#some are so old they're no longer available which makes it very hard

[haydenscloset]

can we get a rundown of all the different disney, other brands and maple leaf and blue jay baseball caps he has?

I have a whole Pinterest board just for his hats, and I'm working on getting through them all. But at the top of my head:

Hockey merch (like you said, Maple Leafs and Blue Jays. Too many to name)

Carhartt (he re-wears two in particular a lot)

Descendant (he wore a hat from them a lot at conventions in 2024)

Side Pie (a pizzeria in Los Angeles that also sells merchandise. He's been seen two hats from them)

Crew hats (the Obi-Wan Kenobi stunts and Episode III hats)

[nyerus]

Guide to Watch TGCF Donghua Season 2

With the new season of the Tian Guan Ci Fu/Heaven Official's Blessing donghua finally releasing soon, I wanted to make a post explaining the different ways fans can watch and support it! Things have changed since season 1, so my old guide is no longer relevant apart from the infographics on how to subscribe to Bilibili CN (and the YouTube channel)!

And to be upfront: the main sites that are going to be broadcasting the donghua have been very sparse with information. I fully expect that we will have to wait until after the first episode releases to know all the details, so while I am making this guide to help people right now, things might change! Please keep that in mind and stay patient! I will post any important updates in the replies as I can!

Additionally, because of copyright/licensing, different sites are going to work in different regions. I do not know with 100% certainty what is going to work in a particular country. There's gonna be some trial and error!

So the main options we have for season 2 are:

Crunchyroll

Sub price: $9.99 USD per month for basic (local prices may vary)

Regions: Americas, Europe, Africa, Middle East, Oceania.

Pros: Easy to subscribe to if available in your region.

Cons: Unlikely for true simulcast so it'll be a bit delayed.

Link to main site (season 2 listing not up yet)

For app: download via App Store/Google Play Store.

Bilibili. tv (EN site/app)

Sub price: $4.99 USD per month (local prices may vary)

Regions: Southeast Asia only.

Pros: Airs earlier than Crunchyroll. Interface is in English.

Cons: If you want to watch it outside of SEA, you'll need a VPN.

Link to Season 2 on website

For app: download via APK link on website if you are outside of SEA. Otherwise use App Store/Google Play Store.

Bilibili YouTube Channel

Sub price: $4.99/$5.99 USD per month (local prices may vary)

Regions: Many -- EXCEPT Japan, South Korea, the Americas, UK, Australia, New Zealand.

Pros: Easy to subscribe if available in your region.

Cons: If you want to watch it from the regions listed above, you'll need a VPN.

Link to channel

It's the youtube app....

Bilibili. com (CN site/app)

Sub price: $9.99 USD for 3 months

Regions: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Pros: If they're gonna air season 2, then they might be the source broadcast if the EN site isn't. Also probably cheapest for those abroad.

Cons: Chinese interface may be intimidating. Not 100% sure if it'll air as normal.

Link to Season 2 on website

For app: download via App Store/Google Play Store.

(NOTE: If you are in Japan, it will be available on WOWOW. If you are in South Korea, it will be available on Laftel.)

F.A.Q.s

🔹What is the release date/time? Bilibili EN has announced it as 20:00 GMT+8 on October 18th. If it releases on Bilibili CN, it'll probably be the same time. Crunchyroll has stated October 18th, but has not yet announced a time as of the posting this guide. I checked. Japan and South Korea have their own release times, so please consult the relevant broadcasters!

🔹Can I watch it on Netflix/Amazon Prime/etc? These streaming services will likely only have it after the whole season concludes, and with a significant delay. For reference, it took several months after finishing for season 1 to be released on Netflix.

🔹Which platform should I choose? Whichever one you can actually access, and feel most comfortable using!

🔹When should I subscribe? Personally, I'll be waiting until the last day before release, just to make sure I have the most information possible. However, I'm sure the idea of doing that makes many people nervous, so... yeah. Whenever is convenient for you!

🔹Which one will have the donghua the quickest/earliest? Probably Bilibili CN & Bilibili EN. I suspect they'll simulcast with each other. I cannot be 100% certain about anything though, because of limited info! For season 1, YouTube and Funimation (now Crunchyroll) were delayed, and it's hard to say if they'll be better this time or not.

🔹Do I need a VPN for Bilibili EN or their YT channel? If you are outside of SEA, yes.

🔹Do I need a VPN for Bilibili CN? Probably not, unless you are in a country that restricts access to CN sites and apps (like India).

🔹Which VPN should I use? This will be up to you! It's best to research what the different options are, and what will work for your needs!

🔹How will I know I'll be able to watch season 2 from my region? The most surefire way is to subscribe to a platform that has officially announced to be serving your region (e.g. Crunchyroll for the Americas). Unofficially, if you can watch the latest trailer and other promo videos on your chosen platform, then there's a good chance you're okay! The exception to this is the YouTube channel, which has some of the trailers public, but has all of season 1 unavailable if you aren't in the right region.... Additionally, be mindful, because even if you're able to see season 1, season 2 might still be region-locked on certain platforms. (E.g. you can watch all of season 1 via Bilibili EN if you're from the USA no problem. But you can't access season 2 without a VPN to a SEA server.)

🔹What languages are going to be available and will there be English subtitles? While dubs for multiple languages have been confirmed, I'm unsure if any of these will be available on release. It'll likely be offered only in Chinese first. For season 1, there were hardcoded CN & EN subtitles for Bilibili on release. Funimation re-subbed the episodes (EN) for their own release, and Crunchyroll will probably do the same.

🔹I watched it on Funimation last time, can I watch it through them this time? No, they were absorbed (in some capacity idk) by Crunchyroll. So they are not distributing season 2 of TGCF, only Crunchyroll is.

🔹Is season 2 actually available in China and thus on Bilibili CN? Yes and no! As long as you are not in mainland China, it seems you will have access to season 2 through Bilibili CN. All promo materials and trailers seem to be available to us, which is a good sign! (They are not available for mainlanders, but mainland fans are able to watch via HK/Macau versions apparently.)

🔹Hopeful that it will be available, I would like to watch it via Bilibili CN, so how do I sign up and subscribe? To make an account, consult this reddit post. To subscribe, please consult the guide below! It's a little old (made it for season 1) but still works pretty much the same.

[noonmutter]

Home for the Holiday

The Foodening...is Nigh.

Leon, being a farmboy and a cook, has a tradition for Pilgrim's Bounty.

For the week leading up to the holiday, there is a rule in the Peppercog-Ambroce household, nestled comfortably up next to the mountains in the Valley of the Four Winds: The front door stays unlocked until sundown, every day, period. On the day of the holiday itself, it stands wide open. Anyone who wants a meal, a place to stay, some company, or anything else is welcome and is considered family as long as they're there.

The food is enough to feed a village...of Pandaren. And it becomes apparent in the days leading up to the holiday that it very well might, as his neighbors (the closest stead is visible a mile away, and travelers come from as far as Halfhill) begin making friendly check-ins and bringing him extra stuff.

While there is always food ready and available (the final mile or so up to the house smells like heaven), the day-of meal is when Leon goes hard, and it's when his direct family and close friends arrive. On the day of the holiday, that house is packed, there is an entire menagerie of pets romping merrily through the back field, and it's a big noisy mess in which Leon stands firmly centered.

Attendees include:

Leon (obviously)

Kaewynn (first wife)

Pineapple (second wife)

Valarin (husband)

Terry (big brother, Viscount of Keel, Baron of the Brightgrove)

Shedwyn (sister in law, Viscountess of Keel, Baroness of the Brightgrove)

Vember (big sister by adoption, Harvest Witch)

Celedyn (boyfriend)

Cythion (roommate)

Cythion's son, Oli

Oli's two moms

Caythaes

Ithilios

Trist'ayran

Anzhin

Terry's personal bodyguard, Tully

Shedwyn's personal bodyguard/attache, Shu-fen

Terry and Dwyn's eight young children

Toby and Graeme (twins), Sam Jr, Ulfric and Corben Caythaes (twins), and their three-month-old triplet girls that I'll be honest we haven't had time to think of names for yet THEY DEFINITELY HAVE NAMES THO. Leon calls all the triplets "precious" because he hasn't learned to tell them apart yet; Terry will show off how easily he can as a party trick after a few beers

Lucien (Dwyn's firstborn)

Praecormu (a bronze drake, chosen guise is a farraki troll)

Eleyn (Duchess of Aramore, head of Getaway Cafe, take a wild guess which matters more to Leon)

Vaelin (one of Elly's entourage)

A grab bag of adventurers referring to themselves as The Meddlers

You, if you want!

This is one hell of a bigass party, and I don't have the means to run it as an event, so I thought I'd post it up as something on the order of a writing prompt. If Leon has ever met you, even in passing, even if only for five minutes, consider yourself invited. If you've never met him but your character would totally be down to crash a big family get-together that treats them like they're part of the family the whole time, do it.

Leon takes Pilgrim's Bounty very, very seriously, and he means it when he says everyone who walks in that door is family until they leave (it also means that leon hid all the really good silverware). They might very well be in danger of it lasting longer than that.

Feel free to throw your hat in the ring and say you were there, or even write up your own stories (or ping me for arpee about it, I might be able to accommodate a few here and there). If you do write stuff, tag me so I can see!

LET'S GET WHOLESOME

[grison-in-space]

Question about dog breeding/breeds, if you’re ok with answering:

I’m a would-be dog owner, never had one before, and I really want to get a companion dog from a breeder/group that is ethical and aims to produce healthy litters, but… I also understand that healthy litter =/= healthy gene pool, and it would be great to support breeding efforts that promote the welfare of the breed as a whole rather than the specific animals they sell. How the HECK do I identify breeders that promote ethical breeding for both healthy animals and population diversity? (I live in Australia, not sure if that makes this harder to answer or not)

(I mean ideally I’d adopt a rescue but there are pros and cons to that and, as a newbie, I’m not going to take on an animal I can’t adequately care for. And also I can never find rescue dogs of the breeds that work for my lifestyle)

So I don't know Australia as well as some other folks (@farm-paws?), but I do know that the best way to figure this out is to find out where breeders are talking to one another and listen to the things they say. The second best thing to do is to just ask breeders producing dogs you like: how do you breed with an eye towards producing the dogs you want, and how do you breed with an eye towards making the whole breed better?

The thing about this question is that there's lots of ways to answer it, but how a breeder answers that question given your breed's context will help you figure out how much they're thinking about each. And it does mean thinking very clearly about things you value. Any person trying to achieve a goal with limited resources, which describes many passionate breeders, is going to have to make trade offs based on resource limits. Increase the genetic diversity of the population as a whole, or win big at a given sport?

Let me get you some examples under the cut.

Here are a couple of examples of what I think of as pretty nice kennels I would be happy to consider approaching for a dog, if they bred dogs of a type I currently want to own and I wanted another dog. (Some do, some don't, and I won't have space in the inn for several years yet anyway.) They are unfortunately American--without knowing your breed of choice it's hard to figure out how to navigate the Australian scene--but most of the tips should carry over okay. Because Dog Culture can sometimes be really black and white and mistake cultural markers for meaningful ethical distinctions, I'm going to try and share a wide range of perspectives, orientations, and viewpoints here from breeders who think about long term breed improvement.

Wayout ACDs: This post on the importance of collecting and storing semen from older, sometimes long dead dogs is a great green flag that this breeder thinks deeply about the long term future of the whole population--especially given her emphasis on these older dogs who might not have contributed heavily to the gene pool in their younger, living days. Collected semen from old dogs who aren't closely related to younger dogs can be a great way to help broaden and revitalize a larger population.

Border City Bullies, coming from a breed with a relatively low incidence of health testing and some big cultural variations, has a ton of resources available on how health testing works, what to do about it, and how to responsibly move forward even if a dog fails a test. The breeder here clearly feels very strongly about teaching and encouraging other American Bully breeders to start monitoring longer term health as a breeding goal and fostering a community of breeders who want to work with each other to make the dogs healthier. I love this approach. Especially when population bottlenecks are not a major problem but health monitoring is, building a better breed community is also a signal of someone who is thinking about their breed over the very long term.

Woodpont Beagles. I really like this breeder as an example of someone who keeps his dogs differently to mine, but who has firm standards for their comfort and care nevertheless. I also admire this breeder's ability to assess two "camps" in his breed that don't communicate much and do his best to take the best from each perspective. Finally I really like the emphasis on the successes and failures of breeders from the past: a good vision for the future often includes a deep knowledge about how we got to the present.

The Functional Dog Collective is probably a good place to check on, even if it's heavily North America based; my understanding/experience is that while there is certainly a lot of disagreement within the broader community of breeders, that's a spot where anyone with an interest in long term breeding for health in particular is going to pop up. The Institute for Canine Biology is another good place to look around for people in your breed of choice who are broadly interested in evidence-based approaches to more healthy breeding, too.

[noxcorvorum]

Do you have any horror podcast recs

I liked tma and old gods of Appalachia but I'm caught up and need to BINGE

hello! youve come to the right place :)

Ghost Wax feels kindof similar to tma, especially tma season 1, with the main character (Owen Voncid) taking statements of people who've encountered the supernatural. However, Owen is a necromancer (the last Reclaimer!) who briefly reawakens the dead so that they can tell their final story, and all of the statement givers are dead. He also has an assistant, Luca Eso, who made the wax cylinders that he uses (he's been around for a very long time, and the remembrances are beginning to slip from his brain) and is a pop culture nerd. They work with a seer, Pip (or Phillipa Le Fay, to respect the stagecraft), who uses her grandmother's tarot cards.

All three of these people work for the Order of Hamsa, which fights the supernatural. Hamsa are incredibly powerful entities who have magic such as geomancy and necromancy, and usually inhabit a human body, though generally not for an incredibly long amount of time. There are several Hamsa in this podcast, including Owen. Owen has remained in his body for much longer than usual. Some other characters I enjoyed are Emea, the apiarist as well as Owen's best friend and a Hamsa, Cosa, the android librarian/archivist, and Azem, who is very thoroughly haunting the narrative. Don't look away.

I absolutely love this podcast, its easily in my top three. There's several incantations/spells which are so fun to me, found family, and really fun sound effects. It has 46 episodes as well as 2 Tales from the Vault, which are filled with smaller stories (I submitted a story to the second one!), there's content on patreon, and season 2 is in production.

Malevolent is about Arthur Lester, a 1930s private investigator from Arkham, Massachusetts, and the voice in his head and his eyes. Episode 1 opens with Arthur coming to on the floor of his office, suddenly blind, a strange entity speaking to him, and his business partner dead on the floor. Arthur and John, as the entity comes to be named, must now figure out how to navigate the horrors, try to find a way to separate themselves, and figure out where John came from. There's lots of cosmic horror/lovecraftian influences in here, and they have so many miles to go before they sleep.

There's a LOT of audio gore/squishy flesh sounds/Arthur screaming because the horrors love ripping into him, so if that's no good then this podcast is not for you. Some of the more eldritch characters also have voice filters, most notably John, which could make them hard to understand, though there are transcripts available. the plot can also be a little hard to follow sometimes.

I really enjoy this podcast, I'm currently relistening to it and having a great time. It's kindof forced family? because Arthur and John physically cannot get away from each other and yet they Have To communicate. They're so so much "its rotten work" "not to me, not if its you" AND "its rotten work" "especially to me, especially if its you, ill do it but christ alive". It's currently 42 episodes at usually 40ish minutes each, and still going, with new episodes releasing mostly monthly. There's also one voice actor, everyone sounds similar because it's the same guy.

Hello from the Hallowoods is a post apocalyptic show about identity, grief, family, and survival. It's formatted as a radio broadcast by an entity named Nikignik, who narrates everything. There is one voice actor for the majority of this show (save for the occasional character speaking outside of Nikignik's broadcast), and they do an amazing job, especially considering the amount of characters.

Some of the characters I really enjoy are Diggory Graves, a nonbinary frankenstein's monster with knife hands and a leather jacket, Percy Reed, a transmasc piano ghost, Riot Maidstone, the lesbian punk daughter of a rockstar, Olivier Song, a genderfluid cloud witch, Ray, a ghost possessing an automobile, Moth Scarberry (moth/mothself), Ray's adopted kid, Walt Pensieve, the asexual groundskeeper of the Hallowoods, and Polly, a devil in a floral suit. Some of the antagonists include Lady Ethel Mallory, a gaslight gatekeep girlboss of a marketing specialist for an evil corporation and the Instrumentalist, a religious fanatic who keeps killing people and turning them into instruments. Darker than your dreams, and farther north than you remember, the Hallowoods loom.

Each episode has a different theme based on the title (such as Keys, Names, and Bones), and is split into several different stories that follow different characters as Nikignik jumps around. There's not very many voice filters, because Nikignik is doing the voices himself, though I think there are a few, and transcripts are available. There's 145 episodes at usually 30 to 50 minutes each, and a new one releases every wednesday.

Sidenote, the Instrumentalist is *really* religious as well as homophobic and transphobic, and he regularly misgenders/deadnames a trans main character. He only exists in the show for about 50 episodes, and definitely gets what he deserves.

The White Vault is a found footage podcast with the first two seasons comprising a repair team's trip to Outpost Fristed in Svalbard. They go up to repair some damaged equipment as well as look at some weird readings, and then have to wait out a massive storm. They find a hatch in the auxiliary bunker, and explore the tunnels beneath to find a village beneath the ice. Theres Graham Casner, the survival guide, Walter Heath, the repair technician, Karina Shumacher-Weiß, the geologist, Rosa De La Torre, the medic, and Jónas Þórirsson, the representative of the company sending them. Travel is not advised.

I listened to the bulk of the first 2 seasons at 2 am while playing powerwash simulator, and it made me so incredibly anxious that I had to have my back to a wall *in the game* so nothing could sneak up one me. Highly recommend. There's so much fear and helplessness surrounding what could be hiding in the storm and in the ice, and I absolutely love the concept for the antagonists.

Seasons 3 and 4 are about a different team in Patagonia, season 5 checks back in at Svalbard, and season 6 is somewhere else entirely. 3-4 are pretty alright in my opinion, maybe a bit repetitive as it follows a similar pattern to the first two seasons, but I don't hate them. I think 5 is pretty good, though it has my favorite character in it, so, you know. I think 6 goes in a bit of a different direction, though I'm not caught up so I can't really comment on it. Seasons 1 and 2 are absolutely stunning, though.

The creators and cast of seasons 1-2 also have a horror dnd podcast called Dark Dice. I must admit I haven't finished the first campaign, though I really liked what I did listen to. I'm told the second campaign has Jeff Goldblum in it, and has 2 different parties with one hunting the other, though I haven't listened to it yet, so take that as you will.

Jar of Rebuke follows Dr. Jared Hel, a cryptid scientist with amnesia in a small Midwestern town, and perhaps closer to the cryptids than they realize. They're also immortal, and (for a reason I don't remember at this particular moment) he has to wear a key around his neck, and never take it off. I'm not caught up, though I really liked what I did listen to. There's lots of fun cryptids and supernatural happenings, such as Jared getting a hellhound as a pet. The episodes are about 10-20 minutes each, and it's ongoing.

As someone on tiktok so aptly said, if you have trust issues with your therapist, you probably shouldn't listen to this podcast. Jared is manipulated by their therapists, and we sometimes hear them talk about him like he's a test subject or creature, not a person.

Do You Copy is another found footage podcast surrounding Redtail National Park, which more or less contains an area called the Dead Zone, in which technology doesn't work and other spooky stuff happens. The Dead Zone has a possible imminent ecological disaster, and though the park is evacuated until the emergency is over, there are a couple people still inside. These include two ghost hunters, a hiker and their dog, and two park rangers who have been instructed to stay inside in hopes of hearing from the three others. I found the Dead Zone and what lies inside VERY interesting, both from a horror perspective and a speculative biology/ecology perspective. It is finished at 14 episodes.

The Hyacinth Disaster is a space horror found footage podcast, and easily in my top three (the other one on that list is tma). It is set in 2151, when Jupiter and Mars have been colonized, and the asteroid belt is being mined for resources. There are two main mining companies in the show, Halaesus Mining Co in Lagrange 4, Greek objects, and Lykaeon Minerals Corporation in Lagrange 5, Trojan objects. The Corvus, a ship contracted to Halaesus and ordered to survey and harvest an asteroid in Lagrange 5, was captured by Lykaeon and held for ransom, and Halaesus denies the ransom broadcast is true, unwilling to pay. The skeleton crew of the MRS Hyacinth has gone rogue in the slowly dwindling time limit to survey a possibly incredibly valuable asteroid, hoping to pay the ransom themselves. But they are 6 people manning a ship meant for 53, and there are so many things to go wrong.

Conlin Hynes is the captain of the Hyacinth and is a good friend of Ember Roth, the captain of the Corvus. Con isn't the greatest captain, not by a long shot, but he's incredibly loyal, and maintains a talented crew. Famke Hynes, or Blue, is Con's sister, and the captain of her own ship, the Sibirica. She would have been the captain of the Hyacinth had she won the rock paper scissors match when they first bought it. She's returned to the Hyacinth to run comms for her brother as they bring Ember and her crew home, and to blow things up along the way.

Finch is Con's wife, and doing an admirable job at being an one-person engineering and seismology team. She's doing her absolute best with the equipment they have that corporate refuses to replace or reapir. Dreadnought in exosuit 2 is by far the youngest of the crew at 24. He's a surveyor, and in fact surveyed Saniss 130991, the very rock they're at, himself. He saw the potential and purposefully misfiled it, hoping to make a bigger profit if corporate didn't know about it, and told Finch, who told Con, and now they're all here.

Grimm is in exo 4, one that he bought himself and has carefully maintained. He refuses to tell the others what he's named it. He moves around a lot, as he gets bored of jobs quickly. Seems like a hardass, but he's actually a pretty nice guy. Argus in exo 7 is one of Con's best friends, having worked with him and Grimm on several jobs. He's a pretty optimistic guy, and follows Grimm as he moves from job to job. His lucky object of choice is a surprise tool that will help us later.

There's lots of angst and horror but also lots of comedy. I've seen a couple reactions that thought there was too much comedy for the situation, but personally I really enjoyed it. It's 7 episodes long, at about 2.5 hours total. There's a lot of sound effects for the ship controls that could potentially be irritating, Dreadnought's dialogue is full of static and sometimes difficult to understand because his radio is partially broken, and there's a loud, extended, high pitched static sound often in the first few episodes (It's when they activate the squealer device, it lasts for about 10-15 seconds each time and there's a countdown from 5 right before), so if you have issues with mechanical/static sound effects, this probably isn't for you. There's transcripts for episodes 1-4 on the website, along with a database of more information about the world.

I'm so so normal about this podcast, I have a note full of facts and trivia (Ember was voted into captaincy by her crew, and according to dreadnought, the ratio of greek names to jovian objects is about 1 in 50,000), my senior quote was from here, I've relistened to it so many times. I cannot recommend this enough.

Among the Stars and Bones is another found footage space horror, but this time it's about anthropology and alien technology. The format is mission files being sent back to the company from a large team investigating an abandoned alien settlement. There's about 7 different perspectives, one from each branch of the team (xenoanthropology, IT, etc).

I really enjoyed it the first time I listened, there were a lot of good anxious moments. A couple of my favorite characters are Dr. Celia Pannella, who heads the xenoanthropology section, and Ben Kelleher, who heads the xenoarchaeology section. I found the alien science/speculative biology really really interesting.

Given you liked tma I'm assuming you know of The Magnus Protocol, but if you don't, it's pretty much Magnus but in a civil service job instead of archiving. It has such characters as Colin the longsuffering IT guy, Alice, who is coping with the horrors by ignoring them, Needles, and Chester and Norris, two text-to-speech voices who we have definitely never heard before (/s).

It has 10 episodes plus an Easter/April Fools special, and it's on a break until April 11th.

Mabel is a podcast about ghosts, families, secrets, and connections. Anna Limon is a carer who has been hired to take care of Mabel Martin's mother Sally. The house is odd, the house is alive, and the house is hungry. Anna is unraveling a mystery as fast as she can find the thread, and Mabel, having grown up half-feral and half-faeral, is somewhere under the Hill.

I will admit I haven't finished this show, but I would definitely recommend it. I actually had to restart it because I wasn't expecting to be as invested as I was. It is very much a faerie story, with riddles and all.

The Silt Verses is a story about faith, and what people will do to keep it. It follows Sister Carpenter and Brother Faulkner as they travel upriver, looking for revelations of their outlawed god, the Trawler-Man. There's a whole cast of gods, many of which are capitalistic, and most of the ones that are not have been outlawed. Some examples are the Trawler-Man of the river, the Waxen Scrivener of decay and books, the Saint Electric of radio and electricity, and the Cairn Maiden of graves and death.

I'd say it has semi similar vibes to Old Gods, mostly with the many deities and monsters. I'm only about halfway through it, but I'd definitely recommend it.

Hope you find something you enjoy!

[bigweldindustries]

(Just read your Hades 2 post)

I want to make an amputee character in my dnd campaign in the future. What are the biggest things you'd want to see from an npc/ a character like that? Anything specific for me to look out for while making them? Sorry if you're not familiar with the game, but I thought I might ask regardless

Hey there! Apologies for not answering this sooner, I was on vacation with my partner when this came in and haven't had a chance!

I just want to preface this by saying I am not an amputee or prosthetic user myself - my father has been a single above knee amputee since I was 5 years old and I have lived with him my whole life, which is where my knowledge and emotional attachment to seeing good depictions of amputees and prosthetics users comes from. As such I am not the be all end all and am never going to know as much nor my opinions be as valuable as those from actual amputees - I am simply someone who has some second hand familiarity with an amputee and who gets excited to introduce cool amputee characters to my dad, haha.

Honestly my biggest piece of advice is to decide on what kind of amputee you want to depict (whether it's above or below the joint, and of what limb(s)) and then research into the current adaptive devices available and used by people with that specific limb difference, especially looking into personal writings about the experience if possible (forums are great for this!). You can then go crazy dnd-ifying them!

The most important thing in my opinion is to not go with the "it's just an entirely magic device that functions exactly the same as the limb would" route - it takes the disability out of the disability. You see this more often with futuristic settings (Luke Skywalker is probably the most famous example) with advanced robotic prosthesis but at best it reduces amputation to a solely aesthetic aspect of character design, at worst it's a solely aesthetic aspect of character design that grants them special powers in some way. By all means magic is not totally off the table (my dad recently relearned to walk yet again with a new knee which is microprocessor controlled, for example, and if I were to dnd-ify that I'd probably explain it's a bunch of specifically enchanted mechanical parts) but the shortcut of "it's magic so it works exactly the same as a real limb" is kind of weird and alienating.

One aspect of this is that there are limitations to what can be done with a prosthetic - back when my dad had a simple mechanical knee, gravel and similar uneven surfaces were a nightmare to walk on, and sand/loose dry dirt is still a no go even computerised. Someone with an arm prosthetic with a hook is going to have a different way of picking up and interacting with objects with their hook, and may have some things they can't do. Once again it all comes down to research - people's accounts of their lived experiences are always such a powerful thing within disability research!

There's also that a lot of amputees don't have prosthetics at all! They are extremely expensive, other health conditions or disabilities can make it hard if not impossible to actually use a prosthetic, hell maybe they just don't want one - there's plenty of reasons why a character may be an amputee with no prosthetic. This would be kind of hype honestly - I can't actually think of a fictional amputee who isn't a prosthetic user!

Even people with prosthetics don't use them all the time - they're not the most comfortable things and can be very physically tiring. If you do decide to depict your character with a prosthetic, it could be nice to have them appear without it whilst relaxing or otherwise "off duty" - maybe they chill in the tavern in the evening without it. Look into what exactly is used in these situations too - for example, my dad will use crutches to get around the house/shorter range outside trips, or an active wheelchair for longer days out.

TL;DR decide on what kind of amputee you're looking to depict, do a bunch of research into the accessibility devices they might use, and then get as creative as you want! Forums and subreddits are probably going to be your best friend - I unfortunately don't know any off the top of my head as my dad does his questioning and answering in Facebook groups (he's 66, he's not the best at social media and the internet lol) but due to the wide range of needs, circumstances, and accessibility devices available even amongst groups with one specific limb difference online discussion tends to be lively and extremely illuminating as to a variety of actual lived experiences!

Absolutely don't be afraid of giving it a shot, overall - as with depicting any disability in media you want to do your research, and if possible run it past someone with that disability for both sense and sensitivity checking, but even if it's not perfect it still matters. When I introduced my dad to Hephaestus from Hades 2 he corrected me on one point (the wheelchair doesn't actually look too much like an active wheelchair - the back is too high!) but despite this he was hype to see a SAK (single above knee) amputee character who he shared a lot of characteristics with, haha.

Sorry for the rambling but I hope there was a thing or two in here that was helpful and I hope writing your character goes well!! Love it!!!

[weirdnessxmagnet]

Super late: 14, 1

1. What would completely break your character?

Not much! She's long mastered using anger to prevent herself from crumbling. The one thing that comes to mind is a senseless tragedy taking away her kids permanently (especially Eli, given everything she's put in to get him back). She's lost her kids before and it didn't break her completely, but she had some very clear figures to blame for that. There was somewhere for the anger to go. Something to do. Something as senseless as Eli being taken out by a random asteroid strike (asteroids can destroy souls for the purpose of this example because it's really hard to stop her just deciding that she's gonna fix things) would break her, because there really is just nothing to do with that. No one to blame, nothing to fix. Nowhere to put her anger, so she'd just have to deal with the grief instead, and she would do so badly.

14. How does the image your character tries to project differ from the image they actually project?

Not that I need to tell you, since you did this on purpose, but this is complicated. To say Toni doesn't care how people see her is inaccurate, but she only cares insofar as the perception of her is useful. To that end, how she tries to present herself depends on the intended audience and the circumstances, and how that image is perceived depends on the observer and what information they're working with.

Literal essay of examples below the cut.

Normal:

This is how Toni tires to portray herself in most daily situations; normal by the standards of her present audience, whatever that audience may be. For most mundane interactions this means angels and demons are allegorical, vampires are for halloween, and while God may answer prayers with signs, if her audience is so inclined to believe that, He certainly isn't showing up for an in-person chat if you start banging pots and pans in his house at 2am. Of course, normal is relative, and so the stranger her audience, the stranger she can be.

This lands perfectly with strangers and passing acquaintances in one-on-one interactions; She lived an ordinary life once, she knows what the expectations are, and in the short term they're easy enough to maintain. The longer the association or broader the group, however, the more the cracks will start to show. She is weird even by most supernatural standards, and eventually that's not possible to hide.

Living Dead Girl:

This is a variation on Normal intended specifically for people who knew her before she got involved in the supernatural (usually immediate family). Critically, this is always woefully unsuccessful; for example, while a Normal Person can still have anger issues for entirely mundane reasons, 20 year old Toni didn't. The girl she was is, as Toni puts it, dead twice over. It is not someone Toni knows how to convincingly be any more around people who know exactly what it should look like. Even at her best, the result leaves her audience with a deep sense of the uncanny valley.

The Doll: 

At its most basic, The Doll is what happens when Toni plays on the stereotypical perception of the tiny, skinny, doe eyed white human girl (which of those categories are relevant is audience dependant). The presumed non-threat, innocence, and naïvety. A soft, weak, and harmless thing. Depending on how premeditated the role is, she will play this up with almost-conservative dresses, often in soft pastels or white, an exaggerated doe eye, and even making herself appear younger now that she's mastered her glamours.

This usually lands perfectly on the audiences it's targeted at; Specifically, those already primed to see themselves as more powerful than her in whatever arena she plans to contend in. It lures the target into a false sense of security, and ends with her getting all kinds of access, information, and opportunities that would never have been available if they'd taken her seriously from the start. Of course, there are groups and individuals who are already primed to be suspicious of exactly this kind of act. For most of these she just doesn't bother with it at all, but in some instances, such as interrogating certain terrorists  with Han, the juxtaposition between the persona and the situation is enough to be deeply unsettling in a way that still takes the target off their guard, if for entirely the wrong reasons. In which case, well, whatever works.

The Vixen:  

Her personal favourite, because the targets just make it so damn easy, Toni can go from the Doll to the Vixen with nothing more than a change in body language. Frequently this persona is called on the fly, but if there's opportunity for a premeditated costume change she'll really lean into it. In fact, given her unique capacity to worm into her target's mind and then glamour herself according to their preferences, her portrayals could be oddly specific and detailed for a sufficiently significant target, though she's yet to have cause to go so far.

The targets of this persona are primarily lonely straight men who are eager to take any positive attention from a woman at face value, and this group specifically has a near perfect success rate, to an embarrassing extent, like even when they know exactly who she is and should really, really know better (we're looking at you @texastrickshot, or indeed any goon Han has given the honey trap talk to who could still be convinced to fall for it). Has also been used on some not so straight men and queer women, but these groups are at least marginally more suspicious on average. This persona has also become more difficult to convincingly pull off long-term since entering a committed relationship, as there are now lines she won't cross so casually. However, given sufficiently high stakes she would expect her former sex-cult-member husband (and suspiciously invested demonic bestie) to understand that sometimes you do what you have to.

The Hunter:  

The trouble Toni had when she was first trying to learn to navigate the sudden appearance of demons in her life was it was really difficult to be taken seriously by the kinds of people who claimed to know what to do about that kind of thing. Frustratingly, it was also near impossible to move towards being someone actually worth taking seriously without first getting a foot in that door. So then the plan became to use what she did have - uncanny observation skills and unholy stubbornness - to fake it till she made it.

This persona, ironically for one that involves the most significant departure from her personal aesthetic preferences, appeared the least concerned with appearances. Rough ponytails and messy buns are the norm, as are well-worn thrift-store jeans and soft flannel shirts, practical boots, and the bare minimum of makeup to not look like she was outright haunted by horrifying nightmares, but not quite enough to make her look well-rested either. This was where she learned to appear resigned rather than desperate, and shoot straight whiskey like she'd been weaned on it (despite being underage the whole time). It was never quite perfect at the time, but it got her far enough to get a chance to learn that the solution she was trying for wasn't one that suited her at all. These days this persona comes out mostly to mislead real hunters to get them of hers and a friends tail, and it works better now than it ever did back then.

The Advisor:  

Toni is more than aware that she has a rather dominant personality. Often this is useful. When working in a position where the job is to support Mara's authority, it risks becoming counterproductive. Mindful of this, Toni intentionally subdues herself both in personality and visually when acting in her capacity as advisor, especially in settings such as a council meeting where they will both be in attendance. She won't contradict Mara directly with an audience; if something is significant enough to debate immediately, it can be done telepathically, leaving Mara free to pass off any reconsideration she might make as entirely her own idea, or else it can wait until they're in private over a cup of coffee. She will publicly ask Mara's permission for things she doesn't truly feel she needs permission for, and has even suggested actions that directly benefit her, such as redistribution of her more extraneous responsibilities, be portrayed as a "punishment" for one of Toni's more unpopular "personal" projects (even as that project benefits the realm long term. Ah, politics...) in order to bolster Mara's own authority and reduce Toni's. 

In terms of appearance, contrary to her natural inclination towards bright reds, bold blues, and gold, Toni's wardrobe when acting in her role as the advisor has gradually shifted not only towards purgatory's colours (blue, grey, and silver), but towards using jewel tones as accents when Mara uses them as a main colour, and being entirely greyscale when Mara uses colour as an accent. She even aims to make her hair less elaborate, and her heels short enough to hide that she's naturally a few inches taller (or at least was, when Mara still wore a physical host).

The Regent: 

Toni has, over the past few years, regularly had to act in the capacity of purgatory's regent. Sometimes in a officially sanctioned capacity, and at other times less so. This plays far more naturally with her true personality; assertive, bold, dominant, and composed. It also plays well with the after effects of possession; while Toni could mimic Mara convincingly even early on in their friendship (they are worryingly similar people in many ways), these days Toni can speak, act, even move as Mara almost as naturally as she does herself. For the most part when acting in her capacity as regent this is the tactic she uses, adding full use of their shared wardrobe to appear as much of a Mara clone as possible, the Queen's personal understudy, convincingly covering any personal doubts she might hold about her own qualifications.

...There is however an occasion where she has acted as regent and very much not been Mara's clone that is worth discussing. You might have noticed that I haven't said anything about how either the Advisor or Regent personas are received. That is because it's uniquely impossible not to discuss these two together; their intended audience is identical. Both personas are used to influence perception of purgatory's residents, especially the palace staff and representative council. Both personas are directly contradictory. Therefore, how they are received depends entirely on which one an individual finds more convincing. 

Add to that that after Hell's terrorist attack on Purgatory's central power source, Mara took some extreme actions that Toni felt hurt them politically and of course were just morally problematic, but that's hardly a point worth arguing with a demon, or even a former demon. During Mara's subsequent breakdown, Toni chose to act as regent (she felt justified, Mara was clearly unstable, but it was not sanctioned at the time), going out of her way to style and carry herself as bland and business like, as practical as her Hunter persona but without the rough edges. This was a conscious effort to distance herself from Mara in order to run political damage control on her own terms.

Add to that that while changes have been frequent enough that there might not be many staff or councillors currently present who remember it, there will surely be at least a few who remember that the first time Toni chose to act as regent, Mara was not even the reigning monarch. There was an heir available who should naturally have been the next in the chain of command while his parents were indisposed. Yet while Toni claimed said heir was in charge when asked directly, anyone with eyes knew that was a lie.

"...if I am the one who looks most in control out there tonight it will not help your position or my sanity..." - Toni to Mara before a recent diplomatic ball.

Neither persona is real; Toni is as uncomfortable in the Regent persona as she is restrained by the Advisor. However, years of practice have made her far better at hiding when she feels in over her head, while hiding her controlling impulses does not come so readily. Therefore, she is acutely aware of how moments like the one in the quote above tip the scale decidedly one way, impacting their long term political situation.

The Demon:

Machiavelli's The Prince states that if you must destroy an enemy, you should do so absolutely, so that his retribution need not be feared. Unfortunately, it is often quoted missing the much needed context that destruction should be the last resort, as you cannot change course later, while gentler means leave many more options open to you.

For Toni, The Demon is the personality of last resort, where stubborn ruthlessness reigns supreme.

A number of people might believe they've seen this persona in a moment of casual cruelty, but generally that's just a crack in her "Normal" persona revealing that she's a deeply unsettling person with serious anger issues. The Demon is also not worth using on the vast majority of people, as anyone inclined to believe another persona will believe this one is bluffing. Then, instead of getting what she wants, she has to make good on her threats to prove she isn't, which, while it will make them inclined to believe her next time, isn't actually productive in the moment.

There are only two people I can think of who have been on the receiving end of her full blown "do not doubt my willingness to be colder then you ever imagined" demonic persona; Hale and Malcolm.

Hale has been on the receiving end of this only once, when he threatened to devour her children after Han's first failed extraction attempt. She told him outright that she had survived their deaths once and would do so again, but he wouldn't. She was of course sobbing the whole time behind the scenes, but he didn't need to know that. She had a record to back her up, and she meant it. It didn't solve the problem; Han did that by "kidnapping" Hale's own son (with somewhat suicidal consent), but he believed her enough to hesitate.

While most of the time she's mostly her honest self around him (in so far as she's her honest self around anyone), Malcolm Brockway is perhaps the victim of this persona more than anyone else, largely because he's not inclined to believe any of the others. He knows she's not normal and he knows her games, but he has expressed, time and again, that she is as callous as Mara or worse. This makes it particularly easy to strong arm him into falling in line when he's in danger of growing too much of a spine; he never makes her prove it. He already knows that if she's making a threat, she's willing to follow through. It still hurts her to be seen that way so easily, but it benefits her too much for her to ever try to repair that perception.

[frostycatblr-fandom-files]

Protecting Little Brothers

Warnings and Information: Third installment in the NTMY,B universe which are [NTMY,B] & [IHNM,OAB] respectively, but this time, we’re focusing on clone oc: Scruffy. Reading the first installments will make this make more sense, so be sure to go give those a read first or check them out some other time!

Scruffy's penchant for not looking where he's walking leads to a very scary time for certain brothers. While he was only clinically dead for a few minutes at most, it feels much longer than that for everyone involved, and those introduced. Vague descriptions of blood, nausea and injuries. Star Wars and real-world swearing. Temporary death by explosive device. And you're probably not supposed to use a bacta tank that way, but kriff it. Scruffy meets the ghosts of Canvas's brothers and receives some very important instructions. Some minor expansion of Faro, Gunnar, Cryfar and Fluke's story and my takes on Clone Culture. No Mando'a here, just maybe lots of tissues. My usual use of italics.

Word-count: 3,782

How could he be so careless? Again? 

"SCRUFFY!"

He never watches where he's walking. In some ways he's still a plastoid puppy with two left feet. 

"LOOK OUT!" The COs warn him. Some are pulling other brothers away while one, the Captain maybe, tries to nab him by the back of his armor, racing after.

A tripwire. He should've seen a damn, glowing tripwire. He's thrown back ten, maybe twenty feet with the force of the blast. The pain is white-hot. The planet around him is swimming in and out of focus, vision growing darker than the dusky sky above him. 

"No-no-no-! Scruffy!" Canvas. Canvas is screaming across the field, booted feet tearing up the golden grass with every step. He's faster than he'd ever think possible for a brother who once took an hour to eat a small ration pack. The hard, white shell of his helmet is plucked from his head and thrown behind him along with his sniper rifle  in the grass as he races to make his brother's position. "Scruffy!!" His vision is so hazy now, but he sees the unfettered panic in Canvas's eyes when he drops to his knees. "No-no-no-no-no! Please don't- Don't leave me, brother!" 

"H-hey, 'Vas I-I'm going to b-be fine… don't worry." he rasps, hearing the clamor of the COs calling in all available medics to convene on their position. Sounds like the Captain had been thrown as well. "They're c-callin' the m-" Something heavy and metallic claws its way up his throat, interrupting him and painting his brother's knees in crimson when he's thrown on his side so he can't choke on it. 

Canvas's voice is fading fast. "O-over here! Hurry! He's-!" 

Back on Kamino. Scruffy is suddenly back on Kamino in one of the massive training rooms, flat on his back. Sitting up slowly, he expects to find he's got company for a moment. That he's in a massive training exercise in his sweat-slick training uniform and he's a cadet again, that one of the Trainers will be along down the training floor and sharply telling him "That was sloppy, CT-××××! Get up! Again!" but the order never came. He found he was alone in this room. 

Strange. Maybe he'll find someone out in one of the halls. "Hello…?"

Except that's too empty, too. All of Kamino is. Kamino isn't supposed to be empty... Growth jars. The halls. The mess. His old bunkroom. There's nary a Clone to be found. It's just him. As far as he can tell. "Hello?"

There's a steady pull just behind his navel that seems to direct him to another part of the cloning facility. He's not sure what the long-necks called this place officially. Doesn’t really give two banthashits what it is, either; Scruffy prefers the nicknames and in-jokes he's heard from older brothers when he'd been caught snooping around the area once or twice as a very young cadet by the brothers who were a part of the Kaminoan security unit. 

"Hey: CT-×××× to command, it's just a trainee out of his bed. We'll take care of it. Aww look, someone's found an excuse to wander into the Build-a-Brother lab."

"Can you blame him? There's something… so calming about the nurseries. But you're not supposed to be here, little brother. C'mon. Back to bed before the long-necks get angry."

"Hello?!" He's getting desperate and unsettled. Kamino isn't supposed to be desolate and silent, his mother-world was always bursting with brothers even before the Clone Wars started, traversing Tipoca City was like swimming in a living sea of identical faces and voices. There was unspoken comfort in that uniformity as a cadet. There was always someone who may not have been the brother you were looking for, but would help you find the brother you needed. 

Needed. Oh what he needed was to find someone. Scruffy has to understand what's going on, why the pulling sensation is getting stronger when he enters the next section of the nursery. Why his chest feels so heavy with rhythmic pulses of pressure. He can't be dead, can he? 

"HELLO?! Will someone tell me what the kriff is going on?!"

"Hey-" calls a particularly brusque voice, but a brother's voice, unmistakably, "Cut that out. There's no need for yellin'. Not in here." Scruffy stares at this brother who seems to have blinked into existence in front of him, wearing armor just like him. There's a scuff mark and three "blaster-blooms" that mar his armor kit. Two in the chest and shoulder plate, and one in the kidney armor. Scruffy remembers that damage in the kidney armor. The ruined flesh beneath it. The BX droid commando's fluke shot. The injury that this brother shortly succumbed to not too long after he had gotten his Name. 

Scruffy can't believe it. "F-Faro? That really you? Where's the oth-" If Faro's here, would the others of Canvas's batch be too? Fluke? Gunnar? Cryfar? Maybe they're somewhere in this section of the embryo lab with him, hiding in another row of machinery ordinarily containing little, growing brothers sleeping in their jars. Someone sighs when he turns around to look behind him, flashing them the ring of paint around the neck of the back plating of plastoid. More have joined him and Faro. "... it's not him. It's Scruffy." 

"Who's-?" asks a third.

There's a fourth new voice, patient with the third while trying to mask the bitterness of disappointment. "Scruffy's the one that kept falling into the pits like you, Cry." 

"Oh, right-right-right..." the third one replies.

Scruffy turns back around, finding a frowning Fluke, confused Cryfar, and the last brother, Gunnar. Scruffy never had much of a chance to get to know each of these brothers. He would've liked to. There were as much his brothers as they were Canvas's batch, "his" brothers, and he… Scruffy was never as close with his batchmates. He loved them, sure. Scruffy loved all his brothers. But the three remaining brothers of his batch weren't quite as close as he would've liked. That kind of closeness didn't interest or suit them. 

"A batch isn't a bond for life, Scruff… you know that. I don't need you to coddle me." 

"C'mon, of course I do know that, but-"

Fluke approaches Scruffy at long last, laying a comforting hand on the deep injury cut into the plastoid chest plate by the explosive he triggered stepping through the tripwire. "I hope that was quick and you didn't have to suffer… C-can I ask-? Wh-where's-?" 

He doesn't know. "Hopefully he's… Oh Maker, hopefully Canvas is okay…" He faded so fast. One moment he was listening to the sound of Canvas's voice becoming more and more submerged before… nothing. He remembers trying to blink the haze from his eyes, and when he next opened them, he was on the gridded floor of the training center instead of the golden field. 

"Canvas?" It's a chorus of confused, delighted voices.

"Did he choose his name?" Faro inquires, his stoic expression brightening with a sense of curiosity. "Fluke, you were with him longest, did he-?"

Fluke shakes his head solemnly. "No…he still hadn't found or chosen a name before I died." Fluke says grimly. "Besides, I would have told you he found his Name. Or had come to Be Named."

They keep talking around Scruffy, excluding him from their conversation. "Dank farrik. Right, no, of course." Faro grumbles before his face is like stone again. Gunnar shooed Fluke off, pulling Scruffy aside to speak by a more "private" row of machinery. Scruffy grimaces seeing the jars up close. 

They shouldn't be empty. Even if this was the afterlife, if he was dead, this dreamscape of Kamino shouldn't be so empty… where are the little brothers? Where are the future soldiers and heroes of the GAR?

The grimace is noticed, and Gunnar tries to console him. "Hey, it'll be okay Scruffy… the longer you're here, the more you'll kinda get used to it. Details will start to fill in and it won't be so bad. We can see 'em… all ten fingers and toes. I've been here the longest between the four of us. I remember being scared too." Gunnar says, gesturing to his batchmates before gingerly laying a hand against the glass. "Hard to believe we were ever that small…" 

"G-guess so." Scruffy forces out between stunted breaths. He can't see the brothers inside these jars, and he's suddenly feeling this wave of dread the longer he looks. His eyes scrunch up before he has to duck his head urgently. He feels… nauseous. Lightheaded. Do ghosts get nauseous and lightheaded? What the hell is going on? Gunnar notices the distress, and thinks he's just not taking the news of being dead so well. Fluke certainly didn't; sobbing for leaving their brother behind on his own. Faro had been silent for weeks, stewing with worry over Fluke and… Canvas. His batchmate finally had a name! "So… he went with Canvas, eh?" That was not the thing to ask perhaps, but it was the first thing that came to mind. 

There's pressure in his chest, or maybe on his chest. Like he's being sat on by a Reek. Scruffy can't breathe. He's going to be sick, he's going to be sick- 

"Far!" Gunnar cries as Scruffy falls to his knees, trying to clear his throat, cough, something, to relieve some of this pressure on his rib cage.

"What, Gun?"

"What's going on with him? You think he's-?"

Faro comes closer, stooping down to Scruffy's level as he's on his elbows and knees, gasping desperately as he tries not to dry-heave. "Yeah. I think they're trying to bring him back." 

"They can do that?"

"For the lucky ones, Gun. For the people who go before it's their time. It's not his. I think… I think someone still needs him." 

"The Republic needed us and we-!" Gunnar shakes his head sharply in self-regulation, apologizing for losing his temper. "Sorry. Guess some sentiments never change and make my temper flare… Wanted to tell off the General like a real idiot, for kriff's sake. I'd have knocked my own head clean off too, Faro." 

"Here. Sit up, Scruffy." Faro's steady hands pull him up to his feet best he can before he's scrutinized by Canvas's batchmate; there's a familiar aura around him, lurking in the depths of his eyes. A rich, deep brown that reminds Scruffy of the mud from their first campaign together. How Canvas and Fluke used to poke around in the older trenches after rainfall, looking for bugs together. Faro's way of keeping them out of trouble. 

"I'm going to speak with the Captain or Commander about seeing if we can't borrow something a little more permanent than filmsi… Would be nice to know what kind of friends you two are finding in the mud by looking everything up one of these days, and we'd need records to do it. Maybe I can convince one of them to use a spare datapad. Or, something." 

"Hey look, this one's green!" 

"You two bucket-heads didn't hear a word I said, did you?" 

The tired eyes of the oldest brother of Canvas's batch looks at him, softening at last when he's satisfied with his study. "Can I ask you something before you go, Scruffy? One oldest of the batch to another?" Of course Faro would figure out Scruffy was the oldest of his batch. You could always tell. Somehow, you could always tell. Sometimes it was the posture, the way they carried themselves. Or the way they kept their brothers in line. A nurturing aptitude. Extra compassion and patience. A helpful and reassuring disposition. A sacrificial nature.

Scruffy wonders what gave it away. "An-anything." Plastoid clacks together, and for a moment the weight in his chest abates as he's encircled in a hug by one Clone-brother. Then another as Gunnar joins in. Cryfar and Fluke don't hang behind for long. "Ask me anything…" he promises once he’s been surrounded by these brothers bearing scuff marks he’s become very familiar with by proxy.

"How or when did our brother get his Name?" 

"When the CO tried to ma-make him a spacer. He was so lost without you, he wasn't doing well. He adopted all your scuff marks. We got worried about him and thought… It's something they said to him. Well he adopted all your scuff marks and eventually painted them in Our color and the CO said he'd eventually paint his in the colors of Another General after he was transferred most likely and he'd look like a paint canvas when he was talking to him and… H-he liked the word." Scruffy explains, feeling all arms tightening around him with every little gasp to alleviate the sensation. We're here, we have you, the gesture seemed to say. Something he never got from his own little brothers much. They didn’t care to be coddled or taken care of the way Scruffy often offered. There was nothing wrong with that. They were allowed not to want their older brother to offer comfort and help and security. 

“Hey. I’m gonna be okay. Medic made sure the cut’s gonna heal up.”

“Oh… good. That’s good to hear, Stick.”

“Have you checked on the one brother yet? How’s he doing?”

“He’s…”

“He’s not doing well, is he?”

“No…”

“You should go take care of him. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine, Scruff, I promise to let you know if anything changes. He needs you more than I do right now.”

The scene around him was fading out. His body felt like it was being pulled in all directions and nothing would hold him down much longer. One by one, Canvas’s brothers released him except for Faro. Faro held this brother close, sheltering him for a moment longer. The medics nearly had him back, they figured. It wouldn’t be long. It wasn’t his time. The galaxy had other plans for him. 

Faro did too. “Promise me something, Scruffy...”

“Anything.” Scruffy swore. Anything at all. He’d swear by the seas of his mother-world and his own blaster if asked. He’d swear he’d always watch where he was going from now on. No more getting so distracted he forgot to look ahead while keeping his eyes trained on the sky looking for more birds to show Canvas, or more sweeping the treeline for spotting scrap wood for Carver, or finding weather-worn rocks to give to Cairn to add to his collection of “proper” rocks. 

“Keep looking out for our baby brother.” Faro requests. It all snaps into place for Scruffy. Canvas was the youngest of his batch. Now he was the last of it. The last brushstroke. No wonder his two older brothers, Faro and Gunnar,  seemed… so worried about him in particular out of the other three from the moment they stepped off the gunship and heard the COs murmuring to themselves. Never scolding him for his lack of adherence to the rules because Canvas made sure to try to follow them to the letter as a Shiny. Never needing to remind him to stick close because he followed so obediently after them. Of course… he should have noticed Canvas was the baby of the batch… (But, maybe he did, deep down.) “Canvas still needs you. Can you promise me that? Can you promise me you’ll protect my little brother for us?”

“I always look out for my little brothers. Brother looks out for brother. I-I promise. I promise I’ll protect him. I’ll protect your little brother, Faro…” he vows fervently. Faro, satisfied with this answer, nods gently before he tries letting go of Scruffy (but Scruffy still holds tight). He trusts this brother to keep his word. Scruffy had never rushed Canvas to find his Name or Be Named, even telling other Clone brothers to back off if he thought that Faro hadn’t heard someone harassing his batchmate. (“He’ll find his Name when he’s ready, leave him be, brother.”) Scruffy had seemed to be concerned about this little brother, just like Faro's batch, when he realized he didn’t have an answer to their questions. It seemed they’d gotten close since they’d died and Canvas was the last survivor of their batch. Maybe Scruffy needed Canvas as much as Canvas probably needed him.

“Thank you, brother.” Faro says before Scruffy slowly fades away in his arms, once again encircling him in embrace around his lower body this time. “Thank you.”

Scruffy comes around slowly, gently, feeling most of his body enveloped in a sense of weightlessness. Nothing below his feet provides any resistance when he tentatively stretches out one leg. He must be in a bacta pod. He tries looking around him, to get a sense for what's going on around him. What's hooked up to him? A couple of leads fixed to the fingers of his left hand that he feels dragging through the solution when he flexes his fingers, so maybe a pulse-OX and heart monitor. There's the breath-pipe and mask attached to his face of course, but there's… two of the oxygen tubes in here feeding in from the top? 

What the hell? His clouded eyes follow the second tube, finding the tense, scrunched face of… 

Canvas. 

His arms are anchored around his lower body, the same area he'd been held by Faro after he made a brother's oath. The promise to look out for Faro’s little brother. Their little brother… Canvas was his little brother, too.

“Commander…?”

“Yes, Carver?”

“What happens to the brothers who lose all their batchmates, Sir? Is it… common for them to be “adopted” into another group, or do they…?”

“...It’s entirely up to that unpainted brother, Carver. Believe us,” he said, nodding to the Captain not far away at the time, “we’re very worried about him too. We’re… trying to find some methods to keep this man safe. There’s an idea that seems promising, but we’re not sure he’d go through it alone. If we sent two people-”

“I’ll go with him, Commander. I’ll go with our brother. It doesn’t matter where.”

“Scruffy…”

“I mean it… uh, Sir!  I’ll go with him.”

The bacta levels are dropping now that the sensors have picked up that the occupant within has begun to show a prolonged period of consciousness. He knows he should brace his legs to support his weight ordinarily, but he’s got Canvas practically glued to his side, head tucked under his chin with one cheek planted snugly on Scruffy’s chest. He’d probably been sedated in order to “allow” him to stay with Scruffy, a smart act of mercy from an understanding medic-brother. Some brothers grow very close together, practically joined at the hip and you have to let the other brother stay so you can take care of the sick or injured one.

The glass shell of the bacta pod opens, allowing three people to step in and support the brother-pair coming out of the medical slumber. It looks like a medic and his Commander, but who was the third who stepped behind them? “Easy, easy,” his Commander urges when he tries craning his neck over his shoulder and feels an unpleasant pull, “you need to take it easy, Scruffy. You’re pretty lucky to be alive. We’re on the Jedi cruiser.” the CO promises, keeping his hands on both brothers as the medic removes the equipment. It finally allows Scruffy to talk without obstruction, though his mouth feels full of thick cotton. “Wh-what do you mean, Sir? A-are you telling me I didn’t die?” 

The medic-brother’s face flashes with an expression that tells him “ah, so he knows” all too plainly. “We were lucky to get you back. You were clinically dead for a couple of minutes, but we managed to get your heart restarted.” He nods his head to the mysterious third person behind Scruffy and Canvas, arriving with a dinged up supply crate wide enough to comfortably seat two.

“We?” Scruffy could guess that the field medics were a part of the effort, naturally, but… Who’s behind him? Had Canvas been involved, too? “Who’s-”

“Hey, Scruff.” the mysterious third announces themselves, finally stepping into Scruffy’s line of sight. It’s his batchmate. It’s the little brother with a silly sense of humor similar to Scruffy’s who named himself Stick. “Turns out the scrawny little Shiny who couldn’t complete a push-up in a full armor kit can do some pretty impressive chest compressions now.”  Scruffy stares at him incredulously, almost missing the moment Canvas stirs against him.

“Stick…? That really you, little brother?”

Stick grins broadly at his batchmate. “Sure is.”

“D-did you-?”

“Sure did,” Stick confirms, bobbing his head once before growing a little more timid, “I was near one of the medics when the call came in for help. When I realized that my batchmate was behind the man-down call, I… found myself running after to help so Canvas wouldn’t lose you. So… I wouldn’t lose you. While I was waiting here with the medics on the cruiser for you to wake up for… a-about half an hour…  I realized I’d rather have you embarrass me by trying to take care of me like I’m a cadet all over again than… be gone.” Scruffy is having a hard time wrapping his head around the words coming out of his batchmate’s mouth, surprised by the confession that Stick cared about him still. He thought Stick was still stuck on the adamant sentiment that Scruffy embarrassed him to be around from the last time they’d talked. 

He’d been sent back by the galaxy, Sith’s hells, maybe even the Force itself for all he knew, to protect one little brother now awake and blubbering in his arms. Maybe he’d been sent back to protect a second brother, too, if he wanted to reforge his relationship with his batchmate. Kamino’s rains, just how badly had he been hurt? Well, no matter. There was time to suss that out later. “Hey, it’s okay, little brothers…” he hums softly, taking Canvas and Stick under each of his arms, “it’s okay. I’m still here.” 

“Count yourselves lucky, boys,” the Commander replies with a solemn voice and a nostalgic smile that speaks to his storied past, “not every day we get to keep those so devoted to protecting little brothers from death itself. We’ll give you some time to comfort your little brothers.” Scruffy wants to thank his CO for this small mercy and act of compassion for their situation, but he’s silenced with a merely mouthed shush you. That comfort isn’t just for them. 

You’re someone’s little brother too, Scruffy, he’s reminded.

We’re not just protecting the Republic. We’re protecting our little brothers.

[FFF Masterlist] [Clone OC Masterlist] [PREVIOUS] [NEXT]

[poorly-caffeinated-diatribes]

This!! Piracy is actually super ethical most of the time, and it's a tool for preservation, anti-capitalism, and acceptance.

Streaming services have been known to produce exclusive shows, and then to cancel and even go so far as to remove the show entirely from their platform. Shows like Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies are only available through piracy sites and torrents. The same goes for movies likeThe Abyss or Mannequin, which, although being an 80s rom-com and therefore subject to rightful feminist criticism, are still movies that are hard to find unless you scour secondhand DVD stores.

Similarly, this affects music, like the Motown single Do I Love You (Indeed I Do) by Frank Wilson, of which nearly all copies were destroyed, never to see the light of day. There are less than five existing original copies, and though there are versions that were ripped and put on YouTube, there is no guarantee that they will always exist on the internet, and unless you happen to have 25k lying around, your best bet for "owning" this single is piracy.

Not to mention the many indie bands that released albums and then pulled their work off of streaming services. There's a punk band named Blaster the Rocket Man that once pulled their one and only existing album off of Spotify and Apple Music, and although they eventually put the music back up, piracy was the only method available for a bit. And they're far from the only band this has affected. Many people who grew up in the indie punk-rock/garage band scene lost all their favourite artists and are only able to find a few of them through online piracy.

Video game companies stop manufacturing games all the time, and with changing technologies there are many old game systems that simply don't work anymore for most people. I know I can't afford to go out and refurbish an old CRT television, and so I don't expect most people can. Games like the (legit garbage game, but an example nevertheless) ET Atari game, most of which have been destroyed and lost through time, have no way of being played without emulators. Games myself and other gamers can only really play on emulators include previously famous ones like Bad News Baseball, T-2: Judgement Day, 1942, and some of Tomb Raider games. These are games that are cult classics or that were loved by many kids in the 80's, 90's, and early 00's but will never be remade or manufactured by a company again.

Now, software in particular, is where it gets more complicated. I recommend checking out this video by Ben Jordan over on YouTube, because he explains it really well. He's worked in the music industry his whole life, and he's used a lot of different softwares, and he has some very interesting things to say about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7EHRpnJICQ

All in all, as a TLDR for his video, software piracy is often beneficial given that companies often steal their own software from others. You'd be surprised how much money these people make, and there is a wide web of lies and complications behind the scenes that ultimately show that, especially the big software companies, are really really not your friends. Part of the reason that we have legal issues with piracy, especially software piracy, is because of companies that stole their own products from other creatives and then made enough of a fuss in courts that people took their side.

This aside (and my apologies, I know this is a longer post), piracy is also often the only method for many individuals to get media that they otherwise wouldn't have access to. This includes countries where certain media is nearly impossible to get. As you can imagine, due to trade agreements, politics, and media publishers ultimately being greedy and messed up, there are plenty of countries that never see a lot of the media that people in the west might find super easy to get ahold of. Places like the Middle East are generally thought of last in terms of media releases. People in places like China that have their own privatized systems often rely on VPNs and piracy to get ahold of certain media as well. Due to media distribution BS, a lot of countries and regions get the short end of the stick.

Another reason piracy can be helpful is if you live in a particularly strict household, or a household where certain media is frowned upon. I pirated a shit ton of queer media in high school because my parents didn't want me watching things like Love, Simon or Carol. When you're a kid with no job, no money, and homophobic parents, piracy can be your friend.

Now, unfortunately with piracy there are definite downsides. Pirating indie companies and indie films or things like that can get very murky, so when you watch things that were created by an independent team of people who generally should get the money for their product, the common courtesy is to just pay for it. For bigger companies, lost media, and other complicated situations, piracy is great. In general, there are more ups than downs with piracy, and it's not the big bad guy that companies make it out to be.

They just shut down the eShop too lmao

[deathwords334]

(Disclaimer: This is not my work. I am in no way affiliated with the artist. I just want to show off artists that I think need more attention. I also don't have anyone I can talk to about the rabbit hole I've gone down that is Good Omens doujins. I will supply links to their social media and where you can find the publications (If available))

It's really getting hard to chose which of these books I should show off... Partially because I love them so much, but also because some of them are R-18. Nothing's visible on the covers, but they're kind of things I need to warn about ahead of the time. I also don't know how much I can type on Tumblr without getting into trouble.

This is Tada Shikan by Satoki

The title seems to translate to both 'It's Just a Tube' and 'Control'. Of the two, I think I prefer Just a Tube because of what connects the stories: Crowley and Aziraphale are watching moments of their lives on a movie screen via an old projector.

It's another anthology doujin! I would argue, actually, that the general vibe and story beats are very similar to Make Good Memories. So, if you've read it you probably have a good idea of how the overarching story goes... Likewise, certain aspects are similar: The artist is very good at expressions (in fact I'd argue their work is even more expressive) and you can easily understand the stories without understanding Japanese. In fact, on the Booth page and their Twitter, they have excerpts of the book without any dialogue and it reads very well. Originally, I thought the whole book would be dialogue free. It isn't, and it's not a bad thing.

Aside from the absence of Starmaker, though, Tada Shikan has its own unique flare. For one, the book is longer with more stories. It's harder for me to chose a favorite out of the stories... I really adore the first story where Eden!Aziraphale is dealing with the PTSD of lying to God about where his flaming sword went (partially because Eden!Crawly is such a brat), but I think I'm going to go with the story where Aziraphale pulls Crowley into a couple's dancing competition. The artist's really good at drawing actions so the dancing is engaging. That combined with their expressions are so sweet. Of course the climax of the story as a whole hit hard (how can it not after all these cute stories?), and I was so happy to see the two come together again at the end.

The doujin is still available to buy (as seen above), and they've recently put out another doujin. A R-18 one :3 Also, today they put out a really cute washi tape and a sketch book! I NEED that washi tape like OMG!!!

[tehuti88-art]

10/20/23: r/SketchDaily theme, "Drawtober: Ghostly Ballroom/Free Draw Friday." Drawlloween theme, Oct. 20: "Mutant Mart."

...

This week's character from my anthro WWII storyline is Lance Corporal Battleship Gray (BG) Rat. He's a radio operator and not a hugely important character, but maybe I'll find more use for him, as one of the original unit. He's rather unintentionally bigoted though harmless, and constantly wired up; I almost drew him with a cigarette as he's always smoking. There'll be more about him later in my art Tumblr and Toyhou.se.

Regarding his design, he's missing an incisor though it's hard to tell here. And usually to be found with a cigarette.

TUMBLR EDIT: This is how Battleship Gray, or BG, is described in the old character list for the circa-2000 reboot:

BATTLESHIP GRAY: LC; along with Doomsday, in charge of repairing things that are broken. While D-Day is more mentally oriented and experimental, "BG" (as everyone calls him) is more hands on and tends to get more done. Tends to smoke or chew on things when no cigarettes are available. Usually to be found with his hands all oily. Develops an attraction toward Hilda, to the consternation of the other Rats. Laid back and casual, rarely to be found raising his voice, but can be nervous sometimes. (Newer Trench Rat.) Current storyline

Firstly, BG is now actually one of the very first Trench Rats, being a member of the original unit that was trapped in Germany before the First Battalion arrived to rescue them. Secondly, eh, hell no is he "laid back and casual"; he's rather a loudmouth, especially when nervous, which is often. He's constantly wired like he's on caffeine, though chain smoking is his thing. He's a rather stereotypical Italian American with lots of Big Opinions and a passionate temper, and it's rather ironic that he's stereotypical, because he frequently stereotypes everyone else. The moment Jewish Trench Rat Drake drops into their ditch to bring them back to HQ, the cliches start. BG is almost never hostile or spiteful with his bigotry--for example, he never engages in the same sort of commentary as the Nazis when he talks to Drake--rather, he's the type to say something like, "I hear all you guys are great with money, yeah?" And he's not picky--he makes such comments about the Irish (Turquoise), mixed race (Copper), Blacks (Amaranth), French (Papillon), British (Bradford), women (Skye), Russians (Boris), Roma (Didrika), basically, if they're from some group he doesn't belong to, they're fair game for casual racism or misogyny.

There's ONE big, and rather odd, exception: BG despises Germany, Germans, and anything related. Can't stand them, and thinks nothing of letting the entire world know. This leads to a running gag regarding his interactions with Doomsday Rat, after D-Day is liberated from Nazi custody. When he first returns, D-Day no longer remembers English, speaking only German; he needs to be "deprogrammed" in a sense to remember how to be American. Even afterward, whenever he gets exceptionally frustrated, he'll lapse into ranting in German. Whenever this happens, despite the two of them being members of the same original unit, BG's frustration goes through the roof as well and he always ends up yelling, "Speak English! Like an American! SPEAK ENGLISH!!"

BG's attitude problem regarding Germans inevitably brings trouble whenever the Trench Rats have to interact with German allies and...sort-of allies. More than once they experience run-ins with Wehrmacht members Ratdog and Klemper; despite Ratdog's personally motivated mission to kill Trench Rats, he also has a sense of honor, and won't shoot anyone who's seriously injured, unarmed, or on a peace mission. Klemper, however, has a temper much similar to BG's, and can't speak English, and is frequently himself wired on meth, so of course he and BG usually end up with firearms aimed at each other, screaming expletives. Considering that both sides are often on the same mission (Ratdog and Klemper decide to start subtly undermining the Nazis' Final Solution efforts whenever they get the chance), this leads to all sorts of complications.

There are two other plot points I mentioned in the old character bio that still stand. BG is the Trench Rats' radio operator, in charge of keeping them in communication with others (especially the British), and as a result is often responsible for fixing broken electronics or at least jury-rigging things until they can be properly maintained. I imagine this could be another source of conflict with D-Day, who as the chief engineer is REALLY the one in charge of fixing things; he probably mutters quite a few Teutonic cuss words under his breath while fixing whatever BG temporarily patched up.

Then there is Hilda. I believe Hilda originally came about as a mere prop of an unfinished adult scene (I know it's weird, but this adult stuff has helped play a big role in character and plot development, including leading directly into this current reboot), but she probably still stands as a character, albeit a minor one who needs some development. I just looked up her character bio and it is COMPLETELY different from what I remember, likely does not still stand, but here it is:

HILDA: Big-boned, "matronly" woman rescued by the Trench Rats before her city is bombed. Ends up residing in the refugee compound, but storms her way into HQ a lot--no one is brave enough to take her on. Short tempered, explosive, and verbally abusive, but also helps care for the Rats after the influenza strikes. Object of Battleship Gray's affection; he seems to have a thing for larger women. Current storyline

Yeah, uh...I honestly don't remember all of that.

As things now stand she's just comic relief, and might remain so, though there's room for change. Hilda is (currently) a maid in someone's household, the stereotypical tall, broad, matronly, harsh-voiced German type; she easily intimidates the Trench Rats who first come in contact with her. Including BG. Yet BG also finds her weirdly appealing, and Hilda finds BG weirdly adorable. She's the one German who doesn't trigger his rage reflex and that's largely because he's terrified of her and that's what he finds attractive. Hilda, meanwhile, talks to him like he's a child and it's just a really weird, fetishy relationship but hey, it works out for them. *shrugs*

This is pretty much all I have about BG at the moment--nothing big or dramatic, no extensive plot importance just yet. This leaves plenty of potential to develop him (and Hilda?) to add more to the story...or maybe they could remain simple comic relief. I have yet to decide.

[Battleship Gray Rat 2023 [‎Friday, ‎October ‎20, ‎2023, ‏‎2:00:30 AM]]

[TUMBLR NOTE, I had to fudge the posting time on this one to 2:01AM due to Tumblr's dumb new entry format change. I have two entries from 2:00AM, I posted them in the proper order, but the one with the earlier entry number posted second...you figure it out, I'm tired of trying to figure out new Tumblr.]

[kedreeva]

#i know egg laying breeds don't grow as fast as meat breeds#but it still seems kinda weird#that the male chicks aren't just raised for their meat (via @birdsquirrel)

The thing is, we've differentiated the breeds SO far in each direction that meat birds (and I mean MEAT birds like cornish cross) are no longer able to be used for eggs because they don't generally survive their own weight to get to egg laying age and even when they do, they don't lay the way laying breeds do. And I don't mean they're a little bigger than they used to be.

You simply cannot functionally grow an egg laying breed to the size of a broiler chicken anymore, no matter how long you keep them, because broilers are literally morbidly obese (as in, their weight can buckle their leg bones and cause heart and lung issues). But even if you could eventually, you'd be spending more money to do it, for less return- both in meat and in money. The older the bird is at their butcher date, the tougher the meat will be; roosters over a year old often have to be slow-cooked or otherwise handled carefully when cooking so that they aren't tough and chewy.

Egg laying breeds, on the other hand, have been swung HARD in the other direction, paying attention only to how many eggs per year they can lay. Each chicken is born with ~600 egg cells, and would normally lay these over a period of 5-7 years (averaging 3-4 eggs a week and generally stopping for a few months in the late fall/winter for molt and dark times). Commercial layers now lay all of those within 2 years and put so much of their resources into doing it that they end up having a shortened lifespan even in good conditions (you can expect 4-5 years lifespan, instead of 8-10). They don't get butchered for human-diet meat, either, because companies don't find it worthwhile. A VERY small portion of them are retired to outside homes if there's a demand locally, but here's the considerable difference in breast size, with a spent hen on the left.

Chances are PRETTY GOOD that the average consumer looking at birds in the grocery store, unconnected to their food and how it's made, isn't going to reach for that spent hen for dinner, if there's a broiler available. You'd have to get a PR miracle of marketing to make that work- even if you went for the "we're not wasting lives/creating more waste" angle of using spent layers, you WILL face the backlash of "you forced them to lay until they were spent and now you want me to buy the sad old meat?" (because remember, they're 2+ years old by this point, the meat is tougher).

That said, some hatcheries for pet-owner chickens (not commercial egg production going to laying facilities) DO sell "fryer" specials or otherwise sell male chicks for cheap intended to be processed for food. But the success of this is unknown to me; most people who have raised chickens before know that laying breeds won't be as good for meats. They may try it once, but depending on what they expect, it may be disappointing since the meat yield is MUCH less, much tougher, and takes far longer. Roosters from commercial egg laying breeds are genetically predisposed to not put energy toward growing breast meat or fat (see the study below), only toward laying eggs.

There ARE dual-purpose heritage AND commercial breeds, some of which have been looked into scientifically, compared to broilers and egg layers. For these breeds, the hens do fairly well (but still worse) at laying eggs quickly, and the cocks get fairly close (but still not the same) to free range broiler size post-dressing. The study found that they could possibly be an alternative to the broiler/layer issue, but it's doubtful that any large-scale operation for one or the other is going to take up with them, when they've already built their business model exclusively for one or the other and are already working with animals that meet their business needs The Best (for them).

HOWEVER, it would 100% be worth supporting any NEW company that may arise that works with dual-purpose birds and aims for more ethical treatment of their animals in general (for example, if a pasture-raised chicken farming operation specializing in dual-purpose birds were to show their face, it might be more expensive, but worth it to support, whether or not they're perfect, it would be better). It's just that we're not likely to see large-scale change in the already-established businesses unless it becomes worth it to them financially. You'd have to get enough people to put their money where their mouth is, and demand and then actually buy smaller, tougher birds, and/or actually buy and raise males themselves at home instead of broilers. And that's just not going to happen on a large enough scale without some kind of miracle.

For the past 2 days I have been back and forth with a person that runs a rooster sanctuary, after they posted an infographic about how hatcheries deal with male chicks that was WILDLY inaccurate and incendiary and CLEARLY made by an ARA group. I've had to explain that when you see "asphyxiation" as a euthanization method, it means "they used CO2" not throwing LIVE chicks into dumpsters out back by the thousands to suffocate to death (which is what ARAs love to say every US farm is doing), and that when you see language like "their brothers" this is VERY SPECIFIC propaganda from ARA groups attempting to anthropomorphize animals in your mind. It's 100% meant to invoke the idea of the human bonds often formed between siblings, the familial bonds chickens do not have any concept of.

The conversation ended shortly after I said more than 1 in a million males is needed for breeding purposes (another claim made), and I'm like 99% sure they aren't pulled from the sale stock anyway, they're selected at the breeding facility, and they responded with that actually only one male is needed for every million hens because, and I quote: "The eggs and sperm are collected in a common trough that feeds into a bucket. Water is added to the eggs and sperm to induce fertilization. The excess sperm, ovarian fluid, and blood are rinsed away. The fertilized eggs are gently poured into an incubator tray."

and I had to inform them that they were copy pasting from a first search result on google, and that it was from a SALMON FISHERY.

Anyway. ARAs continue to be fear-mongering fools who will say anything with little to no research if it means they can get a knee-jerk reaction from someone that doesn't know better.

[saltycharacters]

Oogh Lovin Baizel and the species concept! What does their diet consist of? Is there any way for them to avoid what happens to them over time? Do the hearts work like- if 1 stops it's ok bc there's others or if 1 stops they all stop?

SO glad you like my silly n weird ideas :""] Regarding the hearts question, it depends on how long they've grown at the time and which heart gives out, the front one / further back / etc - the reason they have so many hearts in the first place is to help pump blood throughout such a massive body. And the longer they get, the more work has to be put into that. So, if they're around 20-30 ish years old or less, they can probably survive a heart or two dying on them because the other hearts can pick up the slack (although the extra strain can promote further heart failure). But with each added foot, the amount of work/ importance each heart is deligated increases, and that makes it much harder to recover from a failure.

Essentially, at some point each heart has to mantain a body section alone and if that stops, then there's a domino effect that affects every heart preceding it since the blood exchange from section to section halted. If this happens though, there's a chance of survival if the hearts near the front/head are ok, as cutting off blood flow to the brain is definetly fatal. The other sections will die off but, as the hyperfauna weasels are literally predestined to have that happen at some point in their lives, it's not the end of the world. They even have systems that can function indipendently regardless of what happens to the body (cough cough. Waste disposal) so the biggest change just becomes limited movment.

For the question about preventing the fates of hyperfauna weasels, assuming that you mean as they are now and not by manually altering the entire species via selective breeding/ bioengineering, there IS. a theoretical way to manually stunt growth (also via bioengineering) but, it is VERY difficult to control the outcome over time, and without careful planning (like, what parts of the body are suppose to be stunted and what parts need to develop to survive? How to prevent this manual cell death from reaching something vital? At what age should they be stunted? At what age CAN they be stunted, before these alterations become harder to induce? etc) it can result in a load of problems that make their life over time a miserable one (or just kill them straight off).

Also, hyperfauna weasels are notorious for being difficult to work with medically/bio-manipulatively because 1] their skin is VERY thick, needles need to be long but strong enough to pierce them and NOT break on the way down (also few people can find their veins) 2] any effect needs time to travel throughout their entire body, which can take a WHILE (and depending on how long the effects are suppose to last, their former half could've already worn off while the latter is still feeling the effects [this makes anesthesia difficult bc it needs to be powerful enough to hit everywhere while not being so powerful that it causes heart failure]) 3] their cells are super stubborn/hard to change and it's difficult to intruduce new instructions to them, not to mention they're so hellbent on forever-growth that they're super hardy, multiply and die off quicker than any changes can be induced in them, and kill most foreign objects without prejudice.

All this to say they're a nightmare to manually bio-alter and your best bet would be to manipulate them at the embyonic stage, where they're most cellularly vulnerable / suseptable to change, and if all goes well you can artificially cease their growth after a point, but in terms of lore-reasons this hasn't happened yet. It's mostly because those who DO know about this species, at least by the time this kind of technology was available, just. don't really have the (cough. financial) motivation to do this. Bio-engineering companies are mostly about profit, and this kind of job would require bringing back a near extinct species (not impossible, just a chore) that needs a LOT of resources to mantain, monitoring over a LONG time to see if their alterations worked, and they'd end up with a lot of failed experiments that live almost forever before they get one that lives a reasonable, sustainable amount.

For the last question about their diet, they're omnivorous and can eat a lot of what normal weasels eat already :] although their portions have to be HUGE (even standing on all legs they can be over 5 ft tall, plus all that body length means a LOT of) so in a pinch they can eat most any kind of meat, plant-matter, even fungus.

[sk-lumen]

Need serious advice about setting boundaries or communicating when dealing with a person who:

Is a parent

Has unhealthy communication methods -- it takes very little for them to start full-blown screaming, shouting out all your 'negative' things/mistakes/past, can continue to scream-criticise you even after you've gone silent, for WHOLE MINUTES even if you've shut up, will not accept anything that even hints at them making a mistake

You can't trust since childhood coz u made the mistake of confiding in them with a serious issue as a young teen --- mental related --- and they belittled and invalidated you, and since then pretended you never confided in them and have NO IDEA how you've been coping without them or ANYone else for years... Yeah thanks, parent, what u said back then made me think I was the one at fault and so I stopped trusting even friends coz yeah, when ur own parent doesn't give a damn, why would anyone else?

Is a master at silent treatments without explaining what EXACTLY they're punishing you for, then when theyre in the mood, will start talking to you as if they hadn't ignored you for days. Lol I'd rather be water boarded I think. Especially for all the damage this caused when I was a child

Won't openly talk about what they want, yet expects ALL FHE TIME others (in the family) to know what they want, then will complain/scream/angry for AGES about how no one cares, no one gives a damn... And when someone asks them what they want, they either say: nothing, or "you should know! Can't u see?"

Upon asking them to please talk normally, will blow a fuse, and lose it --- happened multiple times today

Literally will use me as a scape goat to unleash their frustrations upon. Even when I leave the room, I can hear them b*tch about how much of a failure I am etc. The trigger being anything that bothers them, from a phone call to something other siblings did, bla bla. I limit my time with them... But it's like, it feels impossible to have them treat me normally, without ridiculing or criticising me. I'm already a very low self esteem person... This doesn't help AT ALL

In short, refuse to tell/ask/discuss important stuff, and getting mad randomly that no one read their mind, bcoz everyone's 'old enough to have enough sense' to know what they 'should' do... Eg will not pikc up the phone when we call them from the store to ask when what the needed isn't available, so what other alternative can we get... And then when we get home, will instead blame us for being fussy and not getting the alternative, completelt skirting around the issue they didn't deign to pick up the phone... I mean, I don't get it. In the past I HAVE in fact asked them to just openly tell me what they want/expect from me to make them happy... Got passive aggressive answers like "don't you know? Are you dumb?" Bla bla

Passive aggressive to the max when they've lost it

Expect me to drop anything I'm doing and immediately cater to them, and expect me to help them in their hobbies (while simultaneously, as I learned many years ago to much heartache, not being interested or even pretending to be interested in my hobbies. The disinterest taught me very quickly how much what I wanted meant, leading to years of self-invalidation. Luckily I've learned it really is them, not me. My hobbies are valid)

Will not talk about why they're feeling angry, what causes it. Instead will blame me, who's like the golden scapegoat in our amazing family, by saying :YOU made me negative. They've said it many times now... It hurts a lot, when I'm also struggling with my own issues which I ofc can't confide in them about :)

Today I manned up -- the outburst of hatred happened again! Over a simple thing. It was NIGHTMARE and made me angry/sad/frustrated/triggered---, and so I told them to stop talking like that... Boy was that the wrong thing to say... I don't think I can accurately tell u what happened afterwards...

Usually children learn communication skills from the parents... I at least learned to recognize the unhealthy ones, and what NOT to communicate like lol. Like, other parent is even worse, believe it or not. But that's another complex situation

I'm not bashing on the parent. Lord knows I even have that much of a right huh? I hate myself eveb more when they invalidate me if I try to show how MUCH THEY HURT me after a 'communication session'. As in, heaven forbid me if I BE SILENT afterwards and DON'T wanna listen to their retardation. Nope. Even then they provoke me, rage at me, you know how sometimes enraged people hiss vitriol thru gritted teeth? Yeah, that's what they did today after I stayed silent and tried to ignore them an hour later after the 'session' when they wabted something. It's like they don't even need me to say a word and will carry on and on for minutes 🤢

I feel alone, helpless and at a loss what to do

I want to move out. Due to severe mental issues I can't even move out rn coz it scares me even more. But this has to stop. Things are only okay if I'm absolutely passive, say yes to whatever they want, kill my wants and needs, and become a perfect robot bred to cater to them (parent)

I hope you can help me out, dear

Hi darling,

It sounds like you’re in a considerably toxic environment. I'm sorry you're going through this. Know that this is not normal, nor is it how a parent/child relationship should be. In case there's any doubt, let me start by saying you deserve to be supported, respected, listened to, to have your needs met. You deserve to live in an environment that offers you all of these things.

With that being said, from the many scenarios you’ve mentioned you’ve already tried reasoning and setting boundaries, to no avail. There is only so much you can do on your own, if the other person in the equation is not meeting halfway or at all. After all, a healthy conversation involves two people, not just one.

Here's my advice, in this order:

Calmly and maturely asking the respective parent to have a serious discussion with you and to listen to what you have to say. Share how their actions and behaviour is making you feel, let them know you care, and make sure to mention several solutions for the issue as well. If this doesn’t work…

Bring up the subject of needing help from outside, such as the assistance of a specialist/therapist. Family counselling can shed a lot of light on toxic behaviours that are ingrained from childhood (both in their case and yours), on fears your parent may have, stress from their work, whatever is causing their outbursts and anger - because there is always a reason. Behind anger is sadness, and behind sadness is some need not being met, or an underlying fear, trauma, etc. This is not a justification for their behaviour, they are responsible for it; this is simply the fact of how energy dynamics work. People bottle up their frustrations, fears, etc, and let them out on those closest to them, to whom they feel superior. It’s not fair, and it’s not healthy, but it is frequently how this pattern works. If this solution doesn’t work either…

Then unfortunately, all you can do is focus on yourself. If they refuse to meet you anywhere along the road, you have to pack up your things and go your own way. Literally or metaphorically. They may be your parent and you may love them even in spite of their behaviour, but you cannot hold yourself responsible for anything they say or do; that is on them. In those cases, you have to prioritize your own mental health and wellbeing, and focus on moving out. If your (home) environment is toxic, you have to focus on first changing it. That’s vital. Only afterwards can you start healing, refinding yourself, reclaiming your self-esteem and confidence, your sense of worth. As long as you stay stuck in a toxic environment, you cannot really heal; if there is abuse of any kind (physical, mental, emotional), the causes are still there, leading to re-traumatizing.

If for whatever reason moving out is not (yet) an option, I would emphasize seeking some sort of counselling for yourself, if nothing else. You need an anchor, some sort of support that will help you along your path until you do get out.

Now, I don’t know how old you are. I am going to assume you are over 18 and of age, so only mind my advice if that is the case. (As disclaimer, I don't provide advice to minors as it's not the scope of my blog nor am I specialized/focused on that area.)

I understand moving out seems scary because it is unknown, but with that line of thought you may wait another 10 years in the same situation. Wouldn’t you wake up 10 years later already having done the hard work on moving out, finding your independence, claiming your sense of individuality and moving on from this sort of environment, this phase in your life?

Sooner is better than later, but do so with mindfulness and care over your mental health, of course. I know it’s scary. But being an adult requires some difficult decisions at times, and setting boundaries begins with choosing your wellbeing and doing what needs to be done, even if it is something uncomfortable short-term, but highly rewarding and beneficial long-term.

Hope this helps... and wishing you much luck, clarity, gentle guidance and comfort.✨

PS: Lately I've been receiving longer and longer letters in my inbox. As solution, I was thinking of having longer asks/letters redirected to my blog where there isn't any length limit, and readers can more comfortably browse both my tumblr and blog - and those requesting advice can share and receive a more in-depth response.

-Lumen

[yuniemaki]

Oh! HOLD UP!!!!! THIS MEANS:

Delusions so far give users the ability to wield elemental energy not of their Vision-type, or if they are not a Vision holder at all, at great cost. Which makes sense, as these users are not "attuned" to the element the Delusion lets them wield.

While Snezhnaya does not have 7 gnoses, this of course would be a flawed prototype.

But consider: once they do, and once they have this "raw" energy source - they could employ this prototype to manufacture Visions. Or remove current Vision limitations. There would no longer be a need to be "attuned" to any element in order to use it, if there is ample energy available that can be shaped into any element required.

The point on Zhongli's contract with Snezhnaya for his gnosis - this could explain why the Fatui are so insistent on trying to get into the Liyue Qixing, more so than other nations?!

We have Regrator's people trying (failing) to install a figurehead as the next Tianshu; Northland Bank hanging around and undoubtedly continuing to skirt financial laws despite heavy reparation fines for their role in Osial, to the point that the minute the Tianquan shows up in the bank they think they're about to get wrecked again.

All these underhanded means to gain control of the oligarchy - because maybe, just maybe, Zhongli's contract explicitly stated to "keep Liyue safe/unharmed", and nothing on "controlling the nation via its ruling oligarchy" part.

Since Zhongli forgot about a contingency plan for Mora minting and is an exhausted Old Man Ready To Retire - he'd probably not think too hard about loopholes.

So, they don't need to invade to control - if they can corrupt from within.

On Sumeru - if Tsaritsa leaves Irminsul alone, then it'd become a (relative) safe haven for the common people. Independent organisations would set up shop there. Potentially the Crux Fleet and its partners. Second most safe nation would then be Inazuma simply for its distance and the Sakura Tree protecting it both in the past and present.

With Ei now in charge rather than the puppet, she may allow refugees to sail in as well. Thus putting the Crux Fleet in an interesting spot, as Beidou is the type to try and save as many as she can in the event of an invasion.

As for Liyue Harbour, they'd be in a strange position - technically safe, but under Fatui control, if the Harbingers succeed in installing their people within the Qixing.

Again, the Crux Fleet's independence may become the very thing that can liberate the harbour, circling back to your original thoughts on the fleet being the future of the harbour - they'd become one of the main channels for intel, communication, and supply while the oligarchy is held politically captive.

Don't know if Zhongli will consider this a breach of contract. Given how he works and the fact that he did hand over the gnosis and also knows things about this plan that he can't reveal, he might stay out of it.

The other wild card is the Liyue adepti - they may stir trouble, or they may lay low if Zhongli convinces them otherwise.

On Natlan - very fascinating, if we consider the speculative full map of Teyvat, they would indeed be best-positioned to invade Snezhnaya and Fontaine from their less-guarded rears.

But their war would be doomed from the start as they wouldn't be able to match Snezhnaya in terms of military prowess. Still, assuming the Pyro Archon remains active at the end of the Natlan AQ, they can buy time (intended or unintended...) and possibly claim a few Fontainean outposts, lending them access to some of Fontaine's tech.

Depending on how Natlan's society is structured, I can see them fracturing if they crave war - scattering across Fontaine, Snezhnaya, and Sumeru and splitting into different factions.

A shot in the dark about how a world war in Teyvat would start:

@yuniemaki You did this to me.

It would start with Snezhnaya doing a Blitzkrieg-style invasion on Mondstadt proper with no prior warning as the Lawrence Clan has not only supplied them with maps but money and men.

Mondstadt, the city, would be able to hold out as well as maintain control over the region of Windrise and Falcon Crest, but Snezhnaya would take everything north of Dragonspine.

Snezhnaya would use Mondstadt's port as a base of operations for its sea-side campaign and use that same port as a springboard for their full-scale invasion of Liyue Harbor proper.

Fontaine capitulates almost immediately and goes to the Snezhnayan side because of their energy crisis, sparking a civil war between their already separated sides.

The 'illegal side' would declare itself autonomous and ally itself with Liyue, so the Hydro Archon's highest priority would be to bring that side back into the fold.

Sumeru would try to stay neutral, but inevitably, scholars will be bought and there will be an arms race on Liyue and Snezhnaya's part.

It would not surprise me at all if some of the desert folk created some sort of confederation to tide this over in the case that the conflict spills into the desert proper.

It also would not surprise me if some of the higher-ranking scholars started shoring up their defenses in case it all goes to shit and they have to fend anyone off.

Inazuma does not care who is attacking who as any sign of aggression from anyone will be met with the full might of the nation and the Electro Archon herself.

Watatsumi would ally itself with Inazuma at this time as I highly doubt that it would withstand the full might of Snezhnaya's full-scale invasion should they come over there.

Liyue has likely seen this coming and has prepared accordingly. Before Snezhnaya steamrolled most of Mondstadt, they had a stronger military presence at the Stone Gate.

Key positions around Liyue Harbor as well as on important roads are fortified and prepared for anything that might come on land. The waterways by the Stone Gate and beyond it also see an increased military presence.

Natlan is a bit of a wild card in this situation as a population within the nation does own Barbatos a debt, so it is possible that they would fight on his behalf, but we know next to nothing about them.

Snezhnaya itself has probably been baying after this for generations, wanting to prove itself worthy of dominion over the continent.

[xxtraord1nary]

𝐶𝑙𝑜𝑠𝑒𝑑 𝐶ℎ𝑎𝑝𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑆𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑒𝑑 𝐿𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑠

Fandom: Open Heart

Pairing: Ethan Ramsey x f!mc (Charlotte West)

Word Count: 1.9k

A/N: Pretty angsty I guess.

Summary: When a lonely soul decides to spend her morning on a beach she is unpleasantly surprised to find that she isn’t alone and a lot has changed except her feelings.

Warnings: None

Taglist: @katkart122 @missmiimiie @maurine07 @custaroonie @romewritingshop @lucas-rennells @omgfheishot @schnitzelbutterfingers @openheartfanfics

A dreamy sea has a rhythmic pulse to it unmatched by any other part of nature. It forges its own sounds and kindles its own symphony as the waves crawl gently to the shore. Maybe that’s why she admired the Aruban beach so much or maybe it was the isolation of it all. Something she’d come to be so accustomed to. Her loneliness is like standing in the middle of a bustling city, watching people rush by without feeling like you're even remotely connected to them.

No, it's not the same as being alone; being alone is more a state of physical being than it is a state of soul and emotion. You're surrounded by all these people who never seem to truly understand you and who seem like they will never understand the fears and deepest thoughts that tug at your heart. It's not that they don't care about you or truly try to help you -- it's simply that feeling that they will never understand you, no matter how much you explain. It's that craving for love and connection beyond the surface level. Loneliness leads you to feel like you're literally watching the world go by, not part of anything in particular.

Being physically alone though on the beach was nothing new she had to say, but much to her displeasure she wasn’t alone. She spotted a figure in the distance much closer to the shore bare feet in the sand because washed by the gentle waters inching closer. The figure was tall and held a domineering stance and rigid posture she couldn’t shake.

He stood with his face up toward the sun as if taking in the rays of shine and simply basking in its warmth like a bath. He donned white shorts and a plain light blue short sleeved shirt just regular beach attire she shrugged off. He ran his hand through his tussle of chocolate brown curls and visibly breathed deeply taking in the silence quiet and free from disturbance but loud enough to be calming all the same.

It wasn’t until he turned around and they locked eyes from her sitting position did her grow wide and her posture go rigid did she realize this was no mere man or stranger on the beach at all. It was him. Her one that got away. The man that used to make her heart skip a beat with just a simple touch or look, the love of her life. The one that got away. After all this time he was still a part of her. She could still feel the way she beats nearly out of her chest at his mere presence and there’s a certain ache that still makes her feel like she is still in love with him.

For years he’d been the last thing on her mind before she went to sleep the reason for the teardrops on her pillow. Why even after all this time she hadn’t been able to get over him even after deciding to let him go which was the hardest thing she’d ever had to do. She tried to get rid of them, the memories, yet she still cannot, because those memories are so ebullient and hard to forget. They're still in her heart's chamber.

She wanted him to know so much, that she loved him. Still she did, her feelings were never a joke and that everytime she told him “I love you” way back when it came from the bottom of her heart. The moment she told him that his embrace made her feel so much comfortable and forget all her problems in life, yes she was honest with that. She was so honest for all the feelings she harbored deep inside. She cherished the moments shared and wouldn’t ever forget how she felt every time she was with him and all she’d put them through.

She wanted to go to him. Her heart told her to run into his arms and rekindle what they had once had but body stayed situated and stuck in place as she continued to stare at the once love of her life and the man she couldn’t ever seem to get over. That she still held a flame larger than life for. He sent a gentle smile but his eyes told a different story of love, so much love. But her happiness died disgustingly hard when realized he hadn’t seen her at all. Instead his attention had been directed behind her where his eyes alighted unfathomably bright at the sight of a woman and a small girl with a little brown dog.

The woman was absolutely stunning. She truly was what women paid to look like, if perfection didn’t exist she was an exception truthfully. Her tanned brown skin could’ve been glowing in the bright sun and beautiful features were highlighted stunningly by the carefree smile alighted on her face. As she held the smallest girl who took after her seeming to be mother exponentially. The girl held their mother’s golden brown complexion and dark curly hair but those eyes; they were unmistakably blue. A bright blue that resembled those indigo blues she knew all too well.

They were Ethan’s and the woman’s children. Her thoughts were only confirmed when the little girl wrestled her way out of her mother’s arms, raising a laugh from the woman as she ran into her fathers arms with the puppy trailing behind her. She hadn’t ever seen him look so happy and at peace. But when the woman made her way to him and hugged him from behind the way his face lit up was foreign to him; even in their time together she’d never made him look like that with just a simple hug.

He wasted no time in bringing her into his embrace and kissing her deeply, whispering sweet nothings into her ear, and being borderline affectionate. There was no doubt in her mind that Ethan Ramsey, a man who had no time for marriage or family loved the woman that donned a heavy diamond ring on her finger as he held it up and kissed each knuckle tenderly earning a moan of discontent from the little girls. It was adorable really they looked like a picture perfect family. What you’d see in movies really. Hell they even had a small dog with them that she hadn’t noticed till now.

It had finally hit her, she had to move on. She needed to let go of all that held her back: her love for a man who’d absolutely moved on, after all he was her first love. The very first love that she had experienced in her whole life. It felt melancholic for she had lost him. Maybe they were meant to spend the good times together, it’s just fate took its turn, she was able to hurt him and he did too and well she guessed that was inevitable. Then they parted ways and new beginnings came their way, you chose her over what a naive girl thought was forever kind of love. But it’s okay because she’ll get used to it. She promised herself and hopefully soon it’ll be without bitterness or anger.

Her therapist had told her some time ago before she left for the medical conference in Aruba that when she needed to get something out and she wasn’t available to try and write it out, in a letter of sorts. So she did just that and she wrote a goodbye later her lost love would never receive and not for him but for her. So she swiftly left the beach as undetected as when she arrived and made her way back inside the resort and found a pen and paper in her hotel room and got to writing. She wrote till her hand cramped and her tears stained the paper.

Dearest Ethan,

I wish you happiness love, even if that happiness doesn't include me anymore. It's just that I have to accept the fact that I was no longer a part of you and you of me. Thank you for everything. If I would be given a chance to get back from where we started I will still have that small talk with you in the hallway about her physics class we had together. I will still choose to fall in love with you because you're the best thing ever happened to me, maybe our bittersweet love story has ended after I’d hurt you the way I did. I thought the grass was greener on the other side and I was wrong but I found out all too late. But the last thing that I want to say is in another life I would be your girl so I don't have to say you were the one that got away. And I’m sorry not only to you but to myself...and Tobias.

Love,

Someone you used to know

As she sealed the letter she closed a chapter to her life that wouldn’t ever be opened again. And somehow she moved on. Ethan belonged to the beautiful with the brown skin and curly hair and somehow someway Suparna had to be okay with that. She wasn’t thinking when she sent the letter via bell boy to his room she only asked that it be deliverers to Dr. Ethan Ramsey and lied saying it regarded information about the medical conference he’d been invited to. And with that she went to her bed and fell into a restful sleep dreaming of what could’ve been.

————————————————————————————————

After an eventful day at the beach which was great until Charisma decided to put sand in Jenner’s fur. The act prompted the family to make their way back to the suite and give the girl and the pup a good bath before dinner which was much harder than it looked. Jenner was absolutely refusing and kept shaking his wet little sandy body as often as he could making the largest mess he possibly could. He had given up on chasing the three year old who’d decided that baths weren’t her thing and decided she’d rather run naked throughout the hotel room. Finally he’d washed and dried Jenner and put him in the dog bed with some toys to keep him busy. His love thankfully relieved him of his daddy duties and got Charisma ready for bed. A knock on the door interrupted his short reprieve that involved what he needed most at the moment a glass of scotch.

He answered the door and was met with a bellhop delivering him a letter that he took suspiciously wishing the boy a good night. He wasted no time in opening the letter and reading its contents that quite confused him. His thought process was soon interrupted by a warm hug from the love of his life as she placed her chin on his chest.

“Who’s it from?” She gently inquired. He only shook his head and shrugged in response. “No one important.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah I’m alright.” And with that he took his wife’s hand and couldn’t help but to admire the diamond ring that was just made for her and kissed her ring finger tenderly as he and Charlotte made their way to their daughters room to read her at least three stories before she finally turned in only to have her come in their bed later. But they wouldn’t have it any other way.