#unclear if it happened before or after midnight

[dailyhistoryposts]

Just want to say thanks since that plug post sent me on a rabbit hole about out-of-place artefacts which told of the man on mars which cited the old man of the mountains which is on the New Hampshire quarter and now I know about the cool life of John Muir

By the way, in May 2 of this year, it would have been 20 years since the collapse of The Old Man Of The Mountains, so it would be pretty cool if that was a history fact, if that’s ok

On This Day In History

May 3rd, 2003: The Old Man of the Mountain in New Hampshire officially collapses.

[stillness-in-green]

Counting Cliffhangers: The Heroes Are Not the Underdogs in BNHA's War Arcs

(Being a project to tally up which side, if either, of Team Hero or Team Villain is "on top" at the end of each chapter in the war arcs, in consideration of the impact of the overall totals. This is one of those mega-long list posts; do not click the Expand/Read More unless you're prepared for a lot of reading and/or scrolling.)

One of the things that bothered me throughout both of the war arcs was the persistent sense that, for all that the manga was trying very hard to convince me that the Heroes were up against the wall and really having to give it everything they had, I never really felt that level of danger.  Of course, one always expects a degree of that—it’s not as though any sensible reader would really think this manga could end with the Villains winning!—but the problem went beyond that.  Expecting that the protagonist will win out in the end is the standard, after all, but good stories still find ways to keep readers engaged and believing in the stakes.

So why didn’t I?  I certainly believed in the stakes for the Villains—Twice’s death happens very early in the first war, and it sets the stakes quite clearly!  Was it just the difference between my own engagement with the Villains compared to the Heroes?  That didn’t seem quite right—even if I cared about one side for more than the other, it shouldn’t have been the case that that affection alone was skewing my suspension of disbelief about the dangers faced by the Heroes.  The threat posed to Midnight certainly seemed real enough, as was also the case for the Heroes left trampled in Gigantomachia’s wake, like Gang Orca and Fatgum.  As I’ve had to tell the occasional asker here before, just because I don’t particularly care about a character doesn’t mean I become incapable of evaluating their story beats!

What was the problem, then?  Why did the dangers to the Villains seem so desperately real, while the dangers to the Heroes, for the most part, just had me rolling my eyes and waiting for the next asspull that would save them?

I think there are two primary factors.  The first and biggest factor is simply baked into the worldbuilding and the decisions made in the writing: the sides are poorly matched.  I’m not going to go into all of that here, but as a thought exercise, go through the arcs of the story that contain active conflict and consider which side has the advantage in each of the following categories: individual combatant quality (stuff like raw power, endurance, and training/experience to improve upon their inherent capabilities), equipment quality, information about the opponent, ability to set the terms of engagement, and raw numbers of warm bodies to throw at a fight. 

By my measure, much of the early confrontations in BNHA work because these advantages are divided evenly between the Heroes and Villains.  Likewise, My Villain Academia is so gripping because the Meta Liberation Army has virtually every advantage over the League, making the League really and truly feel like the underdogs in the fight.  Conversely, the Heroes are the ones with virtually every advantage in the war arcs,[1] meaning they cannot convincingly be the underdogs the story so desperately wants us to believe they are.

1:  I swear I’m not going to go into all of it, at least not in this post, but to be very brief, I think the only advantages the Villains could even kind of claim during the war arcs are numbers and combatant quality.  The numbers advantage is mostly illusory; the PLF are leveled in the cursory mass arrest of the first war and, despite repeated insistence otherwise, the only place where the Villains’ numbers are a true threat in the second war is at the hospital attack, where said numbers consist chiefly of untrained and easily swayed civilians in a battle it’s desperately unclear why the Heroes allowed to take place at all.  The quality advantage, meanwhile, is heavily concentrated in only a handful of hard-hitting, A-to-S-rank threats on the Villains’ side, while the Heroes maintain clear quality supremacy in rank-and-file or side character battles.

The other factor, and the one this post concerns, is the structure of the chapters themselves, to wit, the way that they end.  In a serialized story being published and read week to week, each installment’s ending is a crucial factor in the story’s overall tone.  What happens on the last page is a major factor in the impact each chapter makes, the feeling the reader is left with while they wait for the next part.  If the intent, therefore, is for the Heroes to feel threatened, pushed to the very edge of their endurance, then a very basic thing needs to be observed: don’t end every fucking chapter with the Heroes having the fucking advantage.

I’m so serious here, guys.  It’s not that the Villains never have the advantage, never get twists or reveals or reinforcements that turn the tide of the battle in their favor.  It’s that, by and large, those advantages come in the middle of chapters, while the Heroes’ twists and reveals and reinforcements get the benefit of being at the end of chapters, so the dominant feeling—the side that’s left wildly cheering for their “team” at the end of the week—is usually the Heroes.  While it’s possible that the impression left is different when reading the story in volume form,[2] when reading week to week, that imbalance critically damages the story’s ability to portray the desperation and strain of the Heroes’ struggle.

2: Having not read the arcs in this fashion, I couldn't say. Obviously I don't know how a volume-only reader would experience this aspect of the story, but even reading (or rereading) a bunch of chapters all in one go online suffers from some impaired momentum between chapters by having to specifically navigate to the next chapter webpage and wait for it to load rather than just being able to turn pages freely.

That, in any case, was my thesis when I first started this count, listing which side has the upper hand at the end of each chapter of the two war arcs, as well as the total overall.  With the second war arc finally having ended, I figured I’d go ahead and post my results. 

Hit the jump!

For each arc, I started counting at the chapter where active conflict breaks out, including as a dramatic end cliffhanger.  Thus, for the first war, I didn’t start in Chapter 258, where the groups are still gathering, but rather in Chapter 259, when the forward momentum begins and the first Villain (Ujiko) is confronted.  Likewise, the second war count begins with Chapter 343, when the armies confront each other.  The counts end with the last chapter containing active Hero/Villain conflict rather than narrated montage.  Thus, the first war ends in 295, when AFO and the League flee the field, not in 296 with the looming threat of the long-awaited jailbreak.  The second war ends with Deku’s weather-clearing fist in 423.

My basic categories are Hero Advantage, Villain Advantage, and Neither.  Fake-outs are categorized as they are perceived in the moment of reading them, not as they read in retrospect.  Further, I do not categorize based on the overall tenor of the chapter, but only the impact of the final page.  This is by nature somewhat subjective, but I’ve done my best to call them as I think they’re meant to be read.

What is the feeling the reader takes with them into the next chapter?  Excitement for the heroes?  Dismay and fear?  A simmering tension?  Which side, if either, got the HELL YEAH HELL YEAH fist-pump?  If there's a relative clear answer, I'll call it for one side of the other; chapters that end with no particular new reveals, arrivals, power-ups, or other such shifts in the tides with be called as neither.

Finally, for ease of tracking and reading, my tallies and accompanying brief explanations are separated by volume. I'll provide totals for each category at the end of each volume, and full totals, as well as a total count for which category the volumes end in, at the end of the arcs. Final counts and commentary will close the post.

Let's get started.

FIRST WAR ARC

Volume 27: 259: Hero Advantage.  Endeavor and company confront (apparently) Ujiko, catching him completely flat-footed.

260: Hero.  Mirko crashes into Ujiko’s lab, to his horror, and kills John-chan in doing so.

261: Neither.  Mirko and the High Ends square up for their Round 2.

262: Hero.  The Villa gets cracked open like an egg, catching its inhabitants entirely off-guard.

263: Hero.  If they were on more level footing, I’d call this Neither, but given the positions Hawks and Twice end the chapter in, and the clear difference in emotional preparedness, this one goes to the Heroes.

264: Neither.  The Hawks/Twice fight continues inconclusively; Dabi is revealed to be on his way, but has not yet arrived on-scene to affect any changes.

265: Villain.  Dabi makes a strong and, for Hawks, unexpected entrance, pinning Hawks beneath his boot.

266: Neither.  Twice dies, which is a huge hit to the Villains, but the narrative sympathy is so clearly with Twice and Toga that it’s impossible to describe the chapter as ending on a fist-pumping note for anyone.

267: Hero.  Doubly so, as Endeavor and Tokoyami both show up to intervene in fights that were about to go to the villains, but we'll be fair and only count it as one anyway.

                   Heroes 5 | Villains 1 | Neither 3 | Total 9     

Volume 28: 268: Neither.  Basement action.  The tube gets cracked; Aizawa and Mic are told not to let Shigaraki wake up.  Nothing conclusive.

269: Hero Advantage.  Literally ends with Ujiko wailing that the Lord of Evil’s dream is over.

270: Villain.  It ends with Deku getting a warning about Shigaraki, which makes it a bit borderline, but Shigaraki being awake at all has to count for the Villains.

271: Villain.  Gigantomachia stands up.

272: Neither.  The kids start rallying against the Decay wave.  Deku gets a new move that doesn’t seem like it should have any effect but is played as being effective.  Shigaraki’s Decay wave is being monstrously effective, even apocalyptic, but the tone of the last page is ambiguous.

273: Neither.  Shigaraki faces off with Endeavor.  Both are known factors on this field of battle.

274: Neither.  Deku is on the move in hopes of leading Shigaraki to a more deserted area.

275: Hero.  Aizawa arrives at the Shigaraki fight, locking down his quirk use.

276: Hero.  Deku and Bakugou arrive in time to save Aizawa from what likely would have been the same kind of blow that will later cost him his eye.

                   Heroes 3 | Villains 2 | Neither 4 | Total 9     

Volume 29: 277: Neither.  Mount Lady attempts to stop Gigantomachia.  Results inconclusive; both known factors.

278: Neither.  Leans a bit Hero side because it’s Momo dramatically getting her head on straight, but it’s really just more preparations for a face-off.

279: Hero Advantage.  The League is getting swarmed and Mina is on the brink of delivering what’s framed as a knock-out blow to Machia.

280: Neither.  Shigaraki laboriously gathers himself, preparing to monologue.

281: Villain.  Shigaraki readies a quirk-destroying bullet with Aizawa’s name on it.

282: Villain.  Gigantomachia, who is very much not knocked out,  looms over an unsuspecting city.

283: Hero.  Deku negates the (immediate) danger of Decay by activating Float.

284: Hero.  Deku lands a full-power blow on Shigaraki, who’s been largely unable to fend him off in the air.

285: Villain.  It pains me to grant this because I knew good and well Bakugou would be completely fine.  But he is a major combatant and face for the Hero side and this is clearly intended to look like it will take him out, at least for the fight.

                   Heroes 3 | Villains 3 | Neither 3 | Total 9     

Volume 30: 286: Hero Advantage.  The action moves to the vestige realm.  Very borderline, but Nana’s words are definitive: “Let us handle this.”  The implication is very much that there’s no need to fear because the vestiges have got this.

287: Neither.  Chapter ends with Toga reflecting on heroes and the weight they give to the lives of Villains.  Could represent a major turning point for Toga, but it’s still soft-pedaled by making that turning point dependent on a Hero’s yet-unspoken words.

288: Neither.  Chapter ends mid-dialogue in the Toga/Ochaco fight.

289: Villain.  Machia and his passengers arrive.

290: Villain.  A little borderline because the actual very last panel is the plane containing Best Jeanist, but the audience doesn’t know that yet, and the bulk of the final page is dedicated the devastation of the Touya Reveal, so I have to give this one to them.

291: Hero.  Best Jeanist arrives.

292: Hero.  Mirio arrives with his quirk restored.

293: Hero.  Machia goes down because the sedative finally kicks in.

294: Villain.  Mr. Compress backstory reveal and big escape moment.

295: Neither.  The battle ends save for the wrap-up.  The villains are neither victorious nor defeated.

                   Heroes 4 | Villains 3 | Neither 3 | Total 10

FIRST WAR TOTAL: Heroes 15 | Villains 9 | Neither 13 | Total 37 Volume End Advantage Count: Heroes 2  |  Villains 1  |  Neither 1

                       

SECOND WAR ARC

Volume 35: 343: Hero Advantage.  The Heroes counter AFO’s army by “unexpectedly” whipping out their own via Warp Gate.

344: Hero.  The Heroes take the offensive and split up the villains’ army.

345: Villain.  Toga lassos Deku through a gate, separating him from the field he’s supposed to be on.

346: Villain.  The beginning of Fingervetr.

347: Neither.  Borderline because it’s a big dramatic page of Toga, but it’s more conversational then confrontational to me, and isn’t revealing anything particularly new.

348: Neither.  Deku flees the island, leaving Toga to Ochaco.

349: Neither.  Dabi gears up to provide the answers Shouto has specifically asked for.

350: Neither.  Dabi’s coming on strong, but Shouto remains undaunted.  I’d give it to the Villains if the last page were Dabi liquidating the All Might statue, though.

                   Heroes 2 | Villains 2 | Neither 4 | Total 8                    

Volume 36: 351: Hero Advantage.  Shouto unleashes Phosphor.

352: Hero.  Shouto appears to beat Dabi.

353: Neither.  AFO is talking a lot, but not about anything groundbreaking.

354: Neither.  AFO and Jirou exchange smacktalk.

355: Hero.  Hawks and Jirou combine efforts to break AFO’s mask.

356: Neither.  Endeavor has a big moment, but AFO gets his hands up in time to block and is still shown intact at the end of the chapter.  Borderline, but I’d say not quite definitive enough to qualify it for the hero side.

357: Villain.  AFO regenerates.  A little borderline because it actually ends with Deku, and the approach of what I guessed at the time were the American jets, but I think it’s a similar enough scenario as the end of Chapter 270 to call it for the Villains as well.

358: Neither.  No impact from the Hero attack leaves it a little unclear how much effect it will have, and a new attack is not a big enough game changer for me to really count it even unproven.  It’d be easy to call it for the Heroes, though.

359: Hero.  Return of the Big Three.

360: Hero.  Bakugou’s in rough shape, but there’s a hint that he’s noticed something important, which could foreshadow a change in the tides of the battle.

361: Hero.  Suneater’s Chimera Cannon, which certainly looks incredibly hype and impressive in the moment.

362: Villain.  Bakugou’s “death.”

                   Heroes 6 | Villains 2 | Neither 4 | Total 12                    

Volume 37: 363: Villain Advantage.  AFO finishes regenerating; full face reveal.

364: Hero.  The impossibly moronic Edgeshot-as-Bakugou’s-heart business.  Not conclusive, but it steals one of the Villains’ victories out from under from them.

365: Villain.  A shift in Inner Tenko’s emotional state heralds Shigaraki’s next form.

366: Hero.  Deku arrives at the Sky Coffin.

367: Neither.  Deku attempts conversation to ask about Shigaraki’s status.

368: Hero.  Deku lands a full-power hit on ShigAFO while Yoichi talks to his big brother about letting this being the day that their battle ends.

369: Villain.  A scene change to Spinner that’s timed in such a way that it could really only foreshadow Spinner’s victory.

370: Neither.  It’s very close to a Hero call, but mostly what Shouji’s doing is shaking off mundane attackers and making a dramatic proclamation.  Not quite enough direct impact for an end-of-chapter Hero Advantage.

371: Neither.  Even closer than the last one, but neither blow the kids are gearing up for actually connect on-page.  I wouldn’t fault anyone who called it for the Heroes, though.

372: Neither.  An extremely effective cliffhanger, for once, as Spinner and Mic call out to Kurogiri simultaneously.

373: Villain.  Kurogiri gets up, calling himself the protector of Shigaraki Tomura.

374: Villain.  Toga deploys Sad Man’s Death Parade; Hawks proves he hasn’t learned jack shit from the last time he faced this question.

                   Heroes 3 | Villains 5 | Neither 4 | Total 12                    

Volume 38: 375: Hero Advantage.  Toga’s narrative-destined rival manages to follow her off the island and to the Villa ruins.  Close to a Neither call.

376: Neither.  Setting up a Dabi/Endeavor clash with Endeavor not caught on the back foot.

377: Hero.  Return of La Brava.

378: Hero.  Return of Lady Nagant.

379: Neither.  Sets up a reengaged clash between Shigaraki and Deku.

380: Hero.  Arrival of Shiketsu.

381: Hero.  Tokoyami lands a blow that AFO is explicitly afraid to get hit with.

382: Hero.  Shinsou and Kirishima arrive with a brainwashed Gigantomachia.

383: Neither.  Reiterates that AFO is in trouble, but it’s not new information, and the choppers coming in at the very end are an unpredictable element.

384: Hero.  The choppers are full of Hero-supporting journalists here to tell the world how incredibly hard-working and earnest and admirable Heroes are.  Gag.

385: Neither.  AFO’s belated but impressive show of force gets dampened somewhat by the Heroes refusing to give in, and even getting one of their number back.  It’s back and forth, but Stain really tips it for good over to a neutral chapter ending.  While he’s obviously not aligned with the Villains, he’s far too murderous to chalk him up as a Hero yet, either, especially on-scene watching two kids he tried to kill last time he saw them.

386: Hero.  All Might gets a cool robot suit and the last-page chapter title drop references his iconic catchphrase.

                   Heroes 8 | Villains 0 | Neither 4 | Total 12                    

Volume 39: 387: Hero Advantage.  Rei is, of course, a civilian, not a hero, but she’s clearly aligned on the Team Good Guy, so I have to give it to them.  It’s not a hill I’d die on, however, particularly with the very last panel being the flashback to Touya emphasizing Rei’s culpability.

388: Neither.  What a nice vision of hell as everyone burns to death, including Dabi.  If I gave it to anyone, I’d lean Villain, because it’s certainly more in line with what Dabi wants—what he’s always wanted.  But in terms of impact on the reader, it certainly isn’t going to get anyone whooping and cheering for the Villains.

389: Neither.  It’s a good last few pages of Shouto and Iida, but the reader already knows they’re on their way, so it’s not a pleasant surprise to see them enroute.  The fact that they are still enroute rather than dramatically arriving to save the day keeps this from being a full Hero moment ending.

390: Neither.  Teasing more of the fight between Toga and Uraraka, but no sudden turns, new elements, or grand statements on either side.

391: Neither.  Ongoing fight; while Ochaco gets the stirring line, the actual last page is Toga lashing out.

392: Villain.  While I’m loathe to give it to them on the basis of an injury I was not for one second actually worried about, the chapter does end with Toga putting a knife into Uraraka’s gut and a flashback to Twice asking Toga about a Villain name.  A clear Villain-upper-hand ending.

393: Hero.  Ochaco comes through with flying colors, getting a quirk awakening and making Toga an offer she’s dreamed of her whole life.

394: BOTH.  For literally the first time in this whole count, I can’t count this against either side.  If pressed, I’d call it a Hero win, but it’s a win because it validates both sides.

395: Neither.  Sorry, gang.  I’m utterly incapable of calling this one in an unbiased way.  It’s an all-too-real death scare for Toga and, regardless of how happy she is in the moment, I can’t call her potential death a victory.  But since Ochaco obviously feels the same, it’s not a Hero win, either.

396: Hero.  And get ready, ‘cause there're about to be a whole lot of them.  Good god, but I hate this All Mech sequence.

397: Neither.  Ongoing battle, no major tides turning in the final page.

398: Neither.  As above.

                   Heroes 3 | Villains 1 | Neither 7 | Both 1 | Total 12                    

Volume 40: 399: Hero Advantage.  The big turn-around with Aoyama, with All Might dropping the Aoyama-themed laser of AFO.

400: Hero.  Stain’s return.  Stain’s a Villain himself, but far too aligned with Hero orthodoxy for me to count him returning to help All Might as anything but a Hero-side victory.

401: Neither.  All Might’s still kicking, AFO is within range of Shigaraki, but nothing decisive deployed on the final page.

402: Neither.  To all appearances, All Might continues to shovel more battle damage onto AFO.  There’s a death threat in the explosion, one I don’t think I took very seriously at the time, though plenty of others did.  Left to my own devices, I’d call it for Team Hero, but I’ll err on the side of restraint and call it a hero equivalent of Toga’s death threat.

403: Hero.  Unequivocal Hero victory—Bakugou’s back up.

404: Hero.  Saving All Might with the literal power of prayer.

405: Hero.  If I wanted to be snide, I’d point out that Final Boss is definitionally a Villain role, so Bakugou enthusiastically claiming it for himself implicates Heroes as having been the Villains all along, while the Villains are the clear heroic underdogs struggling against a corrupt, violent system.  But that’s just my bitterness making me perverse; this is a clear Hero victory.

406: Neither.  Exchanging of smack talk, Bakugou gets a good but not definitive hit in.

407: Neither.  AFO’s flashback ends with one of the most crushing emotional defeats of his life, but you can hardly call AFO slice-and-dicing Yoichi a Hero win, either.

408: Neither.  AFO’s going all-out, but Bakugou remains undaunted.

409: Hero.  AFO’s effective defeat at Bakugou’s hands.  Yoichi’s regretful glance is not enough to shift the needle.

410: Villain.  Shigaraki does what the narrative has long been warning that he can and steals a portion of One For All, grabbing Danger Sense for himself and stealing Shinomori from the OFA collective.

                   Heroes 6 | Villains 1 | Neither 5 | Total 12                    

Volume 41: 411: Neither.  Deku’s readying an offensive that gives Shigaraki lots of Danger Sense tinglies, but nothing definitive.

412: Neither.  The temptation is strong to call this for the Hero side, as it’s the moment Kudou formulates the plan that will soon be leading to Shigaraki’s ultimate defeat, but the caveat that the plan requires losing One For All kiboshes that feeling very triumphant.

413: Hero.  There’s some nominal sadness for Deku gearing up to lose OFA, but the tone here is much more about how great and awesome Deku is for being willing to do it, on top of how incredibly fucking rad the art plainly wants us to think that he looks.

414: Hero.  I’d normally call it Neither for lacking new elements or definitive actions, but I have to acknowledge the sheer disparity between, on the one hand, the vestiges telling Deku that it’s working and to keep going as Deku gears up to unleash another punch while, on the other hand, all Shigaraki can manage is huddling in on himself and choking out a few pained grunts.

415: Neither.  Borderline in that Eri is a clear Hero-side ally with an absolutely game-changing power, but the truth is that she’s at U.A. with no immediately clear way to make it to the battle even if anyone were to let her go, so it’s not too different from any other chapter that ended with a major player en route but not yet arriving.

416: Hero.  Deku finally breaks into Shigaraki’s inner mind, over Shigaraki’s protestations.

417: Neither.  Deku and Nana make a major breakthrough, but Shigaraki’s backstory yet has terrible bombs to drop.  I can’t call it a Villain advantage, though, because it’s still stuff Shigaraki very much does not want Deku meddling with.

418: Villain.  AFO returns yet again, spoiling Deku’s hard-won moment of equilibrium and understanding with Shigaraki.

419: Hero.  We can’t even get a week to savor/freak out over Deku losing his arms because the actual last beat of the chapter is Aizawa bringing in a pair of classmates via Kurogiri’s warp gate, suggesting (albeit inaccurately) that Kurogiri has settled as a Hero ally.

420: Hero.  More of the above and Deku gets his arms back after a world-shakingly relevant and momentous chapter and a half.

421: Hero.  All around Hero support, now including from civilians too.

422: Hero.  More of the above and now Deku’s punching Shigaraki at the end of it under a chapter title of Midoriya Izuku Rising.

423: Hero.  Deku’s triumphantly raised fist clears storm clouds, changes the weather, and kills the man he was trying to save.  This is framed as a victory anyway.

                   Heroes 8 | Villains 1 | Neither 4 | Total 13

SECOND WAR TOTAL: Heroes 36 | Villains 12 | Neither 32 | BOTH 1 | Total 81 Volume Count Total: Heroes 2 | Villains 3 | Neither 2

                   

TOTAL CHAPTER COUNT FOR BOTH WAR ARCS: 118 CHAPTERS Final Page Hero Advantage: 51 Final Page Villain Advantage: 21 Final Page Neither: 45 Final Page Both: 1

Total Volume Count: 11 Volumes Last Page Hero Advantage: 4 Last Page Villain Advantage: 4 Last Page Neither: 3

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

Now, you could (and I might) write a whole different post about the unbalanced strategic advantages that I discussed at the beginning of the post, but I think this breakdown also serves to illustrate the scope of the problem with raw numbers (percentages rounded off a bit such that they total to neat 100s).

In the first war, 40.5% of the chapters end with the Heroes on the upswing, 35% have no clear advantage, and only 24.5% end with the Villains waxing triumphant. Despite Hawks reflecting at the end of My Villain Academia about how the Paranormal Liberation Front was a power on par with, or possibly even greater than, that of Hero Society, the numbers don't really back that up. Instead, Heroes have the advantage over half again as often as Villains do, and even the uncertain chapters are still more numerous.

The second war is worse—much worse. Hero Advantage chapters account for nearly half of the arc at 44.5%, while chapters where Neither side clears account for the bulk of the remaining chapters at 39.5%. Only 15% of the chapters, well under a quarter, are Villain Advantage. For an endgame that wants to be about "saving Villains," only one single chapter (1%) ends with something you could credibly call both sides winning.

Now, of course, the second war is the climax of the whole series, so of you might say that of course the Heroes are going to ultimately do better. They have to win in the end, after all, so of course the arc will eventually feature mostly Hero victories.

I would counter that, while that is true, the story repeatedly tries to convince us that the Heroes are really struggling, that they've lost so many people, that they're at this huge disadvantage that neccessitates the extreme measures they use. And the numbers simply don't back that up, even less than they did in the first war!

If you look at the totals for each volume, Heroes have a wild advantage in two of the first four volumes (the arc is seven volumes in total), numbers the Villains never come close to meeting. There's one volume (the third, Volume 37) where they have the majority of the chapter-ending advantages, and even there, it's a narrow margin. Volume 38 is then a blow-out with not a single Villain Advantage chapter cliffhanger in the whole book, and in the final three volumes of the arc, the Villains get exactly one Advantage chapter per volume.

Not very convincing numbers, if the aim is to convince the reader of how much Plus Extra effort the Heroes are going to have to exert, if you ask me!

Between them, Hero Advantage and Neither chapters make up a shocking 81% of the two war arcs, with merely 18%, less than fifth, of the chapters ending on Villain Advantage beats that could serve to freshly drum up, "Our heroes are really in trouble now!" anxiety.

Looking back to what I said about the Heroes having the bulk of the strategic advantages for both arcs, that surely can't be all that surprising. You can't expect a set-up that slanted to leave much room at all for Villains to get time to shine; they simply don't have the room in the story for that when, for everything they try, the Heroes already have some countermeasure.

As a final comparison, remember I praised MVA back at the start for being gripping in large part because the "Heroes" of that arc, the League of Villains, were at such a disadvantage?

I briefly ran the numbers there, and I'd say, of nineteen chapters that contain active confrontation of some sort between the League and an antagonistic force (Gigantomachia, Ujiko, and the MLA), the League have the chapter-ending advantage beat in four of those chapters: Toga's victory in 226, Twice overcoming his mental block and starting to replicate himself in 229, and the two chapters covering Shigaraki's ultimate victory over Re-Destro, 238 and 239. That's a grand total of 20% "Hero" Advantage chapters for them, and half of those are the arc climax chapters.

The "Villains" for the arc likewise have the ending advantage in 20% of the arc, four chapters: Machia having comprehensively whipped the League at the end of 419, RD making the League an offer they can't refuse in 223, Skeptic pushing all of Twice's buttons in 228, and RD plucking off Shigaraki's fingers in 233.

The remaining eleven chapters—60%—go to the Neither category. Compare that back to the percentages for the war arcs, and you can see that, while the Villain Advantage percentage is similar (~5% higher in the first war and likewise lower in the second), the Hero Advantage is twice the percentage (40+%) in both arcs, while the Neither chapters are accordingly lower (the war arcs are 35% and ~40% Neither respectively).

In other words, the Heroes in the war arcs just straight-up have more chapter-ending awesome moments and reveals, and spend less time facing chapter-ending uncertainty, compared to not just the Villains they're fighting in those arcs, but also compared to what those same Villains got when they were being Heroes for an arc.

And to think, Horikoshi wants me to think his Heroes are being challenged. Pull the other one, Sensei; it's got bells on.

(I welcome anyone else to run similar numbers with e.g. the trainng camp attack or the Hassaikai base raid. For myself, I'm too sleepy to figure out a better ending for this post, so I'm just turning out the lights and hitting the sack. Sorry if there's any formatting wigginess or the closing analysis is lacking; I will clean it up later if need be.)

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

So having never read the Twilight books, but being a big fan of the Twilight fics by yourself and Vinelle, I get the impression that there may be a certain degree of gaslighting and/or misunderstanding going on around Bella and Edward's wedding, their "wedding night" (Edward sleeping with Bella while she's human), and Bella being turned.

I think my understanding is that Bella wants to be turned (preferably by Edward), would like to sleep with Edward (although I'm not sure the degree to which she's set on this being before she's turned), and is very ambivalent to if not against the idea of being married. Edward absolutely does not want Bella turned by anyone, doesn't want to risk sleeping with her while she's human (and therefore is really against ever sleeping with her at all), but does want to marry her if they're going to be together at all (although he'd rather she run off with Jacob to live her "human future"). I'm unclear what exactly the rest of the Cullens understand about all this.

If it's not too much to ask, could you explain your heretical take on what's happening here?

Ah but this is a delightful ask.

And look, @therealvinelle, praise!

What Happened in Canon

You've pretty much hit the nail on the head in regards to Bella and Edward but I should sum it up/make it explicit.

At the end of New Moon, after having vanished for six months, Edward begs Bella to date him again and she agrees. However, Bella wants to be turned into a vampire and immediately has his family vote on the issue. The vote is mostly in her favor, though mixed (with both Edward and Rosalie voting against it), but ultimately Carlisle says he will turn her regardless of Edward or Rosalie's opinion.

Bella, is disappointed as she has always wanted Edward specifically to be the one to turn her. Edward, knowing this, promises to turn Bella himself but only if she agrees to marry him first.

Bella does not immediately say yes, not because she doesn't have feelings for Edward/wish to be with him for eternity, but because she hates the very idea of marriage (she never delves too deep into this but it's highly likely this is due to her being a product of a disastrously young marriage/messy divorce).

The pair spend a few weeks bargaining with each other. Edward asks Bella to consider all the opportunities she'll miss by being a vampire and what she wants to experience while human. Bella considers this, but is unpersuaded by the idea of attending university as a human and doesn't want children (something Edward explicitly brings up as her not being able to do if she's a vampire/living with vampires). However, she decides that she would like to experience making love as a human with Edward. That's it. That's the only thing Bella wants to do as a human and then she can happily turn. This is bad as Edward is highly likely to accidentally kill her in bed. There's then a lot of negotiating about how far the pair can go physically, the marriage, and turning Bella.

On top of this the Jacob love triangle subplot is going on where Jacob's trying to a) convince Bella to stay human and not become a man-eating demon b) tell Bella that she actually loves him and not Edward. This doesn't go anywhere for Jacob save that Edward speaks with him about how, actually, he'd be sad but quite happy if Bella ran off with Jacob to live a human life.

Ultimately though, it all settles with Bella agreeing to marry Edward after all (and have sex with him while human) and Edward then agreeing to turn her but planning to postpone it as long as possible (which doesn't go well as he accidentally gets Bella pregnant with a demon).

So that's our main couple right there, but as you ask, what about the rest of the Cullens.

What Do We Know About the Cullens

Sadly (and this truly is sad, as goddammit I want this so badly) there is only Midnight Sun from Edward's perspective and not the entire series. What I would give to know what terrible shenanigans Edward got up to in Rio or exactly how "talking to his family about how to make love to a woman" went.

So, we only know what Bella knows and what Bella knows is never much as, per Midnight Sun, Edward will not only skew information, leave information out, but will intentionally mislead if not outright lie about what goes on behind the scenes for his own purposes.

(He glossed over a lot of what went on in the Twilight period, a lot.)

Bella doesn't think much about what the Cullens do or don't know or even their opinions. She knows generally that Rosalie dislikes her, she thinks Jasper dislikes her, and she thinks the rest like her or at least like Edward. Bella... doesn't think too much past that.

Which means what I can point to are various things that happen:

Alice plans the wedding (a thoroughly ridiculous and hilarious occasion that sounds like a horrible time for all)

Alice also sends the Volturi a wedding invitation because she saw that they had to be waylaid or else they'd come crash the wedding and say "So, is Bella actually turned yet" and a terrible time would be had by all

Rosalie has spoken to Bella about not turning into a vampire and Bella kind of blew her off

Edward reported that he went to each of his brothers and his father to ask them about sex.

At the wedding, Bella tells Jacob she plans to make love to Edward while human, and Jacob publicly blows his lid and has to be carted out of the wedding with everyone watching (including the Cullens)

Also at the wedding, Bella gets really weird about Jacob and spends about ten minutes slow dancing with him while Edward slow dances with his mother. Everyone was watching, including the Cullens.

Two weeks into the honeymoon, Alice calls Bella because she's disappeared at which point Bella drops "I think I'm pregannanant" (but the way she says it... they may or may not think it's Jacob's...)

To be a completionist, here's what Edward mentions of the behind the scenes with his family on the topic of "making love to a human woman":

He took my face between his hands, still introspective, "I spoke to Carlisle after you and I made our bargain, hoping he could help me. Of course he warned me that this would be very dangerous for you." A shadow crossed his expression. "He had faith in me, though--faith I didn't deserve." I started to protest, and he put two fingers over my lips before I could comment. "I also asked him what I should expect. I didn't know what it would be for me… what with my being a vampire." He smiled halfheartedly. "Carlisle told me it was a very powerful thing, like nothing else. He told me physical love was something I should not treat lightly. With our rarely changing temperaments, strong emotions can alter us in permanent ways. But he said I did not need to worry about that part--you had altered me so completely." This time his smile was more genuine. "I spoke to my brothers, too. They told me it was a very great pleasure. Second only to drinking human blood." A line creased his brow. "But I've tasted your blood, and there could be no blood mroe potent than that… I don't think they were wrong, really. Just that it was different for us. Something more."

Which... there's a lot Edward's not relaying to us. That conversation with Carlisle sounds extremely paraphrased and to me like a very reluctant "well, you have very good control, Edward" and "you should think very very very carefully before having sex. Please."

I think the Cullens have been experiencing emotional whiplash since the start of the saga. The entire series takes place within the course of two years and they barely ever have any idea what's going on.

Edward's suddenly in love, Edward has human girlfriend?!, Edward doesn't have human girlfriend, Edward attempts suicide, Edward is back with human girlfriend who isn't dead?!, We're turning human girlfriend?, they're getting married but Edward doesn't want to turn her...

Midnight Sun they spend the entire novel having no idea what the fuck's happening and constantly trying to get Edward to tell them anything. Edward refuses.

But what they do know at this point is that ultimately, even if Edward doesn't follow through, Carlisle will turn Bella. Some (Alice, Jasper, Carlisle) are probably thinking a much shorter timeframe (lest the Volturi murder them all), Rosalie still wishes for Bella to remain human, and Edward is uh... thinking several decades if at all.

The Heresy

I imagine they're a little confused on why Edward and Bella are publicly marrying if Bella's going to have to disappear and fake her death soon. That will just make Edward the prime suspect, as it's always, always, the husband and Edward doesn't look good on paper (erratic behavior, isolated house where Bella could disappear, quickly marries her after a large absence right out of high school).

(They don't yet realize, mostly because Edward's the bridge between the Cullens and Bella, that Bella doesn't realize what disappearing entails. She truly thinks she can pretend to go to college and then never speak to anyone in person again and that nobody will question why they only hear her through email.)

I imagine they're also confused about the Jacob thing but don't want to go digging into it too much as that's for Edward to handle. And... he seems to be alright?

As for sleeping with Bella while human, I imagine all think it's a bad idea, but Edward has framed it in such a way that they blame Bella/don't want to say anything. Bella's insisting, it's the one thing she wants as a human, Edward has to do this for her...

So, I imagine they try to tell themselves Edward has good enough control and... try not to think about it (I imagine there's a lot of staring at Alice during that honeymoon period, waiting to see if Bella's been pulvarized or not yet).

Basically, the Cullens are that dog floating in space who has no idea what he's doing. EDIT

Anon reminded me that we don't know what Carlisle said.

After anon corrected me again, I edited the post to include the scene.

[8bitsupervillain]

Higurashi When They Cry Hou Ch. 7 Minagoroshi pt. 18

Should I refer to these as Watanagashi hijinks, since it’s after midnight and all? Guess that’s the age old question isn’t it, is it actually a new day when twelve midnight rolls around? Or is it only a new day when you go to sleep and wake up?

Considering their plan is literally called Operation Doomsday what really does it matter if the time of death for Miyo Takano doesn’t quite add up? I wonder why the people in charge of the research into Hinamizawa Syndrome decided Tomitake had to die? Was it just a cover so they could pin the suspicion on Irie and the Irie Clinic, or was there some deeper motive to taking him out? Is it really just the rogue element of those in charge of the entire operation, financially and otherwise, just decided they wanted to take out members of the other faction? Such speculation unfortunately will have to remain that way for the foreseeable future, I don’t recall if they ever bring up Tomitake, and the motives behind his death for the remainder of the chapter.

I also don’t know if they really delve into what the eighteen specific classified documents Takano was meant to secure are. I think it’s fair to assume that they’re to do with the research into Hinamizawa Syndrome that she and Irie had compiled in the years they’d been running the institute. But again I’m not sure if they ever really go into specifics in this chapter. I think it’s just the body of research they’d made over the past few years, but I don’t remember specifically at the moment.

Since the Mountain Dogs/Takano are responsible for propagating the myth of Oyashiro I do wonder if this means they are the ones responsible for the disappearance of Satoshi. Also if they’re the ones behind it all, does that mean that they actually killed Tamae Houjou? It stands to reason since Takano at the very least is behind trying to spread the legend of Oyashiro that would explain how Rika’s dad died of a “mysterious disease.” She mentions when she injected Tomitake that there’s a chance at the highest levels of infection with H173 that he could become disabled for life. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a terminal infection that shuts down one or more major organs, but there’s a chance that’s what it could do.

My theory now is that Takano, and the Mountain Dogs, are responsible for at least three of the five years worth of Watanagashi killings/disappearances. There’s proof that the first killing was just a drunken argument that escalated far beyond reasonability. The only year I’m not certain on is the second years sacrifices of Satoko and Satoshi’s parents. It makes sense on paper that they’d be responsible there as well, but I’m just unclear on the motive, or when exactly Takano got control of the Mountain Dogs (due to information read in Chapter Eight: Matsuribayashi I estimate it happened around 1981). Why the Houjous had to goujou makes sense, it’s playing on the long-standing idea that the Houjou family were traitors to Hinamizawa. But again, this is just speculation on my part, I don’t believe it actually gets into the details as yet.

I know that it said Takano wanted to dump the bike along with Tomitake. But I like to imagine she dumped him wherever, drove a bit and got into a comically exaggerated fiasco of getting the bike out of her car before just flinging the damn thing away, going “good enough” and meeting up with her military contacts. Not every thought I have regarding this series is a serious well thought out thing, sometimes I like to imagine the characters having to bumble their way through stupid scenes. Or I’ll have a thought about “which character from another franchise would I imagine stuck in the Hinamizawa time loop?” The only one that really came to mind was Alan Wake, and I can’t really justify why. But at the time I just thought it was hilarious thinking of Alan just waking up being forced to deal with all the goings-on within Hinamizawa and just blasting someone away with his revolver. I should probably finish Alan Wake 2…

I do occasionally wonder if some of these confirmations are only there to make sure everyone is more or less caught up to speed? Based on previous interactions when Ooishi has Irie look at Tomitake’s body, did anyone really believe Irie actually knew nothing? Although, based on Irie’s internal monologue here I can’t help but wonder, when did they make H173? Going off of other information it must have been a relatively recent invention, because up until Takano and Irie started their research on it in earnest it was implied that there wasn’t much to go on in terms of Hinamizawa Syndrome. Just the research journals of Hifumi Takano, and precious little else. I believe they mention it towards the end of the chapter that the Clinic got a hold of the ringleader of the first dam murder, and they were able to do some research on the parasite that way, but I don’t recall them mentioning having a way to weaponize it at that point. So it must have been sometime between 1981 and 82, right? Or maybe I’m just pulling dates and times out of thin air, and I’m entirely off-base.

It’s true, in Meakashi/Watanagashi he does show up and interact more with Shion than he did the others. He also talked with Keiichi a bit, but he tried to get information from Shion after the disappearance of Satoshi Houjou.

I can’t help but wonder, in these timelines when Ooishi suspects Rika, does he actually think Rika did the deed? Or does he think she just ordered someone to carry it out for her? Perhaps maybe she had someone from the Sonozaki group carry it out? Because if it’s the former we all know that alternate universe Tomitake and Takano got away alive because Rika is a terrible assassin.

It sure is a wild coincidence though that Ooishi is instantly overcome with doubt about the situation with Takano and Tomitake. Professional skepticism for the fact that “Takano’s” body was in fact someone who died a day before it was found?

[dailyunsolvedmysteries-movedd]

The True Story of the Boise Murder House

805 W Linden Street in Boise, Idaho, its covered in a layer of soot, with windows broken and boarded up and trash strewn about the yard, the 2-story, 2,728 square-foot Craftsman-style home looks like an abandoned horror movie set. 

Known commonly as the Boise Murder House, the home is also sometimes referred to by locals as the Chop-Chop House, a glib reference to the gruesome homicide that took place there more than three decades ago. In the early morning hours of June 30th, 1987, 37-year-old Daniel Rodgers and 31-year-old Daron Cox shot and killed 21-year-old Preston Murr in the basement of Rodgers’s home at 805 W Linden Street. The two men then used an axe and knife to dismember his corpse, wrapped the pieces in plastic bags, and drove to the Idaho-Oregon border to dump the body parts in the Brownlee Reservoir. Horrifying as the facts of the crime are, there is one detail more haunting than the rest: Murr almost escaped.

According to court documents, an altercation broke out around midnight between the three men and Murr was shot in the shoulder by one of the two others. Having somehow managed to flee the home, he ran to a nearby house and banged on the door begging for help, but no one answered. The neighbor inside did call the police, however. He reported hearing pounding on his door, as well as someone screaming “let go of me,” followed by an anguished yell. Peeking out his window, he saw someone chasing Murr, eventually catching him and dragging him back into the basement of Rodger’s home, where he was fatally shot in the back of the head.

Though police never responded that night, they were called again the next morning by the same neighbor who asked officials to come investigate blood on his screen door. The blood found throughout the neighborhood—on sidewalks and at least one other neighboring house—further painted a harrowing picture of Murr’s desperate attempt to escape his murderers the night before. While the crime scene has long since been cleaned up, a dark legacy lingers around 805 W Linden Street to this day.

It’s unclear what happened to the house in the immediate years after Rodgers was sent to the Idaho State Correctional Center to serve out a life sentence without parole, but property records available online list a new owner, James Howell, as of 2000. Howell has since rented the house to a number of tenants and, given its proximity to Boise State University, it’s become a popular choice among students seeking off-campus housing. As a result, local lore about the house has a decidedly collegiate flair: One persistent rumor claims that fraternity brothers have reported seeing blood dripping down the walls of the basement for years. While there is no truth to this tale—and 805 W Linden was never an official frat house—many former residents say there is something “off” about the space.

“The basement was creepy and had a weird feel. We would take people down there to scare them. I never saw any ghosts but you could tell something wasn't right,” Joe W., a former BSU student, told a local radio station, 107.9 LITE FM. Another Boise resident, Rachel R., told the station that her family almost bought the house back in 2000, and to this day she still gets anxious when thinking about their tour of the home. “It looked like it had been abandoned and the basement was by far the creepiest part,” she said. But of all the accounts shared with 107.9, the strangest tale, submitted by Dan D., goes well beyond the basement.

According to his story, one night Dan and his friend thought they heard someone trying to break into the house. When they went out to the front porch to check things out, no one was there. After looking around the front yard, Dan turned to face the house and saw a “big black oily looking thing” in the window of a bedroom upstairs. He remembers seeing the shadow-y figure move back from the window and towards the bedroom door before it disappeared. Shortly after, it reappeared outside in a mirror sitting on the porch. Dan watched as the “ball of oily blackness” moved down the large column of the porch, slowly growing in size until it took up the entire reflection of the mirror and moved right through him. “It was the weirdest, most disturbing thing I've ever felt and just typing this makes me feel it again. It's like ice fingers sinking into my shoulders,” he said.

[indeedcaptain]

Spirktober 2023, day 10: Chess

Hello! Good morning! Baby's first smutty fic! Behold: our two favorite gentlemen have a long-overdue conversation and then get physical about it. This is the follow-up chapter to Home.

Also posted on AO3 here.

Content warnings: explicit sex ahead!

☆☆☆

The train ride from San Francisco to Riverside was four hours long, and Spock spent his time fielding questions from instructors whose schedules James’s impulses had also derailed. 

>STS: My deepest apologies regarding my unexpected absence. The captain requested my assistance with a time-sensitive project. 

>CPike2: Once upon a time I was also your captain?? What am I supposed to do with all these cadets??

>STS: Teach them, perhaps? I was under the impression that it was your job to do so.

>CPike2: The youth were looking forward to hearing stories from the big mission. Tell your new captain he owes me big time 

>STS: He says he is sending you ‘a little something-something.’ The reason for the linguistic reduplication is unclear. 

>CPike2: Tell him to make it the good stuff 

>CPike2: Merry christmas, you two

☆☆☆

James spent most of the ride staring happily out the window at the country rolling past. “I love the mountains,” he sighed, multiple times. “Iowa’s got little ones, compared to the Rockies. Have you ever been out here?” 

“Once,” Spock said. “My mother wanted to go camping.” 

“Did you enjoy it?”

Spock recalled sleeping on the ground while his mother snored softly nearby, but he also recalled how excited she had been to introduce him to Earth’s breadth of bird species. “I did,” he said. “It was a unique experience.” 

James snorted. His padd dinged twice in short succession, and he dug it out of his backpack. The message on the screen made his face fall. 

“Is everything alright?” Spock asked. 

“Yes, fine,” James said, but he was lying. Spock watched him until he relented. “Yes, it’s fine, it’s just… My family was supposed to be coming into town as well. But my mother’s ship was delayed in spacedock, and she’s not sure if they’ll make it in time.”

“Oh,” Spock said. He had not considered the idea that James’s family would also be around on this visit. He had never met them, but now that he was exposed to the opportunity he found himself curious about the people who had raised James. James had returned to watching out the window, but his lips were pressed into a thin line. “It is not logical to mourn something that has not yet come to pass,” Spock said quietly. “There are still ten days between now and the holiday.” 

“You’re right,” James said. His eyes remained distant, locked on the forests rolling by. 

“Will this be your first Christmas at home since your brother passed?” Spock asked, and when James’s eyes flicked to him he knew he had isolated part of the issue. Even when the captain spoke of the events that had transpired on Deneva, he never mentioned Sam or his wife, Aurelian. Spock did not know if they were close, or if something had happened between them, but he did understand the grief of losing a sibling. 

“I grieve with thee, James,” Spock said, and James leaned towards him for a moment, their shoulders pressing together. They stayed like that for a moment until James’s eyes flicked to him again. 

“James?” he said, half a smile pulling up the corner of his lips. 

Spock raised one eyebrow. “I like your given name.” James smiled and said, “Well, it’s better than you calling me captain the whole time,” and turned back to the window. 

☆☆☆

They arrived in Iowa just after midnight. Iowa was precisely as cold as Spock had thought it would be: he had looked up the weather forecast ahead of time. What surprised him, then, was how unpleasant it felt. He had not changed into something warmer than his robes before he had allowed James to drag him to the hypertrain, and he realized now that that had been an illogical oversight. The cold wind blew straight through Spock’s robes. He shivered until he was able to summon the requisite control to prevent the autonomic response. James hired a taxi to take them home, and within minutes they were on their way. 

The farmhouse was visible from two miles away, the only feature on the flat land. James pulled something up on his padd and pressed a few buttons, and Spock watched as the windows lit up from within. It looked warm and inviting. It was a stronghold against the cold, the only sanctuary for miles from the driving wind. The winter grasses that covered the fields around the house blew nearly horizontal with the force of the gusts. The taxi pulled up to the front stoop, deposited the men and their bags outside the house, and departed into the night, its taillights visible until it vanished over the crest of a gentle hill. James lifted his chin into the wind and inhaled deeply. 

“Snow’s coming,” he said happily, and he unlocked the door and led them inside. 

☆☆☆

James took Spock on a tour through the house. The downstairs consisted of a living room with both a holo projector and two bookshelves filled with actual paper books, a kitchen, and a dining room. The upstairs contained the four bedrooms and a bathroom. 

“My parents,” James said, pointing at one door. “My room. Guest room - that’s you. And,” he paused, staring at the last door. “That’s Sam’s room.” He shook his head and pointed to the last door. “That’s the head.” He opened the door he’d indicated for Spock. 

It was nice. It reminded Spock of his mother’s office in his family’s compound on Vulcan. She had liked to keep art and photographs rotating through the frames she’d somehow applied to the sandstone walls. This room was similar: there were prints of Earth flora and fauna, a bed, bedside tables, and a small dresser. 

“Thank you,” Spock said. He set his bag down at the foot of the bed. 

“If you need anything, just holler,” James said. He leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms, smiling at Spock. “You know, I thought I was doing you a favor by bringing you out here. But now, I think you might be the one doing me one. I don’t know what I would do without you, rattling around this house by myself.” He lifted one hand like he might reach out, before closing it into a fist and tucking it back into the crook of his elbow. Spock found himself desperately curious about what James would have done with that hand if he hadn’t stopped himself. “See you in the morning, Spock.” 

“Good night, captain,” Spock said softly. James waved the title away with one hand and vanished into his room. Spock stood in the doorway.

Perhaps it was not his wisest decision to be alone with James unsupervised. 

☆☆☆

The smell of coffee brewing downstairs woke Spock from the deepest sleep he’d experienced since disembarking from the Enterprise. He pulled a robe over his sleep clothes and followed the smell downstairs. 

There was coffee brewing on the counter, and a skillet full of scrambled eggs on the stove. James stood in the center of it all, wearing plaid pajama pants and a loose t-shirt, and his feet were bare against the wooden floor. 

Spock cleared his throat, and James turned. His hair was uncombed and he held a rubber spatula in one hand. “Good morning,” he said, grinning broadly. “Unreplicated eggs?” 

It smelled delicious. “Thank you, captain,” Spock said, and received a plate full of food and a mug of coffee from James. 

“I was serious about the snowbank,” James said, and sat across from him at the kitchen table. “We’re off duty, and we’re friends. Call me Jim.” 

James asked him about the experiments he was supposed to be running, the classes he was supposed to be dropping in on, and in return Spock asked him about what the admiralty had wanted. James’s tirade against bureaucracy was well-argued, coherent and persuasive, but Spock could not focus on rebutting any of it effectively. 

Spock did not call him ‘captain,’ but neither did he call him by name. ‘Captain’ was the shield between James and Spock’s sentiments towards him, but James didn’t know that. Spock thought about James cooking barefoot in the kitchen, James with his hair unbrushed, in his pajamas, not a uniform to be seen, the persona of the formidable captain abandoned in California to reveal just the reality of the man here with him--- 

Spock resigned himself to frequent meditation until they returned to San Francisco. 

☆☆☆

Besides the Starfleet production yard, there was less to Riverside than Spock might have expected. The town revolved around starship production, and had built itself for the people who worked and lived there. James took Spock to a few of his old haunts: a restaurant where he had been a busboy in his youth, the library that had introduced him to a few of his interests, and an antique store that his mother loved. 

“Look at this, Spock,” James breathed. He was bent in half, buried up to his hips in a trunk in the back of the store, and Spock stood beside him and caught the more fragile things that he tossed out. James wrestled out of the grasp of the trunk and revealed his treasure: a traditional Earth chessboard. It was carved of a deep brown wood, with lighter brown inlays for the white squares; in his other hand he clutched a bag of matching pieces. He marched triumphantly to the clerk and purchased it immediately. 

“No returns,” she said. 

“It won’t be necessary,” he said, and grinned at Spock over his shoulder. 

☆☆☆

“There are pieces missing!” James cried in dismay, counting the pieces again where he had dumped the bag onto the kitchen table. Spock fought the urge within himself to march back to the store and dig in the chest again, to argue with the clerk, or to whittle new pieces himself just so that James would stop looking so distraught. 

Spock peered through the pieces. There were only three missing - two pawns on the black side, and a bishop on the white. “We could cut out pieces of paper and write the piece names on them. Or memorize where they are and keep track of them thus.” 

“I won’t be playing psychic chess with a certain someone’s eidetic memory, but thank you,” James said. “Wait! Do you want white or black?” 

“I won our last match. I will take white,” Spock said. James turned to the replicator in the wall and returned with two shots of some sparkling brown liquid and one shot of --- Spock sniffed it. 

“Is this chocolate syrup?” 

“Yes, Spock,” James said, smiling wryly. “It’s the holidays. We might as well loosen up a little.” 

“The holidays, as you say, are not for another nine days.” 

“We can get an early start.” 

They set up the board between them on the couch, Spock at one end and James at the other. Spock moved first: the T’Lakian opening, named for the Vulcan woman who created it and was reigning Federation champion for a period of time. James immediately sacrificed one of his whiskey pawns and took his shot. 

“It’s not as good as the real thing, but it does the job,” James said. 

“The job of making your strategy even more illogical than usual?”

“The job of reducing stress and facilitating merriment.” 

“If you insist, captain,” Spock said, and watched as James frowned at him. His nose crinkled in a way that made Spock want to smooth it with his mouth. 

Spock thought he was holding the strategic advantage until James took his bishop and he realized he had been playing to win and James had been playing to make Spock drink. James nudged Spock’s foot with his own. “Drink,” he said, but Spock was more interested in the flash of warmthcontentmentwant that he had sensed through the brief contact. 

He immediately reassessed several conditions that had gone previously uninterrogated. James was in frequent communication with his own mother. James had invited him to his home for the holidays, where Spock would meet his family. James frequently touched Spock in an affectionate manner. James wanted Spock to relax and drink chocolate with him. James felt desire, right now, when it was just the two of them and the chessboard between them.

In all the months since Spock realized that his feelings for his captain were more than platonic, it had not occurred to him to consider the possibility that they were requited. If this were true, he did not intend to waste any more time. But first he required more information. 

He lifted the shotglass to his lips and poured it into his mouth, and as he tipped his head back he saw James’s eyes follow his hands, his mouth, and the line of his throat. He set the little glass on the coffee table, and James smiled at him, warm and comfortable. Spock nudged James’s foot with his. 

“I believe it is your turn, Jim.” Through their contact, Spock felt the same warm flow of emotion from James that he had before: the usual warmth, companionship, friendship that he felt whenever James touched him… but now, unearthed from beneath those, the unmistakable heat of desire. Spock had him in checkmate in five more moves. 

“A good game,” James said, and he leaned back against the couch. 

“If you say so. Were you distracted, Jim?”

James’s eyes met his over the chessboard and he shifted where he sat. “Perhaps a little.” 

“What distracted you?” 

Spock watched James’s breathing pattern change, growing more erratic. Was he nervous? Excited? Uncomfortable? He wanted to touch James, to ascertain his emotions for himself, but he did not want to take any more knowledge that James was not willing to give. 

James picked up one of the pieces --- the black queen --- and ran a fingertip over her elegant crown. “Curiosity, I suppose.” 

“About what?” 

James shifted again and clenched the black queen in his hand. “Spock, I must say that I did not anticipate you agreeing to travel with me.” 

“You did not? Why?” 

“You had your schedule! You had your whole plan for the leave all planned out, all arranged. I expected to see you, argue with you about what was logical and what wasn’t, and to go home alone.” 

“Why did you ask, then, if you expected my refusal?” 

“Because I wanted--- I wanted you to come with me. If I didn’t ask, the answer was always no. If I did, at least I gave it a good shot.” 

“You wanted me to come home with you and meet your family.” 

James’s eyes were always so expressive. Spock saw immediately that he hadn’t realized that Spock had realized what the message of delay on the train meant for their trip. He opened his mouth, hesitated, and closed it again. He smiled wryly, but he didn’t meet Spock’s gaze. “I suppose that’s right.”

“But then I did agree to accompany you.” 

“Yes, you did. And why was that?”

There was no logic in pretending he was not willing to follow James most places if asked. “I have been allowing you to disrupt my plans for two years, four months, and thirteen days. I saw no reason to break the habit.”

“And yet you always manage to surprise me. Yes, I wanted you to meet my family. I wanted to share Riverside with you. I wanted you to see snow, and have a real shore leave, and be with someone who loves you for the holidays instead of by yourself, working.” With each desire revealed, James gestured emphatically, his broad, tanned hands cutting through the air. Spock was frozen in his seat. James loved him. The rush he had felt at learning of James’s desire fell away in the face of this greater discovery. James’s face went pale as he looked at Spock and realized what he had said. 

“I’m sorry, Spock, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I just wanted---,” and he sighed through his nose, tangling his fingers together in his lap. “I don’t know what I wanted.” 

Spock placed all the pieces of the chess set back onto the board and moved it to the coffee table, avoiding the abandoned shot glasses. James watched him move the board with some sort of apathy, or resignation. Spock wanted to kiss that look off his face, but he needed James to say it first. 

“You do not know what you want?” With the chess set out of the way, Spock moved forward onto the middle cushion of the couch. He angled himself directly at James, watching him. 

“No, I do, I just---,” James said, and he licked his lips. Spock tracked the movement. James’s eyes narrowed for a fraction of a second as he watched Spock in return, and he turned fully to Spock. “I know what I want. But I don’t want it at the risk of what I already have.” 

“And if you could have everything?” 

“If I could--- Spock, please. Are we on the same page here?” James’s face was torn between painfully hopeful and frightened. 

“I believe so,” Spock said. He lifted one hand, slowly, so that James saw his intention and could stop him if he wanted, and raised it to caress James’s cheek. But he leaned into it, closing his eyes, before turning his head to brush his lips against Spock’s palm. The dry rasping of Jim’s stubble and the softness of his lips against Spock’s palm made him shudder. 

He slid his hand back, wrapping his fingers around the back of James’s neck, and pulled his captain to him. James leaned forward, and his lips met Spock’s with a quiet inhale. For a moment they sat there, lips pressed together. Through Spock’s hands he could feel James’s anticipation, and anxiety, and desire, and his love, and he estimated that he had an unfair advantage over James, who had no similar understanding of what Spock felt.

Spock intended to rectify that. He tightened his hand on the back of James’s head and opened his mouth, feeling James’s fall open in response. Spock heard James drop the black queen onto the ground beside the couch. He brought his other hand to James’s shoulder and raised himself up on his knees, pushing towards James, sliding his tongue into James’s mouth. James gasped, falling back against the arm of the couch, hands coming up to slide reverently over Spock’s side, where his heartbeat thrummed, running up his back, gliding through his hair. James’s hands were rough. His callouses caught on the fabric of his shirt. Spock wanted to feel them on his skin. 

He slid his mouth from James’s to press kisses along the side of his face, down his jaw, and against his neck. He understood that this area was sensitive, and so he licked a stripe from James’s collarbone up to the spot behind his ear. James arched up against him, whispering, “Jesus Christ, Spock.” 

“Is this acceptable, James?” Spock asked. James nodded fervently. 

“Yes,” he breathed. “I didn’t expect--- I didn’t think that you felt like this. How long…?” 

Spock was intoxicated on the scent of James’s skin, sweat and musk and the subtle tang of arousal. “Two years, one month, and eleven days,” he said into James’s neck. James wrapped his arms around Spock’s back and pulled him down to lay on his chest. Spock could feel his heartbeat through his shirt. James left one arm around his back, hand sliding under the hem of his shirt to rest against his skin, and brushed Spock’s hair away from his forehead with his other hand. “So long?” he asked. Spock nodded. 

“Do you remember Trelane?” James asked. Spock nodded again. “He saw in my mind what I hadn’t realized for myself, and then he pointed a gun at you.” James tightened his arm around Spock. “That’s when I knew.” 

“The emotion infection revealed it to me,” Spock offered. “I understood two things that day: that I should have been kinder to my mother, and that I loved you.” 

James kissed the top of Spock’s head. It was a baffling gesture, one that he had not experienced since early childhood. But it felt comforting, and warm. It felt like physical evidence of James’s love. 

“We might be too stubborn to be alive,” James said. “So much time…” 

“I do not intend to waste any more,” Spock said, and he shifted up onto his elbow so that he could see James’s face. When he leaned in to kiss him for the second time, there was no period of adjustment. James opened his mouth to him, and their tongues slid against each other. James sucked his bottom lip in between his teeth, scraping it gently, and the noise Spock made surprised them both. 

“I enjoyed that,” Spock said. He could feel his face flushing but could not summon the control to prevent it. 

“I did too,” said James. “I’d like to do it again.” He took Spock by the hand --- and that contact was not doing anything to help him maintain control --- and led him upstairs. James opened the door to his room, revealing an astonishing amount of navy blue decor but very little in the way of personal effects. He pulled Spock in, closed the door behind them, and stepped into Spock’s personal space, face tilted upwards. Spock closed the distance between them.

“I’d like to see you,” James said when they broke apart. He was breathing heavily, and a pink flush had risen on his cheeks. 

“I---” Spock did not know how to phrase what he wanted to say. His control had fled from him, leaving behind just his desire and his anxiety. He wanted to continue. He was afraid of disappointing James. 

Like he always did, James guessed at what Spock needed. “Have you ever done this before?” Spock shook his head. “Let me help,” he said, and he was gentle as he removed Spock’s shirt, pulling it over his head, before sliding his hand into the waist of his trousers and pulling them off. Spock tugged James’s shirt off, and marveled at the expanse of chest and hair and shoulders. He had seen the captain shirtless before, but never like this. Never for him. 

The lights were off, but the moon was full and bright outside the window, and it cast James in a silvery light. It illuminated his tousled hair, the slope of his shoulders and stomach, the strength of his thighs, and his--- 

Spock was looking at his captain’s cock. He was being invited and encouraged to do so. He was going to be allowed to look, and touch, and put it in his mouth, and perhaps feel it inside him. He shivered. 

“Jesus, Spock,” James said. He stared at him openly. “You’re beautiful.” James stepped forward and ran a hand over his shoulder, down his arm, and took his hand. He lifted Spock’s hand and, looking up at Spock, folded his hand into the shape of the ozh’esta and pressed his two fingers against Spock’s. Spock closed his eyes against the onslaught of emotion and sensation: Jim’s awe and desire and excitement, his pride, the rough ridges of his fingertips against Spock’s, the warmth of his hand against Spock’s wrist---

When Spock opened his eyes again, he was fully erect. “Is this okay?” James whispered, and Spock nodded. 

“You may have to take the lead in this situation, James,” Spock said. “This time.” 

“It would be my pleasure,” James said, and his grin was slightly feral. “Do you want to keep going?” 

Spock nodded, and James led him to the bed. He pushed him down and crawled over him, predatory, straddling Spock’s thighs. He leaned forward to kiss him, and Spock sat up to meet him, and James took both of them in one hand. Spock’s head dropped backwards and he bit down on his lip to keep himself from whimpering aloud as he thrust upward into James’s hand. 

“Hey,” James whispered against his neck. “It’s just us. You don’t have to be quiet. I want to hear you.” He rolled his wrist, stroking them both, and Spock released his lip from his teeth. James kissed the noises out of his mouth and kept time with his hand and his hips against Spock’s. Spock matched his rhythm, hands roaming over his back and chest and through his hair, and too soon he could feel release building at the base of his spine. It was too soon. He wasn’t ready for this to be over. He pulled James’s hand off of them, wrapped an arm around his back, and flipped them. 

James looked up at him from the pillow, absolutely trusting, and Spock ground his hips down against him to watch him writhe. “May I…?” Spock asked, and crawled backwards down the bed, dragging the skin of his torso against James’s cock. James nodded, breathless, until Spock took his penis into his mouth. He had done enough research, alone in his quarters, to understand the mechanics, and he applied them comprehensively. What he was not prepared for was how dizzyingly erotic James’s response would be. He arched off the bed, knees bending, pushing his cock further into Spock’s mouth, and his breathy, half-vocalized gasp nearly brought Spock’s own orgasm to a head. He pinned Jim’s hips to the bed and sucked him, drinking in the noises James made and the way he gasped Spock’s name. 

After one hundred sixty-three seconds of the most addicting noises that Spock had ever heard in his life, James threaded his hand through Spock’s hair and pulled him off. Precome and saliva dripped from his penis and Spock’s lip, and Spock wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. 

“You’re going to be the death of me,” James whispered. “What do you want?” 

He wanted James. He wanted them to be bonded, married, devoted to each other until they were returned to the stars. But he thought that might be a conversation best had sober and unaroused, so he said, “You, James. Please.” 

James flipped them over again and fumbled in his dresser drawer for a small bottle. “Did you foresee this scenario, James?” Spock asked as he flipped the cap open. 

“A man can dream,” James said, and grinned. He arranged Spock’s legs how he wanted them and slicked a finger. “Are you ready?” Spock nodded and braced himself. 

He was not ready. He had not considered the implications of touch telepathy inside his body, with his beloved James’s finger inside him, the positive feedback loop of his physical reaction and James’s lust in response to seeing him spread echoing between them until he was pulled as tight as a bowstring. 

“Please,” he panted, but James said, “Not yet,” and started working another finger inside. Logically, Spock knew that this was his first time, and James was a caring and conscientious man who was only trying to ensure his physical safety and pleasure. Physically, he felt like he was being tortured. By the time James had worked him up to three fingers comfortably, his cock was leaking precome against his stomach and he had forgotten how to speak Standard except for “James” and “please.”

“You are so beautiful,” James said again, and sucked a hickey into Spock’s neck. “I can’t believe I get to see you like this, take you, have you.” He kissed Spock’s ear as he applied lubricant to himself. “I can’t believe this is your first time. You’re doing so well.” He nipped at the tip of Spock’s ear, and as Spock arched up off the bed he caught Spock’s hips and nudged himself inside. 

Spock stilled, adjusting. He felt the stretch, certainly, and he was now more grateful for James’s insistence on preparation than he had been previously. But most of all he felt full, and could feel James’s pulse within him. 

“Are you okay?” James whispered. Spock nodded, and experimentally wrapped his legs around James’s waist. James allowed him to pull him in another inch. It burned, but pleasantly. He applied more pressure, feeling James slide smoothly within him, until he was buried to the hilt. He felt his body adjust to the intrusion, accepting the presence of him, until it was almost comfortable. He shifted his hips, and whatever James hit inside him made his bones sing. “Move, James,” Spock said, and he did. 

It was a sensation unlike any other that Spock had previously experienced, and he reorganized every long-term plan he had ever created in order to accommodate having sex with James as frequently as possible instead. He could feel James’s muscles moving under his hands, the scrape of his leg and chest hair against Spock’s, his hot breath against his shoulder, and overpowering it all the feeling of fullness and completion.

There would be no slowing down this time. Every thrust pressed the head of James’s cock against his prostate. Spock pressed one hand against James’s shoulder, holding him close to him, and cradled his face with the other. He watched James’s face as he fucked him, memorizing the shape of his mouth and the noises he made. 

His orgasm approached. “James, I---,” Spock gasped. James swore softly. He drove deeper into Spock, and caught his eye. He was asking a question, and even not knowing what it was Spock nodded. Whatever James wanted, he wanted. James turned his head, caught two of Spock’s fingers in his mouth, and sucked. Through the contact, as clearly as if James had said it aloud, Spock heard him think, “I love you.” Spock came immediately, arching off the bed, crying out James’s name as release swept through him. He felt James follow after, thrusting into him once more before slowing, lowering himself onto Spock’s chest without pulling out. 

“Holy shit,” James breathed, and the warm air of his breath gusted over Spock and made him shiver. “Yes,” Spock said. His voice was unsteady. He wrapped his arms around James and squeezed him to him, heedless of the come drying on his chest or leaking out of him. 

They lay in contented silence for a moment, until Spock remarked, “We should have ended all chess matches in such a manner.” James’s surprised laughter shook them both, and he pulled gently out of Spock and led them to the bathroom to shower.  

In the hallway again, afterwards, Spock hesitated. He was not sure of the appropriate postcoital custom: would he be invited to share James’s bed? Or would he be expected to maintain his own room? James stopped with him. He looked unsure. Spock made up his mind to ask just as James started talking.

“What would you prefer---”

“Do Vulcans snuggle---” 

They both broke off, James smiling at their overlap. He took Spock’s hand again and ran his thumb over his knuckles. “I would like it if you slept with me. But there’s no pressure --- you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

“I would like to,” Spock said. He followed James back into his bedroom, which now smelled of sweat and orgasm, and allowed James to tuck him into the covers and slide in behind him. James kissed his shoulder, and they fell asleep wrapped around each other, like they would never be parted again.

[tobiasdrake]

We've done a once-over of the crime scene. Let's talk about the body discovery.

So the crime happened overnight.

That will be the titular Dog, then. It wasn't referring to Yakou.

Oh my god, the animation on that dog is nightmarish! Completely different art style from everything else in Kanai Ward. @.@

Sugar did it. Sugar is our culprit. Only a monster would look like that.

Are you the killer? She might not like you because she knew you had vile intentions. Have you considered that?

Then in theory, it should be your perspective that we see Postcognition through. Did you break the fish tanks? Because if they were already broken then....

Did nobody stop to ask how a man drowned in a broken, empty fish tank? Am I really the only person to find that suspicious?

Well, I guess Tetra finds that suspicious too. That's why she turned to us.

Regardless of their financial value, killing them wouldn't make sense from a financial perspective. I guess if Pops caught someone trying to steal the fish and replace them with cheaper ones, maybe?

The fish all ended up dead on the floor. Wouldn't make much sense to smash the tanks if the killer wanted to steal them. I guess they could have stolen the fish, replaced them with cheaper fish, then broken the tanks to disguise the theft?

I dunno, this feels like I'm barking up the wrong true. It's way too over-complicated.

See, Yakou thinks it's possible. It's worth keeping in mind but I'm not putting all of my eggs in that basket.

Someone wanting to kill the fish out of spite because Pops loved them oh so much could also make sense as a motive for Tetra. It'd explain the assault on the tanks. But the fact that she went out of her way to hire us so we could investigate a case the Peacekeepers consider closed? Yeah, that makes for a strong alibi.

Right now, my chief explanation for the destruction of the tanks was to explain away all the water on the floor.

What's getting me is the sound. You'd think going through and bashing in tank after tank after tank would be a time-consuming and incredibly loud process. Did Tetra and Jeryn really not hear anything?

Hm. If the tanks were destroyed before the murder, then maybe the sound could have been used to bait Pops?

Eight hours passed between the murder and the time of first discovery. That's a large allotment of time for things to have happened.

Eleven hours overall elapsed between when he was last seen and when his body was discovered.

May we speak to the servant? "Whereabouts unknown but probably not here" isn't an alibi.

Both Jeryn and Tetra can provide alibis for one another between 8 and midnight. The murder didn't take place until 10. In theory, that clears Jeryn of suspicion. But we're standing in a room that was half-filled with water for unclear reasons, with serious causal questions surrounding the markings on the vent, the sticky marks on the door, and the shattered fish tanks. This is not a normal mystery.

If Pops was killed via some sort of mechanism, the killer wouldn't necessarily need to be present in the room for it to take place.

So. Tetra and Jeryn have alibis. Servant has no alibi as of yet. But an alibi does not necessarily preclude one from guilt.

Did anyone hear the repeating sound of breaking glass at any point? Come on, Yakou, ask the important question.

There it is. Thank you.

Is it possible that this room is soundproofed?

What was Sugar doing while the crime was taking place?

So he smashed all the tanks, then electrocuted himself, then drowned in the empty, broken tank. Do I have that all correct?

Hm. Seems legit. Don't see any flaws in that logic.

[wartieingreek]

doing update of this i did not too long ago, just want to include more and make it more accurate (Please be aware for any of my Sins (Kiwano, Yellow Rose, Dicentra, Begonia, Fly Trap, Petunia, Jabuticaba) I will be using their Pre-Gem versions (aka the start of their lore :3) to not have the really strong Sin stuff in it :3)

(As usual, Beast Ancients au belongs to @cuppajj :3)

ALIVE:

Teal Shard Cookie - Hiding out in a cave, scared out of his mind. He’s witnessed the forces growing ever nearer and is in a constant state of panic. To whatever God may be listening to him, make it quick.

Gallane Squire Cookie - A loyal warrior amongst Midnight Lily’s forest, serving her with no questions asked. He may be slightly skeptical, but he does not voice them.

Fool’s Goldenberry Cookie - Staying with the Cookies of Darkness, working especially with the cake hounds, raising them at their younger years. He’s been feeling a little uneasy, but it’s likely a cold or stomach bug, right?

Burnt Shrapnel Cookie - Scouring the arid outskirts of the Parmesan Desert, aware of Celestial Cheese. She keeps her distance from the Neo-Beast, however, not wanting to succumb to whatever would happen, just in case.

Haemoglobin Cookie - Already being alone on a island, not too far from the Licorice Sea grants some confort, but the noticeable change in it’s behaviour has his raised concerns. Their eyes and ears stay on alert, just in case.

Begonia Cookie - Her heart has been shredded, having witnessed his girlfriend’s death before his eyes. She’s absolutely ruined mentally, hiding out in the woods, holding a remnant of Dicentra in her hair.

Kiwano Cookie - Being good at hiding from people’s eyes helped, most definitely, but witnessing his sister and friends die or go missing shook him up. He blames himself, and stays in a hut. He’s blissfully unaware of how close he is to the Saint’s territory.

DEAD:

Black Void Cookie - Frozen, one of many ice statues trapped in the lands of Frigid Cacao. From scurrying about, spying on those it considered dangerous or interesting, to stuck in fear and ultimately dying due to the cold. A sad end.

Yew Songbird Cookie - A valiant fighter, he sensed the intrusion into his section of the deeper forests, using all he had at his disposal to try and fend them off. Ultimately, exhaustion and time were his enemy.

Yellow Rose Cookie - A great friend, but a better sibling. She had to force her brother out of their home to save his life. She has since died, now at peace thanks to the Saint.

Dicentra Cookie - She tried to escape with her other half, but ultimately couldn’t hide the best due to dough tones and height. She’s in a better place now.

Fly Trap Cookie - Escaped him after they witnessed what happened to the others. They ended up lost and after enough wandering, found some orchids. They potted one, and kept it with them, caring for it. Big mistake.

MISSING/UNKNOWN:

Shaded Jam Cookie - They always stuck to the shadows, messing with others to their own discretion. They’ve not been seen out the dark in a while. Some say they see white pupils in other’s shadows, though only for a second.

Petunia Cookie - Last seen attempting to fight off the Saint, then gone. There’s been sightings of a red tail tip on occasion, though it may not be them.

Jabuticaba Cookie - They were last seen throwing Begonia and Dicentra over a fence. Some have said they’ve seen a large purple-ish figure, though it is unclear if it is him.

War Crepe Cookie - Missing, last seen staring off into the sunset, then nothing. Footprints lead into the waters.

Emerald Fracture - They just vanished, as if they were deleted by some other force.

[bnhaobservation]

BNHA Observations, speculations and assorted info: The facts taking place during BNHA second year: July

So, in order to write my fic, I spend much time observing canon scenes, comparing the manga and the anime version, take note of details, translations and info in them as well as finding out how are some things called.

Since what I noticed/speculated/found out can be of use for other fic authors I thought to share as well.

OBSERVATIONS, SPECULATIONS AND ASSORTED INFO:

You might notice a special focus on the Todoroki family as all their birthdays and statuses are listed. That’s because this timeline was originally meant to focus solely on them and then I included info about the other characters.

LEGENDA:

BNHA: “Boku no Hero Academia” manga.

MOVIE 1: “Boku no Hero Academia The Movie ～Futari no HERO～” [僕 (ぼく) のヒーローアカデミア THE (ザ) MOVIE (ムービー) ～２人 (ふたり) の英雄 (ヒーロー) ～ My Hero Academia: Two Heroes]

SB: “Boku no Hero Academia: U.A. Hakusho (僕のヒーローアカデミア 雄英白書 Lit: “My Hero Academia: U.A. White Paper”)” called in English “My Hero Academia: School Briefs”

TIMELINE (JULY)

JULY 1: Todoroki Natsuo turns 19.

FIRST WEEK OF JULY (A WEEK AFTER THE STUDENTS DECIDED TO ORGANIZE THEMSELVES IN STUDY GROUPS - LIKELY MONDAY): Written part of the FIRST TERM FINAL EXAMS. [BNHA Chap 60. In Japan, during them, no regular classes are held so the same likely applies here too. Usually Japanese students are tested in English, math, Japanese, science, and social studies, plus health and physical fitness, home economics, music, and art. Also they usually last three days. If the same applies here this would mean they started on Monday and the practical was on Thursday. ]

FIRST WEEK OF JULY (LIKELY THURSDAY): Practical exam. Todoroki Shōto manages to pass it working in team with Yaoyorozu Momo. Todoroki Tōya, under the name of Dabi, along with Toga Himiko, joins the League of Villains. [BNHA Chap 60-68. The time is unclear here as the scene with the League of Villains might have happened the day after or even two days after as Shigaraki Tomura will meet Midoriya on Saturday... though it's also possible Shigaraki wandered for two days before meeting him.]

Pairing up in the practical exam are as follow:

Todoroki Shōto & Yaoyorozu Momo vs Aizawa Shōta/Eraser Head= WIN capturing Midoriya Izuku & Bakugō Katsuki vs Yagi Toshinori/All Might= WIN escaping Kaminari Denki & Ashido Mina vs Nezu= LOSES Uraraka Ochako & Aoyama Yūga vs Kurose Anan/Thirteen= WIN capturing Jirō Kyōka & Kōda Kōji vs Yamada Hizashi/Present Mic= WIN escaping Tokoyami Fumikage & Asui Tsuyu vs Ectoplasm WIN capturing Mineta Minoru & Sero Hanta vs Kayama Nemuri/Midnight= WIN escaping Shōji Mezō & Hagakure Tōru vs Snipe= WIN* Kirishima Eijirō & Satō Rikidō vs Ishiyama Ken/Cementos= LOSES Ojiro Mashirao & Īda Ten'ya vs Maijima Higari/Power Loader= WIN escaping

* In the manga it seems they won by escaping since they are outside the gate, though it's not really clear, in the anime they won by capturing

FIRST WEEK OF JULY (LIKELY FRIDAY): Eraser Head informs them they all will go to the Summer camp even if they failed the exam. [BNHA Chap 68. The scene with the League of Villains might have happened this day as well]

FIRST WEEK OF JULY, LIKELY SATURDAY (THE DAY AFTER): Todoroki Shōto goes to visit Todoroki Rei as he always does in his days off. The rest of class A minus Bakugō goes at the Kiyashi Ward Shopping Mall (木椰区ショッピングモール Kiyashi-ku Shopping Mall) to buy things for the summer camp. Midoriya and Shigaraki Tomura meet. [BNHA Chap 68-70, SB 2]

FOREST TRAINING CAMP ARC

SECOND WEEK OF JULY, MONDAY: Eraser Head tells the students they cancelled their usual accommodations and won’t reveal their destination until the day they depart. Shinsō Hitoshi starts being trained by him. [BNHA Chap 70]

THIRD WEEK OF JULY, AROUND THURSDAY: Tamakawa Sansa learns that someone saw Dabi entering in a building that didn’t have any tenants, the building being Shigaraki Tomura’s hideout. [BNHA Chap 83 It was two weeks before the summer camp attack]

TWO HEROES ARC

JULY, AROUND THE 20TH, POSSIBLY ON SATURDAY: Summer Break. Midoriya and All Might go to I-Island for the I-expo and meet Melissa Shield and her father, David Shield. Uraraka, Yaoyorozu and Jirō, who're there because Yaoyorozu's father received an invitation due to him holding some of I-expo sponsors' stocks and had two extra invites for her friends, meet Midoriya and they all end up at the place where Kaminari and Mineta are working. Īda, who received an invitation to go there due to his family being one of Heroes, meets with them as well. We're told the other girls from class A are also on the island but not with them. They then meet Kirishima who's there with Bakugō who got invited because he won the sport festival and allowed to bring a friend along, and Todoroki Shōto, who was there in place of his father, Endeavor. They all go at the party when Wolfram's group attack it. [MOVIE 1 The movie is clearly placed before the Summer training camp. Summer break in Japan starts around the 2th of August]

JULY (THE DAY AFTER), POSSIBLY SUNDAY: By dawn Wolfram's group is defeated. The Academy's exibit opens to the public. Some of class A kids will go to the pavillon where the academy's exibit is or so they planned. David Shield, from his hospital bed, talks to his daughter. [MOVIE 1]

TO BE CONTINUED…

[dailyunsolvedmysteries]

The True Story of the Boise Murder House

805 W Linden Street in Boise, Idaho, its covered in a layer of soot, with windows broken and boarded up and trash strewn about the yard, the 2-story, 2,728 square-foot Craftsman-style home looks like an abandoned horror movie set. 

Known commonly as the Boise Murder House, the home is also sometimes referred to by locals as the Chop-Chop House, a glib reference to the gruesome homicide that took place there more than three decades ago. In the early morning hours of June 30th, 1987, 37-year-old Daniel Rodgers and 31-year-old Daron Cox shot and killed 21-year-old Preston Murr in the basement of Rodgers’s home at 805 W Linden Street. The two men then used an axe and knife to dismember his corpse, wrapped the pieces in plastic bags, and drove to the Idaho-Oregon border to dump the body parts in the Brownlee Reservoir. Horrifying as the facts of the crime are, there is one detail more haunting than the rest: Murr almost escaped.

According to court documents, an altercation broke out around midnight between the three men and Murr was shot in the shoulder by one of the two others. Having somehow managed to flee the home, he ran to a nearby house and banged on the door begging for help, but no one answered. The neighbor inside did call the police, however. He reported hearing pounding on his door, as well as someone screaming “let go of me,” followed by an anguished yell. Peeking out his window, he saw someone chasing Murr, eventually catching him and dragging him back into the basement of Rodger’s home, where he was fatally shot in the back of the head.

Though police never responded that night, they were called again the next morning by the same neighbor who asked officials to come investigate blood on his screen door. The blood found throughout the neighborhood—on sidewalks and at least one other neighboring house—further painted a harrowing picture of Murr’s desperate attempt to escape his murderers the night before. While the crime scene has long since been cleaned up, a dark legacy lingers around 805 W Linden Street to this day.

It’s unclear what happened to the house in the immediate years after Rodgers was sent to the Idaho State Correctional Center to serve out a life sentence without parole, but property records available online list a new owner, James Howell, as of 2000. Howell has since rented the house to a number of tenants and, given its proximity to Boise State University, it’s become a popular choice among students seeking off-campus housing. As a result, local lore about the house has a decidedly collegiate flair: One persistent rumor claims that fraternity brothers have reported seeing blood dripping down the walls of the basement for years. While there is no truth to this tale—and 805 W Linden was never an official frat house—many former residents say there is something “off” about the space.

“The basement was creepy and had a weird feel. We would take people down there to scare them. I never saw any ghosts but you could tell something wasn't right,” Joe W., a former BSU student, told a local radio station, 107.9 LITE FM. Another Boise resident, Rachel R., told the station that her family almost bought the house back in 2000, and to this day she still gets anxious when thinking about their tour of the home. “It looked like it had been abandoned and the basement was by far the creepiest part,” she said. But of all the accounts shared with 107.9, the strangest tale, submitted by Dan D., goes well beyond the basement.

According to his story, one night Dan and his friend thought they heard someone trying to break into the house. When they went out to the front porch to check things out, no one was there. After looking around the front yard, Dan turned to face the house and saw a “big black oily looking thing” in the window of a bedroom upstairs. He remembers seeing the shadow-y figure move back from the window and towards the bedroom door before it disappeared. Shortly after, it reappeared outside in a mirror sitting on the porch. Dan watched as the “ball of oily blackness” moved down the large column of the porch, slowly growing in size until it took up the entire reflection of the mirror and moved right through him. “It was the weirdest, most disturbing thing I've ever felt and just typing this makes me feel it again. It's like ice fingers sinking into my shoulders,” he said.

[beardedmrbean]

Political commentator Dave Rubin received a behind-the-scenes look at Twitter and why the code that owner Elon Musk called a "flaming dumpster rolling down the street" continues to limit engagement for some users.

Rubin wrote Thursday that he spent the last two days in San Francisco talking to Twitter engineers, product managers and owner Elon Musk and was given permission to share his findings. Musk has been open about his desire to expose once-secret communications that occurred inside Twitter before he took control of the social media juggernaut last year. He has been slowly allowing independent journalists to reveal their findings, and while Rubin’s thread is not technically part of the "Twitter Files," he put a spotlight on the company’s inner workings. 

"Learned a ton about what’s going on. Before I share, want to note that after couple hour meeting I asked Elon what I could share and he said, ‘anything that’s true,’" Rubin wrote. 

WHAT ELON MUSK'S TWITTER FILES HAVE UNCOVERED ABOUT THE TECH GIANT SO FAR

The "Rubin Report" host said Musk calls Twitter a "A Fractal Rube Goldberg Machine" that features staffers working around-the-clock. 

"As they fix the code more problems arise. A delicate balance he likened to a Jenga tower. One wrong move the whole thing collapses. They’re working nonstop, and both times I met him were after midnight," Rubin wrote. 

Twitter executives had long rejected claims by conservatives that they were being "shadowbanned," a term referring to clandestine efforts to limit cetain users' engagement and reach.

The second installment of the Twitter Files confirmed such a practice took place, and Rubin set out to find out why it’s still happening. 

TWITTER TAKEOVER OF 2022: ELON MUSK'S WILD RIDE SINCE BUYING THE SOCIAL MEDIA GIANT

"I met with several engineers who were doing a deep dive on why my account and so many others seem to be absolutely crushed after that two or three week return to normalcy when Elon first took over. They still have more questions than answers, but they did learn a bunch of stuff," he continued. "Accounts aren’t just hit with labels that are obvious to insiders. They now found more ‘secret’ labels which are causing shadowbans. My account was hit with all three; ‘Recent abuse strike,’ ‘Recent misinformation strike,’ ‘Recent suspension strike.’"

Rubin added that it’s "unclear so far what these strikes actually do, but for sure they suppress views and recommendations, they are trying to figure out to what extent." He noted there are "many innocuous tweets labeled NSFW or NSFA (not safe for ads) which affect visibility in the timeline." 

TWITTER FILES FLASHBACK: JACK DORSEY TESTIFIED UNDER OATH TWITTER DOES NOT CENSOR, ‘SHADOW-BAN’ CONSERVATIVES

He pointed to "an entire KeyWord database" that helps machines learn not to promote violence, porn or other frowned-upon activity, but called it a "mess of overreaching" words. 

"Literally the word ‘gay’ was on the KeyWord list which would make you not advertiser friendly and harm the tweet in the algo," Rubin wrote. 

"Backing up for a sec, they found the ‘recent suspension strike’ on my account most interesting because it was fro[m] July 2022, when I was suspended for calling out @jordanbpeterson’s unjust suspension. So though suspension was reversed the action on the account remained," Rubin added. 

"Elon was bringing people in and out constantly and seems to be aware of pretty much every issue. He thinks maybe the entire code has to be torn down and start from scratch. At the end last night he said that the whole situation is ‘a flaming dumpster rolling down the street,’" Rubin wrote. "So I assure you they are aware of the problems and Elon and engineers are there all night trying to untie this crazy knot. Some changes they’ve made, like the ‘For You’ tab, have confused people and hurt engagement for accounts who have gotten the NSFA label without knowing."

Rubin added, "They also don’t know for sure why things got so much better once Elon made the acquisition and why it seems far worse now. Some is probably related to excitement around Elon himself, which also coincided with World Cup, but that doesn’t explain why it feels so off right now."

Rubin promised to share more eventually but had to stop the thread because he had a flight to catch. 

"On a personal note Elon is funny as hell, laughs a ton and it’s just really obvious he cares about Twitter because he cares about free speech and the bigger problems facing the world. He doesn’t need this headache, he chose it," Rubin wrote. 

In the second installment of the Twitter Files, Free Press editor Bari Weiss previously revealed Twitter's "blacklisting" of prominent conservatives, including Fox News host Dan Bongino, Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk, as well as Stanford University's Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a longstanding opponent of COVID groupthink during the pandemic who expressed opposition to lockdowns.

ELON MUSK TELLS JACK DORSEY ‘IMPORTANT’ TWITTER FILES WERE ‘HIDDEN’ FROM BOSSES, SUGGESTS SOME WERE ‘DELETED’

Internal communications also reveal Twitter staffers admitting that the popular right-wing account Libs of TikTok never violated its "hateful conduct" policy despite being punished several times for allegedly doing so. 

Those revelations appeared to contradict what former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey testified to Congress under oath in 2018 that Twitter did not censor or shadowban conservatives. 

Other installments of Twitter Files have focused on everything from internal discussions on how it came to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story to what led to the suspension of former President Trump around the Capitol riot in January 2021.

[notasapleasure]

Maigret S02E01: Night at the Crossroads (2016)

Rowan Atkinson's 1950s French detective investigates the murder of a Jewish man involved in fencing stolen diamonds.

We're officially waiting for Oscar, but Lucy Cohu's in this episode too so at least even if Oscar-with-no-surname doesn't feature much, hopefully between them I'll be kept happy <3

MARK HEAP IS THE FORENSIC SCIENTIST

"He was killed after midnight. Like all good murders." Wuwwuhwgdjfjfkfkfff

Everybody cheer for a boiler suit!

Oscar Vitanes. You do have a surname! And a beret!

"They're weird over there. House is always dark after nine o'clock. You hear him sometimes shooting his guns in his garden. Not last night." Delights in a bit of Danophobia does our Oscar, but so does everyone else in this episode. Carl the suspected Dane does have a disfiguring facial scar after all....

I'll admit to being sad we don't get un petit accent... He does look good hefting car wheels around though 😏

Now Oscar and his wife Jo (oh hi that's me) run an always-open garage on a busy road where fruit trucks pass by, and the murder happened at the crossroads by the garage under cover of a passing fruit truck. I have no motive yet but I don't think Oscar can be ruled out here...it was a big guy who got in the car with the dead man before shooting him.

Inbred incestuous insane Danish aristocrats! That's certainly a flex.

Maigret is married to Lucy!! Noah fence Maigret but if I was married to Lucy Cohu I would be much happier than you seem to be.

Oooh, mysterious night time gatherings at Oscar's garage? Ah apologies, his wife is JoJo not Jo...who is keeping an eye out for hubby's....illegal bare knuckle boxing club!

I am looking. Not entirely respectfully.

The Paris policeman disapproves but the local policeman persuades him to chill out.

Parisian copper Janvier reports all this to Maigret the next morning of course.

Oscar Vitanes! I think I could have done a better job of photoshopping that... Maigret also peeks at the tins of paint. The dead man's car is notably still missing and it was quite a distinctive blue...

Lucy Lucy loml Lucy

Oh hi Oscar!

Bisexuals are winning in this house tonight!!

Ah, the shifty salesman who has been shifty the whole time goes into overdrive on the shiftiness and the Jewish widow is shot dead outside Oscar's garage while she's surrounded by police! The move of a very stupid man...who was obviously the shifty salesman......who runs, is caught, and it's revealed his gun hasn't been fired. Someone else did the shooting with a sniper rifle! (my money's on the regional police guy who was at the boxing match, who's like the only person not otherwise present)

Oscar is not fool enough to interfere when the regional police chief is busy whaling on a suspect in his home! Maigret: "Get them out of here!"

I reckon it's a whole conspiracy involving the local police, including Maigret's old friend Louis (the regional chief), whose wife thinks is cheating on her again, but he's been gambling and I'm guessing has big debts or some such.

I just wanted to take another screencap of Lucy *chin hands*

She knows people get angry when they're frightened, and Maigret wants her around to drink beer with the boys. I want to drink beer with Lucy Cohu too.

Yup! Local gambling buddies apparently set up Danish weirdo in murder conspiracy :')

Ooh, the Danes aren't incestuous!

Oooooh, Oscar has a history of burglary and Louis Grandjean ~personally~ arrested him for it!

How convenient, Oscar has gone off for the day when Maigret arrives to poke about.

AH!! I wasn't imagining the fact they have him hoiking spare wheels about the whole time - that's how they're smuggling goods!

JoJo doesn't really do much to stop Maigret finding the contraband in the tyres - she says "Oscar will (??) me again", and Maigret responds "I'll make sure he doesn't." It sounds more like 'help' than 'hurt' but eeehhh. Unclear. No subs on the file I downloaded.

Anyway, mad Danish sister who is actually a mad Belgian(?though she does still sound very Danish) prostitute supposedly 'redeemed' through marriage to Carl masterminded the whole thing out of boredom. She was having an affair with regional police chief Louis, who did the killing. And she tries to smother Carl for extra funsies.

Oh you great campy goon :')

He's so happy with his diamonds....thinks about running when he spots the cops, and doesn't get far at all.

Rating

Dead? Nope

Evil? I mean, he's involved in the whole murder conspiracy plot yeah, but is very much not the brains behind the operation. Petty thief who's been taken advantage off by people looking for bigger profits tbh. The likelihood of the line I couldn't hear referring to DV is the main black mark here.

Affects the plot? Only as part of the conspiracy really. But he is adorable when he thinks he's gotten away with it!

Bad Oscar, listen to your wife when she tells you murder is wrong, even when it involves setting up creepy Danes! 3.5/5 - a versatile array of good looks, from the boiler suit to the shirt sleeves to the Parisian fancy gear. And the story, being 90 minutes and based on an actual novel, is much more sophisticated than most of the other procedurals I've been watching. Still never quite shook the weirdness of Rowan Atkinson playing it *so* downbeat and straight though, and Mark Heap was criminally underused. But solidly good, nonetheless.

[gladiatorofturtles]

I don’t disagree with you, and the current Mystra is still very fucked up and shady, but the stuff that went down with Dornal Silverhand literally happened hundreds of years before the current incarnation of Mystra was ever born. The current Mystra is a human wizard named Midnight (born Ariel Manx in 1332 DR, 160 years before the events of BG3) who got asked by Ao to take over the mantle of Mystra after Helm killed the original Mystra (the one who did all that terrible stuff to Dornal and his wife to create the Seven Sisters) during the Time of Troubles. She’s only been Mystra since around 1358 DR. Also, I know Gale says she visited him when he was young and stuff like that, but she was murdered by Cyric in 1385 DR (causing the spell plague) and wasn’t even able to reach out to Elminister (as a bare wisp of her former self, only able to possess a bear) until 1479 DR. She didn’t fully regain her powers and return to her full power until 1487 DR... five years before BG3. So the timeline is a bit unclear, I don’t know how fast and loose Larian is playing with the canon timeline. 

That doesn’t excuse the power imbalance, or the other issues in the relationship, which was certainly fucked up and largely on Mystra’s side of things. But I’ve seen a lot of people conflating all the iterations of Mystra with the current one, and also saying things like she’s ancient and whatnot; I know this is easy to do, or be confused about, Forgotten Realms lore is a twisty jenga tower of lore and revisions made over decades and BG3 doesn’t always make things very clear. But I think it’s very important to keep track of context here and what *is* being implicated and how that fits in with what we know for sure.

If I see one more post treating Gale and Mystra like a genuine couple I will scream

In a game where all the companions are in relationships with immense power imbalances, don't you think Gale is in one too????

It is heavily implied that Mystra (A goddess known in the Forgotten Realms for tricking and deceiving, look up Dornal Silverhand) groomed Gale, being his teacher first and then a lover. He didn't fumble anything, he was the magical equivalent of a high school banging his teacher and everyone (more like in real life with male abuse survivors) treats it like he "bagged a baddie" and "fumbled it"

The most horrific thing is that he STILL doesn't quite realise what's happening, he still believes everything she says and believe she knows best for him.

Also, he wasn't trying to unsup her, that's what Mystra saw it as. He adored her and wanted to be her No.1 special little guy so he did something FUCKING OUTRAGEOUS out of LOVE (because he believed and still believes it's love). Does Mystra have the right to interpret it as an attack on her godhood, absolutely but don't get it twisted with what Gale actually says!

"Not to destroy Mystra, but to prove my love for her"

"I merely sought to return one tiny diamond to an imperfect crown"

Sorry for ranting but FUCK.

[holidayhost]

what happens between ren and goro after ren leaves shining! / hosting?

it was a very difficult, and borderline terrifying, decision to leave shining!. ren is heavily indebted to goro, so their relationship doesn’t end when ren quits. because he can’t make payments, or even afford the interest, ren still does jobs for goro on the regular. ‌a courier, a messenger, or some sort of entertainer between meetings / a liaison of sorts, ren is still in regular contact with goro. by this point, there is also a personal relationship, and goro is not completely willing to let ren go. a) ren knows more about goro than most given the amount of time they’ve been together. while ren doesn’t know anything of relative importance to goro’s real identity, he knows where goro has run his business through, and he knows what goro does. that’s enough for goro to keep the leash tight. b) there is a slight investment in ren, though goro has a specific interest in ren’s family. children are always an innocence untouched, to which goro upholds in his (mysteriously, purposefully ambiguous) personal moral code. where his father has fallen in the cracks, goro sees a better life for kyosuke.

as a side note: ren met goro very young, around the age of 19 / shortly before ren turned 20. the exact nature of their relationship is messy, teetering both into the professional and personal. ren is where he is today, even named ren, because of goro. ‌ren is heavily indebted to goro, and is constantly put in compromising positions. yet he is scolded by goro for his escorting, for his allowance to be taken advantage of, and for his lack of shame. the way they see each other is very different and is currently the comparison a tiger to a hare, heavy power imbalance is not only implied, but very apparent. goro uses ren, and ren relies on goro. whether or goro actually cares for ren, or just sees ren as a possession, is unclear. ren’s own feelings for goro are complicated; he’s not quite sure how to see him, but respects goro as his boss. goro is an occasional “money ex-machina” for ren, but this is not abused in story-telling.

a primary reason ren leaves hosting to become a rent-a-boyfriend (and to focus more on his escorting) is due to flexibility and to follow sho tbh. he quits hosting only a few months before kyosuke’s first school year starts, which provides him the schedule he needs. before he could care for kyosuke during the day, begin hosting in the early evening into the early morning, close up, see a client or two, then head home for a few hours of sleep, wake up, take care of kyosuke and his mom, then repeat. while he can’t always just ‘take the clients’ he wants to, being ordered through the service, he isn’t aiming to be number one. as well as being a bit older, he tends to take a lot of day jobs or later evening dates so that he can care for kyosuke after school through dinner and (usually) to bed. his escorting comes into the midnight hours, seeing as he mostly “part-times” as a rent-a-boyfriend. his favorite dates are doing weddings, parties, and one-on-ones such as dinner or going to clubs that have live music. he has less of a character to keep up, but still does have a type he is portraying in his more ‘official’ career, donning the primarily mature or serious type with a special interest in romance. in his main verse, he’s generally 26-28, the later years of his hosting.

[booze-hats]

Out The Goddamn Door (2/4)

He loved Problem Sleuth, he did, he really did. Sleuth was a great guy. He was attractive, he was charismatic, he was polite. Really. All around good guy. Moral, ethical, intelligent. Okay, maybe not. His informant was Spades fucking Slick, after all. 

The name made Inspector eager to get out of the office.

==>

<==

FIRST

He wanted nothing to do with Spades Slick. He had too much involvement with the Midnight Crew as it was. He didn't need to be taking jobs from their head honcho anytime soon. Especially not jobs with goons from across town. No siree. That was his firm decision. 

He'd stumbled out of the office building into the cool night air. It made him shiver and hunker down, further into his coat. Inspector tucked his hands into his pockets and started walking. 

He'd find a bench and he'd make a list of all the reasons this was a bad idea. He'd read somewhere that writing down the problems you have with your loved ones can sometimes help solve them. So heeding that advice, he'd decided he'd sit down and list all the problems he had with Sleuth's decision to indulge Spades Slick in this violently unclear mission. 

He didn't know how far he walked before he pulled the flask out the first time but by halfway through it, he was at the little park with the pond and the yellow flowers in the spring and the purple ones in the summer. He sat himself down on the bench and started writing. 

Why was this a bad idea? Well, it was with Slick, first of all. Second of all, it involved the Felt. From Sleuth's retelling, all he really had was a tip that a robbery was going to take place at the Crew's hideout. That didn't mean anything. There'd been break-ins there before. It hadn't ever meant enough for Spades Slick to go calling Team Sleuth to clean up these kinds of messes. It felt like a trap. Some vital piece of this puzzle was missing. There was a wool over Sleuth's eyes and in turn, his, and there simply wasn't any way of removing it until one of their respective informants decided to hand over more information. 

Speaking of, why didn't he just call his and ask what was happening? Surely, Diamonds would give him a more reasonable explanation of the situation. 

[holidaytorment]

the items on my recent work trip to phoenix that i will be claiming reimbursement for, ranked & reviewed:

two donuts and an iced tea at the donut place across the street from the hotel. the platonic ideal of a donut to me is that they should taste good and you should be able to eat two of them in the morning and be able to go about the rest of your day no problem. dunkin donuts are not this because they do not taste good, and the donuts from artisanal donut places are not this because you eat half of one and need to go down for a nap, and these seem to be the only options around where i live. by contrast, these donuts were light and fluffy, and i was able to maintain attention through boring work meetings without wanting to take a nap for reasons associated with the donuts. the iced tea, flavor-wise, was nothing special (clearly just made from ordinary tea bags) but was strong, which also an unfortunate rarity. in total, like $7, great deal.

hotel stay at the sheraton downtown. got a room with two double beds instead of one king, which is whatever. the comforter was not a comforter, but instead some manner of fitted sheet wrapped around a plastic blanket? it was unclear to me at any point why this was, but was especially unclear when the blanket became unfitted from the sheet, waking me up at 4am while i tried to piece together what happened. also, i dislike the new trend of putting full size toiletries in bathrooms now, i want to steal tiny lotions man, c'mon. food provided for meeting was pretty good and varied (no boxed lunches!). stay overall was okay, but not $700 for two nights okay.

parking at the central parking garage at logan airport. turns out that the central garage at 10am on wednesdays can be full! my car was "valeted" which in practice means they parked it at the next open spot and then the parking attendant gave me my key and told me where it was. also the parking attendant did not have the correct location for my car. $123 but considering that the other option was public transit there an after-midnight uber back i think i'm okay with paying this. the sumner tunnel being closed after 11pm did not affect the placing of this on the list. this whole parking experience was stressful for reasons i will go into later.

the items on my recent work trip to phoenix that are already paid for but i need to include on my reimbursement for record keeping purposes, ranked & reviewed:

flight from boston to phoenix. six hours in the air is a long ass time. they only provided snacks once (the impression i got was that they didn't have many tp give out??), and it was just a packet of two biscoff cookies. read some of a book about coding, wrote some notes about a coding project i'm working on in my spare time, listened to the religion disasters episode of the shutdown fullcast (see below). i do not know how i managed to handle flights this long in the past before i had an adderall prescription. i had a flight from new york to phoenix late last year where my dose wore off midway through and i was unable to take my afternoon pill, and i quickly started feeling like i would do something that would land me on a watchlist or get tackled by an air marshall.

flight from phoenix to boston. somehow i think the flight was only four hours and change (not sure how. jet stream?) but we spent an additional hour and a half at the gate in phoenix while they fixed a computer issue. finished reading "the pigeon tunnel" by john le carre and read some more of a couple of coding books. pulled up to the gate at midnight which is too late to get food pretty much anywhere. i think overall my time on this plane was shorter than the flight out but it was so much worse.

the items on my recent work trip to phoenix that i will not be claiming reimbursement for, ranked & reviewed:

three donuts and an iced tea at the donut place across the street from the hotel. the donuts mentioned above were so good that i went back the next day even though breakfast was being provided. ordered and paid for two donuts and they gave me three instead. $7, and winner of DEAL OF THE TRIP. can't reimburse because a meal was provided.

two tacos, rice, and refried beans from a taco place across from the phoenix suns' arena. good food, not too heavy and didn't make me more tired than i already was. got to peoplewatch the bad bunny fans go to the concert, always neat. i think $15? can't reimburse because i paid cash and forgot to get a receipt like a dope.

two sazeracs from the hotel bar. love a sazerac. was ordering off-menu but checked with the bartender on if they had the stuff to make one and he said yes (even had the absinthe). i feel like hotel bars generally make good, if expensive, drinks. enjoyed these with coworkers and two people who i would with but wouldn't classify as coworkers for reasons i will not get into (mainly we don't work for the same company). $15 or so each, i think. can't reimburse because alcohol

two house margaritas at the taco place mentioned above. for some reason i am a sucker for a cocktail that you get from a tap. good enough, had a bit of a carbonated taste to it but overall enjoyed. stronger than the drinks that i bought at a recent work outing to a local sports bar. $13 each, which is a lot, but it's next to an arena so i'll give it to them. can't reimburse because alcohol.

glass of (i think) sauvignon blanc at the hotel bar. did not drink this myself, but bought for a coworker i really appreciate. don't remember how much, but probably $12-15. can't reimburse because alcohol.

taxi ride to the airport from the hotel. the best thing i can say is that we got there in plenty of time. we managed to do that by blowing through two red lights. very cool! $25. can't reimburse because i did not get a receipt and paid cash because the driver could not find his credit card reader thing.

vibes and other miscellaneous that i interacted with on my recent work trip to phoenix that are ineligible for reimbursement by virtue of the fact that they are vibes, ranked & reviewed:

the most recent live episode of the shutdown fullcast (the internet's only college football podcast), which is a combination book release party for jason kirk's book ("hell is a world without you") and a religion disasters episode. fantastic. tremendous. i must have looked crazy to the person sitting next to me trying not to laugh out loud on the flight out. also includes at least one excerpt from the book which was amazing (i believe there were two excerpts but i can't recall at the moment if the second fully-casted read was in the book, but this was very good too), as was the fact that the entire pre-order proceeds ($56,000) went to the trevor project. The whole thing shifted "hell is..." up to next on my reading list once i finished...

the pigeon tunnel, by john le carre. le carre's my favorite author so it shouldn't be a surprise that i enjoyed what would probably be best described as his abridged memoirs. while initially disappointed that it's not a full telling of his life, i do somewhat respect the idea that the life-stories of the assets he ran aren't really his to tell, and that cover remains cover even to the dead (nevermind the fact that most spy stuff is dull). certainly, "a perfect spy" is a more complete biography than we'll receive otherwise. it's not his best work and certainly no tinker, tailor or smiley's people but i'm not sure anything he'd written in the past 15 or so years would be.

the idea of flying six hours one-way to go to a two-day in-person meeting. it was nice to see people i hadn't seen in person for months or years, but i'm not sure that phoenix was the best destination for it. flying out on the day before the meeting instead of the day of (as originally planned) turned out to be a saving grace, and probably would've meant either no real sleep or sleep during the meeting. would've preferred it in DC as originally planned.