#i hashtag gave up at some point on nearly every one but i figured if anyone would understand that it's u. love u <3< /div> Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[yangjeongin]

SEUNGSUNG as pop punk/metalcore album covers ( happy birthday mary 💓)

[lycorogue]

For your ask game... 7, 13,15 and 16!

Livrever! You're just as bad as @cyhyr! You should also be well aware of my wordiness! Welp. Looks like I'm dusting off that good old Long Post hashtag again today. 😂

[Fanfic Writer Ask Game Questions]

7. What story/headcanons do you feel the proudest of?

By far the headcanon (which became a story) that I'm proudest of is the origin story of the lucky charm bracelet Marinette gave Adrien in "Gamer."

She already had it on-hand, and she didn't seem to have made it specifically to gift to Adrien. She even said he could "borrow" it, but never got it back. I think the charm bracelet was a spur of the moment decision to try to cheer him up and build up his confidence. When I was a kid, my mom gifted me various inspirational cards and worry stones to help me through finals and remind me that I could achieve anything I put my mind to. It felt fitting that Marinette's parents would do something similar, and THAT is where the bracelet originally came from.

If you want to read the full headcanon-inspired story, you can find it here: Build Your Own Luck

I love this headcanon so much I'm making sure to work it into my "I promise, I'm still working on it" WIP One and the Same.

Honorable Mention for favorite headcanon would be the headcanons I came up with for my Plagg-centric/Plagg-Appreciation story Forever in Darkness. In particular, my headcanon that Plagg was Aladdin's "lesser genie of the ring" from the 1001 Arabian Nights tale. I basically had that headcanon since I first saw Origins and Plagg mentioned meeting a genie before.

(Also, ya know, I still consider my first completed multi-chapter story Peeping Tomcat my magnum opus... so... yeah... proud of that one too)

13. When did you start writing fanfic?

I've been dabbling in fanfic pretty much ever since I understood what fandom was. When I was in elementary school I would create a whole series of X-Men OCs (only to discover a decade or so later that nearly every OC I thought of is already a canon X-Men character, they just never made the cut for the 90s cartoon).

In middle school and early high school (so roughly ages 12 through 15), I created a self-insert Batman OC (and love interest for Dick Grayson's Robin). She was Selena Kyle's niece that moved in with her. She struggled between excitedly being her Aunt Selena's apprentice as a cat burglar, and using those skills to be a hero with Batman and Robin. I can't recall the character's name anymore, but she went by the alias Black Panther (because that was my school's mascot and I'm a nerd like that).

About the age of 16 or 17 I joined my first play-by-post role-play game where I played Harley Quinn. It didn't last long before the game master went to college and the whole thing fell apart.

Then there was a fanfic dry spell. I did work on original works almost constantly from the age of 10 straight through to college. Then I had a college professor that more-or-less broke my creative writing spirit, sadly. I still wrote for video production classes and scriptwriting classes, but I didn't write anything recreationally for over 5 years.

Then, in 2009 I got back into the "Hey, Arnold!" fandom. August 2010 I wrote my first fanfic for the fandom. It would be the first fanfic I would ever publish online. I've been working on fanfics again ever since. 😁 (if you don't want to read the story on FFN, you can find the import over to AO3 here)

15. What is the fanfic you’ve written that you’re most proud of?

As I said before, I still think of Peeping Tomcat as my magnum opus. It is the longest story I've written. It is the first multi-chapter story I was able to actually complete. There are a lot of moments in that story that I just love to reread myself. It's the first story I've written that I felt compelled to write a sequel to (sadly, said sequel, One and the Same, has been stubborn the past 4 years and won't properly form, so that's still a WIP). It's the only ML fanfic I've published that has inspired fanart (but it's not my first fanfic ever to inspire art. That honor goes to my sadly abandoned HA! fanfic What is Truly Meant to Be). Plus, I got to emotionally torture poor Adrien, but also give him a happy ending.

Runner Up, I think, would have to be Prescription for Love, which is my interpretation of what Adrien did off-screen during the season 3 episode "Backwarder." A lot of my reviews have stated how much people loved Kagami in that story despite not particularly enjoying her canon characterization at that point in the series. Plus, Adrien is an oblivious little mush.

Honorable Mentions to the aforementioned Build Your Own Luck as well as my first Christmas-themed story Woven Heartstrings. I am still amazed at how perfect the gifts are for all of the characters, and I was the one who thought of them!!!! Plus, I've had a surprisingly large number of kudos/comments on that story outside of the holiday season, so it must really resonate with people even outside of December. Final Honorable Mention goes to the aforementioned Plagg-Appreciation story Forever in Darkness.

16. What fanfic tropes do you avoid writing for?

Goodness. I actually don't write for tropes. Not really. I aim more for "how close to a legit episode can I make this story?" or just general "This plot bunny showed up and I guess I'm nurturing it now???"

I don't know if I even KNOW all of the basic fanfic tropes....

If I used the This or That (Fanfic Edition) game as a guide, I think the tropes off of that list I'd avoid would be:

Flower Shop AU - I don't know much about flowers for that to be worth trying

Historical AU - I am TRASH at historical anything... although I'm a HUGE steampunkest... go figure

Major AU reworks in general - I am perfectly content snuggled into the canon. I like this show for a reason. And I like fanfic because the world building has already been done for me.

Crack??? - I don't have anything against crack. I quite enjoy it. I just... I'm not creative enough to come up with something so bonkers????

Whump - Not intentionally, at least. I almost never go into a story with the goal to torture the characters. That just... kinda... sorta... happens??? Sometimes???

Enemies to Lovers - I ADORE this trope, but I don't know if I could ever manage to write Adrien/Chat Noir as Marinette's/Ladybug's enemy nearly as masterfully as the other works already out there. Especially when some of my "competition" includes Discordant Sonata by @edendaphne and Curiosity and Satisfaction by @imthepunchlord.

Whew! This was even longer than the 4-question ask from Cyhyr! You ladies sure do know how to get me to talk. 😁

Thanks so much for the ask! Anyone else interested in getting to know more about me and my writing style? Feel free to drop me those asks. 😁

[ladylynse]

A belated happy birthday to @bibliophilea. 

Forewarning: All Dipper knew was that there was something buried in some special thermos behind the shack; all Danny knew was that he had no idea how he’d gotten here. Inspired by this artwork by @hashtag-art

Part 3 [FF | AO3] (previous)

-|-

“Okay,” Danny said to himself once he was back in the forest and sitting on a springy bed of moss. He ran a hand through his hair. “They know. Or at least they practically know, because there’s no way they bought that.” That was a problem. Not them finding out the truth, exactly, unless it meant they played that card and trapped him again. (He’d really have to figure out how to prevent that from happening again. His parents didn’t believe in non-ghostly magic, but Vlad would have a field day if he realized that had actually worked.)

Thing was, though, if what he’d done had really been enough, if he’d somehow managed to do whatever Clockwork had wanted, Danny would be on his way home right now.

But he wasn’t, which meant he hadn’t.

And he couldn’t exactly time travel without help, so it’s not like he had an alternate route home.

That probably meant that they hadn’t believed his warning, either. He’d have to figure out how to convince them, assuming he could talk to them without them trying to exorcise him or something. Unless exorcism would send him to the Ghost Zone? He’d be a lot more willing to let that happen if he knew that for sure; it beat waiting around for a natural portal or risk getting caught by Vlad if he tried to sneak into one of the ones he’d built over the years.

Unfortunately, given some of the things Danny had seen in the past, he wasn’t going to bet that exorcism wouldn’t equate to destruction.

Especially in a place that gave off such skin-crawling vibes—seriously, what was wrong with that place?

Well.

Real magic, apparently. Somewhere. Buried within all the scams.

Buried.

Like his thermos had been buried.

What else was buried, then?

Danny slumped back against a tree, absently flicked an ant off his knee, and stared upward at the branches. “I have to go back, don’t I?”

No one answered, which was probably a good thing. It was too much to hope that Clockwork would come back so soon. Especially when he was set on ‘not interfering’ while interfering as much as possible through Danny.

Mabel and Dipper’s magic, whatever sort it was, worked better on him when he was Phantom. His best defense was staying as Fenton. Even if he couldn’t resist whatever they tried next forever, it would buy him time, and that might be all he needed.

It would be nice to think that they wouldn’t be plotting something at this exact moment, but he knew better than to engage in such wishful thinking—at least out loud—when magic was involved.

“I’ll just stay invisible until I can figure this out,” he muttered.

The forest seemed to swallow his words.

This whole place was weird.

The sooner he could get out of here, the better.

XXXXXX

“Are you sure about this?”

Dipper didn’t bother to look up from his reading. “The journal hasn’t been wrong before. I’ve just been wrong when interpreting it. If he’s a ghost, those runes should keep him from harming us.” He made a vague gesture at the walls of their room, which he and Mabel had carefully covered in chalk runes. Not as permanent as he’d like, but a lot easier to get rid of in a pinch if someone came poking around.

Or, more to the point, if something turned out to be the wrong rune or drawn incorrectly and having a meaning that was extremely counterproductive.

“Should.” Mabel’s voice was flat. “Can’t you be more confident than that?”

“I’m starting to wonder if he’s really a phantom, whatever he says,” Dipper explained as he sat up. “He doesn’t have their distinctive piercings, and he didn’t try to hurt me, even though I summoned him. Which means he’s either a category ten ghost or he’s not really a ghost at all.”

“But you summoned him,” she said, “and he was trapped in the circle.”

“That might just be what he wants us to think.”

“So what, then? Oracle? Because of the prophecy?”

Dipper grimaced. “Only if we’re lucky.” He turned the journal around to show her what he was looking at.

“Some kind of demon? You think Danny’s possessed by him?”

“He did say something about interdimensional travel,” Dipper said defensively. “You don’t need to say that like it’s impossible. And that would merit the author’s warning.”

“So would a category ten ghost, and a ghost could possess someone as easily as a demon.”

“I guess.”

He’d tried not to grumble it, but Mabel slid down beside him and leaned against his bed as well. “It’s okay not to know something, bro-bro.”

“I know,” he said, flipping through the journal again to see if he could find something else that might be relevant, “but if I mess this up, things could get bad fast.”

“Maybe we should tell the others, then. At least Grunkle Stan.”

“But then we’d have to tell him everything, and….” And he didn’t want to tell them about the journal yet, not even Grunkle Stan. He just…didn’t. It would feel too much like admitting defeat. What if he wasn’t even allowed to keep the journal?

Mabel hummed in agreement, stayed silent for about three seconds, and then asked, “What if he’s right?”

“Grunkle Stan? About what?”

“No, Phantom. The warning. What if he’s right? What if he is an oracle, or a messenger for an oracle, or something like that?”

Dipper scowled. “Anyone with actual foresight would know that saying something the way he did is just going to make people more determined, not less.”

“Maybe that’s the whole point.”

Dipper glanced at her. “What do you mean?”

“Maybe the point isn’t to warn us off.”

“Really? That’s what it sounded like to me. He kept telling us to stop.”

“But that’s not the actual message he gave us. If you stay on this road, you’ll find yourself on a path you can’t turn away from. That just means if we keep going, we won’t be able to stop later. It doesn’t necessarily mean we have to stop now. Stopping now was just what he thought we should do.”

She had a point. If he really was just a messenger, he wouldn’t necessarily know the true meaning of the message. And if he was wrong? About them needing to stop? Then that had to mean— “It’s forewarning. So we’ll be better prepared for whatever’s coming. Whatever has to come.”

Assuming Mabel wasn’t wrong about that, that changed things.

Phantom might not be an enemy. Danny might not be a conduit or something like that. And the journal’s warning….

But maybe it hadn’t been a warning. It had been in a different hand than the rest of the journal. A special thermos to contain the messenger until it was time for the message to be heard….

“I hope you’re right,” Dipper said.

“But in case I’m not, we still have to do all of this.” She nodded at the chalked runes. “These will stop ghosts and demons?”

“It’s every protection rune I’ve found in here,” Dipper said, lifting the journal a few inches for emphasis. “I’m hoping none of them cancel each other out.”

Mabel snorted. “I’m surprised you didn’t do that weeks ago.”

“I’ve been practicing drawing them,” Dipper admitted. “In the dirt. With a stick. I didn’t want to risk getting something wrong when it mattered. I’m not as good at freehanding as you are without practice.”

“That’s just because you spend more time reading than drawing and crafting.” Mabel climbed to her feet. “You can keep looking through the journal. I’m going downstairs to wait for Danny.”

“You think that’s how he’ll come back? After that story he fed you about his family before running out?”

Mabel smirked. “I’m pretty sure he’s figured out we don’t trust Phantom. Trying to convince us to trust Danny is his best bet.”

“But we’re not going to trust him.” Not liking the look on Mabel’s face, Dipper added a pointed, “Right?”

“I like to hear people out.”

“Mabel!”

“What? He was kinda cute.”

Dipper groaned. “For all we know, he’s as real a person as Norman was.”

She just shrugged. “Summer romances are all about risk-taking and mysteries. It’s part of the thrill.”

“But this is serious!”

“And I’ll help you with all the serious stuff once you figure out what preparations we need to actually make. Just like I helped you draw all this. Doesn’t mean I can’t have fun in the meantime.”

She wasn’t going to listen to him, was she? “Just be careful, okay?”

“I’ll be as careful as I ever am,” she promised before slipping out of the room, and he bit back the urge to yell at her that that wasn’t careful at all. Her definition of careful had nearly ended with her as queen of the gnomes.

But she had helped him with this, and she’d help him in the future, and she really did hate all the research, and that was his favourite part.

He just wished she’d give up the idea of having a wonderful summer romance with any boy who came near the Mystery Shack. It would make his life a lot easier. But that’s what siblings did. They made things harder.

And, usually, they made things worth the effort.

With any luck, that would hold true this time.

XXXXXXX

Danny had absolutely no idea what the siblings—twins?—had up their sleeves, nor how fast they could pull something together, but judging by the magic circle, it would be faster than he’d like.

He knew blood blossoms weren’t the only things that fell under traditional methods of ghost hunting. His parents relied on technology, using their inventions before anything else, and Vlad (and therefore Valerie) was little different. Even Technus and Skulker used it. Danny was getting pretty good at dodging anything Tucker couldn’t just hack, but magic? He barely dealt with that outside of Desiree. He knew next to nothing.

That didn’t make him feel any better about going back to the Mystery Shack.

It didn’t keep him from going, either.

The place wasn’t closed, but it was empty—or, at least, it was as empty as it had been earlier. He would’ve been better off if there had been a crowd. No crowd meant no hope of distraction. He could try being his own distraction, of course—knock a few things around with well-placed ectoblasts, since attempts to duplicate himself would probably end badly with how he felt right now—but the truth was, he didn’t know if that would help.

If the adults bought into the whole magic thing as much as the kids, doing something like that would draw more attention to himself, not less. It was more likely to be recognized for what it was: something unnatural. And for all that this place was clearly set up like some sort of scam, it…. It wasn’t all a scam. He’d felt that much before. He was sure it hadn’t just been the beginnings of that magic circle.

He could still feel it now, hovering where he was underneath a window. Something that made his skin crawl. Something that had his arms covered in goosebumps. Something…something that felt achingly familiar but made him want to run away at the same time.

Or maybe that was just whatever the others had already done.

Or what he was supposed to be warning them away from.

It would’ve been nice if Clockwork could’ve given him some straight answers for once.

Danny put one hand on the sun-warmed side of the shack. Nothing happened, so he tried to phase through the wall. Tried being the operative word, as it didn’t work. He scowled and pushed harder, to no avail. He even tried the windowpane in case glass reacted differently than wood. It didn’t.

It figured.

These guys would find a way to make the entire place phase-proof without coating it in anti-ecto goo.

“Why can’t just one thing be easy for me, huh?” Danny muttered. Clockwork didn’t answer, of course; he was probably back in his tower watching through a portal, sure that everything was going the way he thought it should.

Fine. Whatever. He’d do what he could, even if that meant taking more risks than he’d like in a place like this. Anything to get back home.

Still, what he was doing wasn’t the smartest. Even by Tucker’s terms, it would be a fairly bad idea. Danny knew that even as he circled the shack, looking for an open window that didn’t exist. Everything was closed. Most likely, if anything had been open, the others had closed it. Since phasing wasn’t an option, he’d have to go through a door. Maybe the back door was still open? If Mabel hadn’t locked it behind him….

Danny peeked through the screen on the back door. He couldn’t see anyone, but there wasn’t a full view. He turned the handle slowly, easing the (thankfully unlocked) door open and slipping inside, closing it just as silently. He half-expected to come face-to-face with someone, but the kitchen was empty.

Small mercies.

Danny hesitated, trying to figure out where he should start his search when he wasn’t entirely sure what he was looking for. Did these people hide stuff in plain sight, or was he better off digging through closets and the basement and the attic? Except the room he’d been in with the other kids had pretty much been the attic, or at least some kind of attic room or loft—is that what a loft was?—and he wasn’t sure if this place had a basement, but…

Danny slowly stepped onto the floor, holding his breath as he let it take his full weight. Flying in human form got exhausting after a while. He tried to go intangible and keep going, hoping to slip right through the floor, just in case he wasn’t prevented from that now that he was inside, but his shoes stayed firmly on the wood beneath them.

Fine.

Old fashioned way it was, then.

It’s not like he really expected anything else.

Besides, this place was the Mystery Shack. It had to have secrets. And, well, clearly these people were prepared for the supernatural. Announcing his presence wouldn’t necessarily win him any favours, but maybe he could be his own distraction if he did it in a more old-fashioned way instead of trying to fool them like he had earlier.

Knocking on walls should still help him find hollow spots—hiding spots, for whatever information had to be hidden around here to merit Clockwork’s interference—and they shouldn’t expect anything less from a ghost. Judging from the junk for sale in the gift shop, the head guy would probably use the excuse of calling this place haunted to up his prices anyway. Danny might be doing them a favour.

It wasn’t very subtle, and it meant completely abandoning any hope of coming out of this unnoticed, but it was also very unlikely that he wasn’t expected. He knew that. It was too much to hope for that they weren’t expecting him, especially considering he couldn’t phase through any of the walls. That wasn’t a coincidence.

He just hoped he was right about them not being able to do as much to him as long as he didn’t go ghost, even though he was using his ghost powers.

XXXXXX

Wendy didn’t pay attention to the floor creaking at first.

She didn’t pay attention to the odd knocking sound, either.

At least, not until she realized it was moving and coming far too regularly, too rhythmically, to be something Soos was tinkering with while they didn’t have any customers.

But that’s what made the floorboards creaking wrong, too. No customers. She knew the squeaky floorboards in this place. They all did. They all also avoided them now, more from habit formed by annoyance than anything else. But the last customer to come in had been that kid, and according to Mabel, he was long gone.

Wendy popped the bubble she’d been blowing but didn’t look up from her magazine. Instead, she listened while pretending to read, scanning the page to keep up appearances but not taking in any of the words.

The floorboards shouldn’t be creaking, and there shouldn’t be any weird knocking. Tap tap tap. Tap. Tap tap. Tap tap tap. It definitely wasn’t a woodpecker, even if that might be a seemingly logical conclusion from some city slicker who knew nothing about Gravity Falls. Someone—something—was inside the Mystery Shack. And if it was supposed to be tapping out Morse code, well, it wasn’t being rapped out by someone who had a concept of long and short; the pauses were too inconsistent, even if the reoccurrence was not.

Wendy flicked her eyes to Mabel, who’d come downstairs to borrow one of Wendy’s old magazines and was sitting up on a stool in the corner. She was still humming to herself. Either she hadn’t noticed or she was doing exactly what Wendy was and pretending.

Wendy sighed. Sometimes, she was really not paid enough. Still, this was a good job on the whole. Plenty of time to read and just enough of the inexplicable to keep things interesting. About par for the Mystery Shack, really.

“Hey, Mabel, what’s your brother up to?”

“Reading,” she answered without looking up. “Boring stuff.” She folded open the magazine and turned it around, showing off a bright advertisement for perfumes. “Do you mind if I cut this up for my scrapbook? I like the flowers.”

“Go wild,” Wendy said. Mabel chirped her thanks, but Wendy was still listening to the tapping and the occasional floorboard creak. Whatever it was was coming closer.

She checked her watch; almost closing, but Stan was probably still in town, looking after…something. Wendy didn’t ask anymore. Stan had had that look in his eye recently, been in a sort of mood where he answered questions with a joke, and she hadn’t bothered trying to get anything out of him. He’d fill her in if she needed to know. She knew Soos had gone into the hardware store earlier, too—something about wiring disappearing again—but she was pretty sure she’d seen him in the yard not that long ago. He had to be back, anyway. Stan wouldn’t have left without having him fill in as Mr. Mystery should any tourists swing by.

Not that she needed either of them to deal with this for her, but it’s not like this was an infestation of raccoons. She wouldn’t mind a bit of backup if she found herself dealing with something from the side of Gravity Falls that most people ignored. Or tried to ignore, anyway. Sometimes, it really wanted to be known.

This…might be one of those times. Which might mean she wouldn’t have a choice about giving Dipper and Mabel a crash course in whatever they wound up facing. The truth of it, not whatever stories she knew Dipper tried chasing; however much he seemed to be trying to keep that from her, it’s not like she never heard him whispering to Soos or Mabel. Trouble was, Soos and Mabel being who they were, she wasn’t sure how much of those whispers were truth….

She could remember being as ignorant of all of this as they had been at the start of the summer, as they might still be aside from an encounter or two, but that was before she started working at the Mystery Shack and realized her dad’s ulterior motive for all those survival lessons.

She was pretty sure her dad didn’t believe in any of the stories people told. As far as she could tell, most people didn’t. Urban legends were just urban legends, and a good campfire story was just a good campfire story. If anyone had a particularly good one, well, then it might be deemed something on par with what Old Man McGucket might tell. It was weird, though. People would tell those stories, and then they’d never mention them again, even when offered the perfect circumstances for call-backs. It was like they’d just put it out of their mind completely.

Still, no longer mentioning something and not admitting to even entertaining the idea that there was a modicum of truth in any of those stories didn’t mean people didn’t prepare, even if it was mostly unconsciously.

And even though Stan laughed it off, even though she usually laughed it off, it hadn’t taken the haunting at the convenience store to open her eyes to the fact that there was more going on in Gravity Falls than anyone admitted.

Whatever. Mabel and Dipper were going to find out sooner or later that Gravity Falls wasn’t the sleepy little town it appeared to be—assuming their run-in with the ghosts at the old convenience store hadn’t already done that. Honestly, even she’d thought ghosts were just stories before that one; she’d figured all the real stuff was the sort that was much less popular. Who would’ve thought it was all real?

The door separating the gift shop from the main Mystery Shack showroom creaked open.

Mabel, having torn the page from the magazine, was back to humming to herself and didn’t look up from her reading.

Wendy reached below the counter, trying to figure out what in their eclectic emergency supply would actually be useful in this situation, and settled on the baking soda box that was supposed to be placed in various nooks and crannies to keep the place from smelling too musty when it rained.

There was no tapping, but she heard a floorboard creak. The one by the vending machine, if she had to guess.

“Screw it,” she muttered. She tore the cardboard on the top of the baking soda box and flung the contents in the general direction of the vending machine. For the briefest moment, she saw a humanoid outline in the dust, and then it was gone.

“Wendy?”

Mabel’s voice wasn’t scared, exactly. Nor did it sound like she thought Wendy was crazy. But it was still too cautious for Wendy’s liking.

“What are you doing?”

“Summer dusting,” Wendy deadpanned. “It’s like spring cleaning. This helps you spot all the places you need to dust.” Mabel’s face told her she clearly didn’t buy that, but Wendy didn’t care. She just smirked and added, “Go grab your brother and run outside and help Soos gather some wood. We should roast marshmallows tonight.”

Mabel stared at her for a beat longer before she squealed, “I love roasting marshmallows! It’s fun to catch them on fire and watch Dipper’s face. He hates that. He wants his to be this perfect golden brown, but it’s not done till it’s crispy.” Grinning, she slipped off the stool and out of the room.

Wendy turned her gaze back in the direction of the vending machine. “What the hell are you?” she hissed. “And what are you doing here?”

Something shifted, and she could see the faint impression of footprints in the thin dusting of baking soda.

And then she blinked and saw the kid from earlier standing there.

“This isn’t what it looks like,” he said. “I swear.”

Right. Like she was going to buy that.

“I mean it,” he insisted, probably reading her expression. “I… There’s something wrong with this place, okay? I need to figure out what it is. I…. It’s the only way I’m going to get home.”

There was a thump from upstairs. She had to deal with this fast. “What are you?” she repeated.

“Stuck,” the kid said. “And not a threat to you. Honest. Unless you’re, like, secretly planning to eat the kids who live here or something.”

Well, it’s not like she expected straight answers from something that no doubt loved to trick humans.

“Get out.”

“But—”

“Out!” she jabbed her hand towards the front door. “Now. I’ll know if you try to come back.”

“Not necessarily,” the kid muttered, not quite quietly enough that she couldn’t hear him, whatever he might think.

He vanished again.

No more footprints appeared in the white dusting the floor, but she heard that tapping again.

And then she heard the sound change.

It wasn’t the rap of knuckles against solid wood. There was something hollow, something hidden, something—

Footsteps coming down the stairs.

Mabel and Dipper.

She lunged for a rag beneath the counter and wiped it across the countertop, pretending to be cleaning. When they waved as they ran out the door, she offered a weak smile.

No more knocking.

No more footprints.

Man, sometimes she really wasn’t paid enough for this.

XXXX

Okay, that had not gone as well as Danny had hoped.

Fine, he’d been stupid. Revealing himself had been stupid. He shouldn’t have expected help. Clearly, these people were not here to help him. That would have been too easy.

But at least whatever they’d done to the shack itself to make it phase-proof didn’t extend to its contents. He hadn’t been too hopeful when he’d tried to stick his arm into the vending machine, but once it had worked, well, of course he’d gone right in and tried to keep going. The fact that there really was a hidden passageway behind it was an unexpected bonus. He’d been half expecting a hidden door that would have been just as effective at barring his way as every other wall in this place.

Danny dropped his invisibility and intangibility once on the other side, but he kept floating as he held up a hand and let a ghost ray illuminate the passage. There was a faint light coming from below him, but it wasn’t enough to light his way by itself. Rickety stairs led downwards, the angle steeper than any stairs he’d come across before. This place really did have secrets. Maybe the Mystery Shack wasn’t a total scam after all.

The stairs didn’t seem terribly dusty. Despite creaking under his weight, they held when he stood on them, so he crept downwards.

When he reached the floor, it was just the landing for an elevator. A lone light bulb shone overhead. He pressed the elevator button and waited for it to come up, shifting from foot to foot. Just how deep were the secrets of this place buried that they needed an elevator?

Three floors down, apparently, which might explain why it was so dark when the elevator doors opened.

Danny could hear the low hum of machinery even before he stepped out of the elevator, which made it immediately evident why Clockwork had put him up to this.

This place didn’t only have a creepy hidden room, it had a creepy basement lab. Because, naturally, basements were where creepy secret labs were kept.

He kept walking, calling up a ghost ray again to light up what the various computer screens and blinking lights couldn’t.

Despite having more construction tools and computer screens than beakers or Erlenmeyer flasks, this lab came complete with what looked suspiciously like a nearly finished ghost portal. This one was at least ten feet above the floor, set in some kind of reverse triangle mounting, but it was definitely a portal. Which meant these guys had magic and technology on their side. Perfect. This couldn’t get any worse. This couldn’t—

Danny frowned and walked forward, letting the ghost ray burn a little brighter to give him some more light. That book by the control panel looked like what the kid had had. Danny still didn’t recognize the handwriting—not another novel by Freakshow, thankfully—but those were definitely blueprints to a portal. Incomplete blueprints, but still blueprints. And the portal in front of him was a heck of a lot more complete than the drawings on the page, which was not a good sign in his book.

“Maybe this is what’s going to go wrong,” Danny whispered. “Maybe Clockwork wants me to prevent another accident.” Though, considering no one had stopped what had happened with him or Vlad, that struck him as unlikely. But an unstable portal could lead to a giant explosion, and—

The room flooded with light from overhead, and Danny jumped even as the buzzing of electricity filled his ears.

“I’m not going to let you destroy everything I’ve spent the last thirty years building,” a voice behind him growled, and he turned just in time to see the net flying towards him.

(next)

[omniswords]

How to Open a Padlock, Part 1 [Nino Lahiffe/Camila Siddiq (OC)]

Four times Camila Siddiq ran into Carapace, and one time she found Nino.

I know I’ve been talking about her on and off on this blog, but I’ve had this piece I wrote about her ages ago, maybe a month or so after I even created her. Camila won’t make her Official Debut until the second half of Chronicles, but… here’s what things would be like if she were in the canonverse.

I hope you like it. I really hope you like it.

Before you start, just a quick content warning for explosions and an act of Islamophobia in this part. It’s. Shit’s real, y’all. And I want you to be safe, so take a step away if you need to.

[i.]

This is the sort of thing that’s only supposed to happen in horror stories on the news. In statistics. In social media, in hashtags, in videos blurred out for containing “sensitive content.” In some other country. Not here. Never here.

Camila isn’t supposed to become a statistic, but she just might be, in the Latin Quarter. And for all her supposed tos and shouldn’t haves, maybe she should have expected it after all.

She’s not particularly religious, not the way her parents are. But Friday afternoons are still sacred family time for her. They’re always blocked out for her to meet with her parents in front of the mosque after the lecture and prayer, and to treat them to lunch. It’s the one time she’ll go a little easier on the makeup, make sure her clothes aren’t too ripped or too sheer or too anything, and it’s mostly out of respect for her mother. Her father, as far as she’s concerned, is just there for the ride. Or, she supposes, the drive. It’s his car they all pile into, after all.

And the Latin Quarter isn’t so bad a place. It doesn’t have the same bustle as the eighth arrondissement, but it’s quaint, and quiet, and it feels like a movie sometimes. She’ll even stick around when she doesn’t have any more classes for the day, or even after her practicum, just to meet up with some classmates or friends for tea, book shopping, a casual game of Frisbee in the park or an adventure in one of the art-house cinemas.

It’s just not the sort of place she would ever expect to see thick, black smoke rising. Especially from the Grand Mosque’s dome. Or to hear screaming, especially from the people rushing out and the people still inside.

In the midst of it all, she can’t help but go stock still for a too-long moment, eyes darting around and scanning the crowd. This isn’t supposed to happen here. It isn’t supposed to happen anywhere, but especially not here. Not to her family. Not to her people. They haven’t done anything aside from wanting to live and be good to others. They haven’t done anything aside from wanting to do the things that bring them peace. For God’s sake, it’s in the name of everything they follow, everything they submit to. Why would anyone want to hurt that? Why are there people who still want to hurt that?

She should have known better than to think there was any country out there that could protect her.

Her mother. She can’t find her mother. But her mother should be so easy to find; she’s one of the few people Camila knows who still defies everything to wear her niqab, still gets slapped with the fine for it and everything. But every woman Camila sees pouring out of the side entrance, has her face uncovered, except where they guard themselves from the smoke with their sleeves. Some of them even have children in tow, and it makes her shake that they’ll have to carry this with them. That they’ll have to go around wondering if they’ll ever feel safe anywhere.

Her mother. She has to go get her mother.

Camila’s barely run a few feet before someone grabs her wrist and yanks her back. Before she can shout in protest, there’s an explosion that shakes the ground, and she screams instead and covers her head to protect herself. She’s gathered up in someone’s arms, against a body, and the ear-splitting sound of it is muffled by a shield.

Wait.

A shield?

Once the explosion subsides and the ground stops shaking, she looks up, slowly. There’s still chaos around her, noise and confusion and questions of when and how and why, but the person holding her barely acts like it. From what she can see under the hood, he’s all serious stares and gritted teeth, talking into some kind of communicator. To Ladybug. She hears Ladybug.

It’s him.

“Carapace?” she ventures to say. She’s surprised at how even she sounds. How she’s not breaking into scared sobs. Maybe it’s the stress hormones. Maybe it’s the fight-or-flight simmering in her blood. “What are you—”

“Akuma,” is his reply, and it’s only then that Carapace looks down to acknowledge her. “You can’t go in there, are you crazy? You don’t know what could happen if that guy gets his hands on you.”

“I don’t even know what is happening.” Camila never knows what’s happened. These akuma things were never a problem before she left home, and now it feels like they’re an everyday occurrence. An annoyance, until now. She struggles in his grip, but if anything, Carapace only holds on tighter. “And I have to go in there, let me go—”

“I can’t,” he says, covers her even more with his shield. “I’m not gonna let one more person get hurt if I can help it—”

“I’m not leaving without her!” she shrieks, and now she’s starting to shake, and she’s pretty sure her makeup is starting to run, and she doesn’t care, she doesn’t care. She doesn’t care what happens to her, as long as—

Carapace pauses, shifts back to hold her at arm’s length. There’s something almost… anxious in his eyes. She has to wonder how many times he’s felt this way. If any of these other superheroes in town feel it, too. “Who?” he asks. Soft. Maybe even a little scared.

It’s impossible not to trust him. She trusted him with her life long before they ever met. “My mother,” she croaks, and gestures in the air with a hand swiping over her mouth. “Her face is covered. I can’t find her.”

“I’ll get her,” he says, so firmly that she’d believe him if she didn’t already. He fits his shield onto his back, and gathers her up into his arms in a bridal carry. “But I’m taking you somewhere safe first. Can’t hurt your mother by letting something happen to you.”

Carapace has a point, as much as Camila hates to admit it. Reluctantly, she fits her arms around his shoulders—which are surprisingly, amazingly broad, and casts one last glance at the building, at her brothers and sisters rushing to safety and the lithe figures battling it out in the distance. It will all be fixed in the end, she has to tell herself. Ladybug will fix everything in the end.

Well.

Almost everything.

“You don’t have to look anymore,” Carapace says, a soft, gentle murmur that she can feel in his chest. And he turns her head away. His heart is pounding hard, she can hear that too, and he tells her to hold on tight before he leaps. She screams when he does, her stomach jolting like she’s on some roller coaster ride or an elevator drop, and she holds onto him even faster than before, and he tells her, “Don’t look down. Whatever you do, don’t look down.”

So she closes her eyes to fight off the temptation, and tries not to think about how Carapace is literally talking to her and carrying her, and settles for straining to hear the grumble of Arabic under Carapace’s breath. She knew he was Moroccan, ever since the Ladyblog confirmed it. But it’s still so strange to hear someone so above her, someone she and pretty much every other woman in her family look to, speaking words that are so familiar to her. Not that she’s heard many people swear in her dialect of Arabic—in fact, even the thought of it makes her shudder—but he drops a couple here and there, talking about a fucking akuma in the fucking courtyard, and how this Hawk Moth fellow had better prepare to meet God in his grave, and—

Oh.

Did he just—?

They’re tucked away near the Pantheon before she knows it, or can say anything. The fighting and the panic are still there, in the distance, and something pulls at her heart and makes her want to go back, makes her want to demand why Carapace took her away. It doesn’t take much from him to quiet that tension, though. Just an earnest look—something so familiar to her, painful in how she can’t place it for how rattled she is—and the same three words. “I’ll get her.” And then, three more: “Stay here. Please.”

She takes a slow, shaky breath, nearly slumping against the wall behind her. She would have loved to meet him some other way. Any other way. She just guesses there wouldn’t be any other way, if he only comes out when there’s danger. “Camila,” she finally says.

Carapace seems to freeze for a moment, fists clenched tight. But his stance relaxes, and his voice goes low and soft. “Is that your mom’s name?” he asks.

“It’s mine.” She swallows hard, fingers latching onto the gold hamsa pendant her grandmother gave to her years ago. “I figure you ought to know the name of the person who owes you one. Or two.”

For the first time since she met him, Carapace smiles. It makes his eyes glitter. Maybe it’d make her heart flutter, too, if he didn’t have somewhere to go. “Hey. You don’t owe me nothin’ but your safety.”

It’s not a very tall order, and she really does wish there were more she could do than just… wait. But if that’s all a superhero is asking of her, then maybe it’s all she needs. She steadies herself, stands up straight, can’t bring herself to look anywhere else but at him. “You…” she starts uneasily, clears her throat. “You think I’m pretty?”

He did say it before. How cruel someone had to be to attack such a pretty girl. Maybe he didn’t know she could understand. Or maybe he forgot. Either way, he blushes, deep red under that hood of his, and nods without a word, and then he’s off again.

Pretty.

Carapace, the hero of literally every Arab in Paris, thinks she’s pretty.

(Well. Of course she already knew she was. It doesn’t make her any less fluttery.)

The waiting game is the worst part. Having to listen for all those distant sounds, poking her head around the corner to look for the occasional person or two running away from the commotion, or maybe a bright green force field. Her body’s shaking so much that it’s almost hard to stand, but she said she wouldn’t leave. So she’s not leaving. She’s waiting. And waiting. Fixing her face, and holding herself together, and waiting.

When the flurry of ladybugs come and return the neighborhood to the way it was, she heaves a sigh of relief, and suddenly the waiting doesn’t feel so bad. It’s numbered, right down to the moment Carapace brings her parents back to her, and he slips away before she can even thank him again.

She hopes, in the time her mother is holding her together instead, in the time that her father is watching news of the arrest on his phone, that Carapace remembered her name.

(“I was there,” she tells Nino later over glasses of iced mint tea and sweets from Marinette’s parents’ bakery. “I was there, and I was scared to death, and I couldn’t do anything.”

Over the sound of a soccer match, Nino squeezes her shoulder, and then her hand. “But someone did,” he says, and he pulls her into a hug. “Someone did so you didn’t have to.”

Someone did, but it wasn’t her.)

[ruensroad]

threads of love

For @this-solaris-life, who wanted to see the Sangyu from my Witch and Familiar AU and I couldn’t say no because I love them <3

---

It’d been snowing nonstop since the morning and had been off and on for most of the week. As such, Mo Xuanyu’s orders had turned predictably to warm coats and scarves, mittens, and even boots, beanies, and ear muffs. It had always amused him, somewhat, that the worst of winter came just before the spring, as though reluctant to let go. He enjoyed watching everyone walk all bundled up, like fluffy jellybeans, down Witcher’s Row. So many colors through the fog of white. For being so monochrome by design, it was the most colorful time of the year and Mo Xuanyu loved it.

The New Year always brought an explosion of reds into his shop and he’d yet to fully finish packing what remained away, even with the rest of the rainbow of materials filling the shelves again. The rich, pine greens, most recently, were his new favorite, but still they paled in comparison to his stack of yellows, so unloved, but so delightful and charming when worn by those few that favored it. To be able to work with the bright gold now brought a smile to his face.

His order list was full, but his shop was empty, allowing him some time to relax and focus on his knitting, given his magic was further hard at work building each new garment to desired specification in the flustered chaos of his workroom. It wasn’t a spectacular sort of magical gift, but it was his, and if he could spread even just a little bit a joy through the gloom of winter, it was worth the constant headaches.

Of course, the pain was significantly less than it used to be, thanks to one Nie Huaisang, who’s stubborn will and balancing of his own magic had lessened the mental load. It helped, too, that his familiar was a bit of a diva and loved modeling all of Mo Xuanyu’s designs, no matter how silly they seemed on paper. As such, Mo Xuanyu’s magic and inspiration had started to thrive and the workload far more easier to carry. He liked to think the world had brightened, too, the moment Huaisang had first smiled his way, or gushed over a new fabric. He hadn’t realized how stagnant he’d become until Huaisang had swept him along in a gleeful cascade of color, and now he couldn’t imagine ever going back.

It also helped that the man was a peacock, literally and figuratively, who loved all the attention he got from customers. Naturally charming, Mo Xuanyu knew he had Huaisang to thank for no less than half of his new clientele, who had started bringing snacks or fluffed up perches and other gifts for him to enjoy. As though he needed to be more spoiled than he already was.

Mo Xuanyu smiled to himself and started on the last row of stitches, weaving the gold yarn around a pair of bright pink crochet hooks Huaisang had gifted him with. Honestly, he spoiled Huaisang more than anyone and taking the time to work more just to see him smile proved it.

But with all Huaisang brought into his life, all the joy and laughter, it was worth it. It would always be worth it.

As though summoned by his thoughts, warm hands settled on his shoulders and squeezed lightly, while a chin propped on top of his head. “So, this is the super secret sweater you won’t let me see unfolded?” Huaisang asked, playfully pulling on Mo Xuanyu’s braid. “Is it for a child? Are we having a kid?”

Mo Xuanyu swatted at him, getting a round of sweet giggles. “No,” he huffed, because they’d already had that talk, but that didn’t stop the blush forming across his face.

“For a pet?” Huaisang asked next, fingers starting a slow massage up and down his neck. Mo Xuanyu instantly relaxed into it, not even realizing he’d grown so tense over the hours of work. It was always a relief when Huaisang made him melt.

“I suppose you could say that,” Mo Xuanyu gave him that much, because it was true enough, though the fact Huaisang was calling himself a pet had him bubbling with laughter. “Patience. You’ll see.”

“Can I feel it at least?” Huaisang was pouting now, but it was all in good fun, and Mo Xuanyu allowed him to take the ball of yawn to feel its smooth, silken texture. His surprise was instant. “This is from your special stash, isn’t it?”

Mo Xuanyu smiled wider, but gave him nothing. “Mn.”

“A-Yu,” Huaisang sighed and went back to rubbing his neck. “You are talking to me here. You know I am not patient.”

“You are for the right things,” Mo Xuanyu pointed out, refusing to sway.

“True…” A soft kiss was pressed to the top of his head and Mo Xuanyu shivered to feel it. Even two years being loved and it sometimes still felt new. Brand new. “I waited for you.”

“You did,” Mo Xuanyu looked up at him, turning his face a little, and was rewarded with a kiss between his brows. “So many years… one more minute will not kill you.”

“A-Yu,” Huaisang pouted, tugging on his braid again, and Mo Xuanyu laughed, pleased as he finished the line of stitching. At last, nearly two weeks of work and he was finished.

“Fine, fine, you can see it now.”

Huaisang moved in front of him and Mo Xuanyu did his best not to look nervous as he held up the golden sweater. A warm brown thread had been woven over the front of it in four bold, blocky letters after a hashtag and he hoped it looked good, not tacky.

“Oh my gods, does that say DIVA,” Huaisang gasped and carefully extracted the sweater from his hands. “Holy shit. Who is this for? I want it. Can I have it? I’m keeping it.”

Mo Xuanyu laughed at the idea of his boyfriend and partner stealing someone’s clothes because he liked them, even if they’d never fit. What a surprising thief!

“It’s for you,” he said, shaking his head, and hid the shake in his hands by clasping them in his lap. He hoped, one day, the nerves of giving gifts would not scare him so badly. Hoped that one day, the fear of rejection would never touch him again, especially when Huaisang was already smiling at him like that.

“For my other form?” Huaisang asked, sounding excited, and reverently traced the letters.

Mo Xuanyu smiled, face starting to heat up again, and nodded. “To keep you warm. I noticed you haven’t been strutting around as a bird much lately. Not that I can blame you. It gets cold in here.”

He was kissed for that, a proper, sweet kiss to his lips that left his whole body tingling. His magic sang softly in delight, the way it always did when Huaisang was near, and he melted into it, the fear shoved down to deal with another day.

“Put it on me?” Huaisang asked, handing it back and shifting before he’d even answered. He flapped his iridescent wings excitedly before standing tall and still, waiting.

Mo Xuanyu carefully eased it over his wings and around his body, ever thankful his magic could guide him through perfect measurements every time. It was loose enough Huaisang could move and none of his feathers ruffled the wrong way, but snug enough to be warm, the way it was meant to.

The #DIVA stood out proudly on his chest and Mo Xuanyu couldn’t stop the soft chuckle at how pleased his familiar looked in the shimmering gold.

“Do you like it?” he had to ask and smoothed down the last of the wrinkles.

You made it, of course I love it, was Huaisang’s easy answer, then he was stepping in close and laying his head on Mo Xuanyu’s lap, a soft trill in the motion. Mo Xuanyu smiled in relief and gently smoothed his palm over the silken feathers, scratching lightly under Huaisang’s eye the way he knew his familiar loved most.

“I’m glad,” Mo Xuanyu murmured, truly glad for it, for the acceptance and love and color Huaisang brought to his heart, and when he leaned down to kiss Huaisang’s beak, it was with a song in his soul. Thank you.

[holidaywishes]

I Just Wanted You

Summary: You and Jamie used to be High School sweethearts before he got drafted. Now it’s nearly 10 years later when you finally see him again and you can’t believe you ever let him go

Warnings: none? more angst than I intended, a tiny little bit of fluff.

Author’s Note: I literally have no idea where this came from. I was going to write the next part in my Gally series or my Freddie series but then... Jamie Benn happened.

masterlist

  The last time you saw Jamie, your heart broke. He had just been drafted to Dallas and asked you to go with him but you said no. The idea of giving up any possibility of your own future just to follow him around as he became something amazing seemed like a selfish request on his part. No matter how much you loved him. So you said no and he said you were over; and your heart broke into a million pieces. Naturally, when your best friend told you that she was getting married to a man who worked in Dallas, you knew the Bachelorette Party was going to be there.

   “Think about it!” Claire exclaimed, “if we have it there, then we can literally just crash at Sam’s place -- which will soon be my place too. AND WE WON’T HAVE TO PAY FOR ANYTHING!”

  “You wouldn’t have to pay for anything anyway...” you argued

  “(Y/N),” she narrowed her eyes at you, “you’re not gonna see him. It’s not like we’re going to the game. Just forget Jamie Benn exists for a bit so we can have some fun at my Bachelorette Party.” Claire had been there for you after your breakup with Jamie. For days, she cuddled next to you in matching Onesie’s watching Meg Ryan Rom Com movies from the 80s and eventually your life went back to normal, so you knew that she wasn’t going to let you get hurt. Not again.

  “Fine,” you finally caved, “we’ll go to Dallas.” Claire jumped up and down with glee before running to grab her phone to send out a mass text.

  “Pack your bags, ladies. This bitch is getting married and her maid of honour is putting on a kick ass Bachelorette Party in Dallas. Three days of alcohol and no rules before I give myself to the only man I’ve ever truly loved. Let’s give Dallas a party like they’ve never seen!” All you could do was giggle and roll your eyes when you read the text as you sat across from your best friend. It was going to be three days of alcohol for sure but there would most definitely be rules.

  Especially with Claire’s group of Sorority Sisters she’d collected over the years.

  The flight from Vancouver to Dallas was a rocky one so touching down felt like you’d all just escaped Death. One of Claire’s friends grabbed a cab as soon as the group got out of the airport and everyone piled in to head to Sam’s place; turning to you for “the plan.”

  “Hmm, okay. Here’s what I’ve got going in my brain...” you started, “drop our stuff at Sam’s, go have a bite to eat -- steak, chili, pizza, whatever, -- come back, get dressed and head out. But understand me ladies, there are rules. There will be one stop at one strip club. No more and we will not be ordering a stripper to the house so count your losses if you don’t get the kind of show you want at the club. No drugs and no drinks from strangers. You meet a guy at the club and you want to go off with him? That’s up to you but make sure your phone battery is full so that if you run into trouble one of us can get you help. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Sir, yes, sir!” the girls chanted mockingly and you laughed

  “Alright then..” When it was finally time for the night to begin, the apartment was filled with loud, giddy screams and you weren’t sure what you signed up for; forcing you to take a few too many shots of Tequila before even ordering an Über.

  “Car is here girls, let’s do this” you yelled to the group of girls, frantically checking their makeup in the hall mirror, earning a mocking eye roll from you.

  “WAIT WAIT!” Claire shouted, “we need a selfie first!” The group huddled around Claire and took a few photos -- funny faces, sexy poses, a kiss on the brides cheek and one normal one that Claire chose as her favourite to post.

  @clairebear tagged you in a photo: “My girls and I are ready to show Dallas the true meaning of Party. #werecominforya #hideyoboys #hideyohusbands #Dallas2019 #ifyouresingleletsmingle #ClairesBacheloretteParty2019″

  @(Y/I/H): Counting down until this lady can no longer post hashtags about different cities hiding their men from her. #Clairesgettingmarried #ClairesBacheloretteParty2019.

  It wasn’t long before you’d hit up almost every bar in Downtown Dallas and you could see some of the girls were in desperate need of water so you collected each of them and starting walking down Main Street to find some kind of fast food place to eat when you heard one of the girls scream from the back of the group.

  “What’s wrong!?” you and Claire said at once.

  “Holy fuck! Claire, check your Insta...” Claire hopped on her phone, navigating to the app and immediately looked at you when she saw the comment. You knew it had to be from him, it was the only reason she’d look at you like that.

  “Jamie motherfucking Benn commenting on your post. On a picture of us! Say something back!!!” You and Claire were still deadlocked trying to decide what to do

  “Let’s just step in here and grab some food. We’ll... figure out a reply later” you answered and the girls looked at you dumbfounded. While they ordered, you grabbed a booth and opened your phone to look at the picture, scanning through the comments to find Jamie’s

  @jamiebenn14: you think you can party harder than Dallas? I doubt it but I’m willing to make a bet with you.

  You stared at his comment for too long before you finally noticed that you had a message and your thumb hovered over the little paper plane in the corner of your screen; trying to garner the courage to open it.

  @jamiebenn14 would like to send you a message: long time, no see. You look good.

  That fucker. After ten years, he thinks he can just slide into your DM’s and all will be forgotten. Telling you you look good as if you’d be that gullible, that starstruck, that desperate to cave into him like you always did. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened.

  @(Y/I/H): What’s the bet Benn?

  It was all you could muster. You had heard he was in a relationship and the last thing you needed was to have some chick you’d never met before show up and punch you in the face. You were trying your best not to do anything that might come across as flirtatious or presumptuous but he was your ex...

  @jamiebenn14: Meet me and Ty at the Nines. We’ll show you that Dallas is a better place to party than Kelowna.

  @(Y/I/H): I don’t think so. That wasn’t really the point -- we weren’t implying that Kelowna is a better place to party but that we’re better at partying than anyone in Dallas...

  @jamiebenn14: I don’t think so. You haven’t met these people. You’re out of your league

  @(Y/I/H): I guess I’ve always been out of my league...

  The conversation more or less ended there and you had to pull Claire aside to tell her what was going on, what he was saying, when Shandra overheard and took over the situation.

  “Hell yeah we’ll go to the Nines to meet Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin!”

  “Shandra shut up!” Claire yelled and you held your face in embarrassment

  “What?! How the hell do you even know them?”

  “We went to High School with Jamie, we’ve never met Tyler before --”

  “And we’re not going to...” you chimed in before Shandra could add in any quips to Claire’s statement.

  “Fine whatever.” You knew that Shandra was going over to the rest of the group and telling them everything, forcing you and Claire to take a deep breath before heading back to the table.

  “Listen to me,” Claire said quickly before the two of you walked back to the table, “you can call it a night. The girls are going to be really aggressive about this and I’m too drunk to say ‘no’ to them right now. So you can call it a night and we’ll pick it up tomorrow. That way you don’t have to see Jamie. And if you block him you won’t have to hear from him...”

  “I’m not bailing on your Bachelorette Party Claire,” you replied, “I’ll survive. I’ll be fine. I’m sure he only looks good on T.V....”

  You were obviously wrong. The second your eyes locked on him at the club, you could feel yourself drooling. He had most definitely gotten better with age and you were the girl who let him go. What an idiot you were.

  “(Y/N), Claire, there you are!” Jamie greeted, pulling Tyler and who you assumed was his girlfriend over, “I was starting to think you weren’t going to take me up on the bet.” You smiled awkwardly but still couldn’t find the words. Why was this so god damn hard?

  “Nice to meet you,” Claire stuck her hand out to Tyler, “I’m Claire.”

  “Tyler and this is Kate” he replied and she gave a small, unenthusiastic wave

  “This is (Y/N)” you were suddenly snapped away from Jamie to greet his teammate.

  “Hi, nice to meet you..”

  “So, you’re the One That Got Away huh?” Tyler said and Jamie gave him a quick nudge, making you huff slightly. You weren’t The One That Got Away, not really, more like the One Who Had Too Much Pride. Your mind was racing. Part of you wanted to stay and get to know Jamie again, another part of you knew it was wrong and that it would end in flames but an even bigger part of you was pissed that he wasn’t describing the situation properly.

  “I’m sorry.. I ca- I have to go..” you stumbled over your words, “I’ll see you at the house Claire. Stay safe please...”

  “Wait (Y/N)” you heard Jamie call after you but you just continued running out of the crowded room. When you finally got out, you noticed that your phone had died and you had to settle for hailing a cab.

  “You’ll never catch a cab” his voice boomed from behind you, sending shivers down your spine

  “You don’t know that”

  “It’s late. I’ve lived here long enough to know when they stop accepting fares.” You looked back at him quickly, and quite pathetically, before getting angry and defensive

  “Fine, I’ll walk then.”

  “You don’t know where you’re going!”

  “I’ll manage”

  “You’ll end up in a ditch”

  “Don’t think so”

  “(Y/N) stop, let me call you an Über or drive you home or something, please..” You stopped walking, your back toward him, and contemplated your options

  “Fine. Order me an Über but then go back inside. I don’t wanna talk to you...” He entered in the address you gave him and tried to get you to talk to him but you refused

  “I don’t get it. What did I do? I barely said anything in there. I couldn’t have offended you that quickly?”

  “Just stop Jamie. Stop talking. It’s not about what happened in there, that doesn’t matter. It’s about what you’re telling people happened back then...”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The One That Got Away?”

  “Yeah..?”

  “Jamie.. you broke up with me because I wouldn’t move here with you”

  “That’s not exactly what happened”

  “No, you’re right. You asked me to skip my graduation, leave my family and my friends to move to a new city with no job prospects or qualifications to be with you. Because your life was more important than mine”

  “I never said my life was more important. I thought you would want to experience this life with me... And I didn’t think we’d survive long distance”

  “You never even tried to give it a chance...”

  “I.. I ju--”

  “Exactly. Look I’m sorry. I’m sorry I came out tonight. I’m sorry I responded to your DM. I’m sorry for everything but you can go back inside. I’ll be fine. Thanks...”

  “Why couldn’t you have at least stayed in touch with me?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “After we broke up? We were friends first before anything and that just went out the window..”

  “You broke my fucking heart!! The last thing I wanted was to keep you in my life without actually having you in my life”

  “Like my heart didn’t break?”

  “You don’t get to play the victim here, Benn, you ended it. I didn’t. I wanted it to work. I would’ve done FaceTime or Skype or emails or texts or anything but you ended it so that was that. You can’t say that your heart broke because you didn’t even fucking try!”

  “(Y/N)”

  “And you moved on rather quickly anyway so...”

  “Not really..”

  “This was a mistake... Have a nice life Jamie. I’ll see you never.” You turned your back to him and waited to hear his footsteps head back inside but they neither dissipated or got closer to you. He never moved.

  “I loved you. Ending it-- us was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. Being cold about it seemed like the easiest way to handle it but, ask Jordie, I cried after you told me you wouldn’t stay with me. That you didn’t want to be with me...” You turned around to see a small crowd forming but all you could focus on was Jamie’s sad expression

  “You didn’t give me an option Jamie. I was starting my own life and you were too and I couldn’t take that away from you. I didn’t think you’d take it away from me either but there you were, telling me to drop everything for you. And I would’ve, because I loved you so much, but I didn’t want to resent you”

  “You would’ve resented me?”

  “Maybe... I don’t know. All I know is that it really sucked and it really hurt me that that’s how we were ending.” His gaze dropped to the street and you watched as the headlights from your Über shone across the building, showcasing a small tear on Jamie’s cheek when he looked up at you again

  “I’m sorry...” it suddenly hit you that he said you didn’t want to be with him and your mind raced to find something to say as he started walking away

  “I just wanted you” he stopped dead in his tracks as your words reached him, turning around when the silence was too much to handle, “I would’ve done anything for you, for us, because I just wanted you Jamie. Which is why it hurt so much when we couldn’t find a way to make it work.” He just kind of stared at you and you couldn’t tell if he was waiting for you to continue or if he was trying to come up with something to say himself. You had laid it all out for him again and you couldn’t wait anymore so, you turned to the car waiting for you; opening the door with that same broken heart you had nearly 10 years ago. You heard a quick shuffle of feet and suddenly Jamie’s hand was on your waist and you turned around to meet his stare; he didn’t say anything, only leaned in slowly to capture your lips in a kiss that felt like it had been built up in his system for ages, only stopping when the driver honked his horn.

  “I don’t have time for this. Either get in or shut the door!” With a bright smile, Jamie pulled you away from the car and brought you in for another kiss as he slammed the car door.

[rgr-pop]

since things are rolling again, I’m gonna list some kitchen “renovation” budgeting stuff like I promised I’d do ages ago. costs of making a nicer kitchen are behind this cut!!

here are the things we’ve spent money on to make our kitchen usable and liveable (and beautiful), not all of which were conceptualized as part of this “remodel,” which started in the summer of 2016. I have receipts for most things but truly am just going from memory so we’ll see.

we have never saved up for anything in a large sum, rather we bought big ticket items when a good sale coincided with a cushier month, so we have paid for things in chunks and then installed them as we’ve been able to. about half of the cabinets and the dishwasher came out of the extremely modest money my mother “left” for me (befriended a life insurance salesman who gave her a small policy that she should not have been permitted, lol.) hashtag money diaries lol

I also want to say that we’re not throwing out a ton, and almost everything we are getting rid of is basically extremely unfunctional/making my life a living hell. When it comes to appliances and stuff like that, I'm not willing to replace things that still work. I’m not trying to preach but I also absolutely do not want to contribute to a mood of wastefulness or aesthetic obsolescence. I live in an old house that was a rental for most of the twentieth century, this kitchen was on the very low end of “usable.” Most of the things that I am getting that I wanted versus needed were things that the kitchen didn’t already have. 

While nothing here is at all expensive for what it is, none of it is the cheapest, either. In almost every case, unless it’s an actual emergency, I’m not going to buy anything that’s not exactly what I want and need, which has meant mostly just waiting fucking years to find anything, lol. I can’t change!

cabinets:  I tore out the barely-functioning base cabinet we had in order to make room for a dishwasher, but kept the old steel sink base cabinet, and picked out ikea cabinets to “match” it. this has been an adventure, and like all old house shit, requires a ton of...innovation. it would have saved us a lot of grief to let it go but I couldn’t, and I will not apologize. we’re also getting rid of a wall cabinet that currently sits above the stove to hold the microwave and ninety years of grease, and moving the microwave to the pantry. we’re tearing down the wall cabinet above the counter, which is actually just shelving that had at some point been “enclosed” with “drawer fronts” (boards on hinges). 

in all, we replaced these things with a fifteen inch ikea base cabinet including four drawers, which has been installed, and a thirty inch wall cabinet with shelving and very few bells and whistles, which has not been installed. I think the base was around $200, but I believe I paid quite a bit more on top of that for soft close dampers, but I can’t figure out how much that was! included in that cost were the extendable, more expensive drawers, and mid-range drawer fronts, so you could definitely pay quite a bit less if you choose different options. I wouldn’t get the soft close drawers again but Lucas likes them so they’re fine, but I would definitely recommend the more expensive drawer option for stability and to maximize your space. As for the drawer fronts, I actually kiiind of wish I had gotten the more expensive high gloss white because I just really like them and the ones we got don’t match the steel cabinet as well as I was expecting, but I’m going to live with it for a while and see how I feel. The wall cabinet was around $150, including the panel that goes on the exposed edge of the thing. We also got a stainless steel toe kick, which I believe was $20 and was a big impulse because we could have made our own* I just wanted it and its convenience! I’ll throw that into an “extras” category that includes the suspension rod, drawer hardware template, hinges and shit that I can’t remember if it was included in the base cost, and we’ll call that another $100 to be safe.

*to accommodate the old steel cabinet and extra heavy countertop, there is a tiny bit of extra framing on the base cabinet that will need to be covered by another, parallel aluminum strip, which will cost us like... a small fraction of the cost of the toe kick.

I also have spent a good deal of money on organization pieces for those drawers, because I needed to maximize having only that fifteen inches for storage, and because we all know that’s where ikea excels anyway. This is very much nothing more than “live your best life” bullshit but I have pretty strong and learn-ed feelings about how you should consider choosing interior organization bullshit in a sea of organizational bullshit if you ever wanna hear ‘em! But I ended up with flatware dividers, a similar divider for small utensils, a nice set of dividers for organizing knives, a large clip-in drawer divider and glass drawer sides, and that cost me a good $50 over the course of two years, but I think my setup is reaaaally efficient, easy, clean, comfortable and safe! I want to eventually plan the interior of the under-sink steel cabinet in a similar way, really for my own satisfaction, but that is not a priority yet and I haven’t priced anything out or planned it.

I have not bought hardware for the cabinets yet, but I have “budgeted” $40 to source (probably, I’m thinking of changing my mind) the same chrome handles that the steel cabinet had, to put on all the new cabinets and replace the old ceramic hardware on the hoosier cabinet.

the hoosier cabinet! even though I bought this before I thought I’d be doing anything at all to the kitchen, it’s going to be doing a lot of work (going against a wall whose corner is too narrow to have any built-in cabinets), so I should include it. I can’t really remember but I think I paid... let’s say $160. I think it was less than that but we’ll go with that. Very little money has gone into making it nicer, just work.

I will throw in our pantry wire shelving too, while I’m here, even though we also bought that before. I would die for it. I think? it cost about $100.

So all in, cabinetry and storage is looking like a total of $800, but some of that is actually just furniture.

counter:  We’re pretty much all in for $300, which is unbelievable. It’s something I never could have begun to imagine, how expensive any counters are. The majority of that is actually labor, because we paid movers to help install it. (It’s 200 pounds and could break if dropped.) The rest of the cost includes interior framing and mold framing, the nice cement and pigment (which we still have for future projects), some layout of tools (which we have for future projects), and that cost also includes a first try that failed! We could have cut that cost in half if we had friends to help us carry it! I really can’t believe it!

appliances: The fridge and beautiful gas stove are staying. I bought a dishwasher for $400. It’s installed. We recently bought a range hood (!) on a really good sale (it’s nice), but we both already forgot if it was $300 or $400, let’s round up to $400. Installing it is the next step, and we haven’t bought the ductwork (although it’s traveling a short distance) or anything, and he needs to buy a tool that punches circle holes in the wall. I feel optimistically we can install it, then, for another $100. This installation is also going to involve a lot of wiring, and we’re moving a gas line at the same time so we can move the stove, so we’ll see. Unfortunately we also have to get a new sink because the one we have, which I was planning on keeping, was a casualty, and we have a narrower selection of options because of the thickness of the counter, it’s this whole deal, but the good news is we’re at least basically upgrading to a nicer and cooler sink? $200 and that is wishfully including a new faucet (which I’m not going to get for a long time anyway because it’s not as urgent), and any extra plumbing costs. So we’ll say $1000 in appliances which I still fucking hate to even conceptualize :|. But these two things are huge huge huge huge quality of life improvements for me, because of how much my... brain patterns... about kitchen cleanliness... were actually unhinging me entirely... and also oh my god? People don’t spend hours doing dishes????

In the next year I’d love to also buy an entry-level juice bitch juicer and a burr grinder, but I don’t know if I will, and I would LOVE a nicer toaster, which I might ask for for christmas hashtag money diaries

So we’re about $2200 in and have paid for most of the worst of it, and all of the above are all the parts that make the kitchen run. Everything henceforth is speculative.

floor: I’ve finally found something I can almost commit to, but this is going to be one of the last things. We’re going to do the kitchen, pantry, and the landing to the basement, and I am expecting complications, but I believe we can do it for under $400. I’ve never done it before though, so this might be super optimistic! Or Way over! I dunno! I can definitely settle for cheaper-per-square-foot tile, and think I have found some I love, but I want this to be very beautiful overall. The vinyl we have can definitely get us through for a while.

lighting:

I’ve figured out what I’m looking for, but haven’t figured out where to find it yet. I am imagining a budget higher than this needs to be, just because I’d love something extra nice and beautiful, so I’m going with $100.

walls, backsplash, finishing and ceiling:

I’m just doing porcelain grid here, so the cost per unit will be low, but... I wanna tile a LOT of area. Like instead of just the backsplash behind the counter, maybe... the entire wall behind the counter? Like a whole fucking wall??? I have tile madness. This is very nearly the last thing, so I may talk some sense into myself. But I REALLY wanna. I’m reasonably sure I can cover that in tile for like $35 and I could save money by using the same grout I use for the floor, but who knows. I need a backsplace, possibly to entirely re-trim the window on that wall (or at least fix it up), to address and replace some wonky molding around the door ways, and possibly install tile baseboards or something need like that, plus some aluminum trim here and there around the steel cabinet, something for a stove backsplash (possibly handmade metal) and some handmade hooks and things, we’ll paint, finesse the ceiling, and I’m betting you we can do all of this for $200. There is one final thing. when the stove is in its new spot, I want a narrow kitchen cart/butcher block to fill the gap next to it. We’ve looked at some retail and they’re all cheap and nearly never combine an enclosed drawer (for optimal spice storage) with a wire rack base, so we’ve planned a way to “make” (combine parts into) the perfect one, and this will not cost us $200, probably.

and then I secretly kinda wanna make some curtains out of feed sacks....

:)

[kurogenesis]

What can I say?

Certainly can’t say I didn’t see this coming. Well, might as well get down to it, eh, @adobsonartworks? (I do so wish I could actually tag you, maybe at least let you try to defend yourself). Fair warning, this post is going to get excessively wordy, as I am wont to do. So, first off, it’s a pity you’re so eager to just mash the block button when confronted with someone who disagrees with you. I didn’t even get the chance to see your response before you had blocked me on Twitter - hell, I didn’t even know you HAD responded before you decided to hammer that block button. Luckily for me I can see your response simply by not being logged in to twitter. You made the claim that men never get harassed off of twitter - and made the implication that your claim can be applied across all social media - when you yourself provided not one, but two examples - Ahmed Best and Jake Lloyd - being on the receiving end of harassment so brutal that it nearly drove the former to suicide and led the latter to gave up acting entirely.

And you’re awfully quick to turn around and dismiss something that happened 18 years ago, when you had made a comic about Star Wars related harassment campaigns just over a month ago. A comic that by the end of the month, you yourself said could be considered a failure because you had no profit to show for it - something you could have at least given an attempt to remedy. You have a Patreon - I’ve seen the page, that’s a nice 30 bucks a month you’re getting, and yes it was easy to figure out that you’re getting an average of less than two dollars per patron; you may not list the amount on the page, but your goals are still based on money, and you explicitly list $50 for the first goal - and I’ve heard you have a Kofi account, but I’ve never done anything with that site. If you wanted money, you could have easily linked either or both of them to that post - or any other artwork post - and I’m sure there would be people more than happy to throw some more cash your way. Clearly I struck a nerve by bringing that up. Which is a great way to transition into the real meat of the post; I just wanted to give the response I had been denied because you choose to turn with your tail between your legs rather than actually have a discussion. Can’t really stick to your request to remain “on topic” when you immediately excise me from the conversation. Anyway, let’s talk about you, sir. So far you’ve blocked me on Facebook after a back and forth about TotalBiscuit, on Tumblr after I sided with @the-specksynder against your opinion that punching Nazis is the way to go - you didn’t even bother to try and respond to that one - and now on Twitter after a brief back and forth on harassment. The only time I got even remotely nasty was calling you a “petulant little shit” at the beginning for the first of those three, and I will fully admit that’s because I was legitimately angry when I started that back and forth - raking the dead over coals like that is one of the few things that legitimately pisses me off. But that’s the kind of person you are. You’re not interested in debate or having your ideas challenged. You’re not interested in testing your worldview or adjusting it when someone suggests you might be wrong. I advised you to take a look at the RecastBatwoman hashtag, and based on some comments on Facebook - yes, I really can actually see all your public posts on there and on Tumblr, the only thing you’ve succeeded in doing is silencing critics - you did take me up on that, and for this I applaud you... but you proceeded to wrap the tinfoil fedora around your head ever tighter rather than consider that you might be wrong.

Looking over your history on the internet - your current history on Tumblr, Facebook, and Twitter, as well as your former Twitter and DA accounts, of which many screen shots exist - this is a pattern of behavior for you. And it’s one that runs deep, because you have never let yourself move on from the past (only claiming to when it is convenient for you to do so). You continually blame others for your own shortcomings rather than just own up to your mistakes and genuinely make an effort to change. I will be perfectly honest - if you genuinely made an effort to change yourself for the better, then I would forgiven you of your past mistakes. But that’s the core of your problem - you don’t try to grow. You don’t try to move forward. I don’t know at what point it happened, but at some point in your life you allowed your anger, your envy, your hatred, your negativity to claw its way into you and start dragging you down, further and further into the festering abyss. It’s why you think exclusively in sides, black vs white, the way a child does. It’s why you don’t believe your political opponents can genuinely change. It’s why you hold on to every little slight. You yourself have outright stated to - at least at one point - have kept a running list of those who have “wronged” you in some way, as if that is actually a healthy thing to do. It’s why you think of the world as such an evil, hate-filled place - because that’s all you can see any more. 

You advocate violence against those you fear would destroy you - a show of force to cow them into submission. But while shock and awe may work for military warfare, the war you choose to wage is not one of bombs and bullets, but of ideas and beliefs. Such a war is won through changing the hearts and minds of those around you. You claim to want to fight hate - but the only tool you have is your own hatred - and just as you cannot extinguish a fire with more flame, you cannot destroy hatred with more enmity.

I suppose at the end of the day that’s the fundamental difference between you and me. Once a upon a time I was not so different from you. I was bullied, I was angry, I held contempt in my heart for so many things. I came to hold dearly to one side of the political spectrum, convinced that they could do no wrong. I can’t really pinpoint any one thing that changed it, but I let go of my hate and anger years ago. Do I still find myself getting angry and spiteful? Yeah, of course I do. I’m not perfect. But I don’t hold on to those feelings. I don��t let them consume me. Because I realized that we shape the world we live in. If we sow hatred and ugliness, we will reap hatred and ugliness. The only way to create a world of love and beauty is to go out and put a little love and beauty into it. Yeah, the world has a lot of awful to it. But we may as well give our best effort to do good, otherwise it will never be better.

I suppose I’ve let this get wordy enough, so I might as well wrap it up with a little quote from John Lennon - “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you will join us, and the world will be as one.”

[predict-it]

Predictable Insights - 8.14.20

Here are the real-money, prediction markets trending on PredictIt, the stock market for politics. This week we look at how Biden picked his running mate, the mail-in debate, how each vote could impact the Electoral College winner and Republican strategy in a Georgia Senate race.

Market prices updated as of 1 p.m. ET on Friday, August 14.

2020 US Presidential Race Update

Former Vice President of the United States Joe Biden speaking with supporters at a community event at the Best Western Regency Inn in Marshalltown, Iowa. Photo: Gage Skidmore / Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0

Vying for Veep: The New York Times writes about how presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden picked Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) as his running mate, and how you were wrong if you thought Sen. Tammy Duckworth (I-IL) had a chance in the end. If you were trading in PredictIt’s Democratic vice presidential nominee market on Tuesday, the day of the announcement, you would have already known that. More importantly, you would have been party to the single biggest day of trading in one market on PredictIt since it launched in 2014. The new record set on Aug. 11, 2020 — 8,427,156 shares traded in the #BidenVP nominee market — trumped the old record set on July 14, 2016 — 3,245,252 shares traded in the #TrumpVP nominee market.

Some traders are happier than others with the result: "Let's see how much money I made on PredictIt." — cartoonist Scott Adams, admittedly gloating about his "finest prediction."

Mail-In Voting: “President Donald Trump said on Thursday he was blocking Democrats’ effort to include funds for the US Postal Service and election infrastructure in a new coronavirus relief bill, a bid to block more Americans from voting by mail during the pandemic,” Reuters writes. How does this end? Will it escalate further?

A Federal judge is requiring the Trump campaign to provide evidence of mail-in voter fraud in Pennsylvania. “The case is one of the boldest attempts by the Trump campaign in court to curtail mail-in voting in the 2020 election. The Trump campaign had claimed mail-in voting could prompt questions about the accuracy of election results and ultimately chaos, according to the court record," CNN writes. The judge presiding over the case was appointed by the president and a hearing about the evidence is set for late September.

Perhaps this existential election uncertainty is one factor weighing on PredictIt’s comparatively conservative forecast of 60 percent for Biden winning the election?

Congress Deadlocked on Stimulus: “Nearly 30 million workers have lost $600 in enhanced weekly unemployment benefits that have kept much of the economy afloat these past four months during the coronavirus pandemic, as top lawmakers in Congress and the White House remain at an impasse over how and whether to extend the benefits,” The Washington Post writes. How will the Senate election markets react if this continues? Send us any trends you see to markets@predictit.org.

Diving Deeper: The Economist takes a look at how each vote could turn the outcome in the Electoral College. They write, “The Economist used its presidential-election-forecasting model — which simulates the election 20,000 times a day — to quantify the system’s biases. Using each forecast for every state we determined the chance that any given voter in a particular state casts the decisive ballot in November. That figure is the product of two probabilities: whether a single state is likely to edge a candidate over 270 Electoral College votes; and whether that state is won by a single voter.” Read more here.

Tweet Wars: The race for the Georgia Senate seat currently held by Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) is heating up. First, WNBA players wore “Vote Warnock” shirts supporting Loeffler’s opponent, Rev. Raphael Warnock (D). The catch? Loeffler is a co-owner of the Atlanta Dream, a women's professional basketball team. But Loeffler will have to get to the race against Warnock first, and she’s trying to get there through Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA). The problem? She’s criticizing him for supporting Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) in the 2012 election when she and her husband together gave $1.5 million to his campaign.

The question is, have Republicans provided Warnock with an opening to win a previously red Georgia Senate seat? Paul Kane writes more on the topic. Where is your money in this race?

Other Market Commentary from the PredictIt Community

The Map Room: The latest episode of The Map Room is out on Old Bull TV! This week, Eric Cunningham (@decunningham2), Nick Morris (@TossupReport) and Jared Stone (@JStonePolitics) discuss North Carolina, Eric’s home state. This southern state is diverse, rapidly growing and very competitive politically. The hosts explain all you need to know about the basics of North Carolina politics: the traditional east-west divide, the modern urban/rural split and the presence of many large cities spread throughout the state.

Experts & Whales: Trader @iSavage_PI is more politically astute than James Carville and The Mooch... at least when it comes to predicting the Democratic vice presidential nominee. However, not all traders are so lucky though... apparently a whale in the Democratic vice presidential market on PredictIt as well as on UK betting sites, got outfished.

Markey & Millennials: Besides the polls showing the race tightening, Star Spangled Gamblers’ Keendawg gives another contrarian but thoughtful factor to consider when you’re predicting whether Joe Kennedy can beat Ed Markey in the Massachusetts Democratic Senate primary: “If this turns into a mail-in election, do young people who would vote for Kennedy even know how to use the Postal Service?”

OutSilver’d: With FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver releasing his new 2020 election forecasting model this week, @jipkin takes a look at the old Silver model: “For fun, I scored @538's final 2016 model using the scoring rules for my 2020 Prediction Contests. The result? -2801.9 points. (utterly dismal, but perhaps least bad of competition?) It got killed on margins by underestimating Trump in red states and Clinton in blue states.” Another criticism of Silver’s methodology came from PredictWise’s David Rothschild on the most recent episode of The Political Trade: “I like to think of him as a publisher, an owner of a product, which is a poll-based secret formula — and that’s what he sells. And so he is loyal to his product, and that’s what clogs all of his judgment.”

Picture Perfect: And now, our favorite tweet of the week from trader AG123, expressing the power of market incentives: “I'm at the stage of @predictit trading where I am literally watching someone draw pictures of possible VP picks looking for insight. Kill me please.”

State of the 2020 Presidential Election in One Chart:

Source: Bloomberg

Crowdsourced

Crowds are information-aggregation machines. Here are some disparate nuggets of wisdom we found informative from the PredictIt crowd this week:

Dubious Sources — On the morning of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s expected running mate announcement, someone posing as the Digital Director for Dr. Jill Biden slyly changed Sen. Duckworth’s Wikipedia page, presumably in an attempt to signal her imminent selection as the vice presidential nominee. This disinformation briefly had a tangible impact on Duckworth’s Democratic vice presidential market pricing — with more than 184,000 shares trading on the fake news. A reminder to all traders (and news consumers in general) to check your sources.

Lies^10=Truth — Words of caution from a survey article titled “Facts & Myths about Misperceptions” about the news you choose to consume and share: “Even exposure to the ill-defined term “fake news” and claims about its prevalence can be harmful. In an experimental study among respondents from Mechanical Turk, Van Duyn and Collier (2019) find that when people are exposed to tweets containing the term “fake news,” they become less able to discern real from fraudulent news stories. Similarly, Clayton et al. (2019) find that participants from Mechanical Turk who are exposed to a general warning about the prevalence of misleading information on social media then tend to rate headlines from both legitimate and untrustworthy news sources as less accurate, suggesting that the warning causes an indiscriminate form of skepticism.”

Prediction of the Week — Trump responding to Biden choosing Harris as his running mate: "She was my number one draft pick and we'll see how she works out. She did very, very poorly in the primaries as you know. She was expected to do well and she ended up right around 2 percent."

Submit your comments and links for this section via Twitter by tagging @PredictIt and the hashtag #crowdsourced with your submission. If we select your comment for the newsletter, you get a $10 credit!

In Case You Missed It!

PHOTO: THE EPOCH TIMES/Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0

PredictIt markets were mentioned often in the news this week, including by: Yahoo! News, New York Times, Barron's, Marker, ValueWalk, Seeking Alpha, Investing, The Daily Wire, Hot Air, MI Bets, Election Central, Casino.org (1, 2 and 3), Ahora Mismo, Le Temps, DraftKings, US Bets, UpNewsInfo, Extra Newsfeed and Mediaite.

This Week's Quotable — from Yahoo! Finance article “Markets Brace for U.S. Election Volatility. Well, Some of Them”:

“Trump has been losing ground in opinion polls and his chance to remain in the White House was around 43 percent, according to forecasting site PredictIt.org, down from a 2020 high of 57 percent in late February.”

We are always crowdsourcing new market ideas from traders. Send ideas to markets@predictit.org. Be sure and include a legitimate resolution source.

Thanks for following the markets!

Team @PredictIt

[gizedcom]

Long Road To Hollywood: Why Actors With Disabilities Have Yet To Be Recognized

A pedophilic circus performer. A comedic womanizer. A killer.

These were just a few of the roles that Danny Woodburn was offered when he began auditioning for film and TV roles in the early 1990s. Woodburn, a self-described little person, quickly found that nearly every character he portrayed was “miserable,” broken or evil.

“The go-to, I think, for little people is to make them creepy or animalistic,” the actor and producer told HuffPost.

Even after landing a recurring role on “Seinfeld” and scoring gigs on shows including “Watchmen,” “Jane the Virgin” and “CSI,” Woodburn said he still came across casting opportunities that recycled tiresome tropes invoking pathos for “the sad little man.” Just a couple of years ago, casting agents tried to pitch him on a role in a Christmas special by saying he’d get the chance to kiss a famous performer.

“The big selling point was that I’d be able to make out with this well-known actress,” Woodburn said of the project. “I was like, ’Who cares about that when you’ve created this horrible, stereotypical character and the idea is that I should be so lucky to have this opportunity as a little person to be in the arms of this well-known actress and making out with her on screen?’ They were looking down on little people in that sense.”

Woodburn turned down every role that he found to be demeaning toward people with disabilities, determined not to contribute to objectifying portrayals of disability.

“It’s cost me a lot of jobs, but at the same time it’s given my career longevity,” he said. 

Jerod Harris via Getty Images

Danny Woodburn attends a Television Academy and SAG-AFTRA event in North Hollywood on Sept. 11, 2018.

The entertainment industry has always struggled to provide authentic representation of people with disabilities. In 2016, only 2.7% of characters in the 100 highest-earning movies were disabled, according to a report from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. And if people with disabilities are depicted at all in film, television or theater, they tend to be in polarizing narratives that portray them as objects of pity or inspiration. Stories approaching disabled characters through a holistic, neutral lens are few and far between.

It also takes creative people with disabilities significantly longer than their nondisabled peers to get their big break, if they do at all. 

Disabled people are often shut out of Hollywood because they “miss a rung on the ladder” early on in their careers, casting agent Gail Williamson of KMR Talent said last year at ReelAbilities, the largest festival of films for and about people with disabilities.

For some people, that means being shut out of a writers room. For many, it means dealing with unsupportive film schools or a casting director’s blunt preference for abled artists. And for others, a missed career opportunity can be attributed to nothing more than a damn broken elevator. 

Accessible, But Not Really

In January 2019, Fuchsia Carter signed up for an audition that specifically said performers with disabilities were welcome. Carter, a trained actor who uses a wheelchair, emailed the production company to ask whether the building was accessible. “Regrettably, the space we perform in is only accessible by stairs,” the company’s team wrote back, noting they were “delighted” she wanted to audition. 

Carter has had dozens of similar experiences over the course of nearly a decade. She has turned up for auditions only to discover the building doors weren’t wide enough, the elevator was out of order or there was no parking.

When she does finally make it to an audition, casting agents often assume her wheelchair is a prop. They’re floored that a wheelchair user could also be a professional actor.

“I often get asked if I can show able-bodied actors how to use a wheelchair convincingly,” said Carter, recalling one incident when casting agents for a crime show asked her if she could give lessons to another actor up for the same role. “I’m like, no, you can either hire me as the actor for the character or you can go jump.”

Even at the most basic training level, actors with disabilities are denied opportunities to hone their craft.

Actor Christine Bruno, who received degrees in acting and directing in 1998, said dance movement classes were typically a requirement for her programs — but that she didn’t have the opportunity to take them.

“They wouldn’t teach me because they didn’t know how to teach me,” said Bruno, a little person who has since been cast in “Law & Order” and, most recently, the CBS series “God Friended Me.” “They probably didn’t want to be responsible for whatever liability they thought that that would bring, so basically they refused to allow me to take their classes.”

When she asked the administration if there was another way she could fulfill the requirement, they told her not to worry about it.

“I was like, wait a minute,” she said. “I’m paying all this money for an education. I want to be afforded the same education everyone else is getting.”

I often get asked if I can show able-bodied actors how to use a wheelchair convincingly. Fuchsia Carter, actor

Other disabled professionals in the entertainment industry said they’ve faced similar roadblocks while studying the arts. 

Carey Cox, a theater actor with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, said directors in her movement classes “would physically put their hands on my body and try to adjust [me] or get me to do things I was uncomfortable with.”

“If I fell or couldn’t hold my balance, it was brought up in my evaluations,” she said.

Dominick Evans, a filmmaker, said one of his theater instructors in 2009 only gave him monologues of characters with disabilities — including a deaf character and a blind character from “Oedipus,” even though Evans is a wheelchair user. He left the school the following year and didn’t finish his program.

He graduated from a different film school a few years later, calling the experience “hell” because of inaccessibility and the fact that he was told by one professor that other instructors didn’t want him in their vocal classes because they “didn’t know what to do with me because of my wheelchair.”

That same year, Evans began hosting a Twitter chat using the hashtag #FilmDis and met dozens of other people who were upset about the lack of disability representation on screen. He turned the discussion into an organization with the same name, which released a white paper in March that found that cisgender white men made up the majority of disabled characters on TV during the 2018-2019 TV season.

“In film school they taught us, ‘write what you know,’” Evans wrote during one #FilmDis Twitter chat. “And yet all these films that feature disability are not by us.”

A Steep Climb

When marginalized performing artists are absent from the creative process, both the art and the community suffer. And that’s especially true when nondisabled actors are cast to play characters with disabilities.

In “Me Before You,” a 2016 film based on a bestselling romance novel, a woman takes care of a quadriplegic man who has chosen to die by assisted suicide (played by Sam Claflin, who is nondisabled). The movie also plays out the trope that it would be better for everyone if people with disabilities were dead. 

“The Upside” received widespread criticism for casting actor Bryan Cranston as a wheelchair user and maintaining “a weakness for sentimentality, a reliance on clichés and caricatures,” as the Los Angeles Times wrote in 2019.

Most recently, “Come as You Are,” a movie about three disabled men taking a road trip with a nurse to a brothel for people with disabilities, faced significant backlash for casting all nondisabled actors as the main characters.

But there is some evidence that the tide is beginning to turn. In 2018, for example, about 20% of disabled characters on TV were portrayed by actors with the same disability — up from just 5% two years earlier, according to a study from the Ruderman Foundation, which promotes full inclusion of people with disabilities.

Lauren Ridloff, who plays a deaf character on “The Walking Dead,” is set to become Marvel’s first deaf superhero in 2021′s “The Eternals.” Zack Gottsagen, star of “The Peanut Butter Falcon,” became the first actor with Down syndrome to present an Oscar in February. Ryan Haddad portrays a student with cerebral palsy in “The Politician.” And last year, Ali Stroker became the first wheelchair user to win a Tony Award.

Frazer Harrison via Getty Images

Actors Kumail Nanjiani, Lauren Ridloff, Brian Tyree Henry and Barry Keoghan attend Go Behind the Scenes with Walt Disney Studios in Anaheim, California, on Aug. 24, 2019. Ridloff, part of the cast of “The Walking Dead,” is set to be a Marvel superhero in “The Eternals.”

Many actors, casting directors and other industry figures said they’re increasingly seeing disabled actors playing more dynamic characters — which has naturally led to more authentic, groundbreaking and complex storytelling.

In “Raising Dion,” a Netflix drama series about a kid superhero that premiered in October,  Esperanza (played by newcomer Sammi Haney) builds a friendship with Dion (Ja’Siah Young) and helps him save the world. She also happens to use a wheelchair, but that’s just one facet of her character’s story. In one episode, she tells Dion that his play tent isn’t accessible to wheelchairs in a way that shows how assertive, confident and witty she can be. In another, she gets upset when Dion assumes Esperanza wishes she could walk and teaches her friend that just because someone is disabled doesn’t mean they want to be cured. 

Becoming The Norm

The increased representation of disability on screen is a result of decades of advocacy work to recognize disability as part of the greater movement for diversity in entertainment — not a separate cause. 

In 2011, for example, Woodburn and several other members of the SAG-AFTRA Performers With Disabilities Committee teamed up with the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers, a trade union representing workers in the entertainment industry. Together, they created a task force aimed at creating more opportunities for disabled performers, which has led to new relationships with studios and better industry practices on disability hiring.

Many advocates said it’s important for nondisabled people to be involved in pushing for change. Disabled people, after all, are all too cognizant of how underrepresented their community is.

Most recently, the movie “Come as You Are,” about three disabled men, faced backlash for casting all nondisabled actors for the main characters.

In late January, the Ruderman Foundation released an open letter to Hollywood executives and production companies, urging them to cast more people with disabilities. Dozens of people in the industry — including Marlee Matlin (who in 1987 became the first and only deaf actor to win an Oscar), Danny DeVito, Eva Longoria, Mark Ruffalo and Glenn Close — signed on, and the foundation has since partnered with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization behind the Oscars, to recruit students with disabilities and from other underrepresented communities who are looking to break into Hollywood.

The Cincinnati chapter of ReelAbilities, the film festival for and about people with disabilities, relaunched in 2018 as the Over-the-Rhine International Film Festival. The name change came as part of an effort to make disability part of a larger dialogue around inclusive storytelling.

The festival drew in nearly eight times as many people as it had before the rebranding, Jack W. Geiger, the event’s managing director, told HuffPost. 

“It’s raised the level of consciousness across the board,” he said, adding that more than half of the films at the festival still feature disability-related storylines. “Since the rebranding, it’s allowed us to expand the awareness of disability to a much wider audience.”

The best part of my ‘General Hospital’ dream coming true is that the character is not written as disabled. She is because I am.” Maysoon Zayid, comedian and actor

Also in 2018, the Casting Society of America hosted its first open casting call for actors with disabilities. More than 50 casting directors participated and auditioned at least 900 disabled actors as part of the call, according to Variety — showing that the common misconception that there aren’t enough disabled actors to fill roles simply isn’t true.

“The industry has an extraordinary opportunity to do work that’s truthful,” said Lynn Meyers, a member of the Casting Society of America who has also worked on casting calls for Over-the-Rhine.

“I think that’s all of our responsibilities as producers, writers, directors and actors, knowing that there are people that want to work with them and not giving up,” said Meyers, who has cast movies including “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” and “The Shawshank Redemption.” “It’s easy to say that; much harder for somebody to break through that.”

But even as disability has become increasingly visible on screen and behind the scenes, disabled people of color — including women and LGBTQ folks of color — are often left out of the narratives.

“Anytime you do see disability, it’s a white boy,” said comedian and actor Maysoon Zayid, referencing Ryan O’Connell in “Special,” RJ Mitte in “Breaking Bad” and Micah Fowler in “Speechless.”  

Astrid Stawiarz via Getty Images for Together Live

“The best part of my ‘General Hospital’ dream coming true is that the character is not written as disabled. She is because I am,” said Maysoon Zaid, shown here at a New York City event last November.

“I love them and I support them, but maybe we could see some more women, huh?” she said. 

Even on “groundbreaking” shows, she said, directors and screenwriters need to ask themselves, “Who am I missing?”

Zayid spent the first year and a half of her career auditioning for movies and TV shows. When nobody wanted to cast her, a Palestinian Muslim woman with cerebral palsy, she started performing stand-up instead. Acting opportunities were sparse, and she landed only a few small roles. 

Last year, she got a recurring role as an attorney on “General Hospital.” It had taken her more than 17 years to get to that point. 

“The best part of my ‘General Hospital’ dream coming true is that the character is not written as disabled,” Zayid said. “She is because I am.”

Advocates hope that the industry will get to a point where disabled artists are taken seriously and given opportunities to play characters that have complex backstories, story arcs, personalities and lives that don’t solely revolve around their disabilities.

“I don’t want to be given a job because I’m disabled,” said Carter, the actor who was shut out of inaccessible auditions. “I want to be given the chance to show that I have talent.”

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[thedarkenedkeeper]

Glitched: Part 2 - Save Him

Author's Note: Going to say exactly what I said on my last post - this entire fanfiction is going to be quite dark. This chapter in particular is dark and does contain a bit of a disturbing part near the ending. This is an angst-filled horror story. So if you're looking to have a happy fun time, this is not for you. There WILL be feels. You have been warned.....Enjoy!

Also, listen to this playlist while reading :)

Was he alive? Was he truly actually alive?

 His heart was beating at a slow, stuttering pace; the rush of stale blood deafening to his ears. Raspy labored breathing – inhaling and exhaling, struggling to get the air he so desperately needed.

 Yes, he was alive. Just barely.

 He was growing weak, he knew this. It seemed the longer he remained here in this prison, the more drained and dead he felt. He didn’t know what it was that was causing this. Was this all a result of that wretched demon trying to take control of him? One thing he was certain of: if he didn’t get out of here soon, he would die, whether it by Anti’s own hands or by suffocation of this hell.

The Irishman struggled to his feet, letting out a shaken breath of frustration as he leaned against the nearest wall. With a trembling bony hand, he reached for the chains attached to the wall and coiled his limp fingers around them. Letting a shallow sigh slip through his lips, he took a step back and tugged as hard as he could, conjuring all the strength he had left. He had tried countless times to break these chains, but time and time again, to no avail. All it gave him were deep cuts and agonizing blisters. He was shedding his own blood in exchange for nothing. He yanked on the chains viciously, teeth clenched and hissing in pain at feeling the metal dig sharply into his skin. He didn’t care; he needed to get out of here. He needed to stop Anti and return to the community.

 The community…

 There was a beat. An excruciating one that may as well have felt like a stab wound to the chest. That glitch’s haunting words were clawing into his brain, taunting him and speaking insidious truths. Jack froze, his grip tightening around the chains to the point of breaking the skin. Anti couldn’t be right, he just couldn’t be. He had to have been lying – he had to be saying all of those horrid things just to bring him down to his knees.

 But what if…what if they weren’t lies? What if it was true? Did the community no longer love him? Had they given up on him, abandoned him? Had they created Anti just to get rid of him? Was he only a lab rat to them in all of this, just to test what their creation was capable of?

 Feeling tears prickle at his eyes, Jack shut them tight as a petite whimper of hurt slipped through the darkness. Having no energy left, he released the chains from his bloodied fingers and pressed his forehead against the brick wall, shaking all over as he struggled to hold back the tears that longed to fall. He didn’t want to believe what that demon had said, but his words…he couldn’t get them out of his head. They were like an echo in his mind, playing over and over again like a broken record that he couldn’t fully break. What if….What if…

 He inhaled sharply and coughed violently, keeling over and dry heaving into his hand. He swore the air was becoming polluted somehow, tainted with sin, evil, and blood. Breathing it all in only made him choke every few minutes, and when he pulled his hand back, he was horrified to see a few spots of blood in his palm.

 “N-No…”

 Unexpectedly, from off in the distance, someone came bursting through a door, a beam of light slicing through the eternal darkness before the door slammed shut. Jack jerked his head in that direction to very faintly make out a slim masculine figure heading towards his cell. Anti.

 “Still sobbing over your loyal fanbase, Jackaboy? How pathetic.”

 Jack shot him a glare before returning to what he had been doing originally, pulling on the chains weakly. He barely had any energy remaining and his vision was beginning to swim, and what with how stale the air was, he felt like he’d vomit at any moment. His ears perked at hearing the demon behind him give a faint chuckle at seeing his poor attempt.

 “Give it a rest already why don’t you. You’re never going to get out of those chains, so you may as well sit back and relax while you can. After all,” A smirk tugged at his lips, “you don’t have much time left.”

 At hearing those words, the Irishman stopped what he was doing and turned to face his alter ego, legs staggering as he took a few slow steps forward.

 “What do you want, Anti?” He questioned, his voice as dry and scratchy as sandpaper. He coughed harshly, eyeing him weakly. “You’ve already tortured me enough. What else could you possibly want from me?”

 Anti merely responded with a devilish smirk. “I just thought I’d come by and let you know how your lovely community is doing, given the circumstances.” He leaned forward against the bars. “They’re right in the palm of my hand, Jackie. I have them right where I want them and they are all so…willing.” He chuckled in amusement. “Such obedient puppets.”

 “Shut up…Stop talking about them like that.” Jack shook his head. “You’re wrong about them…You don’t know them like I do…They’ll…” His sentence got cut off by a harsh cough. “Th-They’ll find a way to get me back. They…will find a way to outsmart you.” He lifted his eyes to focus on the demon.

 Just as he expected, his words had little effect on the creature. Anti smiled from ear to ear as a sharp laugh came bursting through his lips.

 “Oh Jackie, Jackie, Jackie, what a misguided fool you are. Have you already forgotten our last talk?” He leaned in further and shook his head. “They’re not on your side – haven’t been for a long time now, actually. They’ve been playing you for some time, getting you to believe they cared. And look at where you are now.” He grinned, pulling away from the bars. “A sacrifice to their greatest creation, ready to be slaughtered. Oh if only you could see just how anxious they all are to see me once again. They cannot wait to see me show my true power!” A chilling giggle rang through the room, sending a shiver up Jack’s spine.

 Jack couldn’t reply, it was getting to be too difficult to breathe in here. He stumbled forward and grasped the bars, leaning against them as he breathed in shallow breaths. Anti chuckled.

 “What’s wrong? Has the hero lost his will to speak?” He giggled out of amusement, enjoying seeing his host so weak and fragile.

 Until he suddenly stopped. Something was wrong, he could sense it. Something was going on with the community.

 “What the - ?” Immediately, the demon whirled around and with a snap of his fingers, a patch of darkness glitched out to reveal a series of posts on the internet. He instantly began scrolling through them all in a flurry, one by one, getting increasingly more put off by what he was seeing. “What the fuck is this?!” The glitchy demon snapped, his head jerking and twitching violently as he tried to keep his anger at bay.

 Straining to keep his head up, let alone focus, the YouTuber lifted his head to see what the demon was going on about. He fixed his eyes onto the screen and to his astonishment, he saw what was agitating the glitch. Post after post had the following hashtag slapped onto them: #septicsave. His eyes widened as much as they possibly could. The community – they were trying to fight back. They were actually trying to get Jack back. He had been right, they did care. They hadn’t given up on him. A small weak smile played at this lips as he saw Anti rush through the posts.

 “Looks like…you were wrong.” He scoffed before a violent cough could leave him. “Th-They still do care about me…And…And they will fight for me. The Jacksepticeye community is…is one big family…and family…sticks together.” He glared at Anti, almost a look of challenge. “You-You take away Jack…and they will m-make sure you burn in Hell, you fucker.” He spat.

 There was a deafening silence, all safe for a faint growl that could be heard coming from the demon, who was now standing perfectly still in front of the screen. Far too still, actually. Slowly but surely, that growl morphed into a chuckle, and that chuckle contorted into a wicked laugh. Jack’s eyebrows narrowed out of uneasy puzzlement, not understanding what could possibly be amusing the demon. And then he heard it.

 “Did it ever occur to you that maybe this just made matters worse for you?”

 Another painful beat. The way he had said that sounded far too unnerving for words. Those words had slithered out through his bared teeth in one of the most sinister voices the Irishman had ever heard, and quite frankly, it made any hope he had started to feel dissipate almost instantly. He swallowed the lump in his throat and struggled to speak.

 “Wh-What do you mean by that?”

 His eyes didn’t leave his evil self as he watched him slowly turn to face him, noticing the eerie toothy grin on his dead-white face. Anti’s neck twitched violently, a loud crack emitting from it that caused Jack to take a hesitant step back. Something was off, something was very wrong.

“You think they’re trying to save you? You think they’re banding together to get you back?” Anti couldn’t contain the laughter he was holding back. “Can you not see what they are doing, Jackaboy?” With no warning, one moment he was standing in front of the screen, and the next he was right in front of the cage, startling Jack and making him stumble backward and nearly trip over his chains. “It’s all one big test for me. Those clever fans of yours’, they’re all testing their creation.” He gave a gleeful laugh. “And you all say I’M the demented one. HA!”

 The green-haired Irishman only became more confused, still not understanding what the demon was getting at. But given the way he was suddenly acting, he knew it wasn’t at all good. Because if there was anything he learned about Anti, whenever he was happy, it was never about something good.

 “A test? Wha-…What do you mean ‘test’?” He asked, fear very evident in his voice and Anti, unfortunately, picked up on it instantly.

 The demon grinned at the question. “Oh…You may not want to know. I mean, you said it yourself. They care about you so much.” He said mockingly.

 “What…What do you mean, damn it?!” He tried to sound menacing, but it only resulted in his hoarse voice cracking and another cough to erupt from his lungs.

 “They’re taunting me, Jackie. They know if they try to put the attention onto you, then I will become jealous and try to get them back.” He jerked forward, pressing his forehead to the bars of the cell. “They’re deliberately trying to upset me so I can go and remove the one in the way of it all,” His grin stretched terrifyingly wide, “you.”

 The Irishman felt a sharp pang in his chest at hearing this, and almost instantly, the voices that had been taunting him earlier came back to haunt him. He cringed and shook his head in disbelief, not wanting to believe it.

 “Why…Why would they want to do that?”

 “Isn’t it already obvious enough? I already told you, they want to see what I’m capable of. I’m their creation after all – they made me the way I am! They can’t stand the wait any longer, so what better way to get my attention and speed up the process than piss me off?!” He clicked his tongue. “I have to hand it to them, they really know how to test a demon.” He chuckled. “And deceive their friend as well.”

 “Stop it!…Just…Just stop it.” Jack snapped, sounding defeated. He’d had enough of this glitch speaking about his fanbase like this, like they were the enemy.

 “Now why would I want to do that?”

 “They care….I know…I know them. They care about me and just…just you watch.” He scowled at his darker half, seething through his teeth. “They will end you for good.”

 At hearing this, the demon lost control and broke down in a fit of laughter. His pitch black eyes fell onto his prisoner as that same toothy smile stretched across his face.

 “Oh Jack…I almost feel sorry for you. Trying so hard to grasp onto straws that aren’t there. How pathetic.” He pressed his face through the bars, not blinking once. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned…” A dark chuckle came from deep in his slashed throat. “I’ve sinned an awful lot…Like how I managed to get into your fans’ heads…Each and every one. All of them – infected.” He stated ever so slowly, punctuating each word venomously. “What, did you not believe me the first time when I told you that they would always come back to me?” He giggled with delight. “I told you they’re in the palm of my hand, Jack, and I meant it. No matter what they say or do, they will always find themselves thinking about me. There’s nowhere to run or hide, no way to deny it. I know they’re all thinking of me, wondering when I’ll actually show my face. Sure, some of them may actually care about you, Heaven knows why…but deep down,” His signature jack o’ lantern grin reappeared. “they only want their devious creation to return to the surface.”

 Suddenly feeling a surge of energy fueled by anger, Jack launched himself at the bars, glaring daggers at the abomination.

 “You fucking monster! You’ll pay for this, you’ll - !”

 With no warning, a hand shot out through the bars and latched onto his jaw, violently pulling him forward into the bars. He winced and weakly struggled to get out of the demon’s grip, only to stop when he noticed the absolutely terrifying look in Anti’s eyes. He could feel his blood run cold in seconds flat, and he halted at his attempts of getting free.

“StOp fUcKiNG CaLLiNg mE ThAt!” The manifestation screeched, his entire being glitching out and struggling to remain somewhat stable. “HoW mANy fUCkiNg tiMeS dO I hAvE tO tEll YoU, I Am NOT ThE bAd GUy iN aLL oF ThiS?! ARe yOu tHAt BliNd To sEe iT aLL? OpEn YOuR dAmN eYeS oR I’LL pRy tHeM wiDe OpEn mYSeLf!” He yanked on his jaw once more, forcing his body to clash against the bars. “I am not the monster, the real monster has been with you much longer than I ever have. And they will be the death of you, I assure you of that.” He seethed through clenched teeth.

Anti shoved him away with such force, the poor Irishman tumbled over his chains and collapsed to the ground, hitting the brick wall. He grunted in agony, feeling tears sting at his eyes out of both physical and mental pain. Once again, the damn demon’s words were sinking far too deep into his skull and he was having a hard time convincing himself it was all lies. All at once, the voices came at him, questioning him over and over again.

Do they care? Do they even love me anymore? Did they truly create this abomination to destroy me? Where did I go wrong? Was it something I said? Something I did? Am I not good enough? They’ve given up, haven’t they? I’m nothing to them. They want to see me hurt…Why do they want to see me hurt? Why do they want to see any of us hurt? Is that all we are, just test subjects to use for Anti to destroy?

 It was too late, the tears were set free, and the more the voices taunted him – the more doubts they gave him – the more convinced he was that there was no hope. He had been forgotten. No one was going to save him or the others. They were all dead men.

 “Please…Please s-stop…” He pleaded desperately through his tears. He gazed up at the demon, moving forward to crawl towards the bars, no longer feeling the energy or motivation to get to his feet. “Please…I’m begging you, Anti. I’m b-begging you…Let me go. Let all of us go and leave the community alone, please, I…” He sobbed, licking at the salty tears that ran over his top lip. “I’ll do whatever you want…I’ll do anything you want, I’ll give you some screen time on the channel, you’ll still get the attention you want. Just please…PLEASE…” He cried, begging for the glitch to set him free. He had had enough of the pain. He couldn’t bear it any longer. “Please…Let us go.”

 Anti merely smirked with delight, not at all taking pity on the crippled mess pleading at his feet for freedom.

 “Well I’ll be. Are you actually begging? I quite like it. How cute.” A static-laced chuckle reverberated off the walls of the room. He sighed and shook his head, grinning. “No can-do, Jackaboy. It’s too late. The community has always been on my side – from the very beginning – and the only reason I haven’t cut you open yet is because my creators are challenging me. They want to see just how dangerous and strong I am, and I cannot and WILL NOT let them down.” He took a few steps away from the bars, slowly backing up with his arms stretched out to either side. “If it’s a show they want, it’s a show they’ll get.” He chuckled with glee, turning on his heel to head for the exit.

 The green-haired YouTuber hung his head low, uncontrollable tears of anguish washing over his cheeks and down to his bloodied hands. When would this pain stop? What would become of him and the other egos?

 “Oh! That reminds me!”

 He sniffled and lifted his head to look at the demon. He watched him turn around, putting his hands in his pockets.

 “I figure since you don’t have much time left, you deserve to have some company for the next few hours.” One of his hands was fidgeting inside his pocket, grasping onto something. He pulled out something and chucked it towards Jack, having it land right in front of the cell.

 Through the darkness, it was hard to make out what Anti had thrown at him. Though he was already a mess, Jack shuffled forward, inching closer to the bars. His eyes searched the floor for what Anti had thrown and finally he made out something round. He reached through the bars with one hand and grabbed the thing, instantly feeling something slimy produce a squishy sound in his palm and feeling something ooze down his arm. His heart skipped a beat and began to quicken out of fear of what he was holding. Slowly bringing his hand in close to himself, the Irishman let his eyes adjust and focused on what was in his hand. And what he saw made his heart stop.

 Anti smirked. “Thought you’d like to see an old friend.”

 In his hand was a green and blue eyeball – Sam the septic eye – his symbol, his mascot, his loving friend and companion. He lay limp in his palm, not moving, not blinking – nothing. There was a deeply large gash sliced right down the center, blood seeping out and weaving lines of hot sticky red all along Jack’s arm.

 He was dead, completely butchered and lifeless.

 The emotionally abused Irishman flung back in horror, dropping the diced eyeball in a hurry as he backed up into the brick wall. He couldn’t take his eyes away from the horrific display. His vocal cords took action, and from them came a bloodcurdling scream of horror and gut-wrenching agony.

 “NOOOO!! NOOOO!!! SAAAAM!!!”

 He hung his head, rocking back and forth, sobbing and repeatedly crying out in horrible pain. Anti watched in awe at the display before him. He smirked with triumph, proud with himself as he opened the door.

 “Let’s see them try to save you all now.” Before he left the room, he grinned happily. “Let the show begin.”

Part 1 - Broken

Part 3 - A Storm is Coming

@fear-is-nameless  @golden-eyed-guardians  @anti-support-group

I am so SO sorry :)

[andrewuttaro]

New Look Sabres: GM 1 - PIT - Lies?

Do you feel lied to? I got to say I don’t feel lied to. I know we had a coach and GM who both sold us on the idea there would be competition for roster spots and here we are looking at an opening night roster that looks awfully similar to last season. Were we lied to? This is hazardous territory for an optimist. I risk coming across like I just defend the organization at every turn. Perhaps I am less prone to join the pity aboard the latest hashtag fire this guy bandwagon. At that point, I minus well just apply for an PR position. Admittedly I was late to the Fire Housley Party and history shows the earlier you hopped on that one the smarter you appear. I was proposing ways the Sabres could make the playoffs well into February last season. You could’ve argued the season was over in December or January even with the win streak. Life is just too full of truly awful shit for me to then turn to my favorite sports team and say: “You lied to me! You Suck!” Marco Scandella is a bad player but he’s also a douchebag in real life. I would love for him not to be on my favorite hockey team, but do I feel like dragging myself along the hot, sharp rocks of pessimism after spending my day trying to figure out why Congress has decided party over country is the new norm? No. You see, no matter how bad this Sabres team gets I am going to look at them optimistically. Yeah, I’ll sprinkle in both the realism and the pessimism a lot of days, but the base ingredient will always be optimism because why would I watch sports to be more miserable? You take sports too seriously and it just becomes another source of misery which is bad for the stuff that actually matters in your life.

That was a rant, but it was also a long way of saying I think we’re underestimating this roster. They can be 100% the same players as last year and still be good. There are too many variables in this game to insist results will be the same; especially with a new coach. That’s leaving out the fact that although the win streak was a statistical anomaly on par with the first of the Meg, it doesn’t happen unless you got the horses to do it in the first place. Spoiler Alert: The Meg gets skewered by Jason Statham at the end. The same happened to the first half beast of the Buffalo Sabres last season. Even as the skewering was occurring last year we beat a Penguins team, which by the way also looks strikingly similar to last year’s club minus Phil Kessel, wait for it… twice! The Sabres beat the Pens twice last year including once when Pittsburgh was gunning for a playoff spot. Tonight was the first night of what I think will be a surprisingly good Sabres season. Here is a fact: the Buffalo Sabres had not won a season opener since the lockout shortened 2012-2013 season. Tonight they hung a 3-1 multi-goal loss on the Pittsburgh Penguins not only winning their season opener; but taking advantage of an opposing team very much not having a good night. That alone is a beautiful if it is a sign of things to come.

There is so much I could say about just being thankful for a great Sabres broadcast crew, new 50th Anniversary promos and throwback highlights but I said I don’t want to look like a Kool-aid drinker. The only big lie tonight was me casting dispersions that I’m anything other than a big old sucker for this club. They were fun from the word go in this first game! Five minutes in the Pens gave up a defensive zone turnover and Casey Mittelstadt turned the play around. He maneuvered the puck to Conor Sheary who sniped one past Matt Murray to put the visitors up 1-0! I thought I was seeing things that first period as Buffalo skated circles around the home team. There were more chances too. The yet untitled Olofsson-Eichel-Reinhart line looked dangerous. They looked dangerous and repeatedly connected on passes you can’t imagine will not lead to goals much longer. This game was also breakaway after breakaway. Apparently Kris Letang and the Pens defense has not been the same brick wall of old; it seemed like every time you turned around a fourth liner was taking a one-on-one shot with the goalie. Of course the first couple times it was Girgensons and Okposo so of course no conversion. In the third Olofsson got a similar opportunity and almost sunk it but we’ll get there.

Something happened in the second period that was very on narrative for Sabres twitter of the last several days since Training Camp ended: a Sobotka flub. Our old pal Vlad put his glove on the puck and gave Pittsburgh their first powerplay opportunity of the game. I would tell you this was evidence of the lie of the coaching staff we talked about earlier, but Jason Botterill backed up his guy in a pregame interview making it very clear the philosophy of this team is veterans first. To call the roster competition promise a lie is misleading, it was always about the veterans whether we knew it or not. I’m not pleased about it either but hopefully these incidents on the ice teach them a lesson. Evgeni Malkin did that task scoring an equalizer on the resulting powerplay. When you concede a goal to the Pens, especially an equalizer you have to be careful not to let the game get away from you. Luckily tonight the Sabres did just that and although the counterattack surely came, the defense held up. Namely Henri Jokiharju’s regular season Sabres debut showed his potential. He can get pucks out of the zone... AND he wins puck battles. This defensive depth was effective and fun tonight but geez the time on ice still reeked of a decade of futility. I would say I don’t know who will take all these defensive minutes once Ristolainen is inevitably traded but that’d be stupid: there’s at least 4 guys just on that side of the defense who can take those minutes. The Sabres survived the Pens and even started to dominate. Casey and Conor connected on the powerplay this time with a little over five minutes left in the second. I nearly dropped my Hard Cider: Sheary got a rebound and redirected it around Murray like he was doing some kind of Jeff Skinner impression. Retaking the lead was fun but what happened in the last minute of that middle frame was downright arousing.

Rasmus Dahlin scored a dangle goal that will surely be in this season’s highlight pack next Spring. Sam Reinhart and our Swedish wonder-boy skated into the zone on another surprising breakaway and passed it. Dahlin deked, dangled and put it top shelf. Samson was still going in hard thinking he’d have a rebound to tap in. No sir, this was just a grade-A certified beauty. Going into the second intermission I fought off the feelings this could be a rout. You figure the Stanley Cup caliber counterattack the Pens were known for would show up. It just never came. The breakaways just kept coming and now the big names were starting to get them. Victor Olofsson bounced one off the post! Albeit no Sabre scored on a breakaway in one of the most breakaway heavy games I’ve seen in a while. As the minutes dragged on it became more and more real. Then one soft penalty gave the Pens one last shot. Fans had booed them and were filing out of the building and… they didn’t capitalize. The Sabres took care of business and won this game 3-1 in regulation. I’m sure we’re in for several games this team loses against inferior competition this season but it’s nice to hope this could be the standard for the coming months. Let’s jut enjoy this. Conor Sheary scored his fifth goal against his former club and his second multi-goal game against them! Real Penguin killer, eh? This was the first Sabre season-opening win since the lockout shortened 2012-2013 season when Brian Flynn and Steve Ott were on this team. It was the first win in a coaching debut since 1997! That last stat is a little irrelevant, but I thought Krueger deserved some love after the hell we’ve been given him. When the Sabres lost in a shutout in the season opener last year I said I never take first games of the season too seriously. I’ll hold any declarative statements for another day but gee, this game gave me hope!

All of the 50th anniversary stuff on the broadcast got me thinking: I ought to do something special for this season. So here’s my idea: every divisional game this season, the first being next Wednesday against Montreal, I ask all you guys what was the most significant game the Sabres played against them. I think it could be fun to look back on some history. I’ll be at the home opener on Saturday and the Fan Fest starting at 5 beforehand. Shoot me a DM, drop a comment here or send a carrier pigeon to me if you want to meet up. If you are even remotely inclined to do such a thing you should also drop a like and share this blog around. This postgame stuff happens after every single Sabres game if you’re new here. Sometimes I can’t get it done same night but always before the next game. I hope you enjoyed what you got tonight. I can’t wait to see where this goes! Let’s Go Buffalo!

Thanks for Reading.

P.S. For the record, that Season Preview I did for Southtowns Tickets was submitted before the final roster and paper moves. The collective angst of Sabres twitter hadn’t blown up to DEFCON 4 at that point; it was more of a dull roar when I wrote that article.

[toldnews-blog]

New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/world/how-fake-news-from-sudans-regime-backfired/

How fake news from Sudan’s regime backfired

Image copyright Facebook / NISS

Image caption The National Intelligence Security Services shared images of the “rebel cell” they had apprehended and weapons on their Facebook page

The BBC has uncovered evidence that Sudan’s security services tried to undermine popular protests by rounding up students, torturing them until they admitted to violent intent, and spreading false confession videos on Facebook and state TV. But the plot backfired, and now the students can tell their story.

“You are dirty! You are slaves!”

Racist insults rained down on John and his friends as, he claims, the security services beat them with fists and sticks and stunned them with electric shocks.

BBC Arabic’s investigations team has spoken to multiple sources who can attest to the torture that John and his fellow students from Darfur underwent, for hours at a time.

John believes they were being tested: which of them would confess to being part of a Darfuri rebel group and inciting violence in Sudan?

How the protests grew

Since mid-December, anti-government protests have rocked Sudan nearly every day. During the demonstrations, the government cracked down hard. Human rights groups say that well over 60 people have been killed. Many more have been injured and hundreds arrested.

The crackdown did not deter the protesters however. On 11 April President Omar al-Bashir was ousted in a military coup after 30 years in power.

Image copyright AFP/Getty Images

Image caption Demonstrators in Khartoum hold up their phones to film Alla Sallah, a woman who has become a symbol of the protests

John, whose name has been changed for this article because of concerns for his safety, hadn’t taken part in the protests when they began in December. But that didn’t stop him being swept up in a raid on a student house in Sennar, a town on the Blue Nile south-east of Khartoum.

Read the latest BBC News about Sudan

BBC Africa Eye- What happens inside Sudan’s secret detention centres?

Forced confessions

When the protests started escalating, the National Intelligence Security Service (NISS) created propaganda to pin the unrest on rebels from Darfur.

Darfur is a region in the west of Sudan which has been ravaged by conflict since 2003.

On 29 December of last year a press conference was held in Khartoum. A government information minister claimed to have exposed a “rebel cell” that was stoking the protests and planning violence. Sudanese state TV channels broadcast claims that the security services had apprehended members of this “cell”, and the videos were also posted to government-run pages on Facebook.

LISTEN: A podcast version of this story is available from BBC Trending on the BBC World Service

The videos showed young black men, looking meek and resigned, confessing that they were part of the Sudan Liberation Movement, a militant Darfuri group led by rebel leader Abdel Wahid el-Nour.

The students in the videos declared that they had attempted to incite violence and that they had carried weapons to protests.

But according to John, who knows three of the men who confessed in the videos, and several other sources BBC Arabic’s investigations team spoke to, the confessions were completely made up – beaten out of the students with torture.

Image copyright AFP

Image caption At the press conference, Sudan’s former minister of state for information announced the capture of a “rebel cell”

What really happened

Nearly a week before the press conference, John was staying at a house rented by a group of Darfuri students in Sennar. Sennar University had been closed down due to the protests, and while some students went home, others sought a bed in the house after being sent away from the university.

John described what happened to him on the morning of 23 December. “There were 30 of us having our breakfast when three Toyota pickup trucks without number plates showed up. They arrested us and… took us to the NISS premises in Sennar state.”

They were tortured, and later sent to an intelligence office near Khartoum’s Shendi bus station.

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Kept apart, but arrested under remarkably similar circumstances, was another group of Darfuri students from Khartoum and Alzaiem Alazhari universities. The students were held captive in cramped conditions and also subjected to torture, according to multiple sources who spoke to the BBC. A detainee who was imprisoned alongside them recounted the torture methods in detail, and said that a PVC hose, made rigid with a stick, was used to make the beatings more painful.

One of the students from the University of Khartoum described to the BBC how their interrogators accused them of making petrol bombs, or Molotov cocktails. In fact, he claimed: “It was the first time I had ever seen a Molotov.”

At one point, John claims that Salah Gosh, the Director General of NISS who resigned after the 11 April coup, came to the prison in person to ask if the students were being tortured. After he left, John says that those who said they hadn’t been mistreated were left alone, but any who said they were being tortured were beaten again.

Image copyright AFP/Getty

Image caption Salah Gosh was forced out of his post as Head of the Security Services on 13 April, after pressure from the protesters

John said “they observed which of us was most afraid of torture”, and that the security services took a group of the younger students away. Afterwards, they told John that they had been electrocuted and water-boarded, then instructed to give a statement to a camera.

“I am part of the Abdel Wahid el-Nour movement. I marched in the Khartoum university protests. I was a student from the dorms going home, carrying a bag and knives.”

If the security services hoped to discredit the protesters though, that strategy backfired.

How did the plot go wrong?

Friends of the young men in the videos identified them and dismissed the confessions both online and in interviews with the BBC. They attested that their friends were ordinary students, peaceful young men, and had no ties to any militant groups. In fact, some of them were in groups actively opposed to militia groups in Darfur.

Multiple interviewees, including a representative of Human Rights Watch (HRW), said that their ethnicity, as black Africans from Darfur, was being used against them to give the impression they were part of a violent movement.

Associate director of HRW’s Africa division, Jehanne Henry said: “[There is] a lot of racism in the security forces in Sudan and amongst the security agents who are doing these arrests and detentions and subjecting the students to really serious beatings.”

One friend of the students told the BBC: “Through the Facebook posts, we were able to expose the lying regime’s false accusations, and the truth of what these youths have experienced since their arrests.”

Facebook comments disputing the validity of the confessions went viral. The incident even helped fuel the protests, as activists in the streets directed new chants at President Bashir: “Hey you, arrogant racist! We are all Darfur!”

Social media posts bearing the hashtag #WeAreAllDarfur were shared thousands of times.

The incident has not been forgotten. After the 11 April coup, the victorious protestors have been filmed chanting and singing “Darfur is our home! Revolution! Revolution!”

Former President Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity committed in Darfur. The Transitional Military Council which has taken over Sudan is dominated by figures who are strongly implicated in the alleged war crimes.

Although there has been jubilation at the ousting of Mr Bashir, HRW’s Jehanne Henry says that the protesters are acutely aware that members of the Transitional Military Council, as she put it, “have blood on their hands.”

Image copyright AFP

Image caption After the military coup, Sudanese men chant slogans as a soldier imitates President Omar al-Bashir waving his trademark cane

What happened to John?

Despite being tortured, John never gave the authorities a false confession. He was released without being charged after three months in detention.

“When I was released, the officers came and asked for forgiveness. They told me: ‘We were just doing what we were told to do.’ I told them: ‘I’m innocent, you came and raided my house, detained and tortured me for no reason. I don’t forgive any of you.'”

All of the students in the confession videos were released without charge, indicating that the security services had little hard evidence against them. The Darfur Bar Association has called for the release of Darfuris who still remain in detention for political reasons.

Although John wasn’t involved in the protests when he was arrested, he has since become an active participant, and the torture he was put through only made him more determined to oust the regime.

Omar al-Bashir and his security chief may have fallen, but his generals are still in control of the country, and protesters have vowed to continue sit-ins until they hand power over to a civilian government.

The Sudanese Embassy in London did not respond to a request for comment.

The false confession videos showed that the regime was trying to use social networks to further its own ends, but was outsmarted by ordinary Sudanese people on those platforms. Before he was ousted, Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir said: “The change of government is not through WhatsApp and Facebook, but through elections.”

The coup proved him wrong.

With reporting by Owen Pinnell, BBC Arabic investigations team

Do you have a story for us? Email BBC Trending.

More from Trending: Eritrean Press: Reporting on Africa’s most secretive state

Image copyright BBC News

He’s the editor of a popular Facebook page that provides news from a country with one of the world’s worst records on press freedom. But not even the journalists who write for him know his real identity. READ MORE

You can follow BBC Trending on Twitter @BBCtrending, and find us on Facebook. All our stories are at toldnews.com/trending.

[mhsn033]

Thailand protests: Risking it all to challenge the monarchy

Image copyright LILLIAN SUWANRUMPHA/AFP

Image caption Panusaya Sithijirawattanakul study out the reform manifesto

A rising breeze among college students has been calling for political reform in Thailand. In recent days, the protests possess taken a handsome flip, writes an analyst in London for the BBC.

On a stage at an out-of-metropolis campus of in fact one of Thailand’s high universities, a young girl with wavy prolonged hair and owlish spectacles steps forward, thru a dramatic cloud of dry-ice, and reads out a 10-point manifesto to a crowd of cheering college students.

Her demands, for a monarchy that is accountable to the country’s elected institutions, that moderates its consume of public funds, stays out of politics and doesn’t exercise preserve an eye on over main military objects, would be unremarkable in most nations.

In Thailand, they’re nothing short of innovative.

Thais are taught from delivery that the monarchy is the keystone that holds the country collectively, the institution that embodies the nationwide persona.

Every recent Thai structure – and there had been 19 nowa days, collectively with a dozen armed forces coups – has acknowledged, on the tip, that “The King shall be enthroned in a blueprint of revered love” and that “No person shall shriek the King to any form of accusation or action”.

Those provisions are backed by article 112 of the criminal code, identified as the lese-majeste law, which subject issues somebody criticising the royal family to secret trials and prolonged jail sentences.

More no longer too prolonged ago, critics who fled to neighbouring nations had been kidnapped and murdered. Thais are taught to appreciate, revere and like the monarchy, nonetheless moreover to distress the penalties of speaking about it.

A ‘darkish hand’?

The disorders raised on that stage at Thammasat College on Monday possess, within the past, been discussed openly simplest by these living safely in exile, a long way from Thailand, or whispered within the privateness of the home.

The Thammasat manifesto has prompted an uproar.

Image copyright LILLIAN SUWANRUMPHA

Image caption Thais are taught to revere the royal family

The college students had been accused of “crossing the road”, of going too a long way, even by a number of of these that fortify their diversified demands for reform.

Senators appointed by the aged armed forces junta, and the biggest political crutch for the executive of junta-chief-turned-High Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, possess known as for factual action against the pupil leaders, for an investigation into how they funded Monday’s spectacularly-produced shriek, and into which “darkish hand” instigated the kids to give you such depraved demands.

The noteworthy military commander, Classic Apirat Kongsompong, suggested that the protesters were afflicted by “chung chart”, “hatred of the nation”, a duration of time weird and wonderful within the past to rally ultra-nationalist Thais against perceived enemies, and a illness, Classic Apirat told troopers, that used to be a long way worse than Covid-19.

The pupil chief who study out the manifesto, Panusaya Sithijirawattanakul, has since stayed totally on her campus, planning further rallies, and nervously watching the undeniable-apparel police who are undoubtedly repeatedly monitoring her.

Worryingly, some ultra-royalists are elevating the spectre of October 1976, when police and proper-fly vigilantes opened fire on left-fly college students internal Thammasat College, killing dozens, lynching some and then battering their our bodies.

That shockingly brutal attack used to be provoked by a rumour of a itsy-bitsy by the college students against then-Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn, the prove king.

Veterans of the upheavals of 1976 develop no longer mediate this can occur but another time.

Feeble executive minister Chaturon Chaiseng, who used to be among a series of pupil activists who spent years hiding with communist insurgents after the 1976 bloodbath, says a repeat of such violence would be very awful recently.

There are so noteworthy of grievances against the executive for the time being, he says, which the college students half with wider Thai society.

These protests are taking place all thru a nearly finest storm of contemptible news for the Thai executive.

Despite managing a dauntless containment of the Covid-19 coronavirus, with out a neighborhood infections for on the sphere of three months, the collapse of tourism has hit the economic system very onerous and drawn consideration to in fact one of many sphere’s widest gaps between prosperous and heart-broken.

Image copyright MLADEN ANTONOV

Image caption Thai activist Wanchalearm Satsaksit used to be kidnapped in Cambodia, his whereabouts are unknown

The resolution earlier this three hundred and sixty five days to dissolve a dynamic fresh political occasion, which had attracted the fortify of many youthful voters, gave them the sense that the armed forces-dominated political system used to be denying them a squawk.

That used to be compounded by the kidnapping and presumed homicide of a Thai activist in Cambodia, blamed by some on ingredients shut to the palace, and then by the losing of all criminal charges against a member of in fact one of Thailand’s wealthiest households over the killing of a police officer in a success-and-speed incident eight years ago.

On high of that, for the explanation that Covid-19 crisis started King Vajiralongkorn has spent on the sphere of all his time living in a resort in Germany, prompting a Twitter hashtag #มีกษัตริย์ไว้ทําไม #whydoweneedaking?, which used to be reposted higher than one million cases.

The voices of the next technology

The shriek leaders had been careful to frame their demands all thru the structure.

The first person to interrupt the taboo, per week sooner than the Thammasat manifesto, used to be human rights attorney Anon Nampa, speaking at a Harry Potter-themed shriek and taking a gaze no longer unlike the fictional young wizard.

He wired that he wished to reform, no longer overthrow, the constitutional monarchy.

He focused in particular on the large sources of the Crown Property Bureau, which, under the gradual King Bhumibol, had been notionally held in belief for the most effective thing about the Thai folks, nonetheless possess now been declared the deepest property of the king, making him by a long way the wealthiest person in Thailand.

Anon moreover puzzled King Vajiralongkorn’s resolution to grab deepest shriek of all armed forces objects essentially based in Bangkok, one thing he believes can’t be smartly suited with a democratic, constitutional monarchy.

“It had to be done,” he acknowledged of his demand accountability.

“That’s why I selected to talk candidly, to honour my trust integrity, the integrity of the target market, and out of appreciate for the monarchy. Because if we develop no longer discuss frankly about it, then we are going to have the option to by no come designate it.”

Anon Nampa and one other activist, Panupong Jaadnok, possess since been arrested on charges of breaking Thailand’s sweeping sedition law, an replacement resolution to the lese majeste law which, the King has let it be identified, he now no longer needs to be so widely weird and wonderful.

Image copyright Lauren DeCicca

Image caption Anon Nampa, a Thai Human rights attorney, used to be the first to flee reform of the monarchy

But a long way from silencing discuss about the monarchy, their demands possess now been taken up by a pupil breeze which has been agitating for change for many months, and which is active in campuses across the country, and entails high-college college students as smartly.

We spoke to two young political science college students who possess change into alive to on the breeze, both considerate and utter, with hopes of factual careers after university.

But their comments about the monarchy, even supposing expressed with moderation and cause, would had been unthinkable even a three hundred and sixty five days ago.

“This technology is conscious of for a proven truth that the monarchy is alive to on politics and that’s affecting the lives of the Thai folks,” acknowledged one.

“So it is honest and democratic for us to chat about somebody alive to on politics, whether or no longer it is miles the armed forces or the monarchy.”

“Now we must envision out to originate talking about it, making it a brand fresh norm in society to chat about the monarchy,” acknowledged the diversified.

“I mediate the tranquil majority must chat about it, because whenever you develop no longer touch one thing, whenever you develop no longer reform it, this can scoot injurious and collapse.”

There are kids on the diversified side, even supposing how many is onerous to gauge correct now. The functionality for clashes, contrived or spontaneous, is true.

Image copyright Lauren DeCicca

Image caption Protesters possess prolonged invoked the three-finger salute from the movie the Starvation Games

At a little skilled-monarchy demonstration in Bangkok’s historic royal quarter this month a pupil told the BBC that “the three pillars of this country, nation, faith and monarchy, needs to be revered, no longer introduced down to be played with love this. That’s no longer the ideal manner under a constitutional monarchy.”

“We’re no longer popping out to fight with them. Now we possess come out to display the vitality of the diversified side. Thailand has a prolonged history. It could per chance’t be introduced down by these that must defame the monarchy,” they acknowledged.

Here is uncharted territory for Thailand, and no-one is conscious of what is going to occur subsequent.

The chief, comprised mostly of conservative, armed forces and royalist figures, appears to be like uncertain the blueprint it could perhaps well per chance soundless answer.

An over-harsh response risks angering a public already aggravated over diversified disorders. But it could truly truly’t be viewed to be failing to protect the monarchy.

“The genie is out of the bottle,” says Professor Thongchai Winichakul, a historian on the College of Wisconsin and one other survivor of the 1976 bloodbath.

“Society obtained’t stop, change obtained’t stop. The ideal thing we can develop is to grab care that the change takes blueprint with as runt bloodshed as which that it is most likely you’ll specialise in. Thais had been gossiping about the monarchy in deepest for years, then instructing their kids to praise it lavishly in public, to be hypocrites. All these young protesters possess done is carry that gossip out into the originate.”

The lese majeste and diversified regulations and the risk they pose to BBC workers limits a number of of our reporting that relates straight to members of the Thai royal family.

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[fifacoinszone]

7 FIFA 18 Tricks and Tips We Learned from Hashtag Ryan's Workshop

Ryan 'Hashtag Ryan' Pessoa facilitated an uncommon FIFA 18 workshop at the Red Bull Gaming Sphere on Saturday. The FIFA fans who went to took in a great deal from the master gamer, who rose to noticeable quality after an amazing keep running in a years ago FIFA Interactive World Cup.

Ryan uncovered how he sets up his Ultimate Team, sharing a lot of tips and traps that players can use to take their FIFA game higher than ever. Following this, players were part up into sets to apply their recently discovered information in matches, with Ryan viewing on and giving custom fitted exhortation. There was likewise a chance to make a showing of FIFA against either Ryan or Unilad Shellz.

With Ryan dropping information bombs everywhere, there was bounty to learn (and a lot of enraged writing in scratch pads). Here are the seven hints that we grabbed that will have the greatest effect on your game, starting with Ryan's FUT strategies.

 1. Hashtag Ryan's FIFA Ultimate Team custom strategies

FIFA Ultimate Team gives you a confounding exhibit of choices to decide how your group plays. These settings are part up into the classifications of Defense, Build-Up Play and Chance Creation.

Inside every class there are a few sliders and different settings you can conform to accomplish the ideal style of play. Take the Passing slider in the Build Up play classification, for instance – modify that to 100 and your players will foresee long balls and make runs in like manner. Slide it right down to zero and they will draw nearer to the ball for some tiki-taka.

In the wake of clarifying what every one of the settings did, Ryan demonstrated to us the ones that he by and by employments. Here they are:

Barrier

Weight: 58

Animosity: 75

Group width: 56

Protector line: Offside device

Development Play

Speed: 80

Passing: 40

Situating: Freeform

Chance Creation

Passing: 46

Intersection: 43

Shooting: 50

Situating: Organized

 You can change these as indicated by your style, or simply leave them as is in the event that you would prefer not to stress over that stuff. We certainly fall into the last camp, and in the event that they're sufficient for Ryan, they're adequate for us!

 2. The most ideal approach to stop kick-off objectives

Commencement objectives are a major bogeyman for a ton of FIFA 18 players. Passing it out wide from commencement, run down the wing and putting a cross in is a simple method to make an opportunity – and, on a regular basis, score an objective.

"Individuals yield a ton from commencement – it is practically difficult to guard," said Ryan. "Be that as it may, the most ideal approach to protect from commencement is – if your adversary is taking a long time – you ought to rapidly change to your striker and run him once more into focal midfield. When he goes back, offside device and afterward control your striker and move back. Try not to press – when you press you leave holes in the center."

 3. The trap that gives you a chance to score straightforwardly from a goalkeeper's kick

Goalkeepers aren't normally help lords, yet Hashtag Ryan could change that with a trap he showed to incredible impact at the Red Bull Gaming Sphere.

It goes this way – when your goalkeeper has the ball in his grasp, keep running up to the highest point of the crate, at that point twist his run and go straightforwardly to the base of the container. This should free up some space for one of your strikers, so when you point a determined kick their direction it regularly makes a one-on-one with the resistance guardian. To execute a determined kick, simply hold RB (R1 on PS4) in addition to the shoot catch.

This trap doesn't work without fail. Be that as it may, when it does, it feels fringe out of line.

 4. Cause devastation with drifted crosses

Intersection is a strong weapon in FIFA 18, and, as indicated by Ryan, coasted crosses are especially undermining, as the goalkeeping AI regularly battles to manage them.

To complete one a skimmed cross, you should simply hold down LB (L1 on PS4) while you cross. Ryan likewise prescribes making the cross full-control – that way, you expand the opportunity of the manager fluttering at the ball and furnishing your forward with a simple header.

Note: ensure you have cross help set to 'Semi' in the settings, generally the trap doesn't work.

 5. Make space with off-the-ball runs

A great many people realize that you can provoke your players to make off-the-ball keeps running in FIFA by squeezing LB while you are under lock and key. What's less generally known, be that as it may, is the means by which you can go through this repairman to free space for your forward even after his run has wrapped up.

Ryan says that after the run has taken the player offside, he'll come back to his underlying position, yet in the process he'll have shaken off his underlying markers. This opens up a decent measure of room, possibly making a shooting open door for your forward once he's gotten the ball.

 6. Use CBs with integral work-rates

In FIFA 18, players' work-rates are basic, as they figure out where your players will commonly position themselves on the pitch. Ryan cautioned against having two focus backs with a similar work-rate since you will finish up being powerless against one-twos that can send a striker clean through.

"It's ideal to have one CB who's High/Medium and one who's, state, Medium/Medium," said Ryan. "On the off chance that I was utilizing Ferdinand and Ramos, it's better for me to shield since Ferdinand will remain in his situation with Medium/Medium, while Ramos will be forward to dependably catch since he has High assaulting work-rate."

 7. Step by step instructions to spare (nearly) every punishment

It was really Unilad Shellz who gave me this tip, just before annihilating me 5-0 out of a game that altogether dashed my expectations of turning into a FIFA genius.

Anyway, when you're endeavoring to spare a punishment, it's truly hard to understand where your adversary is going to put it – except if you're investigating at their controller, that is. Be that as it may, it turns out there's a simpler way. You should simply give close consideration to where the player taking the punishment is looking. This will pursue the heading of the shot precisely, enabling you to ensure you plunge appropriately.

Simply don't tell your companions you know this. In the event that you do, they'll have the option to trick you by pointing one route before altering the course of the shot ultimately. Best to keep this one a mystery. More FIFA 18 Tips are available on FIFACOIN.com, learn more from this article: Juventus, Naples, Rome and Inter Milan Which Team IS Serie A Champion?

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Avengers: Endgame trailer hype had you just where Marvel wanted you

The highly anticipated Avengers 4 trailer at long last hit Friday morning, uncovering the film’s title to be Avengers: Endgame, producing unending examination and expectations and breaking records for the most-saw trailer in a solitary day, as indicated by Disney. Furthermore, kid, were Marvel fans prepared for this one – they’ve been anticipating it for a considerable length of time. Perhaps since credits moved on Avengers: Infinity War back in April.

In the days and weeks before the trailer dropped, many individuals on Twitter changed their handles to some form of “GIVE TRAILER UNTITLED AVENGERS.” Fans utilizing the Twitter hashtag #MARVELVSTHEFANS made numerous recordings asking the Avengers 4 chiefs for the trailer. Fans on Reddit shared, at that point erased, minute by-minute portrayals of what apparently occurs in the trailer, in light of informal holes. They pored over the online life records of the movie’s chiefs and stars, searching for pieces of information to a trailer discharge date and a title.

More than one supposed date went back and forth, and we began to figure the trailer could never come.

Promotion for a motion picture is a certain something. Be that as it may, publicity for a trailer? This is the place we are currently, and everything started in excess of a hundred years prior…

Film on interest

The first-since forever trailer was appeared in a New York Loews film route in 1913, and it wasn’t notwithstanding for a motion picture. Rather, it was a short film made to promote the Broadway melodic The Pleasure Seekers. However, it was a splendid snare: Tease excitement searchers with a see of another bit of stimulation they may appreciate. Normally, the limited time films took off.

Trailer craziness isn’t new, however it’s absolutely achieved new statures, on account of YouTube and online networking, and also the continued blast of science fiction and superhuman flicks. Studios have even figured out how to press somewhat more exposure out of their trailers by offering super-short forms, frequently called secret trailers.

Anton Volkov saw trailer love becoming in 2016, when he began a motion picture news Twitter record and site he called Trailer Track. A wry statement from essayist chief James Mangold that is stuck to the highest point of the site’s Twitter account entireties up the present trailer fixation: “[Trailers] will in general presentation half a month after you’ve achieved a pinnacle of disappointment,” it peruses. “Promoting resembles foreplay.”

“This kind of dimension of expectation for advertising materials, be it trailers or notices, was dependably there,” Volkov says. “It’s simply getting to be … more standard.”

Constant interest

William Bibbiani is a film faultfinder and co-host of Canceled Too Soon, a digital broadcast about brief TV appears, and the motion picture webcast Critically Acclaimed. He concurs trailer franticness returns – in any event decades.

“Groups of onlookers were so energized for Tim Burton’s unique Batman [in 1989] that numerous individuals purchased tickets to another motion picture, just to see the trailer in a theater, and after that left before the genuine film started,” he said.

The trailer for Star Wars: The Phantom Menace made comparative buzz 20 years prior. CNET film pundit Richard Trenholm calls that time, with no Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, a “veritable Stone Age” similar to survey trailers. He takes note of that Steve Jobs himself depicted the second Phantom Menace trailer as “the greatest web download occasion ever.”

Start OF THE ENDGAME

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Three noteworthy improvements during the 2000s tightened up the publicity, Bibbiani says.

Fast web connections enable fans to consume trailers and promoting materials right away and share their responses similarly as fast. The flood of effective hero motion pictures made “nerdy blockbusters” the standard – who superior to anything a self-broadcasted nerd to dismember even the littlest film detail? Also, the 24-hour online stimulation news cycle has made a mammoth that is constantly ravenous.

“Aficionados of these properties are being kept in a condition of constant interest, so new trailers – or even the conspicuous nonattendance of new trailers – turn out to be huge occasions, despite the fact that they are, at their center, just ads,” Bibbiani said.

Building the buzz

Wonder’s outrageous dimension of mystery around the Avengers 4 trailer earned a great deal of consideration, however it’s not the standard.

In 2017, broadened film from Avengers: Infinity War was appeared in the mid year at both San Diego Comic-Con and Disney fan gathering D23. Despite the fact that that recording wasn’t shared on YouTube at the time, a few fans who saw it uncovered what they saw, and word spread.

However, as of not long ago, we didn’t see anything for Avengers 4 other than a discharge date and essential plot abstract. “I believe it’s very certain that (Marvel officials) have spotted how much buzz and conversation the plain absence of content and the mystery produces,” Volkov said.

Indeed, even devoted fans comprehend it’s everything part of Marvel’s matter of fact. Alex Rodriguez, 19, began a Twitter account this year called MCU Speculation to share news and hypotheses about the studio.

“The promotion and the strain develops increasingly more for every day that the trailer doesn’t get discharged on the web,” Rodriguez said. “This makes for a tremendous dispatch for the trailer.”

Trailers still fill a need. No-nonsense fans, the benevolent who wear outfits to midnight showings and purchase the very first moment tickets well ahead of time, will see Avengers 4, see or no see. Yet, a trailer can help pitch a film to progressively broad gatherings of people.

“At the point when a film like Avengers 4 comes in, there’s dependably something like one essayist for a site making the contention that possibly that film can escape with not discharging a solitary trailer,” Volkov said. Be that as it may, he notes Marvel isn’t going to leave millions on the table by not advertising the film to pull in a considerably bigger group of onlookers.

What’s more, studio dollar-signs aside, trailers make a social affair that can be simply unadulterated fun.

“The desire to share certain encounters all the while is regularly compelling,” Bibbiani said. “What’s more, is there any good reason why it wouldn’t be? Who doesn’t love a decent trailer, and who wouldn’t have any desire to discuss it with their companions? Particularly if it’s inclining on Twitter?”

Spoilers!

There are approaches to convey the merchandise without driving fans to Thanos-estimate dimensions of madness. A few studios and merchants make pre-trailer declarations. Fox and Warner Brothers have even utilized a Facebook and YouTube highlight that tallies down to the entry of a transferred trailer. Volkov thinks this is a savvy approach to construct expectation for the motion picture while facilitating fan dissatisfaction.

At the point when a trailer at long last drops, its real content now and again has little to do with the film’s quality.

“We’ve all observed great movies that weren’t very much served by their limited time battles, and we’ve all observed frustrating movies that looked truly great in trailer frame,” Bibbiani noted.

An extraordinary case of this was 2016’s Suicide Squad, whose trailer was such a hit Warner Bros. all things considered got the organization that slice the trailer to help alter the whole film. (It didn’t help: Suicide Squad wound up with blended to negative basic audits.)

In any case, ongoing movies at the focal point of the trailer storm have unanswered inquiries that make their trailers considerably progressively pined for – despite the fact that the sneak peaks themselves should walk an almost negligible difference or hazard an excessive number of spoilers.

Drawing out the sit tight for a trailer just makes the craving for film increasingly extraordinary.

“The up and coming trailers for Avengers 4 and Star Wars: Episode IX will undoubtedly be gigantic popular culture occasions, on the grounds that the two sneak peaks will … answer addresses that fans have been hypothesizing about for a considerable length of time,” Bibbiani said. “What truly occurred after The Snap? What’s more, will (Episode IX executive) J.J. Abrams continue down Rian Johnson’s controversial way from The Last Jedi, or will he make the following Star Wars motion picture increasingly like his moderately more secure Episode VII?”

The trailers are probably not going to let us know, yet fans will watch them eagerly in any case.

In 2018, anything discharged before an eagerly awaited motion picture, from a publication to an Instagram picture, will be dissected by watchers and diversion locales hungry for pieces of information. Obviously the feline in the ongoing blurb for 2019’s Captain Marvel isn’t only a feline. What’s more, in September, the Russo siblings hurled out a Where’s Waldo?- style test, welcoming fans to “take a gander” at what gives off an impression of being an exhausting high contrast picture of a nearly vacant Avengers 4 set.

Drawing out the hang tight for a trailer just makes the longing for film increasingly exceptional. The trailer for Avengers: Infinity War wasn’t discharged until four months after film appeared at Comic-Con and D23, which gave fans over 100 days to groan and grumble on the web. Indeed, even Marvel Studios co-president Louis D’Esposito endeavored to calm eager for trailer fans by tweeting that he adored the IW trailer, however wasn’t prepared to share it yet. At the point when the trailer at long last turned out, be that as it may, fans compensated for lost time. The first Infinity War trailer has been seen in excess of 214 million times.

Begin the commencement

Volkov says the expectation for Avengers 4 is the greatest he’s seen for any film since beginning his site in 2016. From that point forward, he positions Avengers: Infinity War, Justice League and war motion picture Dunkirk as the most energetically anticipated.

“It does simply come down to hero and Star Wars films being the greatest amusement around the local area as far as general intrigue and film industry today,” he said.

Presently the Avengers: Endgame trailer has arrived, search for excited fans to begin requesting the second trailer, Volkov said. Furthermore, normally, enthusiasm for Star Wars: Episode IX, due out in December 2019, will be galactically high.

In any case, while the last film in the fundamental Star Wars adventure holds numerous secrets, a trailer date probably won’t be one of them.

“At any rate on account of Episode 9, it’s genuinely clear and evident that (the trailer make a big appearance) must be at Star Wars Celebration in April,” Volkov says.

You heard him, fans. Begin the commencement. Just four months to go.

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