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ha-bloody-ha · 8 months ago
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Floating Watts
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tsuchinokoroyale · 11 months ago
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Happy new years… let’s stay hydrated together ✨
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#I didn’t end up going to the rave just stayed in with my buddies and had KFC (( Korean fried chicken )) and laughed til we cried so#it was still a wonderful start to the new year 💞🥰💞#but the fwb wanted pics of my potential rave look so I figured eh I brought the stuff anyways#and now I’m imagining locking eyes with a stranger on the warm and writhing dance floor#the beat thumps and shakes and rattles the air in our breath as the spotlights dance in the reflections of our held gaze#he pushes his way through the crowd with a singular stare and a wicked smile on his face#I smile and turn my back on him arching myself so he knows I am giving what he’s looking for#I take careful steps through the revelry toward the edge where the crowd thins out#I prop myself up on an available stool in a lonely corner of the club as he closes the distance between us#“now I wonder why you dragged me all the way here” he utters in a playful growl “trying to get far away from the crowd?”#I smile and I nod. “obviously. can’t really do what I want with you out there”#his eyes perk up and his smile gives away the desire building inside him. “yeah? why don’t you show me then.”#“I thought you’d never ask” I smirk. I reach down into my pants and pull out my phone#“so this one is blue. he’s the oldest but he’s sooooo sweet. and that’s Eva. my only girl she’s sassy but she loves swea-” he leaves#whaddahell I say demurely whimpering even… whaddahell…#gpoy
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kirby-the-gorb · 8 months ago
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groovygrub · 4 months ago
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askteunderverse · 14 days ago
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hello everyone! ^^
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Smh Error’s feeling moody today
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live-emotion · 6 months ago
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What songs are you most looking forward to playing in Live Emotion?
A particular dance MV, a new song that was never in Shining Live, an old favourite Shining Live beatmap, or just a favourite Utapri song.
Personally I'm really curious about the new songs we never got in Shining Live, but Lycoris no Mori and Go x2 Jet Coaster were always favourite beatmaps of mine in Shining Live, so I'm really curious how they'll play in Live Emotion!
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violentinez · 3 months ago
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guess my favourite author (impossible edition)
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too-many-rooks · 5 months ago
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I'm really ironically pissed off right now! I'm feeling quite lost right now Like in a really big forest, like in lake tahoe or something, Somewhere big and scary 'Cause you're scary as shit, dude! Like I don't know really know what I can tell you You kinda freak me out, but, we can be friends!
i threw glass at my friend's eyes and now i'm on probation - Destroy Boys
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mariocki · 4 months ago
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Doctor X (1932)
"If you ask me, I think Dr. Xavier is using very unethical methods."
"Necessity has no ethics, sir."
#doctor x#1932#american cinema#pre code film#horror film#michael curtiz#robert tasker#earl baldwin#howard warren comstock#allen c. miller#lionel atwill#fay wray#lee tracy#preston foster#john wray#harry beresford#arthur edmund carewe#leila bennett#robert warwick#george rosener#willard robertson#solid good time pre code horror (and another off the Rocky Horror list; actually this could be the last i had to see?) (also contrary to#the lyrics of Science Fiction/Double Feature‚ at no point does the titular Dr build 'a creature') but yeah anywa#anyway*‚ this was one of a very few films made with a pioneering two tone technicolor process that was quickly abandoned in the face of#public apathy; once considered a lost film‚ that version was found in the 80s and is now happily available in a beautiful restoration and i#gotta say it looks absolutely phenomenal‚ full of deep‚ ominous greens and purples. the plot is some hokum about a string of murders#possibly involving the good Dr (an as always impeccable Atwill‚ at the beginning of his all too brief run as a star) and his rogues gallery#of weirdy scientific associates. it's par for the course for early horror cinema‚ complete with mildly exasperating comic foil hero (but by#far not the worst example of the type) and some rather risqué dialogue that absolutely wouldn't have got past the code a few years on#could have done with more focus on the horror and less on the funny business but so it goes and at least the laboratory stuff looks amazing
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beesorcery · 8 months ago
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hello it's part 3 of 3 for my cool fun graphic design adventure!! part 1 and part 2 got too long. to recap i am recreating this t-shirt design but with the magic 8 ball songs instead of city names:
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here is the current draft, updated through 3/27 (pittsburgh) (!!!!)
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thefirstknife · 1 year ago
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Getting real sick of a certain subset of Destiny players complaining that it’s a baby game and crying to Bungie to nerf exotics and abilities when their ENTIRE POINT IS TO BE STRONG in specific ways as if they are being locked into using them.
IF YOU WANT AN EXTRA CHALLENGE STOP BEING SUCH A DPS GOBLIN AND JUST EQUIP SOMETHING THATS NOT TOP TIER META AND STOP COMPLAINING JESUS FUCKING CHRIST
MOOD. Go off.
It's incredibly annoying to me. They always use the argument of "the game should FORCE me to do things, I should not SELF-IMPOSE challenges." And like. ? I'm sorry but what? It's a video game for a big audience, it's here to be playable and accessible to the widest possible playerbase. There are plenty of ways to make the game difficult for yourself, so knock yourself out if that's your thing, but don't force others into it.
Like, I enjoy hard content, I regularly at least attempt day 1 raids, I do master raids, GMs, solo and solo flawless content and all that. But only when I want to. Sometimes I don't and I don't want to suffer in a patrol zone or struggle in a seasonal activity I'm doing for the story. The majority of the players don't want that. Designing games for the professional gamers only has NEVER been a good idea and never will be. Fifty streamers can't sustain a video game. It needs casual players who will want to come back to the game instead of feeling defeated.
One of the reasons I really enjoy helping others is because I know that casual players tend to struggle in stuff that's basic activity for me. I've seen people unable to get through a strike. I've sat for 10 minutes rezing someone who couldn't do the jump in a seasonal activity. I want those people to be able to play basic content without feeling frustrated and I want them to know that there are people out there who will help them out.
And this doesn't apply just to basic content, although it should start with that. I think all dungeons and raids and everything should be things that all players can complete. Fine, doing a master raid with all challenges should be tough, but it should be achievable with time and practice, not impossible. What a lot of these "pros" want is just completely divorced from reality.
It takes days and days of practice every time a new master raid is out for me and my team (all with thousands of hours of playtime) to get comfortable to finally finish it. We're far from casual players and it still takes a lot of time to be able to finish hard content. Making it even harder is insane to me. Like, if something is so hard that my team full of people, each with 5000+ hours of playtime and a coordinated team that's been raiding together for years now can't finish it, that means it's absolutely impossible for probably 90% of the playerbase. That's wild to me. Raids and GMs should have more people playing them. If master raids are too easy for you, Mr. I-Play-Destiny-For-A-Living, that's on you buddy. Unequip the super god tier god roll meta guns and loadouts or play something else.
And ofc, another excuse they make is "if I don't use meta, I am not going to win a raid race!" Then don't. Idk. Let me play you the tiniest violin. This affects literally nobody except a grand total of 50 people. Run your meta in day 1, and play with random shit otherwise. Play raids with all white weapons. Play without mods. Play without a HUD. Do things solo only. I don't know, make up a way to spice things up for yourself. I'm not interested in that and neither are 99% of the players out there. The game is genuinely hard enough for the majority of the players. On top of that, I am here to feel like a powerful space fantasy superhero. I am NOT here to die to dregs in patrol zones. If there's ONE thing that I know for a fact that put people off from Lightfall (as in this year of Destiny), it's the difficulty changes. They're annoying, frustrating and for some a barrier to entry more than anything else.
#destiny 2#gameplay#ask#long post#i really do love helping but i can't not feel bad because once the people i helped are out of my fireteam...#...there's no telling what other experiences they'll have#there's so many speedrunners and people who don't care and people who just aren't helping and are instead mocking others#you can only do so much for a few people you see in activities#this season's activities are super tough. every time so far I've played everyone in the team was struggling#i'm gonna have to start going into altars of summoning with my full support build warlock just to sit in there and help people#istg the 'pros' have to get their loadouts restricted. go play with non-god tier armour sets and guns#equip the same loadout that some casual player has available and let me see you then#this idea that everyone has minmaxed best equipment available at all times is bizarre. please get your head out of your ass#'i have perfectly rolled all artifice armour with perfect stat exotics for every loadout because i have infinite time to grind' okay dude#most of us aren't being paid to play destiny. lmao#'the game used to be hard' no. you got better. you mastered it#why is this so difficult to understand. everything is hard when you first start. 5000 hours later it no longer is#the game is fine. the 'health of the game' is fine. you mastered it and outgrew it#either impose challenges on yourself or find something else#like. when i first started GMs they were almost impossible for me#now i play them for fun. they're still challenging but they're not the same level of hard and I'm fine with that#i enjoy them as content and they're still entertaining#and when a new GM comes out it's a new challenge to master so it'll be hard at the start#as everything ever in the world#if that's no longer enough for you then you just outgrew the game and should probably move on#the only reason why some things used to be hard was poor quality of life that got improved over time#not being able to mantle in d1 is not difficulty. it's just not good design. it was fixed and improved#the bitching about light 3.0 as well. man. just don't use the 'OP' fragments. it's so easy to unequip them#i personally love the variety and all the options i have now as opposed to before#okay tag essay done. fhkajhakfhksjf
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crehador · 1 year ago
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since i can't find one and need to know who to aim for...
list of reverse: 1999 jp dub cast (updated for 1.4)
210 - hirose daisuke 37 - iguchi yuka 6 - nakamura yuuichi
a knight - hayami show alien t - fukuhara anjou an-an lee - sakura ayane apple - hirakawa daisuke arcana - koshimizu ami
baby blue - suzaki aya balloon party - minase inori bette - kanzaki maki bkornblume - ueda reina blonney - saito shuka bunny bunny - ozawa ari
charlie - matsuda satsumi centurion - ikuta teru charlton - nomiya kazunori click - uchiyama kouki constantine - tanaka atsuko cristallo - aimi
darley clatter - yada kouhei diggers - tachibana shinnosuke dikke - kawasumi ayako door - shimizu sakuma druvis iii - ishikawa yui
eagle - noguchi ruriko enigma - umehara yuuichirou erick - tanaka chiemi eternity - fairouz ai
forget me not - suwabe junichi
horropedia - okitsu kazuyuki
isabella - kino hina
jessica - waki azumi john titor - konishi mai
kaalaa baunaa - ootsubo yuka kanjira - akasaki chinatsu kumar - fujitou chika
la source - yuzuki kazuka leilani - tachibana yuki lilya - kitamura eri lucy - suwa ayaka
matilda - itou ayasa medicine pocket - hanae natsuki melania - ueda kana mesmer jr. - kudou haruka mondlicht - tsumugi risa ms. moissan - kohara riko ms. new babel - uchida maaya ms. radio - odashima kazami
necrologist - wakayama shion nick bottom - satou fumiya
oliver fog - nagatsuka takuma onion - horikawa kaede
pavia - nozu pickles - saito soma poltergeist - maekawa ryouko
rabies - takagaki katsuhisa & mugiho anna regulus - yamamoto nozomi ring - sakakihara yuki
satsuki - touyama nao schneider - yuuki aoi shamane - yasumoto hiroki sonetto - uchida shu sophia - kobayashi yuu sotheby - itou miku sputnik - toba yuuko sweetheart - tanaka rie
tennant - takahashi chiaki the fool - nitta kyousuke tooth fairy - uesaka sumire ttt - sumi tomomi jiena twins sleep (lisa & louise) - kamitaka suzuka
vertin - takamori natsumi voyager - hondo kaede
x - toki shunichi
z - liyuu зима - totto
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jade-efflorescence · 19 hours ago
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she did it for the hopeless romantics (me, emphasis on hopeless)
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aliquidether · 1 year ago
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warmup Maomao sketch
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sugarspunquill · 16 days ago
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Y’all I am struggling in vain, does anyone know where to find armor for Emmrich that doesn’t look really dorky??? I KNOW there are good ones out there I just can’t seem to find them, and I can’t rank the merchant up to 4 yet
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e-adlirez · 8 months ago
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Thea Stilton Treasure Seekers Review/Ramble
Behold, an impulsive ramble about a possibly-obscure trilogy that's been translated to English during quarantine-ish, adding to the obscurity.
So the Treasure Seekers, huh? :3
Coming out a little prior but more or less over the course of quarantine and thus a lot of people not having ready access to it, the Treasure Seekers is what turned out to be a trilogy of what it says on the tin: the girls hunting down cool treasures as a result of going down the world's biggest and highest-stakes scavenger hunt written a hundred-ish years prior to the present time.
Gonna be giving MAJOR spoilers for the first book in the trilogy, and there'll (probably) be one post per book in the trilogy. If you haven't read the book, here's a copy on the Internet Archive you can read before skipping ahead to the review, enjoy, it's pretty good. If you've already read the book or don't care about spoilers, please proceed below the cut :3
The story begins with the girls on summer vacation in Scotland. Shenanigans get started when they meet this old hermit woman who has in her house a mysterious heirloom tapestry with a mysterious poem on it.
The tapestry has this poem that talks about a place with sweet winds, petals that will lead you to something beneath them, something about midnight and birds, and an alabaster garden created for the "jewel of the palace" (like me to you), that is guarded by a friend with deep feet. Sounds like a whole lotta cryptic shnit the theory heads would enjoy :D
Anyway so the girls go visit Beitris (the hermit woman) the next day to return something they borrowed from her only to walk into a holdup :D
Said holdup-ers are these two grunts led by this mysterious lady hiding her identity under a black fedora and thick-framed Ray Bans. The girls deal with that situation real quick and get the guys to scarper (if you're wondering how they did that, "the police are coming"), and once it all blows over, they find that the thugs only stole the tapestry despite ransacking the entire place like raccoons. Such a realization leads to a revelation on Beitris's end, so she entrusts the girls with the tapestry's backstory in a segment I will describe as LAAANNNEEEE LOOOORRRREEEEEE (said in a MatPat voice, we'll miss you king :'])
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The tapestry was a family heirloom passed down to Beitris by her grandmother Petra, who got it from her older sister Aurora Beatrix Lane, who is basically British Amelia Earhart. Wasn't into girly shnit, liked being outside and also archaeology, studied in the University of Cambridge as an Archaeology major and learned how to fly a plane, all while punting early 1900s gender norms into oblivion with her pants and motorcycle. Motorcycle queen, plane queen, archaeology queen, but then everything changed when this British Amelia Earhart did a British Amelia Earhart.
The context behind Aurora Beatrix Lane's disappearance is something relating to her work with her mentor Jan Von Klawitz, who was doing archaeology things with her and probably got up to some wild shnit, but we would never know because Aurora is very secretive about her plans and her destinations, and she only came home to the UK once, after her first trip, and that was when she gave smol child Petra the tapestry to guard because it led to "a very precious treasure", but she can't show it yet for the time being. The vibe was Aurora was planning on using the tapestry to show the treasure it hides once she's done with her archaeology shenanigans.
But then she did an Amelia Earhart but completely untraceable since she never revealed her destinations, so uh there's that :D
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Back to the present, this little storytime from Beitris has gotten the girls sucked into a rabbit hole. They are now hyperfixated like nobody's business and this Aurora Beatrix Lane is JUST LIKE THEM FR, and as a result they decide that y'know what they still have a few days before classes in Mouseford starts, and while they're at it, they're gonna find Beitris's tapestry and maaayyyybeeee find the alabaster garden. First destination: Girton College at the University of Cambridge, Aurora Beatrix Lane's alma mater.
The girls take a quick jaunt to Girton by train and then by bus to have a lil' chat with the dean, who reveals to them that they're looking for the central archive if they're gonna be looking for the deets on a student from a hundred years ago, but uh the archive is closed for the day, please come tomorrow. (Wonder why, maybe it's because they rode from Scotland to Girton by train which takes a shnitload of time. /nsrs but fr tho I wonder if the original Italian had them drive over there by car-- they did rent an SUV, and going by car would be way faster, like it'll only take a seven-hour drive faster) They come back the next day, are let into the archives, and oop, they find a well-preserved diary with Aurora's initials hidden in the Stanley Library.
Y'know what that means, LANE LOOORRRREEEEE
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So two months into her accompanying Jan on his excavations, she notes that Jan's been acting a bit sus lately-- being very nervous, being extremely protective over his luggage, being weird about hiding some of the relics he's found, and also a weird-ass incident where while exploring a small village's old castle, Aurora found a hidden chamber with a tome inside that Jan immediately snatched and was like "I'll take care of it don't worry, don't worry about the protocol stuff I'll be fine I'll take care of it". And then he went back to "normal" after that. Hmmmm.
A month later, while Jan was talking with one of his collaborators on their train to England, Aurora stumbled into the tome again, suspiciously in Jan's personal luggage instead of being properly archived and catalogued like it should've been. She read it, saw a thing about the Seven Treasures of the World, and that caused her protagonist genes to kick in since now she's now very tempted to look into finding them and showing them to the world.
After that, she went to some libraries to investigate and eventually decided to confront Jan about the whole treasures thing and his first reaction was he was pissed, calling Aurora a snoop and everything poking into his things. Then after calming down he said "just pretend to not see", but oh no, dear reader, Aurora was not gonna pretend to not see. She ain't gonna pretend to not see the fact that her mentor was actually a treasure hunter and collector who'd been using his occupation as an excuse to snatch some nifty treasures and keep them to himself like every European country who's stolen artifacts from Asian countries ever, ohohohooooo noooo, she's gonna do something about it.
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The girls scuttle on over back to Scotland and Beitris, to find that uh oh dear, the thugs came back again and this time they were asking about the girls specifically. Beitris pulled the same trick the girls pulled to get them to leave. So NOW the thugs are looking for the girls for whatever reason and wanna know their deal. Anyway, the girls show Beitris Aurora's diary, tell her about the summary, and also that unfortunately some of the pages are missing, and the diary doesn't say shnit about the tapestry so far. Beitris helps by giving them a letter that Aurora sent to Petra about the tapestry and its treasure, but interestingly mentions that she should "only trust Robert".
Since I haven't mentioned him before, Robert Neville was Aurora's flight tutor, a flying medic, and was toootttallllyyyyy just friends with Aurora you guys they were totally just frie--
He is dead in the present time, but his nephew John Neville is a (former) lighthouse keeper for the Ar-Men lighthouse in the IÎe de Sein, Brittany, France. So the girls head on over there, land in France, insert a thing where Vi feels like she's being watched but is like "maybe it's just a me thing, I dunno".
They head over to the Île de Sein, find an old man who turns out to be John, are invited to his house, tell him about their situation, and John mentions that he himself has been researching like crazy too about Aurora ever since hers and Jan's simultaneous disappearance over the same place at the same time in the same terrible storm. And also the fact that Robert was totally devastated when he got the news and spent years looking for her. He gives them his notes that he's accumulated over decades of researching in his pastime (which amounts to just Aurora's trip to Mexico), and tells them that since Aurora was looking for seven treasures, they'll need to find out where her seven trips took place, which will not be easy because Aurora was extremely secretive, and she only made her first trip even remotely public.
First place is Mexico so might as well head on over-- oh god the holdup-ers are back to holdup.
The thugs snatch Aurora's diary and book it before the girls can do much besides get an impromptu ocean bath, and oh dear, the thugs' boss has them now, and it's not the mafia cosplayer lookin' woman. But that's something I'll address later :3
Nonetheless, they carry on since the thugs never stole John's notebook, and they use it to go to the Puuc Route in Mérida, Yucatán (sounds very specific until you realize that Mérida is the capital of the Yucatán, and one thing everyone and their mother knows about the Mayan ruins there like Chichen Itza) to find more clues.
They do some more research on the Puuc Route, find some clues about "an invisible place, guarded by the chattiest of creatures", discover that it means they have to go to Uxmal, get a dub against the unfortunately acrophobic thugs, and realize that yes, Aurora did in fact sneak another one of her diaries in there.
This one doesn't have as much Lane Lore to contribute besides a clue that the girls find leads to Kannauj, Uttar Pradesh, India, a city known for its perfumes :3 sounds like "sweet winds", doesn't it? Oh and there's also something about a place with two lakes, which turns out to be Lakh Bahosi, a bird sanctuary about an hour's drive away from Kannauj. The girls head on over and try to do some investigating, but it doesn't take them that long to find a pair of grunts struggling under the weight of a very familiar tapestry while their boss was struggling to supervise them with her heels constantly digging into bird sanctuary dirt.
Anyway so the girls concoct a little scheme to steal the tapestry and the thugs fall for it like fish for a fishing lure, and they managed to scatter with the tapestry. After getting to a private space in the sanctuary, they find a clue that leads them to a set of coordinates that they find is a beeg tree. Oh and the treasure seems to be a present that was made for someone close to Mumtaz Mahal, as in "the jewel of the palace", the woman the Taj Mahal was made for; and the tapestry has a set of coordinates that is leading them to a beeg tree, with deep roots/feet. Oh hell yeah it's all comin' together.
They get to the tree, deal with the mafia lady for a little bit, find the treasure, and it turns out it's a very exquisite perfume bottle made of alabaster called "The Perfume of the Earth". They find a little note from Aurora explaining the treasure and its value and the significance of finding it, and now the girls have found the treasure Aurora had been searching for, and now's the time for a villain reveal?
So I haven't talked about him yet and have glossed over this guy for the entire ramble. See the mafia lady, Cassidy? Yeah she's not the big boss here. It's this guy who has a whole secret base in Denali National Park, Alaska, and has been overseeing everything behind the scenes. And by everything, I mean everything: He was alerted to the whole thing with Cassidy's first raid of Beitris's house, found out about the girls' involvement, and for a good half of the book, was trying to figure out what the girls' motives are for interfering with his line of work and what they might know about this whole thing he's looking for, which is the alabaster garden.
This guy has been keeping tabs on the girls through Cassidy and her thugs, who've been stalking the girls ever since France. He and Cassidy figured out in Paris that the girls are Mouseford students on vacation, and he was the one who gave the orders to snatch the journal from there. He was the one who told the goons to tail them to Mexico, and he was the one who managed to look up the girls' names, backgrounds, reasons for being in Scotland, all from the comfort of his base in Alaska. And only then, only then did he go to India himself to supervise and put a cap to his goons' buffoonery.
Who is this guy? Well, he is a treasure hunter who just wants to enjoy the treasures Aurora Beatrix Lane has hidden from his great-grandfather a hundred years ago. That's right, meet Luke Von Klawitz, the current heir to the Klawitz legacy and the treasure trove Jan Von Klawitz left behind in spite of his disappearance. Unfortunately Jan was better (and old enough) to secure a family legacy of greedy artifact hoarding.
So while the girls were in Lakh Bahosi, Luke was too with the goons and Cassidy (who is not his right-hand man and more just... a subordinate trying too hard to impress him), being the babysitter with these guys on leashes, as he tries to keep their stupidity under control. He intercepts the girls as they're about to leave Lakh Bahosi, blocking their path, and asks about the alabaster garden. The girls obviously don't spill and prolly would've gotten themselves blackbagged and interrogated had a friend they made prior to Lakh Bahosi not shown up in her dad's truck and came in clutch. (It sounds cliche and like it came out of nowhere but trust me it makes sense in-universe-- after the girls left the friend's family restaurant that they were hanging at, Luke's goons came over to interrogate them about the girls and where they went. Subtlety, who is she?)
The girls bring the perfume to a nearby university so it can be brought to a museum, send the tapestry back to Beitris, and return home to Whale Island, to read the last bits of Aurora's second journal and presumably to
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So that's the book :D I put in a LOT of spoilers, but I'd say that reading the book is still worth it because you'll be able to get the connecting tissues that tie the organs of this story together. H-hopefully this all made sense . .'''
First things first, if you're not used to how Scholastic kids' novels are written, then uh, you might wanna get used to it, because the English translation of Thea Stilton is very... that. It's not beating the kids' book allegations in English, unfortunately. On the brighter side, though, it's pretty good for Scholastic standards! The pacing's very fast, but it feels about right-- gives me the same energy as diving deeper and deeper into a rabbit hole and going to all sorts of places because of the hyperfixation responsible for consuming their sanity for all of a week or so. The dialogue isn't nearly as atrocious as the worst it's capable of being (oh trust me we'll get to that). The tapestry puzzle and how the girls work towards solving it is very coherent and logical for the situation they are in at the beginning, and it's very satisfying to see everything come together and for things to slowly make more and more sense in the poem despite it being as vague and puzzle box-y as it was.
The Lane family lore is very well-thought-out, and Aurora Beatrix Lane is the perfect spiritual predecessor to the girls, what with her love for adventure, love for travel, strong moral compass, and the strong compulsion to elbow drop every single feminine social rule under the sun. I can totally buy her being someone the girls would totally hyperfixate on researching, because she feels like that kind of compelling character-- a passionate young archaeologist who decided to put her own safety on the line for the sake of what she believed in and to dunk on Klawitz and his selfish (and very illegal) goals of hoarding the treasures of the world to himself.
As for the villain, I'll be real gamers, Luke Von Klawitz is probably the most intimidating if not terrifying villain in the entire franchise. He has drones spying on every corner of the world for him, he has goons he can contact at any time and have them do his bidding (to mixed results it seems), he has cutting-edge technology that he uses for terrifying means, all in the safety and comfort of his secret underground base in Alaska where he has his little basement filled to the brim with historical artifacts he's kept all to himself to enjoy. Lemme run this through you again:
He was able to learn the girls names, the university they're studying in, and why they were in Scotland in the first place, all without ever meeting them face-to-face or having his goons interrogate them directly. All he needed to learn all of this was the (not very helpful) research by Cassidy, and a few commands put into his world-connected supercomputer.
Are you intimidated yet? I sure hope you are :D this guy's got a lotta potential is what I'm saying. He's a bit of a brat who wants what he wants and wants it immediately, but he's also a bit of a chess master who looks over things in the background while his minions do all the work for him. Really the only thing holding him back is the incompetency of his goons, and technically it's not even that they're very stupid-- Cassidy and her grunts Stan and Max are very good at swooping in out of nowhere to wreak havoc, dip in and get out before anyone can do anything about it. They're decent if not good at the job they're usually assigned: low-level grunt work. Unfortunately they're not good at much else, which drove Luke insane this entire book, haha.
The girls' dynamic with Cassidy, Stan and Max was refreshing in the sense that the girls aren't always getting punted by them, and the goons aren't always taking Ls just from physical contact with the girls. Cassidy and the goons always had the element of surprise on their side, being able to show up out of nowhere and do their thing before the girls have time to even blink; but once the girls figured out their whole shtick, it was easy to learn that they are easily outclass-able by five mouse Oxford students in braincell count and thus act accordingly. They force the girls to think fast and come up with some snappy plans on the spot, and the girls force Luke to realize he hired Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum, and Tweedle Dummy as goons :D
Now uh, I have been complimenting this thing the entire time, but there is one little thing I have an issue within this book, and that is the whole... Power of Friendship thing they've got going on throughout the book.
Yes, unfortunately, the Friendship Curse has claimed this hardcover series too, and while it's not the worst here, it's still... it's still a bit atrocious :D
For instance, the conclusion Cassidy and Luke come to for the girls' reasons for interference is "friendship". Literally, Cassidy literally says to Luke, "It seems they did it out of friendship, Sir", and then Luke responds with an evil cackle and is like "FRIENDSHIP? THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP DOESN'T EXIST IN THIS WORLD! AIN'T NO WAAAAYYYYY THEY'RE NOT FIVE SCHEMERS WHO WANNA GET THE TREASURES THEMSELVES", which is like... I don't get that vibe from Luke anywhere else in the book? Luke values efficiency and getting what he wants-- he's not hired Cassidy to be all buddy-buddy with her, he hired her for a job and she has to work to fulfill said job. He just wants competent employees, and y'know what, that's valid. Not a single part in that have I seen "ew power of friendship". It's very villain for the sake of villainy kind of energy, which I don't think fits Luke with the other bits of information we get of him? He's following his great-granddad's footsteps-- not a single minute of that did that mean "the spirit of friendship doesn't exist get yo head outa the cotton candy"
Then there's... how this applies to the girls.
inhales
WHY DID THEY MAKE VIOLET THE GROUP'S FRIENDSHIP PROPHET GRAAAAHHHH
I probably would make a full-blown rant about this at some point, but one thing I never liked about any of the hardcovers was how Violet of all people is the group's assigned friendship prophet. She'd occasionally make a comment about how uh something something the power of love is the strongest of all, and every single time I don't like it :D
Sure fine you can chalk it up to character development since her early months in Mouseford, but in the earlier books it's heavily established that she's the pragmatic one, the braincell keeper, the one who keeps the girls' group ADHD on track or the one who reminds them that "hey we've been at this for a really long time and it's now 2AM, we should really turn in now". Being a friendship prophet is a Colette thing, not a Violet thing, and I'm not trying to insult Colette or anything like that. I would be far more okay with it if Colette was the one to go on about the "power of love" because she's literally the HOPELESS ROMANTIC! She's the one with her head in the clouds, the one most likely to fangirl about ships in movies, the one who chooses to ship Romeo and Juliet and pretend to not see the entire second act of said play for the sake of believing in love.
If Colette had a line where she gushed about the power of friendship, I would've just chalked it up to "that cheesy-ass statement is something she'd totally say ngl", as opposed to the jarring whiplash I get from seeing Violet of all people call upon the Power of Friendship.
Again, probably will rant about this at some point (lemme know if you're into that idea), but yeah -m-
Literally just chuck the power of friendship bits and replace them with something more practical/realistic/grounded/whateveryouwannacallit, and it's basically perfect! Even the bits where the girls make friends on their journey is believable! Those don't have to be altered at all! Geuh it drives me insane, almost to the point of wanting to do something about it....
Well, that's enough rambling for today. I can't use up all my steam on this first book-- I plan on making ramblings for the second and third books, after all.
See ya Stilton fans, and for the newcomers from Twitter, welcome :D I hope you enjoy your stay :D
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