#they're still a bit better than yesterday for the record

[ayakashibackstreet]

Incredible how I used to play games for 12 hours straight and my eyes were fine but now they're just Fucked Up for no reason

[black-arcana]

EPICA Releases New Single 'Arcana'

Dutch symphonic metal titans EPICA have released a brand new single, "Arcana". The track heralds a new chapter in EPICA's two-decade-long history and marks the band's first new release since the group's chart-topping 2021 album "Omega" and the collaboration EP "The Alchemy Project". It offers a glimpse into the band’s future music, coming in 2025.

EPICA comments: "'Arcana' guides you through the universal stages of spiritual evolution in life. It leads the way to a higher consciousness and spiritual self-awareness.

"Writing this song was a spontaneous effort, so it came together quickly, which felt so natural that it wrote itself. The music contains classic EPICA elements but has some vibes that might remind you of '80s alternative rock or modern metal."

The single is now available on all streaming platforms. It also includes "The Ghost In Me (Danse Macabre)", EPICA's recently released collaboration with Europe's second-most visited theme park, Netherlands's magical De Efteling, and their much-anticipated new attraction, Danse Macabre.

The music video for "Arcana", directed by Remko Tielemans, can be seen below.

In a recent interview with Spain's Mariskal Rock, EPICA singer Simone Simons spoke about the progress of the recording sessions for the follow-up to "Omega" album. She said: "I think that there should be a single by the end of the summer-ish. That's that's our plan. And the album should be released [in] 2025.

"I just wrote with Mark [Jansen, guitar] and Rob [Van Der Loo, bass] also yesterday that I'm so happy with the songs, I'm so proud how everything turned out and it's gonna be another amazing EPICA album.

"We added a couple of new elements, but also went back to the roots, the old EPICA," she continued. "And yeah, I just can't wait for people to hear this.

"I loved 'Omega' and we toured so much with 'Omega' and had wonderful experiences, but then when you reach the end of a touring cycle, you start to get itchy and feel, 'Okay, now it's time to do the new album. Can we do it as good or maybe even better than the last album?' That's always the thing we strive for, ways to renew ourselves a little bit. And we feel a very strong spiritual connection also that it's our ninth album. So there's gonna be themes around the symbolic meaning of nine, the number nine."

Elaborating on the musical direction of EPICA's next album, Simone said: "The songs are heavy. There's a beautiful ballad, a very cinematic song, very uptempo, very doomy, melancholic and amazing, amazing power riffs. It's the most epic EPICA, I think, so far. Yeah, I think so. I mean, I'm feeling it. I'm very happy with it. I'm proud of it. And they are going to start recording the orchestra now next week. They're flying to Prague; that's where we record the orchestra. And I will be recording my final vocals as well."

In November 2022, EPICA released "The Alchemy Project" through Atomic Fire Records. The EP was co-written and performed with diverse guests ranging from extremists like FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE, Niilo Sevänen (INSOMNIUM) and Björn "Speed" Strid (SOILWORK) along with melodic masters like Tommy Karevik (KAMELOT),keyboard legend Phil Lanzon (URIAH HEEP) and Roel Van Helden (POWERWOLF) to a once-in-a-lifetime song with Simons, Charlotte Wessels and Myrkur.

Just one day after the release of its anniversary reissues "We Still Take You With Us" and "Live At Paradiso", EPICA celebrated 20 years of existence live in September 2022 at 013 in Tilburg, Netherlands, the same place where they played their first show (supporting ANATHEMA) back in 2002.

EPICA was formed by Jansen after leaving AFTER FOREVER in 2002, and the band quickly gained attention outside their home country, taking big steps towards becoming the leading symphonic metal superpower they have long proven to be. After their ambitious debut "The Phantom Agony" (2002) and the surprisingly eclectic sophomore work "Consign To Oblivion" (2005),the road took them to new heights via their first concept masterpiece "The Divine Conspiracy" (2007) and their global breakthrough "Design Your Universe" (2009). 2012's opus "Requiem For The Indifferent", 2014's bedazzling "The Quantum Enigma" and "The Holographic Principle" (2016),cemented their reputation as not only one of the hardest-working metal bands in the business but also as one of the best. With "Omega", the final part of the metaphysical trilogy they began with "The Quantum Enigma", they reclaimed the throne without so much as the blink of an eye, amassing three million-plus streams during the first week of the album's release.

Photo credit: Tim Tronckoe

[otdiaftg]

The Raven King - Chapter Thirteen

Day: Tuesday, November 14th Time: 10:10 AM EST

"Let's talk about the season," Wymack said, because it was his job to keep them moving no matter what tragedy tried to set them back. "I spent most of yesterday talking to the Class I coaches about our situation, starting with Coach Rhemann." Neil dimly recognized the name, but he was too tired to place it. "I've got a conference call with the ERC this afternoon to determine our status," Wymack said. "I don't know which way they're going to swing. Andrew's still enrolled as a student at Palmetto State. Easthaven and the registrar's office agreed this morning to let him finish the semester long- distance. That means he's still contracted with us, so we're within regs. This is a bit more drastic than having him benched with an injury, though. An injury is treatable and calculable. Andrew's current treatment isn't that black-and-white. But," Wymack continued, "Rhemann has taken ourside. He offered to speak on our behalf if need be, and he's helped reach out to the others." Neil finally recognized the name. James Rhemann was the head coach for the USC Trojans, one of the Big Three in NCAA Exy. USC didn't have Edgar Allan's flawless record, but the Trojans were known for their sportsmanship. They'd won the Day Spirit Award seven years straight and had yet to receive a single red-card: an impossible feat considering their long history and their ranking. It made sense Wymack would turn to them for help first. "As of this morning, the vote across the Class I teams is almost unanimous," Wymack said. "They want us to finish the season." "They—what?" Dan almost choked on it. "Why? They've never supported us before." "Does it matter?" Matt asked. "If they'll fight the ERC for us, I'll take it." "It's not a guarantee," Wymack said, holding up a hand to calm them. "The ERC has to listen, but they don't have to accept. I just wanted you to know there's still a chance for us. That means we have to bring it today like the news is already good, get me? So change out and get down to the court. I want one lap for every time you've ever said the NCAA's never had your back." "Oh, Jesus," Nicky said. "We'll be running all day." "Better get started, then," Wymack said. "Move out, maggots."

Art used with permission by ForTheLoveOfExy. Thank you @fortheloveofexy!

[imsadstuff]

Loving You Is Red - A Jeon Jungkook Fic, voice memo's that were never sent

Synopsis: Jeon Jungkook's name was unheard on the Formula 1 paddock till he got a chance to drive a Mercedes car as a reserve driver. His 2020 starts looking brighter as he signs with Ferrari and meets you, his team mates little sister. So many cliched tropes, strangers to friends to lovers, slow burn, dating brother's best friend, and most importantly Jeon Jungkook looks smoking hot in a Ferrari! Genre: Angst, lots of it, happy ending Word Count: 3.5kAuthor's Note: So, this is a little extra instalment based on something my boyfriend did. He told me about the voice notes he left for me during our break up. he wanted to call and tell me a million things, but instead he'd leave a voice memo in his phone, pretending like they got to me. made me sob like a baby. so, this is a version of that for loving you is red, different voice notes Jungkook records for OC over the five years they're apart... I highly recommend you read the fic to have a better understanding of this. You can find the fic here

please don't be a ghost reader, likes, comments, reblogs, show your appreciation (given you like it 🫣)

Day after Abu Dhabi Race 2020

Jungkook was hungover and tired, the night had been kind of a blur after he won the race. He still couldn’t believe he was the 2020 F1 world champion, he still couldn’t believe you weren’t in the bed beside him, he still couldn’t believe he let you go.

Jungkook was drinking to feel numb, but the morning came and the emotions were starting to eat him up. His hand hovers over your number, Jungkook wants to apologise and wants you back, but he fights the urge as he locks his phone and throws it on the bed as he walks into the washroom.

Walking back with his towel low on his hips, he picks up his phone again, opening the voice recorder app instead. He needs to let out all the intense emotions he’s feeling.

“Hey, just got done crying in the shower. I feel so overwhelmed and anxious, so much is happening all at once. I can’t believe yesterday really happened” he sighs as the app continues recording as he sits down on the bed.

“I’m supposed to go out and celebrate my amazing season but I feel sick just thinking about yesterday. I feel so guilty, I don’t deserve this win” tears are staining his cheeks again, he takes a few deep breaths to compose himself.

“We weren’t supposed to end this way ___…” your name feels heavy in Jungkook’s heart as he presses stop on the recording. Flopping back in bed, he allows himself to cry a little more, processing everything is just too much right now. 

1st January 2021

“It’s been a month and a half since I last saw you, feels like forever” Jungkook struggles to stand still as he records another voice memo. Jungkook’s friends invited him out, hoping to distract him and celebrate the new years, but you were still on his mind.

“The new year started fifteen minutes ago, so my resolution for this year is to get over you, I’m going to get a tattoo to symbolise that too” he promises as he gulps down the whiskey, taking a good look at himself in the mirror. All he sees is a shitty, depressed version of himself and he doesn’t like it one bit.

“I have to start getting over you, I can’t keep feeling broken like this” his voice cracks as he struggles to keep the tears away, he’s been crying a lot more than usual lately.

“I hate myself some more just imagining you being miserable like this. I hope you’ve realised that you’re better off without me, that you deserve someone who prioritises you” he whispers the last part as he lets the tears win once again.

“Happy new year ___, I know this year can’t top the magic that was 2020, but I’ll try. I have to unless all this pain was for nothing” he chuckles dryly as he stops recording. It takes him a few minutes to compose himself, but he does, he’s getting shockingly good at pretending like he’s fine.

Race 2 2021

Jungkook’s frustrated as he shuts the door to his hotel room, it’s the second race of the season and the car is absolutely not supporting him. He can feel the anger simmer inside him as he struggles to fall asleep, he’s been struggling with this for a while now.

“I wish you were here right now. Bad day’s didn’t feel as bad with you” he says as he stares at the ceiling as his phone records beside him.

“You’d probably help me realise that the issues are out of my control, that I need to be a little patient. You’d run your fingers through my hair, in an attempt to calm me down” his hand rakes through his hair as the memory of you doing the same flashes in his mind.

“But most importantly, you’d put on the office because that’s your cure for everything” an actual giggle escapes his lips as he turns off the recording and opens the netflix app.

That night, he falls asleep as Michael Scott does something childish. 

Race 7 2021

“Phillip was on call with you while we were out for a photo shoot and I heard your voice for the first time in months” Jungkook sighs as he takes a seat on the kitchen counter, something you’d usually do.

“I was starting to feel better and then I heard your voice” he says as he eats straight from the pan.

“You were talking about the weather in Oxford, adjusting in your new apartment, your voice sounded the same. Soft as always” he stares into his empty, dark apartment as he wonders what your new apartment looks like.

“And all I’ve been thinking since then is how quickly one can go from knowing each intimate detail of someone’s life to being an absolute stranger to them. How life keeps moving on, even when your heart can’t” he’s starting to lose his appetite the more he thinks about it.

“But I’m glad you’re moving on, You deserve to” Jungkook chuckles as he says that, he means that, he truly does.

“In other news, my year has been an absolute shit show so far, Seven races in and no wins for me yet. Maybe I am just a one hit wonder like the press has been calling me” Jungkook doesn’t find any of this funny, it’s eating him up and the problems just keep piling on.

“I need to stop talking into the recording app and go out and talk to actual people” he thinks out loud as he jumps off the counter, packing away the leftovers.

Summer Break 2021

It’s early in the morning as Jungkook walks closer to the water, the Ibiza wind hitting him in the face and waking him up. He’s been vacationing for all of last week, he has been laughing, hanging out with friends, having a good time, he’s truly been feeling a lot better.

Laying on the beach, he soaks in the morning sunlight, taking a few deep breaths before he starts talking.

“Today would've been our one year anniversary” he sighs as he flops back into the sand, just wanting to lay down for a while. There’s silence for a while as the sentence feels heavy in his heart, just the waves crashing and his heart thumping.

“We wouldn’t be in Ibiza, we’d be closer to the mountains, somewhere cold and cozy” there’s a faint smile on his face as he imagines an alternate universe, where the two of you are still together.

“You would have given me some amazing, handmade gift, like a cute photo book that journals our first year together. I would’ve gotten you some jewellery, probably that bracelet you were eying in Brazil” he remembers the exact bracelet he’s talking about, it’s kind of pathetic that he does.

“But in this shitty version of the universe, you’re probably enjoying your time at university and I get to go to some other club tonight and make small talk with a woman I’m not even remotely interested in”  Jungkook is bitter and angry thinking about what could have been.

“This was for the best, right?” he asks himself as he picks up his phone, saving this voice note with today’s date.

Race 17 2021

“Phillip took me out to dinner because he’s worried about me, he thinks the car issues and lack of winning is starting to get to me” he sighs as he pours himself another drink.

“It is starting to get to me, I’m so scared and anxious about my future it keeps me up at night. Of course it’s already starting to get to me given the panic attack I had during the last strategy meeting” Jungkook looks back at the difficult few months, it’s truly been challenging.

“He told me about going through something similar last year, and to not let the disappointment and temporary failure swallow me” Jungkook sighs for what feels like the millionth time tonight as he downs his drink in one go.

“Phillip told me to talk to him or anyone about my fears, verbalising my fears to someone I trust might help me. Phillip said that he told you the same after your accident, how the fear of a dwindling future paralysed you” hearing your name at dinner was not something he expected, every few months he’d start to forget about you and one thing and the rush of memories come back to him.

“You’re the only one I can think of when it comes to talking about my fears,” Jungkook says as he slides down the sofa and sits on the floor.

“I wish I could call you ___” he shuts his eyes tight as your name rolls off his tongue. His phone keeps recording as he switches on the tv to dissociate for a while. 

Race 22 2021

“So, I didn’t win the championship. Wasn’t even in the top three but that’s the least of my concerns right now” there’s actual joy in Jungkook’s voice as he tussles around in his hotel bed, balancing his phone in his other hand.

“I just got to the episode when Jim interrupts Pam’s talking head to ask her out, and WOW!! The way the biggest smile appears on her face, and how her eyes light up, jesus fucking christ!” he squeals as he sits up in his bed, he might be a little too invested.

"Jim giving up on a promotion for love, peak of romance” Jungkook can’t help but smile, as he thinks back to the scene he’s seen multiple times now.

“After the crapfest of the year I’ve had, I wish I had the willpower to fight Ferrari last year. I can’t believe it’s been a year since we broke up” having spent all these important momentous dates with you, Jungkook can’t help but think back to them a year later.

“Sometimes I can’t believe just how easily you complied with me breaking us up, how you didn’t fight for us, at all” there’s bitterness in his heart about this, he knows it’s irrational but it’s there.

“Something you said sits heavy in my heart, ‘between the two of us, I’m the only one who’s had to give up on a dream without having a say in it’ and that’s just not true anymore” Jungkook remembers every word you said that evening exactly, he just can’t seem to forget them, or you.

“You may have given up on your dream of figure skating, but I gave up on my dream of a future with you”  

Phillip’s Birthday 2022

“I haven’t done this in a while,” Jungkook speaks into his phone as he watches the night sky from the balcony. It had been five months since he had recorded a voice memo instead of calling you, he was starting to forget you.

“I knew I was going to see you today, but, um, I still wasn’t prepared to see you” Jungkook left the party early, he’d had enough of you and your very charming, british boyfriend.

“Christian and you look like you stepped out a romcom, with the perfect met cute story” he laughs genuinely as he thinks back at your chatty boyfriend, so different from you.

“I’m kinda glad seeing how well you’re doing. University, perfect relationship, I really am glad” he repeats in attempts to comfort himself. Taking a good look in the mirror, he has the urge to tug off the sweater he hasn’t worn in ages. The sweater he wore just so you’d notice.

That night, he finally packs up all the things he associated with you, the sweaters, perfumes, diary, books you left around his apartment, you’ve moved on, so should he.

Amsterdam 2023

Jungkook rewatches Phillip’s instagram story for the tenth time today, and there’s a smile on his face everytime he does. It’s a video with a caption that reads, ‘Birthday girl returns to the rink’. A ten second clip of you skating on ice with the biggest smile on your face brings him an amount of joy he hasn’t felt in years.

As you twirl on ice, your hands come into focus and Jungkook notices the ring on your index finger. On the previous watches he might have been a little too distracted by the smile on your face to notice you wearing the birthday gift he gave you. He knows you don’t wear it all the time anymore,because it was missing on Phillip’s birthday less than a year ago.

“Happy 23rd ___” Jungkook talks into his phone as he takes in the prettiest sunset in Amsterdam.

“Today is the first time I’m recording a voice memo when I’m not feeling bitter and depressed” he chuckles out loud and shuts his eyes as the smile on his lips only grows.

“I spent your birthday exploring a vintage bookstore, I was celebrating you in spirit I guess” Jungkook was happy with how he spent his day, going through books for hours.

“I went out for lunch and just stumbled upon this place, it was a happy coincidence. I cancelled my plans for the day and spent it doing something you would love. And for the first time in a while, I thoroughly enjoyed doing something that wasn’t racing” all Jungkook had been doing the last year was work, work related activities and training, he had completely given up on his hobbies.

“You would love this place” Jungkook says wistfully as he looks at a bag full of books he just bought.

Race 2 2024

Jungkook looked at the discarded boxes in his new apartment, and he finally moved to a bigger and better place. The movers had unpacked and arranged everything for him, this place feels foreign and unfamiliar. Jungkook opens a few drawers and shelves before he finds the plates, the only set of plates he owns.

Jungkook presses the record button to record a voice memo, something he hasn’t done in the last six months.

“So, I moved to a bigger, better place. I can afford a ridiculously expensive apartment in Monaco because I’m a two time F1 world champion now!” he says with excitement as he eats the takeout food from the plates you bought him.

“But I still haven’t bought plates, the ones you bought are beautiful, with the blue specks of colours. My favourite colour, apparently” Jungkook says as he takes another bite of the mediocre chinese food.

“And the passcode to this place is still the same as my last one, mostly because I don’t want to remember a new set of numbers. Definitely not because I’m hoping for you to surprise me by breaking into my place” he laughs loudly as he thinks back to the time you let yourself in while he was live streaming, Jungkook really thought someone was breaking in and entering.

“I have a stupid logic for why I won last year's championship, other than the obvious skills and amazing car. I started wearing the chain you gave me, your good luck charm might be my good luck charm too” he smiles widely as his hands go up to touch the chain.

“If it really is a good luck charm, I’ll win this year too” Jungkook has high spirits for 2023, he has high spirits about his personal life too. He turns off the recording when a call notification from Ava pops on his phone.

Race 22 Abu Dhabi 2024

Jungkook is dazed and frustrated as he walks back to his hotel room instead of going back to the club, abandoning his girlfriend but he could care less right now. He hadn’t seen you in over two years, and a three minute conversation has left him feeling empty the same way it did four years ago.

Your voice is ringing in his head as he flops back in bed, how frustrated and bothered you were.

“I hate how broken you looked, how broken you sounded” he whispers another voice memo as he shuts his eyes.

“I didn’t just move on like we never happened, it still shocks me how just six months of us being together bothered me for two years. I DIDN’T MOVE ON FOR TWO FUCKING YEARS ___!” he shouts with frustration, wishing he had said this to you.

“I’VE MOVED ON” Jungkook shouts some more to convince himself.

There are some frustrated huffs until he stops recording, his mind is all over the place and your wide, tear filled eyes haunt him.

December 2024

“So, I broke up with Ava a week after I saw you,” Jungkook says, still sitting in his car. Something clicked after seeing you, he knew all this time that he didn’t really love Ava. You asking him if you did just made him realise that.

“I was using Ava as a distraction and I hate myself for it” he sighs, not really wanting to go back to his empty apartment.

“How can I not love Ava, she’s quite literally perfect for me but I can’t imagine a future with her, at all. Am I damaged? Not capable of loving someone again?” he wonders out loud, his frustration and disappointment growing as he thinks about the mess he is some more.

“Seeing you just reminded me of what loving someone felt like…I couldn’t even be completely honest and open with Ava” he whispers shamelessly.

“You told me about your very destructive tendencies in a relationship, how you cheated on Christian because you couldn’t bring yourself to break up with him, and it just made me realise I was doing the same to Ava” Jungkook talks to himself, he’s been doing a lot of this lately.

“I was hanging onto Ava because I desperately didn’t want to be by myself, I didn’t want to be alone. I hate being alone” he confesses and his eyes are getting a little misty as he thinks about his situation some more. 

That night Jungkook comes very close to actually calling you, he wants some warmth and comfort but he knows he doesn’t deserve any of that, especially from you.

Phillip and Maya’s wedding 2025

“I should have made some lame excuse about being busy or something, why do I do this to myself” Jungkook whines as he struggles with his tie, how does he not know how to tie a tie as a twenty five year old. He’s been pacing around in the hotel room, worried about ruining his chance of seeing you.

“I’m just going to apologise and shut this chapter, I need a fresh start and that can’t happen until I apologise to you and this is my only chance to because I need to be done with you” he frustratingly takes the tie off, wondering if he can rock the open button, casual look.

“I’m just worried that you’re not going to want to see me and then this whole evening is going to be awkward”  he says as he looks for a turtleneck, open shirt is just too casual.

“Is there a delusional idiot in me that thinks that tonight is going to lead to something more? Yes, but you could bring another charming date and shatter my unrealistic expectations” Jungkook is very frightened for a man who drives at 300 kmph every other weekend without any fear.

“I’m just going to ask for your help, this is nothing more than an ex asking another ex to help tie their tie” he chuckles dryly as he downs his drink, needing some liquid courage before he faces you. 

Summer Break 2025

“All I want to do is relax and eat tons of amazing food for the next week,” Jungkook says into his phone as he closes the door to his car.

“Then that’s what we’re going to do, but can you at least tell me where we’re going?” your voice booms on speaker and Jungkook smiles shyly, knowing the suspense is tormenting you. It has been a few weeks since Phillip’s wedding, and since the night he realised something, it’s always been you. It will always be you.

“Pack warm, that’s all I’m going to say right now” he giggles as you grumble on the other side.

“Kook, all my winter clothes are packed up, can you come over and help me get those boxes” you say and he laughs sarcastically.

“Is this just a ploy to get me to come over, if yes you have very bad game ___” he says and you’re the one laughing this time.

“You’re replaceable by a ladder Jeon, don’t get to cocky-” you’re interrupted by your apartment bell ringing.

“Too bad, I’m already here” he says as he’s still on call, you’re a little too elated as you swing the door open.

“Hey-” he’s shut up by your warm lips tugging on his as your arms come around him. Jungkook loses his balance for just a second before he holds you close and deepens the kiss. Jungkook doesn’t have to leave voice memos on his phone anymore, he doesn’t have to pretend to leave you messages. He’s glad he gets to call you, he’s glad he gets to hold you, he’s glad he’s given a second chance with you. 

Another Author's Note: Still working on an epilogue for this, comment under to be added to the taglist if you still aren't on it!!

Tag List: @blancflms @nadzzzblog @kookiewhtaee @jksoftiitii @oiseul @elisaaru @coralmusicblaze @tearyjjeonn @moonchild1 @jungkooksseuphoria @cookysstuff @ohyeahjk @bobakkoo @whoa-jo @kooromiwrld @littlelandalp @marvelover3000 (the last one didn't ask to be added to the taglist but i'm adding them anyway :))

[pigeonwhumps]

Tour

Immortal Cannon Fodder masterlist

Taglist: @painful-pooch @i-eat-worlds @a-funeral-romance @extrabitterbrain @wolfeyedwitch @whumpinggrounds

This is a crossover with Alex & Friends by @i-eat-worlds, who Joseph belongs to!

Aaron takes Phoenix on a tour of Hero Alliance London HQ, and they end up at the cafeteria, where things don't quite go to plan.

4.7k

CWs: immortal whumpee, hero whumpee, abuse, panic attack, ableism, low self-esteem, past starvation, denial of food, fear of punishment, expected punishment, asking to be punished, begging, conditioning, losing control of superpowers, consideration of self-punishment, guilt, flashback, traumatised whumpee, food-related trauma, traumatised caretaker, threats, insults, punch, shove, fear, intimidation

"And this is the cafeteria."

Phoenix stops dead in their tracks in the doorway, looking around.

"It's, um, it's big."

'Big' was an understatement. The place was huge, and always busy, full of noisy heroes, some laughing and joking, some sombre. Some have clearly very recently come off shift.

Unfortunately, Phoenix has been recognised as the hero who got Abbie suspended (even if they're so abused they didn't see anything wrong with her behaviour – but then, so many have swallowed her lies about accessing their medical records to look after them better, why wouldn't Phoenix). The room doesn't quiet, though some of the conversations become more stilted, and there's a few glares. A bit of intimidation tactics from those heroes who can use their powers with any subtlety.

"Come on," mutters Aaron, putting an arm around Phoenix's shoulder in an obvious show of solidarity, "let's fetch some food. You'll love the cinnamon buns."

Phoenix nods, but they're distracted, and for good reason. It's good manners, good practice, good safety, not to use your powers against people in here. It's just one of those things you don't do. If you have a problem with someone, you solve it mundanely. So for that to happen, suddenly... it's a big show of strength against Phoenix and they know it.

"Don't let them win. Don't let the others make you think you don't deserve to be here. You show them something later. If this is going to turn into a contest, you're way more powerful."

"I don't think I am," they murmur, but let Aaron steer them towards the serving counter, grabbing a couple of trays on the way.

"Hey. None of that. You'll be fine. They're fickle, trust me. Ignore them. You've got allies anyway."

Phoenix nods. They still look very small, pressed up against his side. He squeezes them tight.

Aaron's honestly relieved. He'd thought the reactions of the other heroes in disagreement might be worse than that, judging by their behaviour in the medbay lately. It's a shame they recognised them, but hey. Can't have everything.

He tries not to think about how that might be partially his fault.

Phoenix squints at the chalkboard menu. "What, um, sort of chips are they? Fries or chunky ones or... I don't mean to be fussy, sorry. I'll eat them, whatever they're like, please let me still eat." The last sentence is added hurriedly, as if that's a regular problem. And maybe it is.

"Hey. I brought you here to have something you like, it doesn't matter how fussy you are. And if you're worried about the price, don't be, it's free."

That's not completely true. There's some posh things that're just reduced. But Aaron made an agreement yesterday, so if Phoenix wants them he won't have to pay in front of them.

Phoenix nods, visibly trying to absorb that.

"Chunky, like a chip shop."

Phoenix's eyes light up at that. "Can I, can I? Please?"

"Yeah, of course. Do you want to go and order? You can have something with it, if you like."

Phoenix looks very confused, but follows Aaron over to the food counter. Aaron pushes them gently ahead of him. Just in case.

The serving lady smiles at Aaron. "Hello, you. How are you keeping? You've made another friend?"

Aaron scowls at her. She's not supposed to reveal how few friends they have.

"This is Phoenix. Phoenix, Mary. She'll probably try and fatten you up."

Phoenix waves a little, and Mary frowns at them in concern.

"Hey love. You new here? I haven't seen you around before."

Phoenix shakes their head. "No. I just, I, um, haven't been here before. Can I have, um, chips and beans please? It's okay if I can't, I just–"

"Of course you can. We've got some left, haven't we? It's not reserved or anything." She plates it up, then turns to Aaron. "Fish, chips and peas, as usual?"

"Yep." Once it's plated and on his plate, Aaron gives her a winning smile. "So... any chance of the biggest cinnamon bun you have?"

"You can't just use charm to get whatever you want, you know." But she winks and plates a massive cinnamon bun.

Phoenix's eyes are like saucers, and they only widen as the serving lady serves them an extra portion of chips and beans.

"Ketchup and other condiments are over there, love," she points out. Phoenix nods.

"Thank you, sir."

Mary watches them go with a slight frown.

"Polite kid."

"Maybe too much so," murmurs Aaron. "They're getting better though."

"Who's on their team? Bit negligent to not show them this place. And they seem off."

"The Spark, Tempest and Nightkeeper."

"Poor kid. Here, take some onion rings to share, they do need fattening up. You'd better go and help them." She nods to the condiments table, where Phoenix is standing, looking lost.

"Yeah. Cheers."

They manouvres their way over to them.

"Hey kid. What's up?"

"Am I really allowed all this too?"

"Yes, of course. And these two," he points at the onion rings and cinnamon bun, "are to share."

"But... that's, um, that's a main dish, and a side and another side and a dessert. I can't take seasonings as well, that'd be, um, greedy!"

"Is it greedy if I take some?" Phoenix shakes their head. "Then why would it be for you?"

"Abbie says that I don't need so much to eat. I don't. Do I? I'm fine."

"I... Phoenix. You nearly passed out from hunger."

"And?"

Aaron splutters a little. "And? Do you not see how that's a bad thing?"

Phoenix shrugs. "I nearly died from it once. Only one person ever saw a problem then, and he was a villain. So it's not a bad thing if I don't eat much. Why do you– I don't understand."

It takes an enormous amount of effort for Aaron to control himself. Sparks don't literally fly, but it's close.

"Your team. I assume they're the only other people you saw then. What did they say?"

Phoenix shrugs, almost overbalancing their tray. "That I was weak. And Abbie said that it wasn't serious because it, um, wouldn't kill me permanently. And then she punished me for accepting outside help. I don't, um, understand why she let me accept your help, though."

"She has to, I'm your team medic and Kai was on your team. And you did say she'd been getting worse shortly before her suspension."

The lights flicker this time as Phoenix looks so damn confused that Abbie might be hurting them.

"That can't be right. She's my mentor, she must have my best interests at heart."

Maybe at the very centre of her heart, surrounded by unbreakable stone. He doesn't say that though.

"Come on. Let's eat."

Aaron drowns their chips in salt and vinegar, while Phoenix hesitantly picks up the ketchup, looking around. When nobody stops them they squirt out a small pile.

"Thank you."

"'s no problem." Phoenix follows Aaron over to a small square table, Aaron glaring at anyone who so much as dares look at Phoenix wrong. They drag another table over to ensure there's enough space for all the food.

"It's a lot of food. Are you sure it's, um, not too much for someone like me? I don't mean to be ungrateful, I just, um, I'm not worth it, and– I'm sorry."

"Yes." Phoenix frowns. "Yes, you're worth it. Everyone is worth food, Phoenix." Phoenix has a look of confusion on their face, tears welling in their eyes. "What's wrong?"

Phoenix's eyes snap up to theirs for a second before darting away.

"It's, um, it's more than I've eaten since Kai went back to his team. That's all."

Aaron's alarmed by this. Sure, this is a big meal, but not overly. And if they're going on solo missions and healing themself they need bigger meals. They need the energy.

Abbie must worry about him finding out during their weekly check-ups now. Just how little proper food did she feed them before anyone found out?

What did he miss during that first weigh-in in five years? Did they start feeding Phoenix with Kai on the team, to make themselves look like heroes who aren't abusive? Phoenix seemed to know then that they needed to eat more, what's changed? Did they just say what they thought they wanted to hear?

How much of that has there been?

"You know it's not normal to eat so little so regularly, right? If it was by choice we'd call it an eating disorder."

Phoenix frowns. "Abbie's teaching me how to survive. It's, um, part of my training. I have to learn because I, um, I'm a bit pathetic and keep being captured. I'm her apprentice, she, um, she knows what she's doing."

Oh, Aaron bets she does. Keep Phoenix weak, reliant on her, with low self-esteem and terrified of their own shadow some days.

Except they're not weak. Not by a long shot. And sparks do crackle from the end of his fingers this time.

Phoenix shoots back from the table, chair hitting the wall, eyes wide.

"No, what are you– please, don't hurt me, don't punish me, I didn't mean to! I understand that I deserve punishment but please, please, let me eat first before locking me away! Please, sir, I'm, um, I'm begging you!"

Aaron holds up his hands and, with great effort, wills the sparks away. Phoenix's sleeves are rolled up and their forearms are changing colour seemingly at random, parts of their face growing fake scales and illusory feathers and all sorts that keep appearing and disappearing. They're terrified and Aaron needs to deal with this before they end up almost invisible again. That would certainly get back to their team.

"Hey. Easy, Phoenix, where do you think you are?"

"In, um, in the flat, I know that, sir. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I shouldn't show my powers like this, please don't hurt me, please, um, I know I deserve punishment but please."

Aaron glances around quickly. Luckily no-one seems to have noticed or cared. They lower their voice anyway.

"You're not in the flat. You're in the cafeteria. And you're certainly not in any kind of trouble. In fact, I don't even know what you've done that you think warrants whatever 'punishment' you were about to get."

"But you– I– I don't– Aaron?"

"Yeah. It's me. No punishment, and no pain, I promise. Shall we eat?" They're guessing from Phoenix's pleas that Abbie sometimes denied them meals as a punishment, and Aaron's hoping being clearly offered one might help them calm down.

Phoenix nods, arms wrapped around themself. "'m sorry. I fucked it up."

"No, you didn't. Less than five minutes out of a good day? Let me give you a hug."

They nod again, and Aaron crosses to the other side of the table, pulling them in as they lean on him.

"The food won't even be cold."

"Is there, um, someone with powers in the kitchen or something?"

"Yes," says Aaron simply. He knows they're joking but it's true.

"Oh." There's silence for a minute, before they say, tentatively, "I think, um, I would've liked that job. If I had the right sort of powers. I can't save the world that way, but still. It would be fun. And I could, um, make food for people who've been rescued. It'd be a waste of my immortality but I wouldn't be immortal in this scenario. What, um, what other jobs are there here that aren't on the, um, front line?"

Aaron recognises it as a tentative attempt at an olive branch they mistakenly think they need, and leads them gently back to their seat. He takes a bite of his fish.

"Well, there's plenty in medical, for starters. Nursing's a big one. And liaisons. I think you'd be good at that."

"Liaison? What, um, what do they do?"

"Well, first of all, it's not like a medical liaison job on the outside, if you know what that is, so put that thought aside. They're called medical advocates, or patient liaisons. A medical advocate works with patients who are struggling, usually psychologically. Patient advocacy, helping them through trauma, explaining things in their terms, informing us of things we might need to know. Like your sensitivity to general anaesthetic and healing. Long-lasting trauma. A lot of it's in the word liaison, to be honest. And we never have enough of them."

He's trying to think of a way to ask them if they'd like to help with that while Indigo and Segun won't let them in the flat and all they can do is solo missions until Abbie returns, when they hear footsteps behind them. Aaron thinks hopes that they'll just go past, but no such luck.

"Can I sit here?"

Aaron snarls and whirls around, before noticing who it is. "Oh! Hi Joseph."

"Hello there. Still as protective as ever. Phoenix? Mind if I sit here?"

"Yes, sir. I mean, you can, sir," they murmur, going quiet. As Joseph smiles and takes the seat next to Phoenix, carefully blocking their view of one of the heroes whose gaze is boring into them, Aaron notices them curl over their meal, ever so slightly.

One of these days he is going to hack Abbie into a hundred pieces. Without knocking her unconscious first.

"Thanks." He picks up a chip and pops it in his mouth. "So, what were you discussing before I interrupted?"

"Non-frontline jobs here. For example, Phoenix, Joseph works as... what exactly do you do? You're medical, I know that much, but what specifically?"

Joseph shrugs. "Frontline Paramedic. Found out the title recently."

"Okay, maybe not the best example of a non-frontline job, but we're still better than you."

"Not true."

"Oh, come on. Your only decent output is your cinnamon buns and you know it. And we don't even need you to make them anymore, not now we have the recipe."

Phoenix snorts, taking a hurried mouthful of beans to cover it up. "Sorry, sirs."

"'s okay," shrugs Joseph. "How's your injury?"

"It's healed, sir. Completely."

"Good." Aaron can tell he's a little surprised at the speed – it was a large gash, after all, and Aaron's not sure if he knew about Phoenix's healing abilities. It's refreshing to meet someone else who actually cares about their health, especially for non-work purposes. "While I'm here, can I have your phone number? Just for the purpose of sending cat memes, I promise. Nothing nefarious."

"I'll kill him if he does," says Aaron helpfully, when Phoenix hesitates. "And you can always block him if he gets annoying. No-one would blame you."

"O-okay." Phoenix takes Joseph's phone and enters it in. Then he looks between them calculatingly. "If you, um, don't mind my asking, how long have you known each other?"

"Since med school," replies Aaron easily. "We took the same international elective on helping patients with psychological trauma." Like Phoenix. At least... well, at least all this is good practice.

Phoenix nods. Aaron thinks they were right. Phoenix would make a great liaison, especially if they were a little more confident.

"Aand now I'm stuck with you," sighs Joseph theatrically.

Phoenix giggles. Actually giggles, and Aaron wasn't expecting that. "This food is amazing," they say between bites. "It's been a long time since I had chips and, um, beans or onion rings. I don't understand though. My team always complain about my cooking. If it's so bad, why don't they, um, order me to fetch food from here instead?"

"I don't know," lies Aaron sadly. In reality, he can make a pretty good guess. He's just not sure Phoenix is ready to accept it yet. "Go on. Eat up. I want you to try part of this cinnamon bun."

Aaron is the first to finish, and he carefully cuts up the genuinely massive sharing-size dessert.

Phoenix eats slowly, but their eyes pop out of their head as the scent wafts across the table.

"Wow."

"Mary must love you."

Aaron shrugs with one shoulder, feeling a bit awkward. "I saved her son. Physically. You remember after they closed the schools? Some people... didn't do too well. Even six years after the event, when I started, he wasn't doing well."

That's the understatement of the century. Joseph flinches minutely, dropping his fork.

"That's when the medical advocacy role was created. After the abolition. But a token apology and a new role in which there aren't enough employees does not reparations make. It certainly doesn't help enough." They sigh, then turns to Joseph, whose eyes have turned glassy, and taps him on the shoulder. "Hey. Breathe. You've got a cinnamon bun to eat, remember? No blood on your hands."

"There is a lot of blood on my hands," he breathes, but takes a bite of the bun anyway. "These really are delicious. Does Mary save them for you or something?"

Aaron smiles. "Yep."

Phoenix bites their lip, looking up for a second before locking their gaze on their bun like it's the most fascinating thing they've ever seen. "You– you said��� well, um, you won't let me go back to living in the cupboard and, um, you won't let me pay you back, I'm sure I could but you won't let me and I still don't understand why, and you've done so much, and... and... and I... I, um, I... never mind. Sorry. Doesn't matter, it's stupid."

"Go on, spit it out," says Aaron gently.

"I– I– I, um, I– yousaidyoudonthaveenoughpeopleandindigowonttakemebackyetandiknowidonthaveanytraumaorexperienceanditsastupidideabutmaybeicouldhelp." They flush bright red after speaking all in a rush, and as Aaron tries to process the words he's heard, Phoenix says quietly, "I told you it was a useless idea. I'm sorry. You can punish me for it if you like."

Aaron shakes his head. He's understood the words now. Did Phoenix just make a suggestion? Not just a punishment one, and not pushed, one of their own accord.

But he needs to respond, or it might be the last suggestion Phoenix ever makes.

"It's not useless. Not in the slightest. I'd love to have you work in the medbay, even if it's only for a few months. And I'd never, never punish you for making a suggestion."

"Oh." Phoenix's eyes flicker upwards, and they must see the sincerity on Aaron's face because they smile. "Really?"

"Absolutely."

"I know it's a lot to ask but, um, will you not tell Indigo or Segun? Please? I don't, um, they might give me something else to do and, um, I'd be better helping you if you, um, think I'd be good at it, even though, um, I'm not sure, and I'm not supposed to– please don't tell them, please, please, sirs."

"I won't, I promise. Joseph?"

"Never."

Phoenix doesn't look much more relaxed, but they glance at Joseph with what appears to be a fraction less fear than before. They finish up their chips and take a bite of the bun, eyes going wide.

"Thank you, sirs."

"It's absolutely no problem. Really. You like the bun then?"

Phoenix nods enthusiastically, almost forgetting about their fear in their excitement. Aaron's heart aches. Over five years without even knowing they exist.

Their left cheek starts to turn the colour of the wall behind them in their enthusiasm. They haven't noticed, and when Joseph opens his mouth to potentially mention it, Aaron catches his eye and shakes their head. That would be a very, very bad idea.

He waits until Phoenix has finished before saying, "Do you want me to fetch you a leaflet on medical advocacy jobs once we've finished here? So that you know exactly what the job entails before you decide for certain whether or not to take it."

"I, um, I'm sure I do. But I'll, um, take a look at it if you, um, think it's best. Are you sure I, um, would be any good?"

"Hey. Stop putting yourself down. I love you, kid, but that has nothing to do with how good I think you'll be. I wouldn't have offered out of pity, would I?"

Phoenix shakes their head. "I'll, um, I'll take the trays up," they say thickly, gathering up the plates and clearly not about to take no for an answer. Joseph looks about to object but Aaron shakes his head.

"Let them gather themself," they murmur, once Phoenix is out of earshot, heading towards the furthest deposit point.

"I am going to murder that team of theirs."

"Just... do it cleanly? I don't want to have to heal them."

"Noted."

They watch as Phoenix deposits the trays, then just stands there for a minute. They raise a hand to their cheek quickly.

"Oh, kid," Aaron murmurs. Then they frown as one of the heroes who was glaring and intimidating the most earlier approaches Phoenix with intent. "I think we might need to intervene."

The other hero – Gorgeous Warrior, Aaron thinks his pseudonym is, and that's a bit much, even for someone of his ego, the name Kevin certainly not enough for him – gets into a conversation with Phoenix, and at first Aaron thinks hopes it might not be too bad, that he might be wrong.

Then Phoenix takes a stumbling step back, and Kevin takes one forward, pressing them against the trolley.

Fortunately, it has wheels, so they're not trapped for long. Unfortunately, all the trays are on the upper levels.

Aaron sees what's about to happen before it does, but he's too late to do anything about it as the trolley topples over with an almighty crash.

The cafeteria falls deathly silent. As Aaron approaches he can hear Phoenix's whispered pleas. White smoke rises around them, and Aaron is forcibly reminded of Morticia Addams, although this isn't relaxed smoke. It's their terrified friend, hiding behind their illusion powers because they can't do anything else.

Aaron doesn't know why their powers are so prevalent today of all days, not when they must've generally been more controlled with Abbie to avoid 'punishment' and permanent damage, but that doesn't really matter. What matters is that they're terrified and the man doing it is supporting Abbie, their abuser, with a smirk on his face.

Even what she's done publicly, accessing Phoenix's encrypted medical files without their permission, is bad enough, and he's smirking.

"Please. I'll do anything, please don't."

Aaron plants himself firmly behind Phoenix, Joseph on their other side. He's a bit unsure about interfering but... right now, Phoenix needs obvious allies, not to deal with this themself. Right?

"Hey. Back off."

Kevin sneers. "What? Can't handle me on your own? Powers too weak to do anything except hide, like a fucking coward?"

Phoenix flinches. "I– I– just leave me, um, leave me alone."

"Coward. You can't expect anyone to take you seriously with that stutter. Abbie's doing her best with you, despite all your issues, and you got her suspended. You should've been grateful for her to take you despite the damage to her reputation. Should've been grateful to all of us for taking in someone so weak and keeping you alive when we didn't need to."

Aaron feels a rush of anger and the lights in the cafeteria burst, sparks flying, the only illumination now except for the setting sun. Before he can do anything direct to Kevin, though, he becomes aware of Joseph moving beside him, shoving at Kevin.

"Don't you dare. Don't you dare put Phoenix down like that. And you are way out of line with those comments. What makes you think they're okay?"

"What the hell?"

Kevin looks genuinely confused, like he doesn't understand why they'd care for Phoenix, and that just makes Aaron angrier. He pulls his arm back and lunges for Kevin's face. Their fist hits the area around his eye with a crack.

"Get the hell out of here," they growl. "Before we make that look like a bloody picnic."

Kevin turns away, walking maybe (hopefully) a little faster than normal. Aaron glares until he's out of sight, then turns to Phoenix, touching them gently on the shoulder. They jump a foot in the air.

"Want to help me clear that up?"

Phoenix nods, bending down with Aaron to clear up plates (Aaron stops them touching the sharp shards). Joseph doesn't help, "keeping watch" instead, and Aaron suspects that he, too, saw the terror in Phoenix's eyes when they looked at him.

"You're not a coward, Phoenix. And you're not weak. I, personally, think your powers are amazing."

"But, but, um, they're not useful. Not like yours. Sorry, I, um, I can't stop that. Stutter. Tried."

"You don't need to stop it. I like you. All of you. Hmm? Don't apologise for yourself. There's someone I need to introduce you to when we get a chance."

Phoenix continues gathering trays, not looking at Aaron. After a minute they whisper, "Abbie used to use him for, um, for medical procedures. Because I, um, couldn't go to medbay."

Aaron's jaw tightens. He knows exactly what Phoenix is hinting at, even if they can't say it. But the fog is slowly dropping, even if their camouflage is nowhere close to it, and he pulls them into a careful hug.

"Shall we get out of here, kid? All the people, and the lights and the noise... it's too much for you, isn't it? I should've seen that, I'm sorry."

"'s okay. But, please, if you, um, don't mind."

"Of course. You okay with Joseph coming?" Phoenix nods, and Aaron helps them to stand on wobbly legs. "We're going somewhere more private. Do you want to come with us?"

Joseph glances at Phoenix quickly before nodding. "Sure. Where are we heading?"

"My room. If you're okay with that, Phoenix?" Phoenix nods, clinging on to Aaron tightly. They're really not hiding their fear of Joseph but Aaron doesn't know what else to do. He can't deal with this alone.

Phoenix walks with them robotically, Aaron's arm the only reason they don't fall, and doesn't seem to even notice as Aaron steers them into their room, sitting them down on their bed.

"Abbie's going to kill me," they whisper. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't, um, I didn't mean to stand up to him, but I did and Abbie's going to, um, she'll be so angry when she finds out. Please don't tell her." They look up at Joseph, back to themself suddenly. "Please don't tell her, sir, please don't, um, don't tell anyone, except you can but please."

"I won't," says Joseph, handing them a mug of hot chocolate and wrapping their hands around it when they don't move, "I promise."

Phoenix sniffles. "I can't control my powers. I need to. I can't, um, I need to but I can't learn, please, help me."

"Phoenix..."

"Please!" they cry. "I can't... it looks, um, it looks terrible and it's useless and what's the point if I, um, I can't even control it?"

"I'm not putting the cuffs on you, and the only reason I'd ever even consider it would be if you were putting someone in imminent danger. Which you're not."

He is, though. His powers are getting seriously out of control when he's angry. And he needs to get them under control, by any means necessary.

Joseph squeezes their shoulder, sort-of threateningly. "I know what you're thinking. Don't you dare."

Phoenix buries their head in their hands. "I don't, um, want to be useless," they say, voice muffled and choked, "I want to be good."

"You are. Stop putting yourself down. I like all of you. All of you is amazing, because you are. If you like, we can start your training soon, as a medical advocate and with more advanced first aid, because I think you'll be fantastic at the former and you desperately need the latter." Phoenix nods. "Great. Just promise me one thing?"

"What? I mean, anything, sir."

"Stop promising you'll do anything for people. You have no idea what they'll ask."

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Yesterday I posted about several Britcom tourism things I did in London, which were far too niche to make sense, or possibly to justify doing at all, but were still probably the coolest things I've done in at least 5 years. Here, though, is a far more reasonable bit of comedy tourism:

I left 2 pens, from my dad and I, because when I was young he and I read all the Hitchhiker's Guide and Dirk Gently books together, then did Last Chance to See and Salmon of Doubt. By "together", I mean he read the to me even though I was more than old enough to read on my own (11-13, I think, we went through them all a bit at a time over a couple of years), but if was a fun bonding thing and I think he wanted to share them with me because they were books he loved when he was younger.

After I left the pens there I realized that's probably some sort of thing we're not supposed to do, I'm sure it's bad for the environment or something. Like the marmalade sandwiches. Oh well, already done.

The other thing since the last update was I saw Daniel Kitson's show, which was absolutely incredible (turns out comedy is cooler in person than on a recording!), and I would write about that, but 1) I have to get off this train soon and wouldn't have time to nearly do it justice, and 2) afterward I met him briefly and got a picture with him and completely lost the ability to speak and I cannot think too hard about that without cringing. John Robins and Elis James talk about the phenomenon of "getting it wrong" when you meet your heroes and how this can be a problem because you might not be able to enjoy their work anymore without remembering the time you got it wrong, ironic that that's who described the concept to me as the main person with whom that's happened to me is John Robins (I haven't even met John Robins... but his friend telling you "I found your Tumblr blog" and then taking down a YouTube video because you shared it has to be the ultimate getting it wrong). I can't really listen to John Robins now and really need that to not happen with Kitson, I'm very glad we've added a last-minute ticket to see him Thursday so the overriding memory will be that amazing show, and not being unable to look at him or speak when some people very kindly got him to meet me and he very kindly agreed to take a picture even though he is on record as saying he hates everyone who likes him. But he did not seem to hate us, he was incredibly nice, I am very glad I did that and will be very glad I have that picture once I am able to look at it, which is not now so it's not getting posted. It might not have helped that I spent the journey here listening to recordings of him from 2003-2006, when he largely spoke about hating everyone who likes him. It may be outdated information. You cannot hold people to everything they said in 2004.

...Right, I'd like to stop thinking about that now, though as usual in a this-blog-is-cheaper-than-therapy way, I feel slightly better for having written it down. Actually writing about the show will take much more time than that, so I won't even try for now as I'm off to other stuff (but holy fuck was it ever cool to see live and it is so very good right now). Got another big comedy tourism thing coming up this morning. To the 3 separate people who've informed me in the last 2 days that they're enjoying reading this as though it's an actual travel blog... I may, by later today, have some comedy tourism pictures that are actually of interest to the Tumblr community and not just my niches. So that'll be fun.

Mind the gap. I'm still not over that.

[astralartefact]

Right, I forgot to post something about Reincarnation ending for real yesterday, so. uhh. what pseudo-deep thing do I have to say about all of this...

Reincarnation is allowed to end and its contents are allowed to be ""inaccessible""* and everyone involved in its production knew it was going to end like this from the start even if they likely thought it wouldn't end quite this abruptly.

Yesterday Matsukawa literally said on Twitter that one of the first things Yoko Taro told him was to keep all the design work they did in consistent structures so they could easily publish them afterwards, they knew, they're not as stupid and helpless to corporate greed as some of you seem to think they are.

*heavy air quotes here because it's not inaccessible, there are at least three seperate fan projects documenting its content and even all of the in-game data has been publicly archived by fans - how much more accessible do you want an online game to be after it ends???

I know we love to complain about live services because that's a buzzword to do with capitalism (which is indeed bad) but like. It being inherently impermanent isn't what makes it bad. Theater plays are inherently impermanent and I have yet to see someone complain that Theaters still perform plays seasonally and then change what they're playing. What if I couldn't see Faust 1 last year and this year they're only playing Faust 2??? i dont think faust is a theatre play

Video Game Archiving is weird because yes, there's basically no downside to keeping something accessible forever aside from cost - and yet to me it has kind of started to become a little bit like hoarding in the fear that you might need it eventually. Like sure, why not store a video game in perpetuity if you could, someone in the future might want to look back on it after all - but like. Do you really need to be able to play a video game to do that, to understand what it tried to do and how it executed on its premise?

If nobody actually liked NieR Reincarnation's gameplay - which a lot of you complaining about it ending seem dedicated to point out any chance you get - then why keep it around as a game and not just as recordings or in writing? And whose responsibility is it to record that stuff? For the most part History wasn't recorded by those that made that history happen either. History can be recorded in writing, in photographs, in paintings,... so why can Video Games only be recorded as that Video Game?

I think these discussions are important to have and it sucks that it's always undercut by "Well but Corporations should do it, especially since they only don't do it because of money" - which is perfectly true and I agree with that, just for the record - and yet even in a better societal structure than Capitalism these problems would remain. If money wasn't an issue should every person ever posting anything on the Internet have to make sure it will always remain there for people that haven't seen it yet just because they could? Taken to the next step, are you allowed to remove something from the Internet if anybody finds it some amount of impactful?

The answer is pretty easy. If you care that much about it you will just have to record it yourself somehow - like a lot of Reincarnation's fans already did. And yes, video games have an interactive component that is now lost - but so what. If that was so important then write down what it meant to you! Make art that expresses what Reincarnation made you feel! All perfectly valid ways to record and experience history!!!

I feel like some of you people haven't had the pleasure of not being able to afford a certain video game console anywhere in the foreseeable future but knowing there's a game on there that you would love and so you decide to experience it through everything but playing the game itself. That game for me was Drakengard 3 on the Playstation 3 - and it was my favorite game of all time before I actually was able to play it 7 years later. And I think that's why I'm not particularly bothered by Reincarnation being taken offline, because I know you can appreciate it and everything it had to offer without actually playing it - because in Reincarnation's case a lot of people did the actual work of making it accessible online and that includes both fans and the devs for structuring their game in a way that makes it easy to do so.

But all I see is this weird insistance that Lore will be lost and that people won't be able to understand NieR 4 because they can't play NieR 3 to catch up on the Lore anymore even though

a) that hasn't been a thing for a single Yoko Taro game. The only time that ever happened is YoRHa:Dark Apocalypse and even there it didn't actually happen, people just fully misunderstood what part of the story was the actual A Plot and blamed them not understanding that on the Lore.

b) Reincarnation has maybe a handful Elements of concrete Lore and each of them can be summarized in 2 Sentences at most - case in point Noelle's RoD crystal is now part of the official timeline.

3) Drakengard's lore has never been explained once, not even in Drakengard itself, and yet a lot of people were able to love it and/or everything following in its wake - so clearly the lore is not that important, is it?

I also can't help but point out that 10H's story is literally about how she has to rewrite stories from her own memory of them because they keep being maliciously changed and that when she loses access to them completely the first thing she does is to recreate them and then she ends up giving them to someone else to experience (which ends up being herself but aah, technically somebody else)

Anyways, something completely different as a reward for reading all of this bs: Do we think Accord is a Player Insert? Is the Player Accord recording what they're experiencing for the "greater sake of Humanity"? We're always watching the Player Characters from a Third Person View - Who's to say that's not actually Accord's First Person View?

Has Accord been here the whole time?

[joju-but-trek]

Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2, Episode 7: The Fast and the Curious

Dal's such a nerd, it's great.

This episode and the last work together in a very interesting way. They're both standard Trek plots fitted into the wider story, but they exist in entirely different contexts. Holodeck shenanigans and weird planet competitions can normally happen to the same ship - if this were two episodes of Voyager in a row I wouldn't bat an eye - but they require opposite extremes here. It's a reflection of what Prodigy is and how it's unique among Star Trek shows, and I like what it implies. 9/10.

To elaborate, this episode does a pretty Trek-standard plot, but it does it on the bones of so many other concepts. They get to the weird alien race via an abandoned Borg conduit, and the facility is run by Kazons, and there's a corrupted AI behind it all. It really does feel like something happening in the background of the Star Trek universe and it's better for it. I do think it's interesting that this episode plays the AI concept straight when Lower Decks has three separate "Evil AIs" all going through one form of therapy or another in its latest season, but I don't think that the overlap is intentional. If it is, that would be cool, it just doesn't feel deliberate from what I've seen so far.

There's also some fun Dal moments with him trying to record a captain's log but getting shut down by everyone else. In the moment, it feels like he's being nerdy and doing a log like Boimler would, but with the context of the last season it's a bit of an ego trip. It does feel tamer than it would have been last season, which is good character development.

During the race, we get some good moments of genuine fear from Rok and Jankom. Rok specifically says that the race isn't fun anymore, which is a good reminder that she is still a kid underneath everything amazing she's done so far. Rok also keeps bringing up Starfleet protocol, which feels like a good extension of her arc of trying to fit in, even if it is being eroded by being on another adventure on the Infinity with her friends.

I don't know what I thought was going to happen with the hologram duplicates on the ship. It didn't occur to me yesterday that we'd see them again and that they'd be such an obvious liability, but it's interesting that no one noticed but Maj'el. The Doctor just thinks that he's getting through to them, which is funny and in keeping with how this show's been using him, but does play into him having a massive ego, which I'm less fond of as an interpretation. Janeway not catching on could be a bit of the beat that she doesn't really know the main cast the way her hologram did, or just being distracted by running a starship and the impending plot of the reboot movies and finding Chakotay. I'm not sure if I want to assign meaning to that just yet, but I have theories.

I'm curious what they're going to do with Zero's shell being broken. It'll be cool to see where that goes, but it is a little sad to see them just dump her in a chair at the end. Also, is it just me or does she look like a Personality Core? I half-expect her to give me a portal gun and tell me to dodge the lava.

[petra-creat0r]

Okay so the polls have determined I'm talking about LPS.

Tbh, I don't have a whole lot to talk about when it comes to my favorite little toys from the 2000s, especially since my collection is at home, but I do have a few things!

First is my favorites! Aka Creme (Angora Rabbit #2480) and Tytus! (Goat #1786). Creme I've had since I was a kid and was one of my first pets (along with the Rat #2481 she came with who I've since lost)

Them

There's also my girl, Sydney Petrovsky. I was gonna replace her before she quickly grew on me

Her neck spring or something is broke so her head sinks down, making her a little short and 9 year old me painted her with black oil paint that smugged her original markings a bit. All in all, she's a little roughed up but I say that adds to her character.

An example of how she should look is Sara, the replacement I forgot I ordered, who, while damaged, is still in a little better condition than Sydney.

Asides from my favs... I guess I gave Garrett, the pet I brought with me to work. Since my apron has a pocket, I've been bringing one of my pets with me every shift.

Gecko.

Edit: since this took me two days, Garrett was who I brought yesterday. Today was Alli

Honestly, LPS was one of my main hyperfixations as a kid. One of my mains before discovering Undertale and I frequented LPStube as much as I could back then. (Though oddly I never got into LPS Popular and still haven't watched it). I remember watching Cookieswirlc a good amount before they started making non LPS content. As well as a lot of skits and music videos. My friends and I would even make up a couple ourselves (though we didn't really have the resources to upload them, we could still record on my mom's camera and stuff.)

Because of this, I have a few old LPS series concepts. They're not all that good because I was like, nine. But I think it'd be interesting to revisit them sometime. The first series I can remember was Peter and Piper. Since I had a double of Monkey #485 (Likely because I somehow got one from my girlfriend considering she has one Squirrel #484 which came in a playset with the monkey).

The "plot" (if you could really call it that) of the series would be that the protagonist, Peter, played by one of the monkeys, had the power to... genderbend. Piper being his girl counterpart (played by the other monkey). Could I have executed this idea with just one monkey, likely. Was it a cringe idea especially considering modern times? Yes.

The other characters was a G4 Wolf (#3806) and a G3 Guinea Pig (#3299) who I don't recall the original names of, but whom I've since dubbed Lisa and Harvey. I also remember Lisa had ice powers, causing Harvey to sing Let It Go to annoy her. There was also something with the school mascot (because of course it was set at a high school) being a hybrid of a bunch of animals including like a tiger and a bear and a dragon I think.

I'm not sure how to adapt it, asides from probably making Peter a magical girl or something? (Also probably trans as I like that better than the gender bending thing)

The second show i had even less for. It was called Twins and stared Creme (my favorite Angora Rabbit from above) and another Angora I had at some point, a pink one with striped ears, #2132. (I've since lost this pet. Might've traded it with a friend)

It was about an evil mirror dimension. As a kid, I used to believe mirrors were actually viewing portals into other dimensions and the inhabitants were opposites of us or something. A pretty common trope but I think nine year old Lorrie actually believed it.

Tbh, the concept of the 2nd one would work better with doubles compared to Peter and Piper, which might be possible with just one pet.

Anyways, that's all I have on LPS for now, anyone has any questions about my thoughts on certain pets or even some series, then shoot me an ask.

[lecpenni]

LEC RETROSPECTIVE: VITALITY

So yesterday I said I was gonna start posting about the team individually, starting with last place in LEC Summer Regular Split 2023, and that means I'm gonna write first about probably the most chaotic and insane story this year, a team known for their frequent superteams and subsequent collapses.

This is the 1,2,3,4 5th! failed superteam from the french organisation, and considering their track record they really aughta stop trying. After coming into the league, shitting it up with that godawful Hachani roster, having a mildly successful run to worlds in 2018 with Kikis and early Attila, and then blowing up every last successful aspect of their roster in 2020 with the Saken rosters, they've since decided that they're going full money, no thoughts and built a roster of hopefully, high quality.

Winter began with a roster of Photon, a former T1 Challenger player who was probably the 3rd or 4th most exciting prospetive toplaner in LCKCL, Bo, the maligned prodigy booted from his home region for matchfixing allegations, who spent 2022 absolutely running EUW and making montages of the top level LEC players, Perkz, a western GOAT, one of the most storied players in our fair region and fresh coming back from his NA journey, looking (honestly) worse than ever.

Now, this topside was fairly exciting. Perkz was historically known mostly as a carry player on mechanical assassins, like Leblanc, but in his recent years, he was yet to show any real promise in game. Out of game, he's a renowned leader and able to get along with anyone. Bo was a prodigy jungler, undefeated in 2021 until the matchfixing allegations came out and arguably doomed the FPX roster, while Photon was a bit of an unknown quanitity. As a CL player, Thanatos was MUCH MUCH better, and others like DnDn are in LCK now and doing well for themselves, but Photon was on T1 Challengers, which has produced some of the best new talent in the LCK and LCS, with Berserker going to NA, Trigger doing well in LFL, and others like Mireu doing well on R7 in the LLA. So you can't exactly discount his potential. Now the botlane? They went from Carzzy and Labrov the year before, with Carzzy looking bottom 3 at best and Labrov being a coinflip on his performances, to a power duo of Neon and Kaiser. Now, as a certified Misfits Fan until their departure, I am always hyped to see former bunnies doing well. Kaiser? Less so. I don't enjoy his play and I think he's either been massively overrated in his time in LEC or performing to a basic average level of what an LEC support should be. So I wasn't exactly excited after Kaiser spent 2021 clinging to Carzzy's legs dragging him back to elo hell, and 2022 ensuring UNFORG1VEN couldn't have too good a time. But, you know, it can always get better. And honestly, who better to bring this roster together than the former Misfits coaching staff? A very strong, proven coaching staff that managed to take a team of middle of the pack players and almost propel them to worlds on unique and interesting strategies, and VTO. Well, Winter began and Bo ended up kinda performing to the level expected. Photon did pretty damn well, and Perkz didn't look bad either. And despite a lot of what people now say, Neon actually didn't do too badly on uncomfortable picks, while kaiser utterly SPRINTED some laning phases and oft abandoned the botlane to push their topside ahead. Not the worst, but on picks like Caitlyn? Yeah not advisable. Neon also showed that he still had it in him with some amazing lategame carry performances on Varus and Zeri, but both of those were so broken at the start of this year that it's maybe easy to discount his performances. The topside certainly had a time. Photon was performing pretty damn well most of the time, usually on Gnar, Gwen or an AP Gragas or two. He ended up being recognised as the best or at least one of the best junglers in the league. Bo was mostly resigned to Maokai, Vi and a very early Graves carry game, and usually went down in kills but, overall, not the worst. Perkz? Yeah not too bad either. An overall mixed bag that had some good azir games, some int tristana games, and a questionable leblanc and taliyah at the end. But the overall cohesion of the team was sometimes called into question. Which, considering this was essentially one of the first LPL players to be brought into the LEC, and an unproven LCK player who had to learn english as well, AND deal with (what I presume was the reason for the vitality collapses before) a general manager who does something. I don't know, but to foreshadow, it's absolutely something to do with management that this team ends up THIS bad, and that most people who move on from Vitality end up so much better off.

Vitality ended the regular season with a 7-2 record, placing them in first place, with losses to a surprisingly strong underdog in SK Gaming, with Irrelevant stomping an Ornn Photon in the toplane and successfully transferring that lead throughout the map, and to KOI, the former Rogue, with a dominant Azir from Larssen, and a double ADC botlane stomping the Zeri-Yuumi of Vitality. But, this was ok, since they tied first alongside MAD Lions, holding the head to head, so taking the lead and their first ever 1st place regular season in LEC. Congrats Vitality! Now just carry that through to the all-new Group Stage! ...This is where this overview is gonna take a bit of a depressing turn. Winter Group Stage is where a lot of Vitality's problems begin. They begin by picking Heretics to go up against. And that's completely understandable. Heretics had the disaster lanes of Evi and Ruby, a fairly weak botlane of Jackspectra and Mersa (sadly) and I'd argue The Western GOAT, Jankos, having a hell of a season with 3 training weights. Unfortunatly, Vitality drop a game to Heretics. Now, not the end of the world, but this game hard exposed some things. Target and overwhelm the botlane, Neon and Kaiser can collapse, and Bo will usually try to salvage bot rather than focus topside. Photon can be beat by forcing him onto tanks, and don't give Bo something he can carry on. An embarassing Cait/Lux lane in game 2, a kindred carry in game 3 from Bo, plus a weak series from Photon showed that the "god" can bleed. But ultimately, Vitality did win. Dropping a game does mean nothing, at the end of the day. You don't lose points or anything for that. And then the KOI series happened. KOI vs Vitality's Bo3 was a disasterclass. A clean 2-0 from Malrang's Xin Zhao, an utter failure of a Nidalee/Yone comp, and speaking of Comp, why did people give him Zeri? He's the pentakill guy now he gets pentakills, cmon. KOI cap off the series by annihilating Vitality, and qualifying for the playoffs. Not the end of the world. Vitality have one more chance, vs... SK GAMING The guys who beat them in regular season, the surging rookies looking promising and incredibly exciting going towards the playoffs. They lost a series too right? To... Koi... Well. Shit. Vitality proceed to play a 40 minute game with maybe one of the most useless scalers ever, Elise, and Perkz' Shitty Goddamn Sylas, and then get stomped in under 25 minutes by The Sertussy on Ahri, and picking Karthus with no protection or scaling in jungle, vs Draven Vi. Oh God. So that's Winter dead and gone now. Placing 5th overall, after winning the regular season, ain't exactly great. Fingers started being pointed, and at the end of the season, the team went forward with heads held high. So you dropped to 2 surging teams with high ceilings? What could go wrong next season?

Well... How about dropping your perfectly fine botlaner? Here's a twitter link for an announcement video that Neon is being benched for Upset! ...What??? A lot of people quickly jumped on board saying that Upset is a better botlaner than Neon, and should be a better fit for vitality's playstyle. He's goddamn Upset, right? The best botlaner EU's ever produced that never won his title? That's what people say. They also like to neglect that fuckin EGO that Upset has. Maybe it's unpopular to say, but some of his comments about being the best to not win a title, or claiming He's too Good to Not Win A Title come off as very egotistic to say the least. But other than that, Vitality remained the same going into Spring. G2 won the split, MAD came 2nd overall, and Vitality have a bright future ahead of them! How can they NOT win the regular seaso- 6-3 they went 6-3. Which is still impressive! But the losses were to goddamn ASStralis (who also went 6-3 and looked a whole lot better without dajor but That's for tomorrow), G2 who just came off from winning a split, and BDS, who were really coming into their form in this meta. Not the worst, but some performances were… sketchy to say the least. Bo didn't look as good, Perkz was faltering in some matchups, Kaiser had some real fuckin int plays at times, and Upset did sometimes play for pure KDA. Photon still looked pretty damn good, playing carries more, and a game or two of malphite who just looked useless at times, but whatever. His Gwen looked good, he had a scary Jayce, a couple of Camilles and a Darius, for a bit of variety! There's not as much to say other than the whole team... well... they looked tired. There was less laughing, less jokes, people seemed frustrated, and overall the atmosphere seemed slightly worse. Speaking as someone completely outside of that sphere, that's what I saw. Which could be completely wrong, but eh. Some things you do have to infer. Their losses often looked much worse than in winter, as well. Bo usually got the bad end of the stick in their losses, looking completely exposed as a fairly bad jungler, which wasn't always fair. Sometimes it was just a passive less explosive botlane which led to slower or longer games which no-one in vitality really wanted to kick start. Even in some wins, Perkz or Photon got hard exposed, while Kaiser kinda shit the bed or messed up engages in lane, leading to Upset usually just playing under turrets and begging for help from Bo. But you can whinge all you want, they still came out with a positive record, and a 4th place position, meaning they get to avoid the top 3 of Astralis, BDS and G2. And they made the best use of it! Groups started out with a very clean 2-0 over MAD Lions, owing to some stellar Zeri Gaming from Upset, then Ahri from Perkz dominating MAD's scaling comps that shit the bed colossaly from Carzzy and Hyli playing Lucian/Nami very poorly all game both times. Not much else to say, but they managed to repeat the effort vs a defeated and downtrodded Astralis, where 113 put on a disasterclass of being punished in jungle. That one series showed the Bo We Were Promised, and uhhh.... it never came back. Seriously. That was the last good performance by vitality, for basically the rest of the year (spoiler). They qualify to playoffs and something flicks in their heads, and they look hollow, like absolute shells of humanity.

First series vs BDS has a kill-less game for Vitality, one of the worst Annie performances for a long time, and an absolute schlacking in the jungle for Bo, on a 1/9 sejuani. There's nothing else to say than it was an absolute wipe, and Vitality get dropped to the lower bracket vs a loser's bracket MAD Lions who infamously were 1 nexus strike away from being dropped to 9th and missing groups, let alone playoffs. And Vitality get a win off the back of a good tristana performance from Perkz, and get roundly whipped into shape by Nisqy and Elyoya, who look world class again if only briefly. An absolute disaster in the botlane for games 1, 3 and 4, Chasy proving that he was the better korean top all along, alongside some really damn good carzzy performancse led to Vitality absolutely losing everything. And that's spring split done. Vitality completely figured out, losing to the top 2 teams one after another, and missing out on MSI. But the team not only made it to playoffs convincingly, but put on some good performances before then! Surely nothing will go wrong going forward? Right? Summer. If any Vitality fans do truly exist, they will shun this season with hatred and fear. And going in, it didn't look much different to Spring, if anything people were more hopeful. Upset was apparently signed hastily after playoffs, meaning a general lack of time to sync up as a team and get on the same page, as well as less scrim time. Well this time, there's a whole ass international tournament in between, hosted near Berlin and a large number of huge players are gonna be in the EU, on soloq and ready to scrim. Week 1 starts in an... unfortunate manner. A quick loss to a humbled and utterly whipped MAD Lions after the infamous 1647 incident, with Bo getting utterly demolished and, of note, a very very distinct lack of harmony. Bo would often start objectives and go entirely MIA during the objective, basically just leashing for the enemy while leaving his lanes in a horrid state, and going for objectives basically against the wishes of the laners. Kaiser looked lost, Upset lost almost every lane, Perkz often got pushed in and left to fend solo vs ganks, and Photon got way too over eager and similarly lost lane, and threw games off of it. Week 1 finishes with a middling win over a slumped SK with some truly disastrous jungle and support performances, and another loss to an up and coming Heretics with Vetheo. Week 2 was worse. A 0-3 week, losing to G2 with another jungle disasterclass, losing to Astralis who outscrapped Vitality to death, and Fnatic who utterly shitstomped Bo with a pocket Amumu. You might notice a recurring pattern of Bo being the most focused and often lost person on this roster. Management thought so too, so they brought up their 17 year old LFL jungler Daglas, who was just ok. A carry focused player who often took risky fights against most conventional wisdom. AKA A mini Bo. Oh God. Week 3 started Daglas' LEC journey, in an absolute snoozer vs Koi where Photon was the only human logged on and Daglas got put on Maokai duty, where they lost, and then on Day 2, they needed the win. Desperately. Without this win, they're eliminated from groups, and it's vs a slumping BDS. This game was fought with blood, sweat, tears, and teeth. A constant back and forth between 2 teams fighting for last chances in the season, and it all comes down to one teamfight. I implore you, if you haven't to watch the final few minutes of this game. It is utterly heartbreakingly close. And BDS just sweep one fight and walk in a wave to end the game. That's it. That's Vitality's season, basically. One more game vs Excel looks just as lifeless as ever, and they're gone. Vitality's out, the superteam has failed again. Well, they can qualify for season finals on a technicality but it's so slim that I doubt they will. Not that I, or any other viewer would want to. They look utterly hopeless and depressed, and I cannot wait to see how badly this ends.

Vitality's season was one of tragedy. Few teams shoot for the stars so often, and fall so hard and so short of their expectations. Let's see if they do it again next year, shall we?

[black-arcana]

EPICA's Next Album Will Be Band's 'Most Epic' Release So Far

In a recent interview with Spain's Mariskal Rock, EPICA singer Simone Simons spoke about the progress of the recording sessions for the follow-up to 2021's "Omega" album. She said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "I think that there should be a single by the end of the summer-ish. That's that's our plan. And the album should be released [in] 2025.

"I just wrote with Mark [Jansen, guitar] and Rob [Van Der Loo, bass] also yesterday that I'm so happy with the songs, I'm so proud how everything turned out and it's gonna be another amazing EPICA album.

"We added a couple of new elements, but also went back to the roots, the old EPICA," she continued. "And yeah, I just can't wait for people to hear this.

"I loved 'Omega' and we toured so much with 'Omega' and had wonderful experiences, but then when you reach the end of a touring cycle, you start to get itchy and feel, 'Okay, now it's time to do the new album. Can we do it as good or maybe even better than the last album?' That's always the thing we strive for, ways to renew ourselves a little bit. And we feel a very strong spiritual connection also that it's our ninth album. So there's gonna be themes around the symbolic meaning of nine, the number nine."

Elaborating on the musical direction of EPICA's next album, Simone said: "The songs are heavy. There's a beautiful ballad, a very cinematic song, very uptempo, very doomy, melancholic and amazing, amazing power riffs. It's the most epic EPICA, I think, so far. Yeah, I think so. I mean, I'm feeling it. I'm very happy with it. I'm proud of it. And they are going to start recording the orchestra now next week. They're flying to Prague; that's where we record the orchestra. And I will be recording my final vocals as well."

In November 2022, EPICA released "The Alchemy Project" through Atomic Fire Records. The EP was co-written and performed with diverse guests ranging from extremists like FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE, Niilo Sevänen (INSOMNIUM) and Björn "Speed" Strid (SOILWORK) along with melodic masters like Tommy Karevik (KAMELOT),keyboard legend Phil Lanzon (URIAH HEEP) and Roel Van Helden (POWERWOLF) to a once-in-a-lifetime song with Simons, Charlotte Wessels and Myrkur.

Just one day after the release of its anniversary reissues "We Still Take You With Us" and "Live At Paradiso", EPICA celebrated 20 years of existence live in September 2022 at 013 in Tilburg, Netherlands, the same place where they played their first show (supporting ANATHEMA) back in 2002.

EPICA was formed by Jansen after leaving AFTER FOREVER in 2002, and the band quickly gained attention outside their home country, taking big steps towards becoming the leading symphonic metal superpower they have long proven to be. After their ambitious debut "The Phantom Agony" (2002) and the surprisingly eclectic sophomore work "Consign To Oblivion" (2005),the road took them to new heights via their first concept masterpiece "The Divine Conspiracy" (2007) and their global breakthrough "Design Your Universe" (2009). 2012's opus "Requiem For The Indifferent", 2014's bedazzling "The Quantum Enigma" and "The Holographic Principle" (2016),cemented their reputation as not only one of the hardest-working metal bands in the business but also as one of the best. With "Omega", the final part of the metaphysical trilogy they began with "The Quantum Enigma", they reclaimed the throne without so much as the blink of an eye, amassing three million-plus streams during the first week of the album's release.

Photo credit: Tim Tronckoe

[misc-obeyme]

Nightbringer: Initial Thoughts

I have a lot of thoughts about Nightbringer, but I don't want to have one massive crazy post, so I'm gonna break it up a bit.

This first post is about the general gameplay, nothing story related. So there aren't any spoilers, just my thoughts on the app and updates.

Ruri☆Tunes

I LOVE IT. Listen, Ruri is adorable. I am right there with Levi. Like if this was a real anime, I would absolutely watch it. She's so cute! Did you guys see the background for Lesson 7 where there's a Ruri themed Miss Em doll? The cuteness nearly killed me.

The rhythm game itself is HARD. At first I didn't realize that you need to tap the actual objects. So by switching the controls to up and down, then turning my phone, and tapping the actual objects as they hit the line, I got WAY BETTER. I reblogged a post about this I think yesterday? It explains it better and thanks to that, the levels are now pretty fun.

I love the songs, of course, though some of the remixes are a little funky. But I loooove all the graphics! The lil donuts! And the lil demon chibis! And Luke's chihuahua! Oh yes and my favorite thing ever is Asmo's little "hai!" when he jumps over one of those green puddles. It's so cute.

Overall, I much prefer this to the dance battles. That being said, the levels are not really any easier than the OG. I was hoping we wouldn’t need to have a bunch of crazy high leveled cards to get through the story, buuuut it’s really looking like that might still be the way of it. I mean to be fair, the whole point of this is to make money so...

I don’t really hold it against them. I mean I do but I also don’t lol. The story is good enough that I can look past the money making motives. However I will say that this is just the case for me personally. I am lucky enough to have a little bit of disposable income to spend on apps, but I know a lot of players don’t.

Moving on before this becomes a rant about the evils of capitalism…

Wanderers Whereabouts

It sure is… something… Aside from the horrors of 3D models, I don't understand why they're playing sports in MC's room. Would it have been that much of an issue to give us an outdoor space as well as an indoor one? At least let them play sports in a field or something, you know?

My favorite ones so far have been when there's multiple demons in there, though. The way they interact with each other is so cute. And even though I find the whole thing a tiny bit weird, I DO like hearing their voices and seeing their interactions. Plus they do some really cute things when you give them an MC plushie.

But I think we all agree that the best part is watching Levi chase Mammon around on the map.

Fab Snap

This is supposed to be like TikTok, right? Once again I'm not a fan of the 3D models, which is probably due to the whole uncanny valley thing. However, I do still enjoy the shenanigans because what the fuck are those guys even doing? I'm sure you've all seen the musical chairs situation. I did like the one with Luke doing the snack test thing and you can hear Simeon who is recording the video. It's definitely cute to see them doing fun little things like that.

Everything else...

... seems to be the same except for some updated graphics and such. The story interface still has the 2D sprites thankfully and as far as I can tell, it works exactly the same as the OG. I've seen some people saying they're worried about the options changing the story, but they don't anymore than they did before. I think that's just their way of saying you get intimacy points with different characters depending on the options you choose. As far as I can tell, nothing seems to be any different on that end?

I love that they have entirely new special guest and home screen dialogue. The special guest dialogue especially seems more lovey and flirty than the OG. Solomon straight up says he loves you if you get the full heart reaction. You can still get annoyed reactions, though. From what I can tell, the reactions are the same as the OG app. If you get an S, it's the same as if you got three stars in the dance battle. I'm not sure about if you get lower than a B... but the three star reactions seemed to work for S, A, and B.

Also, I looooooove Karasu. I hope we get more Karasu beyond the tutorial, but I don't know if that's actually going to happen. I'm sure many of us will now refer to Mammon as Noodle Boy, though, because c'mon, that's excellent.

Okay there’s more I could talk about, but this post is already long lol. I like the mix of familiar stuff and new stuff. So far, I’m enjoying all of this. Stay tuned for posts about the story itself because there are so many thoughts.

I am also happy to receive any asks about your opinions on all of these things or if you have actual questions or anything else, of course.

[russianstudyblr]

Week 5 Overview

Hello hello! My weekly overview post is late because we lost power and internet for most of the past few days. Classes yesterday were also excused for the same reason, so I got an impromptu four day week/three day weekend, which was nice. I'm happy to say I spent much of my off time studying and cementing vocab and grammar concepts into my head.

Week 5 started out tough because I didn't memorize enough of the week's vocab in time, but it evened out near the end, and I'm pretty much back on top of everything now.

Successes this week:

Got a passing grade on the lexical (lexicals aren't graded anyway, they're just pre-quiz vocab quizzes, but if you get less than a 75% on two in a row you get mandatory tutoring for a bit)

I didn't get my grade back for the actual vocab quiz but I think I did better on the quiz than on the lexical

I spent the last two days getting ahead on written homework, so now the only homework I have to worry about for the next few days is stuff that requires a computer

I also spent the last two days learning the next lesson's vocab, so I'm actually ready for this week!

Things I need to work on:

I definitely know now not to let myself get away with knowing anything less than 100% of the vocab words before the week starts. Lesson learned!

In general still need to get better at speaking

Plans for the weekend, or what's left of it (dude I had so many good plans for the weekend, but most of them required a computer so I couldn't do them with the power outage):

Get back to Duolingo, specifically on the computer, to get better at typing in Russian

I ordered sheet magnets online and I wanna type up all my vocab words and cut them out to make refrigerator magnets of them. Idk I just thought it was a nice little idea

Record myself reading from the Russian Harry Potter book I have every day to track progress on speaking/reading aloud. Also thought that would be a nice little idea.

Do the parts of my homework that require Wifi lol

Hopefully the power and wifi actually stay on (it's been on and off, mostly off, the whole time). It was actually kind of nice, though-- I got a lot done in terms of studying, and I also made some progress on a drawing. And it kind of brought the whole base together. And it just plain gave some great spooky vibes at night when everything was dark. Idk it was fun.

All in all: this week started out mediocre because I wasn't prepared enough, but ended pretty well. I think week six is gonna start well too!

[gullethead]

hey! this is kind of spur of the moment, and i don't know if I'll keep up with it, but I'm gonna start keeping a daily... picture journal, i guess, of my body. i started HRT a few months ago, and learned i probably (definitely) have the eating disorder ARFID shortly after that, and i realized i want to keep a record of how my body looks as i work through both of those things. I'm gonna take pictures of myself and post them under a read more, probably with a stream of thought journal entry to accompany them. warning that there's going to be nudity and candid discussion of different parts of my body and disordered eating (not in the same vein as anorexia or other body image-related disorders, but it may be tough to read if EDs are a sensitive topic), and likely struggles with ADHD and other things like that. I'm going to tag them "#transition & recovery" if anyone wants to blacklist them! I'm not going to make them rebloggable because i don't see any reason to allow it vs the potential risks.

so, with that being said: T&R, day 1

so, starting out 121 days on hrt. not sure how much i weigh at the moment, but I'll estimate 120lb - on the heavier side of my weight range that hasn't changed for the last few years, still very light for my height. it's hard to show in a picture, but my chest is notably different from how it was before september. there are small masses of fat around each nipple. my right side has started developing a mammary gland - god knows i can feel it - but the left side hasn't yet, or it's at least smaller. this makes a noticeable difference in their shape where the right nipple is fuller and more round than the left under the same conditions. it's interesting to me how the body develops unevenly like that. arms are a bit more fatty now than they were before, too, but i don't know if that's the hormones or just my attempt at eating better

speaking of, mixed results on that the last day or two. made and ate Korean beef yesterday, which is definitely an improvement over most of my diet recently since i started my class. ate a full bowl of beef and rice around 3 pm yesterday, then a bit more around 7 pm, but i was still mostly full which surprised me. filled most of a square Tupperware with rice and beef and ate less than half of it. can't remember if or what i ate last night, other than some Reese's trees and a late night brown sugar cinnamon poptart sleeve. went to sleep... much later than I'd have liked and woke up for good around 12. since then I've taken my Adderall, eaten another poptart sleeve and a cup of butterscotch pudding, and taken a shower. I'm feeling very hungry and thirsty, i should heat up more of the Korean beef to eat soon and grab my water bottle.

last thing, i started what could generously be called an exercise routine last night. one three-pound dumbbell, twenty reps on each side. i need to research what proper posture and technique for dumbbells looks like; my right side felt fine, though i noticed my arm swinging which is why I need to look it up, but on my other side i noticed a... vein? tendon? rolling when i did reps. something around my bicep. that might be related to why it's so hard to get my blood drawn - I'll try having them start with my right next time i need to. hopefully it'll become less of a problem as my arms gain fat/muscle but it's concerning to me, so i want to keep an eye on it. feels mildly painful, i just did a mock rep to recreate it and feel where it was and my bicep stings a little bit

at that dip on the near side of my bicep, where it meets the deltoid, is roughly where the tension is. it probably just needs to fill in with fat to pad the veins and muscle structures under the skin, so they're not just kind of... hanging freely. honestly i hope my arm does that regardless, i hate how the humerus sticks out so far. i can feel a shock go up my ulnar every time i so much as brush it on something.

I'm probably going to end most of these posts without much ado whenever i feel like I've said enough, but I'm excited to do this. I'm going to be glad to have a record i can look back on to see how I change for the better. I'm looking forward to having a body that feels good to be in. i think that's whats spurred so much of this all happening at the same time - I'm tired of hating the body I'm living in. in both transition and weight I've always been so far from where I'd like to be, and i realized last year that i just... don't need to accept that. I'm not a prisoner in my body, i AM my body, and i can decide to make a change. it's tough as hell, especially trying to eat more, but goddamn, at least it's better than where i was. I've been dreaming of the future for years, but for the first time I'm making tangible steps towards it, and it feels great. anyways, that's enough for today, but thanks for reading!

[king-of-men]

StableDiffusion is still massively terrible at poetry; or alternatively I don't know the first thing about prompt engineering. Having gotten the thing running on my desktop - although I'm a little worried: The Python script has a progress bar in the command line, and every time it advances I can literally hear the GPU fans going tchh-tchh-tchh - is that supposed to happen? It's actually kind of cool in a steampunk sort of way, to hear the coupling between the massive amount of processing happening and the heat being output. But I digress. As I was saying, I decided to use a poem as the prompt just to see what would happen, As One Does. So I took the first three lines, thus:

Oh yesterday the cutting edge drank thirstily and deep, The upland outlaws ringed us in and herded us as sheep, They drove us from the stricken field and bayed us into keep;

a neat little encapsulation of a Border raid gone wrong, as it might be, or of some Imperial patrol on a godforsaken highland frontier getting the worst of some forgotten skirmish; and StableDiffusion gave me back

...sheep. Whose detailed anatomy is perhaps best not inspected too closely; but at any rate, very sheep-ish sheep. Presumably the one word other than "upland" that those four gigs had a weight for in the nodes.

Helping the algorithm along a little, I added the words "illustration to a poem by John Masefield" at the end. That gave me:

Spooky sheep, I guess? In some sort of upland landscape, sure. Again, clearly the training data have not included combinations of image with the actual lines of the poem, at least not enough to form an assocation.

Indeed the training data must presumably be descriptions of the images from which an artist could work, as in "some ghostly sheep standing about an upland meadow"; a poetic phrasing is essentially random words as far as the AI is concerned. But maybe I can do better by leaning into that:

A group of defeated, dejected warriors huddling around a fire, cleaning their battered weapons and armour. Their resident bard is reciting a poem to encourage them to renewed effort; the first three lines are "Oh yesterday the cutting edge drank thirstily and deep, The upland outlaws ringed us in and herded us as sheep, They drove us from the stricken field and bayed us into keep". Illustration to a poem by John Masefield, black and white line drawing.

Oh, max 77 tokens, great. Hum. Well at any rate it's not sheep this time:

Eh... now it's just bad at faces. No wait, by dog, there's still a goddam sheep in the background! I didn't even notice until I'd uploaded. (For the record I'm making four images for each prompt and picking the one I like best; they're all pretty similar though, otherwise I'd show the outliers.) Anyway I guess I could see this as a starting point for a "yeah wait until tomorrow" defiant painting. Although one of those soldiers has the face of a pig? Possibly because many images have farm animals together?

Anyway let's just drop two lines of the poem to get the prompting bits within the limit, which also removes the dang sheep (along with, it's true, most of the actual poem I wanted to quote, which does somewhat defeat the exercise):

A group of defeated, dejected warriors huddling around a fire, cleaning their battered weapons and armour. Their resident bard is reciting a poem to encourage them to renewed effort, beginning 'Oh yesterday the cutting edge drank thirstily and deep'. Illustration to a poem by John Masefield, black and white line drawing.

Eh, I guess. Now it just has the usual flaws of StableDiffusion art. I could use it for a by-the-by illustration if I were translating the poem and wanted something to fill up the empty bits of the screen, as one does. But there's no very obvious connection to the original "upland outlaws", "stricken field", "cutting edge" imagery, as I might have been able to get out of a human artist. At a nonzero cost in money, of course.

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Go Faster Stripe has four John-Luke Roberts shows, from 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2022 (some recorded later, I think, but those were the Edinburgh years):

I'd seen a couple before, and I recently bought the other two and decided to watch all four. Then I decided to hold off on doing that, because I learned that GFS filmed a bunch of his older shows in Edinburgh this year, because he performed his entire back catalogue on various nights. Including that one particularly famous one, where I believe he did the ultimate dead dad show, which I'd quite like to see. So I thought I'd wait until those other ones come out and watch them all at once.

Then I decided I did not actually want to wait, so I watched all four in an afternoon yesterday, and my God, are they ever good. They're so good. And I cannot understand why I find them so easy to enjoy, when I usually find stuff like that difficult. I was inspired to go find that stuff from watching all the 2019 ACMS streams, and in those videos, I saw enough different acts to know that I definitely don't always enjoy watching people do stuff where the reason it's funny is not immediately obvious. Sometimes I can get it, if I put some effort in. If I make myself watch it for a bit, and try to understand what's going on here, what might be considered entertaining about it, and then, through concentrated effort, I can be entertained.

Absolutely none of that is required when I watch John-Luke Roberts, and I still can't work out why I respond to his stuff so much more easily. Aside from the obvious guess, which is that he's just better at it than most people are. When you break it down he's basically just doing sketch comedy. It's absurdist theatre and everything, but it's also very funny sketches.

I think it might also make a difference that he's not as reliant on physical comedy, as a lot of people who do the "alt-comedy"-type stuff. I don't mean "reliant on physical comedy" as though that's a bad thing, lots of people like physical comedy. But for me, in general, something looking funny doesn't usually tend to make me laugh as much as someone saying funny stuff. John-Luke Roberts, in the shows I saw, has fewer props than I'd have expected. He wears a bunch of different costumes, but none of those are what make him funny. Which I know because, to be honest, before I watched that show of his with the title like an MIA song, I heard an audio-only bootleg of it (I have now paid for that show on GFS and watched the video, he has my money, it's okay). That show has his blue moustache and things like that, but even without any visuals, it was still very, very funny. I'm not sure that could be said about most comedy that can also be described as "absurdist theatre".

Also, his shows still followed the basic idea of a really good stand-up show. They had an underlying point, they built up to their message, the seemingly disconnected bits tied together and got recontextualized as it went along, he had callbacks and structure. It was easy to follow the overarching stuff, as well as laughing at all the smaller jokes along the way.

...I realize I may be praising these shows in ways that could be viewed as terrible insults, depending what kind of comedy you like. "John-Luke Roberts' wild alternative incredibly creative absurdism is great, because it's not that different from a normal stand-up or sketch show." I don't mean to say it like that, there's obviously lots of other stuff going on there, including what I'm sure is lots of stuff that goes totally over my head and I don't have enough artsiness credentials to understand it all. But I can understand enough to really, really enjoy it. I mean "accessible" in a good way, I promise!

Anyway, these four shows were fucking fantastic. All four of them, and I can't wait for the others that are going to get released soon. They made me laugh out loud so many times, and even if I don't know how to analyze exactly why I loved them so much, that's the main thing that mattered. I laughed a lot. I surprised myself with how often I laughed, how easily I got drawn in to all his worlds, and as I said, how easy it was to enjoy.

I don't even know if I can pick a favourite. After Me Comes the Flood is amazingly impressive, to me, for how he makes everything, visual and verbal and conceptual, fit together like a beautiful puzzle. Look Upon My Works got some of the hardest laughs out of me with all the different characters. A World Just Like Our Own wins in the Touching Message department. But I think the MIA song-titled one is probably my favourite overall, for everything going on in it, it's amazing. Absolutely brilliant stuff, all of it. If anyone wants to laugh a lot and get to feel smart for enjoying a type of comedy that's usually challenging, go buy those GFS videos.