BE that way. It's a really pleasant surprise.

Anyway, today I need to figure out what to work on. I think I need to build the town's first incline today that way I can better utilize that extra space on the second level. If I ever unlock the ability to terraform I think I'll be getting rid of some of the third level so the second can be bigger, but I think that is where I will put most of the rest of our houses.

I want to have a residential area on the right, shopping district in the middle, and a woodsy, orchard-y kind of place on the left. I do have an island in the middle and I don't know what to do with that space yet, might make it a garden... not sure though. And those are all just rough ideas they aren't the detailed full plan. But for right now since it's been so much trouble I've only been working with the first level mostly. Now that it's going to have an incline I think I can more easily access it and start thinking what I want to do up there.

And I also want to upgrade my house. I think I want to get it fully upgraded so it's best to work on that as much as I can as it could take a while even if I paid off my loan daily and I know that I won't be able to make it each day especially with the loans getting so much more expensive. So I need to constantly be working on that too. Plus make sure I have money for shopping, especially for clothes.

Clothes are my favorite in these games and the wand makes it that much more fun. Celeste came to visit last night and I got a recipe for a star wand which I do have enough to build I just don't know if I should keep my bamboo one instead and save those pieces for something else. I will probably make the star wand because it's cuter honestly. With the bamboo wand it's kinda more just a stick of bamboo more than any kind of wand.

Anyway, I can wait no longer, I have shiz to get into this morning on the beautiful Isle Euphoria. So I am going to go do that. Thanks for reading.

[theonyxpath]

WOW! What a weekend!

And it started with our Legendlore Kickstarter funding on Friday! Now we’re moving into Stretch Goals – so please, if you haven’t already, check it out! The link is below in the Kickstarter section!

And and, to get you started, here’s a review of the free PDF of the complete text for the book linked on the KS site: https://thetabletopalmanac.wordpress.com/2020/06/15/rpg-reviews-legendlore-manuscript-preview/

Of course, this leaves the rest of the weekend, which just happened to consist of the first-ever Onyx Path Virtual Gaming Convention!

What a fun time!

We really didn’t know how folks would respond, but now that the three days of panels and gaming are done, I can say that our community was in turns hilarious, supportive, giving, excited, and energized. And that energy really flowed right back into all the events and energized all of us!

I mean, we’re still tired as all get out – who’d have thought that a con I could attend from my own house would do that? – but pretty sure we’re all still feeling the love, too.

Just to pull the giving part out for a second, we are absolutely thrilled that our charity goals were blasted through sometime mid-con, and we’ll be donating over a thousand dollars to each of our excellent causes: The Bodhana Group, and the Thurgood Marshall College Fund!

Now, back to the whooped by the con part, we are and I am, so today I’m just going to pull out some impressions of the events from a bunch of us who normally would have had our Monday Meeting today – we rescheduled it for later this week.

SCENES FROM A VIRTUAL CON:

Matthew: The Onyx Path Virtual Gaming Convention was the first con I helped organise, and while it had its share of stresses in the setup, it came to excellent fruition due to the fantastic teamwork of everyone working hard behind the scenes and amazing engagement from viewers, panelists, players, and those who donated to our charities and took advantage of our sales on onyxpathcon.com

RichT: I started us off on Friday night with the Opening Keynote speech, and then just sort of chatted with Matt McElroy, Dixie Cochran, Eddy Webb, and Matthew Dawkins about what was coming with the con.

For me, I then rolled into my first game, I played one per day, which was the first Actual Play of Exalted Essence. It really did run both fast and smoothly, and all of the various Exalted types we were playing had their times to shine. I was able to put a different, more easy-going, pie-eating, spin on my bear-totemed Lunar who still wound up grappling with the big bad and bear-hugging them in place for Danielle’s Solar to practically one-shot the sucker!

Ian: Convention was great, despite a few hiccups. I was on two streams early on: one Friday evening and one Saturday morning, and then the rest of the con was “free.” Travis and the GG crew were all-stars. Travis couldn’t get Nightbot working for a bit so I took over the random prize drawing for a few streams. I was often juggling two different streams in different monitors to help keep dialogue going in chat. Kudos to everyone, especially those of you who worked multiple panels and games in a single day.

RichT: In fact, the panel Ian refers to on Saturday morning was the “What’s Up With Onyx Path?” panel that started off the day at 9am. This is a panel where a bunch of developers and I talk about upcoming projects for their lines, and answer questions. Eddy and I started doing them about a decade ago when it was “What’s Up With White Wolf?”, but changed the name for obvious reasons after Onyx Path appeared.

During that panel, a couple of things came up: Matthew teased that we might very well do They Came From (the Old West!, or something more flavorful that fits the genre) as the third They Came From game, and Ian talked about Trinity Continuum: Aeon Mission Statements, a book all about the organizations in the setting that aren’t the Psi-Orders. We also noticed that some folks in the chat were new to Onyx Path and what we create, so that was unexpected but welcome news!

Then, I played my second game of the con, which was a sneak preview of Scion: Demigod! Neall took us through a voyage to the Grecian Afterlife, using the Ready Made Characters from Heroes of the World and I got to play a stern Horace Farrow ala Sam Elliott, while Steffie cut up many, many things with Yukiko’s Grass-Cutter Sword. Then, another panel on Community Content and why it rocks wrapped up my Saturday.

Matthew: I didn’t encounter one instance of bad behaviour in chat or anything dubious discussed on screen in games or on panels, and I attended most that I could as a viewer, if I wasn’t an active participant.

Viewership of panels and games peaked at around 250 to 300 people at one time for a couple of the shows, and bottomed out at around 50 people. Those are good figures. Our subscriptions and follows on Twitch rocketed, with many subscriptions being gifted by viewers and even more just being purchased or acquired via Amazon Prime.

My own highlight is impossible to choose between the games and panels I ran or appeared on, though the “Create Your Best Character” panel, which I suspected would be a sleeper, turned into an excellent talk on not playing harmful stereotypes and break out of dangerous tropes.

Eddy: The convention was great for me. My scheduling was a little odd, and I ran into one minor technical issue, but otherwise it went smoothly and it seemed like people in the chat were excited and appreciative. I felt like we got to dig into topics we aren’t able to do in normal convention settings, and attendance was definitely higher than usual for panels at other shows. I also heard that people had a good time watching the games or playing in ad-hoc games all weekend. I know there were some problems on the back-end of getting this all together, but I don’t think any of our attendees noticed anything but a nice, polished experience.

RichT: Sunday started out just like Saturday, with the second “What’s Up With Onyx Path?” panel, although with a different set of developers. The big news was when Eddy ratted out that he was working on Squeaks in the Dark, the mice/rats supplement for Realms of Pugmire!

I then had my second panel on Sunday, the “Art of Onyx Path” one, where Mirthful Mike Chaney joined three of our freelance artists and I in discussing just how illustrators work for us: how they submit their work, how they are contacted, how art notes work, how artists work, and what sort of music do we listen to while doing illustrations. Lots of great questions from the audience, and a wide range of experience within the panel, made it really interesting.

RichT: Then my Sunday game was the first public playtest of They Came From Beyond the Grave! run by Matthew, and featuring Dixie’s Rose Thorne, a driven vampire hunter with attitude, and 70s hair. She teamed up with B. Dave Walters’ smoooth street investigator to blast the ever-lovin’ hell out of evil cultists, while Ian Mueller’s exorcist (sorta) shot the big bad between the eyes with Rose’s derringer, and my slightly odd professor tried to save as much weird-science lab equipment as he could. Science! We left the haunted house as the superimposed fire effect began to devour it, fortunately for all involved (except the dead 70s prog-rock star sacrificed by the cultists).

I immediately had to log into my last event, but what a special event it was! Added late in the proceedings as we had to work within a lot of people’s schedules, I was thrilled to sit down with a bunch of my old co-workers at the original White Wolf in a “Memories of WW” panel with Bill Bridges, Rich Dansky, Ethan Skemp, Mike Tinney, and my old go-to designer for graphics, Matt Milberger.

Much reminiscing occurred, interposed with questions from the chat, that pretty much focused on our time from the early 90s to the early 2000s, although we did chat a bit about the late, lamented WoD MMO, as most of us worked on that in one capacity or another. Mike talked about how he cozened us an arcade version of Dark Stalkers for our little lunchroom, and we had fond memories of the WW Blood Bowl League.

(My Children of the Khorne chaos team won the cup two seasons in a row, just sayin’).

And although I didn’t want it to end, it did, and my time at the first-ever Onyx Path Virtual Gaming Convention was over. Which was actually pretty good because my brain was on autopilot at that point.

Ian: Everyone on both sides of the screen seemed to have a great time, and the only real complaints I heard were that there were too many good things happening at once and people had to make a choice on which stream to watch.

Matthew: While many games had a tendency to overrun, I’d say they each ran to optimal length and didn’t cause too much disruption farther up the schedule.

RichT: Which are all good things to happen, actually, with your first online convention, so we’re going to review all the metrics we can gather ourselves and from the super folks at Gehenna Gaming, and see what we can learn from all that.

Will we do another one? We just don’t know yet, but whether we do or not, this one sure did what we wanted to do – folks who attended had a whole lot of fun! If you missed out and want to watch the games and panels, they are currently on the Onyx Path and Gehenna Gaming Twitch channels for subscribers, but will soon migrate over to the Onyx Path YouTube page for all to watch!

So, from all of us to all of you, whether you attended or didn’t, thanks for making it a real joy to walk with you exploring:

Many Worlds, One Path!

Blurbs!

Kickstarter!

The Legendlore Kickstarter funded right before we started the Virtual Con last week! A really great way to start things off! Now we’re building towards Stretch Goals: the GM’s Screen, and starting the Legendlore Companion book PDF!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/339646881/legendlore-rpg-setting-for-5th-edition-fantasy-roleplaying-0

Grab your friends and escape to another world!

You’ve found an enchanted portal — a transition point — between worlds. The portal, called a Crossing, takes you to a world you thought only existed in novels and films: a magical land where dragons roam the skies, orcs and hobgoblins terrorize weary travelers, and unicorns prance through the forest. It is a world where humans join other peoples such as elves, trolls, dwarves, changelings, and the dreaded creatures who steal the night. It is a world of fantasy — of imagination.

It is the Realm.

It is Legendlore.

Onyx Path Media!

This week: the most exciting episode of the Onyx Pathcast ever, recorded live at the Onyx Path Virtual Gaming Convention!

As always, this Friday’s Onyx Pathcast will be on Podbean or your favorite podcast venue! https://onyxpathcast.podbean.com/

Hi all!

We’ll be back next week with our usual promotion of all the excellent games on our Twitch and YouTube channels, but for now, we encourage you to do what it seems a lot of people are doing right now, and hop over to our Twitch: twitch.tv/theonyxpath

While the convention has ended, but subscribing to our Twitch channel (which you can do for free if you have Amazon Prime), you get access to all the panels and games that ran on it over the convention weekend. So, if you missed a panel or game you really wanted to watch, head on to our Twitch, subscribe, and browse our back catalogue!

Other than our content, we would like to promote a couple more games for those without Twitch:

Occultists Anonymous continue their excellent Mage: The Awakening game here:

Episode 106: Friends & Minions The cabal combats the uninvited guest summoned by an Exarchal Supernal Being. The danger of the Exarchal attention prompts further investigations away from the Supernal. https://youtu.be/YSErlwnC7Nc

Episode 107: Making Promises Songbird reaches out to the Queen of the Vampires of New York about a divine blessing. Wyrd and Atratus hatch a plan to make a car… https://youtu.be/dueYYUl0FrY

And A Bunch of Gamers have just started up a two-part extravaganza of They Came from Beneath the Sea! right here:

The Crabby Lizard from the Murkey Depths

Episode 1: In the small east coast town of Chatham Massachusetts things are easy. The soda pop shop is ready for any of the locals. The city comes together for a bake sale to help their neighbors, and everyone knows each other. All that changes when a strange electrical storm and a booming voice can be heard over the jukebox. Tonight, the strange, the horrid, the damp creatures from beyond the stars and the depths of the sea rise up to meet the people of Chatham.https://youtu.be/UwxzdwVoYQE

The Tabletop Almanac has released a lovely review of Legendlore that you’ll want to see! https://thetabletopalmanac.wordpress.com/2020/06/15/rpg-reviews-legendlore-manuscript-preview/

Please check these out and let us know if you find or produce any actual plays of our games! We’d love to feature you!

Electronic Gaming!

As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is awesome! (Seriously, you need to roll 100 dice for Exalted? This app has you covered.)

On Amazon and Barnes & Noble!

You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).

If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue from which you bought it. Reviews really, really help us get folks interested in our amazing fiction!

Our selection includes these latest fiction books:

Our Sales Partners!

We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire and Monarchies of Mau out into stores, as well as to individuals through their online store. You can pick up the traditionally printed main book, the screen, and the official Pugmire dice through our friends there! https://studio2publishing.com/search?q=pugmire

We’ve added Prince’s Gambit to our Studio2 catalog: https://studio2publishing.com/products/prince-s-gambit-card-game

Now, we’ve added Changeling: The Lost Second Edition products to Studio2‘s store! See them here: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/all-products/changeling-the-lost

Scion 2e books and other products are available now at Studio2: https://studio2publishing.com/blogs/new-releases/scion-second-edition-book-one-origin-now-available-at-your-local-retailer-or-online

Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

And you can order Pugmire, Monarchies of Mau, Cavaliers of Mars, and Changeling: The Lost 2e at the same link! And now Scion Origin and Scion Hero and Trinity Continuum Core and Trinity Continuum: Aeon are available to order!

As always, you can find Onyx Path’s titles at DriveThruRPG.com!

On Sale This Week!

Available this Wednesday, we are just a bit embarrassed to say that we’ll be releasing on DTRPG the PDF and PoD versions of Swine and Cheese Party, Et Al., excerpts from The Complete Duke Rollo, for Trinity Continuum: Aberrant!

Also available this Wednesday on DTRPG: the Advance PDF for Quantum Entanglement the Trinity Continuum: Aeon Jumpstart!

Conventions!

Though dates for physical conventions are subject to change due to the current COVID-19 outbreak, here’s what’s left of our current list of upcoming conventions (and really, we’re just waiting for this last one to be cancelled even though it’s Nov/Dec). Instead, keep an eye out here for more virtual conventions we’re going to be involved with:

PAX Unplugged: https://unplugged.paxsite.com/

And now, the new project status updates!

Development Status from Eddy Webb! (Projects in bold have changed status since last week.):

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep.)

Exalted Essay Collection (Exalted)

Adversaries of the Righteous (Exalted 3rd Edition)

The Clades Companion (Deviant: The Renegades)

The Devoted Companion (Deviant: The Renegades)

Saints and Monsters (Scion 2nd Edition)

Trinity Continuum: Anima

CtL 2e Novella Collection: Hollow Courts (Changeling: The Lost 2e)

M20 Technocracy Operative’s Dossier (Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary)

Redlines

Dragon-Blooded Novella #2 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Hundred Devil’s Night Parade (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Novas Worldwide (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Exalted Essence Edition (Exalted 3rd Edition)

M20 Rich Bastard’s Guide To Magick (Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary)

V5 Children of the Blood (was The Faithful Undead) (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

V5 Forbidden Religions (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Wild Hunt (Scion 2nd Edition)

Second Draft

Many-Faced Strangers – Lunars Companion (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Kith and Kin (Changeling: The Lost 2e)

Dearly Bleak – Novella (Deviant: The Renegades)

Mission Statements (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Contagion Chronicle Ready-Made Characters (Chronicles of Darkness)

Under Alien Suns (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

V5 Trails of Ash and Bone (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Trinity Continuum: Adventure! core (Trinity Continuum: Adventure!)

Dead Man’s Rust (Scarred Lands)

Development

TC: Aberrant Reference Screen (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Across the Eight Directions (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Contagion Chronicle: Global Outbreaks (Chronicles of Darkness)

M20 Victorian Mage (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Exigents (Exalted 3rd Edition)

N!ternational Wrestling Entertainment (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Assassins (Trinity Continuum Core)

Manuscript Approval

Crucible of Legends (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Post-Approval Development

Editing

Lunars Novella (Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition core rulebook (Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition)

Player’s Guide to the Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)

Contagion Chronicle Jumpstart (Chronicles of Darkness)

TC: Aberrant Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Trinity Continuum Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum)

Masks of the Mythos (Scion 2nd Edition)

LARP Rules (Scion 2nd Edition)

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

The Book of Lasting Death (Mummy: The Curse 2e)

They Came From Beyond the Grave! (They Came From!)

Scion: Dragon (Scion 2nd Edition)

Scion: Demigod (Scion 2nd Edition)

Post-Editing Development

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

W20 Shattered Dreams Gift Cards (Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th)

Cults of the Blood Gods (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Hunter: The Vigil 2e core (Hunter: The Vigil 2nd Edition)

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant core (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

Monsters of the Deep (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Legendlore core book (Legendlore)

Pirates of Pugmire KS-Added Adventure (Realms of Pugmire)

Tales of Aquatic Terror (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Terra Firma (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

One Foot in the Grave Jumpstart (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e)

Indexing

Art Direction from Mike Chaney!

In Art Direction

Scion Titanomachy – Art coming in.

Tales of Aquatic Terror

WoD Ghost Hunters (KS) – Prepping KS assets.

Aberrant – AD’d. First new comic in.

Hunter: The Vigil 2e

Mummy 2

Deviant – Dividing up among current artists.

Legendlore – KS running.

Technocracy Reloaded (KS)

Cults of the Blood God – Rolling along.

Scion: Dragon (KS) – Waiting on art notes.

Masks of the Mythos (KS) – Some tweaking to art notes and hiring artists.

Scion: Demigod (KS) – Tweaking art notes, hiring artists. Splats in progress.

They Came From Beyond the Grave! (KS) – Finals coming in.

TC: Adventure! (KS) – Cover art finishing.

In Layout

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad

Vigil Watch

TC Aeon Terra Firma

V5 Let the Streets Run Red

Pugmire Adventure

Proofing

Trinity Aeon Jumpstart – New artist taking care of finishing missing art.

Lunars: Fangs at the Gate – Finishing Backer PDF errata.

Contagion Chronicle – Going to WW for approval this week.

Cavaliers of Mars: City of the Towered Tombs

Magic Item Decks (Scarred Lands)

Yugman’s Guide Support Decks (Scarred Lands)

Dark Eras 2 Screen and booklet

At Press

Scion Companion – Shutting down errata.

TCFBTS Heroic Land Dwellers – Prepping PoD files.

TCFBTS Screen and Booklet – Files at press.

They Came from Beneath the Sea! – Files at press.

Creature Collection 5e – PoD files uploaded. Traditional files sent to printer.

Pirates of Pugmire – Files at press. Prepping files for PoD.

Pirates of Pugmire Screen – Files at press.

Duke Rollo Aberrant Book: Swine & Cheese Party – PDf and PoD versions on sale Wednesday on DTRPG.

Pugmire Buried Bones – Gathering errata.

Changeling: The Lost 2nd Edition Dark Eras Compilation – Gathering errata.

Today’s Reason to Celebrate!

Today is feet up and dozing after the busy, busy, Virtual Con and celebrating its success!

[journeysintowebcomics]

Worm Liveblog #116

UPDATE 116: Travelers

Last time the Travelers had managed to get off the building and try to get to safety, but instead they stumbled into the edge of what seems to be a quarantine. If they try to breach it, they die. How will they deal with this situation? Let’s see!

You know, with all this, I’m starting to wonder if maybe Noelle’s injury here has something to do with how she’s like in the present. What if the reason why she’s in need of being locked in a vault and is so dangerous is because her injuries here made her unable to control her power correctly? Or it caused her power or her body to have some unexpected problems. A possible counter to this theory of mine is that I remember Alexandria was completely healed when she got her power,  but that may have been a consequence of Cauldron’s serums instead of something that happens when you get a trigger event. Grue sure didn’t get healed when he got his second trigger event, that was because he was sapping someone else’s power, not because trigger events heal you. Maybe I’m onto something here!

Although this little theory of mine kind of would be ruined if it turns out she got her trigger event right before getting injured in that apartment. Oh well. Not the first time I would be wrong, and certainly not the last.

Naturally the Travelers are rather upset they’re getting ignored despite their situation. They think the soldiers hearing them, but I’m pretty convinced they are, especially because a speaker tells them to step away from the fence or else they’ll die. Wow. I’m pretty certain there must be a reason for such drastic threats, but it’s still callous. I wonder what’s the reason for them to pretty much be of absolutely no help at all.

Above and some distance away, the Simurgh is still fighting, making buildings float around and taking Scion’s attacks. The Travelers have to find cover before they get injured from that titanic fight. I’m a little nervous about it, because, well, the Simurgh is making buildings levitate around. It’d be so easy for her to uproot any place they get into, and use it as a shield.

Luke’s leg injury isn’t as bad as I thought it was, he says it’s shallow. Francis seems to have a feeling he’s putting on a brave face not to worry them. In that case, all this walking must have worsened it somewhat. If Luke starts losing feeling faint, then this all will take a serious turn for the worse. Heck, maybe Cody really is Ballistic and Luke is the one who dies. It’d certainly fit with Ballistic’s distaste for Trickster.

“Yeah, but if there’s trouble, maybe they’ll come help us,” Krouse pointed out.

“Doubt it,” Jess said.

He turned her way, but the way her lips were pursed suggested she wasn’t planning on elaborating.

She really should tell everyone all she knows, but for their benefit and my benefit. At least it’d be sharing information they could use for any short-term plans.

There’s a place to hide in, and they try to get in by breaking the door open. Having failed at that, they sneak into the basement like a bunch of cat burglars.

“Hope there’s nobody hiding in there,” Oliver muttered.  Mewled might have been a better word.

Krouse didn’t generally dislike Oliver, but the guy was hard to like, too.  He’d joined the group when they’d started their gaming club at school, had once been one of Noelle’s friends, back when they were in kindergarten or something. Now he was in a few of Krouse’s classes, but despite the associations, he remained a second string member of the group.  Krouse was willing to admit to himself that Oliver was a second string friend, too. He was short, a little pudgy, with an unfortunate haircut and no real personality, rarely joining in of his own volition.

That all summarizes rather well my general opinion of Oliver. Frankly, when I mention the Travelers, virtually never I associate Oliver with them. I forget he exists. He really is a second-string member. Not having powers at all, it’s kind of surprising he manages to keep up with the rest – and that the rest bother to take him along, too. You’d have thought they’d have told him to scram or something. Maybe they’re letting him stick around because they’re all on the run from the military, and they can’t let someone of the group be captured and harassed.

That said, I really wonder why Coil tolerated Oliver around, if his role in everything was as incredibly minor as it seemed to be.

Jess definitely knows something, and Francis insists she tell them already what she knows, why they’re under quarantine. She accepts, with the condition they wait for Cody. Francis insists and gets shut down, because this is not the time to be an asshat. Trickster hasn’t changed one bit in all these years.

He found a couch and got into a sitting position, easing Noelle down.  He rubbed his shoulders where the sleeves of her shirt had been pulling at him while Marissa and Oliver handled getting Noelle from a sitting to a prone position.

“On her side,” Marissa said. “There’s a lot of blood in her mouth, and we don’t want her choking.”

Oliver nodded, and Krouse found space to get close and help them shift Noelle over.  Once she was in position, he seated himself on the oak coffee table, elbows on his knees, facing her.

She was white to the point that she was pushing pushing past pink and moving into the bluer hues, and she had a purple-brown bruising around her eyes.  The blood around her nose and mouth was caked on thick.  Some had gotten onto her coat and sweatshirt.

Oh, dang. That’s pretty bad. If I didn’t know she was alive in the present, I’d be pretty concerned she was going to die. She really sounds like she’s on the verge of death. Those who can help her don’t want to, and those who do want to help her can’t do it.

I admit I’m a liiiittle peeved, though. If there’s a moment Noelle could have gotten some characterization and stuff, it’d have been in this arc. True, in the first chapter there was some, but it wasn’t much. It’s somewhat disappointing that even in the past Noelle is not available to do a thing in the story. In the present she’s locked in a vault, being a complete mystery, and here in the past she’s almost catatonic.

Now that they’re in their newfound shelter and Cody is with them, Francis pressures Jess to talk.

“We have to know what’s going on, what to watch out for.  This screaming in our heads-”

“Don’t remind me,” Cody said. “Fuck me, I’m losing my mind.”

“That’s what I was going to ask,” Krouse said, staring at Jess.  “Are we losing our minds?”

“Not… not permanently,” Jess said.

Oh. Just temporarily? I don’t know, something’s off. Why would Grandiose’s team kill him if any madness from the song is temporary? Maybe the madness is temporary, but there are some effects that remain, effects that are better prevented by killing those affected. Things aren’t looking too bright for the Travelers here, really.

“It’s what happened in… what was that place called?  Lausanne? Switzerland.  She showed up, and nobody wanted to pick a fight with her, and they were curious, so they studied her, and tried to communicate with her. Tons of people gathered.  Then she… sang?  Screamed?  Whatever this is.  There was chaos, people didn’t know what was happening, so they weren’t able to evacuate that well.  Roads clogged.  And then they started flipping out.  Emotions ramped up, inhibitions lowered, flashbacks to old traumas.  And a lot of the emotion that got juiced up was fear. People can do pretty stupid, dangerous things when afraid.”

So what I’m understanding is that the Simurgh messes with people’s emotions by using her song, and that leads to some rather bad things. Hmmm...what if the idea you have to quarantine those who listen to her is a byproduct of ramped up fear? It’s not implausible, no? It sure would be quite ironic and chaotic if it turned out that the attempts to contain the worst of her antics was the Simurgh’s influence anyway.

Even though she talked about what she knows, there’s still this feeling there’s something she’s not telling. Francis even thinks for a moment maybe the ‘temporary’ part was a lie. She did hesitate a lot about talking about this, so...it’s not impossible she’s still hiding something out of concern for them all.

Say, if I recall correctly, Genesis is on a wheelchair. Given everything that has happened so far in this flashback...she wasn’t on a wheelchair back then, no? All this time I kept picturing her still sitting on a wheelchair. There goes Jess, rolling around on her wheelchair on top of a building full of windows and what not, on slippery surfaces in the middle of winter while the Simurgh destroys everything. I really should have realized this before. This line about she being concerned what may happen if her legs get too cold is what made me think about this. It could be the cold really caused her to lose the function of her legs.

Apparently the Simurgh’s song not only affects people, it also can affect animals. Hm. There’s no way the military doesn’t know about it, no? I’m not sure the barricade they have will be effective against animals trying to get out. Then again, it’s not like the Simurgh has much use for animals, unless she intends to make them maul people around.

He’d been scared, earlier, had felt genuine fear for Noelle’s well being, for his own.  But this was something else entirely.  What he was experiencing now wasn’t fear, but despair. He backed away, thinking hard. Too many things weren’t making sense, but this threatened to bring everything into a kind of clarity he didn’t want.

Given what Jess said about how the Simurgh can manipulate people’s emotions, this is rather alarming. I imagine it’s going to get worse, since they’re still in the area, so...their only hope ist hat the Simurgh leaves.

Francis takes a knife, just in case he needs to defend himself against one of those monsters that fell from the skies, and returned to the rest. The song in their heads is already complex enough to resemble real singing, which is once another bad sign. Things are getting pretty bad, and given how none of them have powers...well, that’s reason to think it all may get even worse, no?

Everyone else is busy tending to the wounded or being wounded, so Francis has free reign to go interrogate Jess about what she knows about the Simurgh. He’s convinced she knows something more, and turns out he’s correct. She’s still reluctant about talking, though.

“It wouldn’t help to tell,” Jess said. “They’d panic, and we need to focus on taking care of Noelle and Luke.”

Panic, huh. Meaning whatever she hasn’t talked about is pretty bad. I’m not sure how worse it can get, honestly. Like, I know the situation can worsen, but I’m not sure what else the Simurgh can do that’s worse than what she’s already doing. Does she outright control them without anyone realizing it, perhaps?

Having secret conversations is a bad idea when everyone is feeling so antsy and about to be suspicious of everyone – possibly a consequence of the Simurgh’s emotional shenanigans, really – and there’s not even time to talk about that. The military outside are shooting at them. Ah, looks like they have abandoned any pretenses about things going to be okay.

For a moment I thought maybe that the military would kill them all was what Jess was hiding, but then I remembered they saw Grandiose get killed by Dragon. This isn’t something they’re unaware about. So whatever she knows should be worse than death. Does the Simurgh control their dead bodies or what?

Oh, nevermind, the military was trying to kill a monster. Oh well.

Noelle is getting worse, she’s not reacting to anything. She better not die! If it turns I’m right about the Simurgh controlling dead bodies, then...well it sure would explain a lot about the present. Coil locks a Simurgh-controlled Noelle, who for some reason has powers, while the Travelers try to find out how to help her return to normal to...bury her, I guess?

“No,” Marissa said.  “I can handle this, I think.  What am I looking for?”

“She shouldn’t be this pale, but there’s not a lot of blood, except around her nose and mouth.  Check for injuries?  I’m worried she’s bleeding into her boot or her jacket or something. I don’t know.”

That does indeed sound pretty bad. My immediate thought is that there’s internal bleeding, in which case she’ll need a miracle to be okay again.

Emotions are running rampant here, Cody barely said ‘She’s modest’ in reference to Noelle and Francis immediately wanted to scream to him, and thought about how if he did that then he wouldn’t contain himself and he’d lash out at Oliver. Hmmm...it could be possible the Simurgh affects more those that are of a sourer disposition, like Francis. Nobody else seems to be feeling as haywire as he seems to be right now.

Giving the girls some privacy while they check Noelle and try to find external injuries, the guys go to the kitchen to hang out and wait for the results.

A minute passed, and Oliver turned his attention to searching the cupboards for food.  He found a fruity cereal and poured some out into his hand. Krouse took some for himself, chewing on it.

Cody’s eyes narrowed as he glanced away. “I don’t like you, Krouse.”

“This isn’t exactly the time to hold onto old grudges.”

Says the guy who was twitching with barely repressed frustration five minutes ago. Other than the moment he was told he was out the gaming team, Cody has been taking this all better than expected. It’s like Francis is growing more pissy, while Cody calms down more. He even is trying to have a serious conversation with Francis about how they treat each other, and Francis isn’t really receptive about it.

Somehow I think these two going into the basement, away from everyone, while they’re about to jump at each other’s throats is kind of a bad idea. But naaaah, there they go. Down to the basement, all alone, where there’s plenty of stuff stashed away. The conversation continues, this time about how Francis wormed his way into Noelle’s heart while Cody backed down. It really is not the time for this conversation, haha

Krouse flinched.  “Let’s drop this topic of conversation.”

“Why?  You keep doing that, trying not to talk about stuff.  Is it because you know I’m right?”

“It’s because we know that whatever happens, this screaming in our head is going to push us to the edge.  Any argument could turn ugly if we aren’t careful, and I’m not forgetting that you wanted to hit me before.  What’s to say you won’t try again, with a weapon in your hand?”

“Fuck you.  I have self control.”

Well at least Francis is aware of that much. Good for him.

The reason why Francis wanted to come down here is because he wanted to search for more weapons – idea that’d be great if it wasn’t because a big concern right now is that the Simurgh may manipulate them into attacking each other. Luckily for them, there’s space for...like one casualty only. The rest will be fine. But really, if it wasn’t because I knew most of them would be okay, I’d be so convinced there’d be a bloodbath in like one or two chapters.

Neither Cody nor Oliver – yeah, Oliver is here. Hey there! – want any weapons, in fact Oliver is busy staring at a wall. Is he hearing something new in his head, perhaps?

Krouse found a battery operated nailgun, fiddled with it to find the clip and check the number of nails inside. He pulled the safety at the nozzle back and fired an experimental shot into a black plastic bag.

“This is a mistake,” Cody said. “A ranged weapon?  We walk upstairs with this stuff, and in half an hour we’ll have killed and butchered each other.”

Hah! That’s exactly what I was thinking! One wrong move and this could all turn into Battle Royale: Worm Edition.

The three guys who went into the basement soon have some pretty tough weapons, and go back upstairs to check on the situation. How is Noelle, gals? Not good at all. What they found does suggest there’s internal bleeding, and it’s pretty bad. It’s so bad Francis takes the decision to go outside and look for a doctor. If only it were that simple. I really doubt there’s going to be any doctors around here, and even if there are, there’s only so much they can do. Noelle needs a hospital.

“If you’re playing the gallant boyfriend because of what I said in the kitchen-”

He wanted to slap sense into Cody. He settled for raising his voice, “Fucking stop!”

Cody shut his mouth.

Wow. Cody, there’s a dying woman here. Dying. Is it really that strange that someone would want go seek medical help for her? Not everything is macho bravado, geez.

It’s soon decided who will go outside to look for help: there’s Francis, there’s Cody, and Marissa is coming too. They all have weapons to defend against anything that could attack them. They’re as ready as they can be.

The three go outside to seek help. Francis keeps thinking that there’s something off about all this, that what they have seen just makes clear there’s further consequences to the song.

“Where is everyone?” Marissa asked. “We’ve barely seen anyone on the streets.”

“They know better,” Cody said.

“They evacuated,” Krouse corrected. “It’s why the heroes were okay with knocking down buildings like they were.  Everyone was already cleared out.”

They evacuated real quick, then. It was like everything was okay one moment, and then the next it was there, destroying everything. What if something else happened, like...like their perception of reality isn’t accurate? Maybe more time passed. Maybe there indeed was an evacuation, and this group didn’t know or notice at all. Maybe the Simurgh can influence more than just emotions and can tamper with their memories too. It may not be that the Simurgh appeared and destroyed everything, including toppling their building in a second, but that her attack had been going on for a couple hours already and their memories don’t fit reality.

“Took us too long to get out of the apartment,” Krouse said, the lie smooth.

...I’m not sure what the lie is. It did take them a while to get out of the apartment.

What I’m getting from this all is that Francis has realized something pretty big, and Jess knows it too. Something so big they’d dissuade everyone else from realizing it. Thankfully for me, I don’t have to wonder for long what it is, because Francis spells it out:

The reason people had evacuated so quickly was because the fighting had been going on for some time.  Jess had said the Simurgh wasn’t a tinker.  She was probably right.  The Simurgh had merely copied an existing design, copied a device that had already been used once.  Making the massive halo-portal was just a question of copying the layout, remembering how the pieces had been put together, and being very, very smart.

Jess would have figured it out, once she saw enough of the capes, or when Luke had gotten lost in his neighborhood. Even when they’d just climbed out of the apartment, she had asked why the Simurgh was here.

He thought back to the bird in the cage, and the bloody newspaper that it had been standing on.  He’d only been able to read part of the headline. President Gillen orders…

It isn’t that Alexandria, Scion, the Simurgh and the other heroes somehow came here.  We’ve been taken there.  The Simurgh had brought them to Earth Bet.  Earth B.  It was the Earth they’d heard so much about on the internet and the news, stuff Jess had followed with such curiosity that they’d jokingly called her a cape geek. An Earth where Japan was in shambles, a different president led the United States of America, there were a thousand times the number of parahumans, and Endbringers threatened to crush humanity in a merciless, unending battle of attrition.

They were a long, long way away from their families.

So...basically the Simurgh isn’t attacking their city. What’s going on is that the Simurgh made a portal, and then...the building the Travelers were in was brought along. Huh. Because that must be the point it all happened, everything turned ninety degrees because the building was transported to another world altogether.

...

In that case the portal that brought them here must have been real close to the floor. That building sure didn’t fall from the skies like the monsters did.

Also, golly, Jess made quite the assumption there. I know I would never suspect I was on another Earth until there was overwhelming proof about it, but she managed to deduce it rather quickly. In any other situation she’d have been wrong, haha! But yeah, that’s why she’s been so cagey. She knows they’re all stranded in another Earth altogether.

I suppose the Worldhoppers isn’t nearly as good of a team name as the Travelers.

I have to wonder if maybe Coil was also looking into giving them a way to return home. All this time I took for granted that what he was doing for them was looking for a way to help Noelle, buuuut what if it wasn’t that, and what he was looking for was a way to let them return to their Earth? Or it could be both, really. It’d be quite the motivation to play along with his plans, and would give them a reason not to care much about this entire Earth and its people, anyway.

It does make their indifference about the people around here be a little more understandable, yeah.

Either way, that’s the end of the chapter. I’ll stop for now!

Next time: six updates