#unskilled dealer

[quetzail]

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⟠ ࣪ . like or reblog if you use/save ☆.

⠀⠀⠀⠀Girls x Battle 2

[mdhwrites]

The Mis-Projections of Odalia

Odalia's fanon versus canon characterizations are fascinating to me because at every turn, the fandom takes what is actually a reasonable trait of Odalia and cranks it up to 11, even to the point where it's entirely incongruent with both the facts and the spirit of the show. Consider this a continuation of me questioning how bad a parent Odalia is. I will also say upfront here that I have point, beyond just bashing fandom's ability to remember what the show is, for why this matters but I need to get through the rest first.

So, how does the fandom, or most of them at least, characterize Odalia? Well, they make it that she is the root of all evil, abusive, racist, classist, doesn't care about anyone or anything but herself and is a capitalist who only ever sells snake oils and lies.

In the show... She's very few of these things and many of the rest are actually her being a part of the Isle's culture. Not its nebulous culture that's bad but like the ONE element of its culture that is ever consistent. We'll get to that though.

Is she evil? Honestly, by the metrics of the show, not really. She isn't an slaver like the publishing lizard. She doesn't kill people just for fun like the bounty hunters. She doesn't scam people (we'll get back to that) like Tibbles. She isn't entirely good mind you, she's scrupulous and is willing to break her own beliefs when emotions run high but compared to like ALL the other villains in TOH, she's weirdly tame. Now mind you, the villains of TOH are all charicatures based out of the 90s so the bar is ROCK FUCKING BOTTOM but rather than fantasy levels of evil, Odalia is boringly modern and constrained. Put her in the human realm and literally nothing of what she does changes, including making a killer robot. She is not the worst person on the Isles though.

How about being a bigot of any sort? Well, Dana is correct that as far as we see, Belos is the only bigot on the Isles. The closest that ever comes to it otherwise is Boscha scribbling Round Ears on Luz which as far as bigotry goes is the equivalent of calling a kid with glasses four eyes. No, instead, she is, like all of the Isles, merit based in how she treats people. Period. No ifs ands or buts.

I say this so firmly because people don't seem to understand that. Boscha is liked because she is strong and gets results. Amity was popular because she was top of her class and got results. Willow was disliked not because of any racial, religious, gender, etc. element, it was ENTIRELY from the fact that she fucked around, caused trouble and was entirely unskilled. By her own society, young Willow was an abject failure. She wouldn't listen to rules, even simple ones like 'go to class' in the flashback we see with Amity, and her skill with magic was genuinely abysmal until she swapped courses at which point she excelled and became popular.

So, who does Odalia dislike? Gus, Willow and Luz. One of these fuckers doesn't want to follow what he's a savant at and instead wants to chase cryptids by their societies standards, and also got his ass put into detention before breaking detention to get out, the next already had a history of fucking around and is associated with two troublemakers already meaning she is still trouble, and the third... The third is the apprentice to the OWL LADY. She practices WILD MAGIC. Everything about Luz is illegal WITHOUT getting into all the times Luz has broken the law, rules and just general common sense. By a meritocracy, what the Isles is, these three are the bottom of the barrel. It'd be like saying a parent was unreasonable for not wanting their kid to hang out with the sixteen year old drug dealer behind their school and skipping class to do so. She's pretty fucking valid honestly for not wanting Amity to associate with these people.

Is she abusive? This one is more up in the air but besides Escaping Expulsion, we never see consequences for disobeying her, minus when her kids break the law and try to sabotage their own family in Clouds on the Horizon for which they're ONLY GROUNDED instead of way worse. We also never really see her kids worry about punishment outside of, again, Escaping Expulsion where the twins mention not telling mom they're helping but also they don't try to stop Amity out of fear for her own safety. You know, like people who are used to strict retaliation for mistakes should be. Amity quits the covens and seems to have literally no repercussions from that. She can also just keep telling her mom to go fuck off about her hair. This is not the attitude of an abused child. Oh and on the side of Odalia gives zero shits about her family, first I'm going to say I'm entirely ignoring Clouds on the Horizon's bullshit of "I knew about Belos' plan" because there's no reason for her to have been told that, no need for her to have been told that and is such a needless escalation of her character being cartoonishly evil, ratcheting back into being at home with the rest of the villains of TOH, that it it is just a transcendentally bad piece of writing that should only be mocked. HOWEVER. The first time we literally ever hear about Odalia is a moment of kindness and care. She sends the twins to bring Amity her lunch to make sure she eats. That's... Caring. She didn't send them to scold her or punished her by not letting her eat, she sent her troublemaking twins to the library to feed her and probably in hopes that the twins might study a bit. That's a fine mom move. Without more that is clearly abuse, I see it as neutral at worst. The necklace is the same way. It's more secretive than sending her daughter texts but they all have cellphones, she can just text her and that's really all she ever does with the necklace. She never actually controls Amity with it. Without more to sustain allegations of abuse, I don't see it as anything particularly nasty.

And finally: Is she a scammer? I won't say she isn't a capitalist but TOH never tears down the whole economy and the Isles appears to be by volume 80% scammers or criminals of some sort when it comes to their shopkeeps so capitalism is still absolutely a thing. Is Odalia one of these though? No. The worst she does is exaggeration and that's just marketing. It's not false advertising, it's just painting your product the best you can. She never says the abomaton can take down an Emperor's Coven guard so a trained, albeit young but also top of her class, abomination witch being able to take down the abomaton 1.0? Yeah. that's not lying. It still would do a plenty good job protecting your home and kids from things most people want out of their home defense systems like burglars. It also factually can do everything else Odalia promised. We're shown that. Whether it does it well is up for debate but it DOES do everything legitimately with Amity up until she's supposed to feign being in danger which like... Did you want her to be actually in danger? Actually have her life at risk? Because that would be irresponsible especially to do to your OWN DAUGHTER. She only removes essentially the safety constraints once it's someone she gives no shits about and sees gain in their removal (and also is pissed.) That's not scamming people, that's a product demonstration. It was still able to grab Amity and lift her in the air with one arm, showing its strength. Also, everything else Odalia shows off as Blight Industry tech is legit, much to Luz's detriment.

SO. As you can see, the fandom is essentially dead wrong when it comes to Odalia. They took kernals of truth, that she's a strict mom, capitalist, judgemental, etc. and blew them up to be as bad as they could be. Why did they do this though? Why is this even important?

Well, it's because the show WANTS you to take her that far. Amity doesn't actually do much to redeem herself, especially to those she wrongs. She NEVER does anything but a bare minimum apology to Willow for YEARS of bullying that Odalia didn't ask her to do. Odalia just asked her to stop being friends with Willow. But hey, since all Amity does is an apology, that Willow only kind of accepts, literally stating they're not friends still... What do you do about that? Standing up to Boscha is for Luz after all. Standing up to her mom is for Luz. She never even bashes the ideologies she used to have to show her change, just that she was nebulously wrong but she's better now without any real sacrifice or meaningful acts of redemption. So... As a viewer, what the fuck do you do with that?

Edit: Someone pointed out that she doesn't actually apologize. She does say she was wrong when she was younger which is actually good for redemption BUUUUUT she claims she'll make Boscha and everyone else stop bullying Willow. Then Winging it Like Witches happens where Amity doesn't give a fuck about what Boscha is doing until it is focus fired on Luz making her whole speech there just a bold faced lie. Good job Amity.

Well, you do what the show did and scapegoat people. Why is it okay that Amity abandons her friends like she did Willow so many years ago? Because they're evil and bad people, or Boscha is at least, despite Boscha doing nothing Amity hasn't already in the show. But she was only like that because of her mom. Her awful, abusive, controlling, classist...

Wait a second. Do you dear reader see the problem?

This is why the projection is required. TOH actually is really bad at redemption arcs, namely that it doesn't know what redemption means besides no longer being a dick, and so you actually no way to forgive the characters for what they did by what they do. As such, you need excuses. The people the fandom hates the most are usually those scapegoats, especially for Amity. Why is Boscha worse than Belos when all she is is a bully? Because people claim she was the reason Amity was a bully and shift the fact that Amity was Willow's main bully to Boscha, despite all evidence to the contrary. Why do they make Odalia worse than all other villains in media combined? Because otherwise, their blorbo, the lesbian that helped make TOH as popular as it was, the one who was endlessly praised for having a transcendentally written character arc... Is never redeemed nor actually has much of an arc or depth to her character. She NEEDS to have all these serious elements put upon her through her mom or else... She's just a mean girl who fell in love and decided to care about one person and be a LITTLE better to other people. Remember, at the point of Labyrinth Runners, an entire season after Understanding Willow, Amity does not recognize that she was wrong that Willow is weak despite Willow's entire character for the past season being defined by how overpowered she. Amity very clearly has not been paying attention or caring about anyone about Luz and that's not what a good person does? You care because caring is the correct thing to do.

And I care because I would like her to be written better. I would like her to be more than what she was. I would like the whole show to be. But... Odalia isn't what you think she is and that matters because it means Amity isn't either. The show isn't either. See you next tale.

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[omniblades-and-stars]

following the current, circling the drain

read on a03 | spotify playlist for good vibes

Well, shit, this certainly complicates things. Found myself in a bit of a conundrum now, haven't I? You probably have too, since you're also sitting in this shitty little cracker box of a "prison cell" in the basement of self-proclaimed warlord and arms dealer Sitis Epirian's sort-of-mansion. Or what counts as a mansion on this blessed rock called Omega. It’s more like a mercenary compound with fancy art tacked up on the walls than an actual mansion. Big and fortified, just like any hobbyist warlord should have.

Name's Inonsi, I'd say it's good to meet you, but the circumstances being what they are ...

Shit, will you calm down? Stop freaking out, it's not so bad here. They even put a bucket in here so you can piss somewhere other than your pants or the floor. I've been stuck in worse, comes with the territory. If you wait patiently, everything will work out, you can trust me on that. I've never let something like six-inch bulletproof glass with kinetic impact barriers, high tech security systems, locks, and a literal mercenary army stop me before. And if you so happen to slip out when I'm done ... well, that's none of my business, now is it?

I know what you're thinking, how did the drell with beautiful shining scales and eyes like endless obsidian pools end up getting manhandled and tossed into a man like Epirian's torture dungeon? Well, I could tell you the entire story from start to finish in exacting and exhaustive detail, right down to the number of buttons on my father's dinner jacket that he wore one time when I was five years old (seven brass buttons that caught the light and shimmered like small stars, by the way), but I won't do that. You humans don't have the attention span for that kind of biography.

But we've got some time to kill, I love talking about myself, and you seem like you're on the verge of a stroke. You need a distraction. Put your feet up friend, relax and let the tide flow out to the sea.

 

Disappearing Apprentice

I was a special child, training under a specialist known far and wide for her skills in martial arts and hand-to-hand combat. Why was a child training under someone like that? Easy enough answer, the Compact. The hanar saved my people two centuries ago and now there's some long-held belief that all drell owe a debt to the hanar for it. And so sometimes, promising young upstarts with apparent skill in sneaking around and good balance get plucked from their parents to be trained as assassins, soldiers and mercenaries, and they're supposed to be thankful for it.

Etensan Laon was a difficult mistress, impossible to please.

"Again!" She shouts. A crimson scaled hand flies out and wraps tight around my ankle. One short tug topples me from my perch on the worn balance beam, the fading vinyl covering over the center evidences the apprentices of times past. I land hard on my back, my breath comes in short, painful gasps, her fingers are still digging around my ankle. She sneers down at me, lips turned up in the left corner with disdain. There are white stripes running from the crown of her head to her neck. "Balance and attention, Inonsi! Simply remaining upright when you land your jump is not sufficient. You will fall to your death if a strong breeze catches you unaware, as I have just done."

I am only seven years old, but she will not let go of my ankle. I know I must free myself from her grasp. One cannot depend on never being caught. Her talons scrape against my scales, still sore from the last two days we have been doing this exercise, repeating this exact scenario. "Yes, Sera Laon," I say before I swing my other leg beneath hers and attempt to pull her down. She does not fall to the ground, her knee only buckles, but her grip around my ankle weakens and I roll back, pulling myself free.

It is sloppy, unskilled, but it works. I leap back onto the balance beam to start again. I must be perfect. Etensan Laon does not tolerate imperfection.

Oh, sorry about that. Happens sometimes. You get used to it.

Well, I trained with Laon until I was ten years old. I was great. At ten years old, if something had a neck, I could theoretically snap it. If there was something to climb, leap from, hide behind, or twist myself into, I could do it. You know that thing in all the spy movie vids where the spy disappears into a crowd or into a passing shadow? Well, I could do that too. But I wasn't perfect, and I hated that as much as Laon seemed to hate me. It worked out in the end though.

Because I got to leave.

I was allowed to visit with my parents sometimes, and one of those times, my world went upside down. You see dear old dad got involved in some political scandal, the nature of which is quite embarrassing if you know anything about hanar-drell politics, which you don't, so don't worry your head about it. Suffice to say, he and mom elected to leave Kahje and well, they weren't going to leave precious little Inonsi behind. I waved goodbye to Kahje from the private passenger cabin of a very pricey transport shuttle. I was ten and to my mind it was an exciting adventure. Besides, I'd gotten in trouble with Laon because I had been caught stealing yetae blossoms from the tree in the meditation garden, and my parents were in such a rush to get off world that she never had the opportunity to tattle on me.

How was I supposed to know you weren't allowed to pluck them straight from the tree? It's not like there were signs posted around the ancient tree that I willfully ignored from the moment I arrived at the training center to the moment I left it. The blossoms smelled so sweet. If they didn't want me taking them, maybe they shouldn't have smelled so good. Following the rules has never been my strong suit.

If my parents had known then exactly how often I was stealing they might have kept a better eye on me once we landed at our destination, because flowers from a tree didn't even really count as stealing, there were other things. Mostly Laon's things. I didn't even keep them, I would just sneak into her quarters or pick her pockets and take things. Datapads, credit chits, clothing, incense burners ... whatever I could get my little hands on. I threw almost all of it into the ocean. She never caught me stealing anything that mattered. Just those fucking flowers that she treated like holy relics.

Urchin? Sort of.

And then, middle, middle, middle. You don't want to hear about the quiet years on Teyolia, where father dearest conducted secretive business, and I definitely did not make a habit of listening in on his conversations or hacking his computer terminal and reading his encrypted emails. I most certainly didn't bug his office. Nope. Not Inonsi, she never ever would have done that.

Just kidding. Let's just say that perhaps nature versus nurture might lean more toward nature in my case. My poor, long-suffering mother.

I kept to myself at school mostly, I stuck out like ... well a bright orange and purple thumb in a sea of tall, blue and beautiful girls. I was easy to mock, short by asari standards (and also drell standards, but that's neither here nor there), and very, very different. It's okay though, the meanest of the girls, Paresya, found a lot of her school supplies missing. A lot of her girlfriends too, as we got older. What can I say? I have a certain mystique about me, it would be a shame not to leverage that to my advantage.

Oh please, don't give me that look. You're in this cell too. Don't tell me you've never done something juvenile and vindictive like stealing someone's girlfriend or boyfriend out of spite. I don't believe it.

When I was sixteen I grew dreadfully bored of school and of teenage asari superiority, so I started skipping classes frequently. It's incredible how long you can get away with that if you know how to hack into the school's attendance system and reprogram the VI that calls the parents when you're absent. All those phone calls went to some takeout joint in the next city over. By the time my parents were contacted by a real person, I'd missed approximately a quarter of that year's lessons.

You know, those asari do a very good job of making their colonies and cities look like marvelous, utopic jewels. If you stay on all the main thoroughfares, in all of the tourist centers, you might even find yourself believing it. But at sixteen, I found my way to the seedy underbelly of Iare, a moderately large city in the main colony of Teyolia. I found a group of kids, far more diverse than I'd ever been exposed to before. I was used to living first around drell and hanar exclusively, and then mostly asari. They were poor kids, a pair of turian siblings whose parents were day laborers, a salarian whose dad was sort of like mine, but unlike mine had recently had the rug pulled out from under him, and an asari who didn't talk about her family at all.

I pulled the same trick. They were fun kids, and I didn't want them to know that I got to go home at night to a nice apartment with flawed, but loving parents. Zelthatea, Zel to anyone who didn’t want to get socked in the face, didn’t talk about her family for much darker reasons, but I was sixteen, and using her method seemed like the best way to fit in.

We were tight, those kinds of bonds formed by committing small acts of theft and property damage together. The kinds formed through spending whole days together rough housing and running away from cops, shrieking with relieved laughter as we narrowly escaped capture. And then they found out I could do tricks. I could scale a building, leap from rooftop to rooftop, and I started teaching them how to do some of it. Soon enough, we had ourselves a little gang of roof running hooligans, we would do beer runs on convenience stores, and escape into alleys and up and away from prying eyes, that sort of thing.

We got too big for our ill-fitting pants, though. I wish I could tell you that I don’t remember whose idea it was to break into a corporate office and try to make off with company secrets, but if a drell ever tell you that, you know they’re lying. Only one of us had a dad who was in the corporate espionage business, so you do the math. There I was, in the CEO’s office with Zel, Apus and Catiae were our lookouts and were pretending to be janitors. Dex (the salarian, he didn’t like us using his real name) was our man on the outside, he was supposed to keep an eye out for security and police activity. He lost his nerve the first time he saw someone who looked like she might have been security and darted off without telling us!

“Shit, something’s up, get out of there!” Apus calls into the room right before tossing the trash cart over on its side and dashing down the hall towards the fire stairs. Catiae is hot on his heels. Her secondhand boots crash against the tile floor noisily as her footsteps pound heavy, sounding her escape. They don’t quite fit her yet. They were her mothers, one of the buckles hangs loose, it clinks mockingly as she ducks through the door.

Zel looks at me, panic in wide, ocean blue eyes. She is already crying, but she doesn’t want to leave me behind. She is always so sweet, usually quiet. Three emerald lines draw down over her pointed chin, the only facial markings she has. “Zel, hide! I’ll run a distraction. Don’t leave until it’s safe,” I say. Out of all of us, she doesn’t deserve to get caught committing a real crime.

I snatch the OSD I was using to transfer a clone of the CEO’s terminal on and beat feet out of the door. Four guards turn the corner, they wear heavy armor, deep blue, accented with gold. I wave my hand at them, making sure they see the OSD held in my fingers. “Genteux gives his regards!” I shout. Genteux doesn’t exist, or at least, I do not believe he does, I’ve never heard of anyone named Genteux. I run for the elevator and dart inside. I send it down to the first floor, climb out of the maintenance hatch and pry open the doors on the second. One, two, three, four running steps to the window. It is not the kind that opens. Shit, I panic. I pick up a chair and send it hurling through with a neon biotic burst.

No hesitation, I leap through, tuck and roll to the ground. It hurts, but I haven’t broken anything. I land right in the center of a congregation of Iare’s finest, guns raised and trained on me.

Everyone but Dex got caught. I did my best to take the fall for it. It was my big-brained idea after all. But well, my dad wasn’t exactly a paragon of upstanding citizenry, as I have alluded to already. Money floated into someone’s grasping hands, and I was let off with a slap on the wrist. Despite my desperate pleading, daddy dearest did not extend his kindness to the poor kids who got wrapped up in my ego.

Well, my days as an up-and-coming criminal mastermind were cut quite short at that point. Mom was furious, dad was embarrassed, and apparently lost a lot of business (judging by the angry phone calls I was still horning my way into) because I allegedly chose my target based on some conversations that were very private. Allegedly.

We picked up and moved again. I won’t tell you where to, dad still lives there, conducting his business.

They say there’s no honor among thieves, but I am daddy’s little girl. I never put his lifestyle in jeopardy again, and I will not do so now.

Mom eventually wised up to his shenanigans, by the way, and is living the high life in the tropics. Last I heard, she’s started seeing a nice young drell. Good for her. I believe you humans would call her a cougar. She seems happy, and that’s what matters.

Hey, settle! The guard’s just cranky because of the little surprise I left in one of the bathrooms. I mean, maybe some people think a flashbang rigged up so that the pin gets pulled when the door opens isn’t a good prank, but those people aren’t tormenting assholes like these guys. This guard’s a pussy, he’s just trying to rattle our cage a bit. Keep it together, will you? Losing your cool because the guy is threatening to pull our fingernails out one by one because he has a migraine and moderate to severe hearing loss now is a surefire way to miss our chance.

Now, where was I? Oh, don’t answer that, it’s hypothetical. I know exactly where I was.

Actually an Acrobat

I was kept under lock and key right up until my parents could no longer do so without it being considered false imprisonment or kidnapping. I mean, I still got out. Often. Civilian security is child’s play, and it’s frankly embarrassing that more people don’t know how to hack open a regular old apartment door and slip out into the night.

This story has to, of course, touch on tragic young love. All the great stories do. And mine is pretty good, if I do say so myself. And I do.

Upon gaining the freedom afforded by adulthood, I immediately tried my hand at the nightclub scene. I learned two things right away, club goers are easy pick-pocketing targets, and that the cocktail called the “Rough Tide” is the best alcoholic beverage to be crafted by clever asari mixologists. Its main components are lunassa, a very strong asari liquor, and juice from the olan fruit native to Kahje. There are other things mixed in it, but I’ve never bothered with the finer points of cocktail mixing. The sweetness of the fruit masks the surprising strength of the liquor, and when you stand up the tide sweeps you off your feet.

I’ve made some of my best bad decisions under the influence of a Rough Tide … or three … or four. My favorite best bad decision was Tertus Achaso, even when you account for the aforementioned tragedy. I was sitting at the bar, pleasantly drunk but not out of my mind on it, when a barefaced turian with a charming smile, chipped third tooth, and sharp, honey eyes slid onto the seat next to me. His first words to me were, “So do the colors go all the way down?” Very charming. Very smooth. It should have been very off-putting. But what can I say? I’m a sucker for a good smile.

“Buy me another drink, and maybe you’ll find out,” I answered. I was looking for a good time, and it seemed I had found it.  What? Oh, the answer? I am all the colors of a desert sunset from my head to my toes. You should be so lucky to see me in my full glory.

Stop distracting me.

We talked for a while, and he did buy me a drink, another Rough Tide. He laughed when I told him that I couldn’t stand the taste of hard liquor. He laughed even harder when I admitted that I had (still have, thank you) a terrible sweet tooth. One thing led to the only place this was ever going – a cheap hotel room.

He smells of fresh cut lumber and canvas. There is a scar cut deep into the keel of his chest, long healed. Dark brown hide, patterned with sandy, rough plates.  He’s surprisingly gentle for someone so large. Fingers tenderly trace down-

Ahem, sorry. That’s not the kind of memory that one should share, especially with a stranger. We’ll just gloss over that by me telling that he worked for a traveling circus, and I happen to be very flexible. I made an impression on him, and he made an impression on me.

So Inonsi runs off with the no-so-smooth talking turian to join the circus, right? I had stars in my eyes, like all young women do. Tertus could do no wrong, and I became enamored with both him and the idea that I could make a living of being an entertainer. I wowed audiences with suicidal feats of acrobatic grace, tight ropes, swinging on long swathes of cloth, leaping from heights that made most people sick. Finally, I was putting my training to use. No more petty thievery for me, and breaking and entering because I was bored, I was going straight.

Ha!

See the thing was that those kinds of circuses, the ones that are not owned by multibillion credit entertainment conglomerates, are filled to the brim with criminals and rejects of every stripe. Beautiful, gentle, and sweet Tertus was one of them. A criminal, I mean. He was probably a reject too, but he was my, admittedly very small, world so I didn’t see him that way. Some nights, he would step away from the other stagehands to go make phone calls. I’ve always been too curious for my own good. I listened in on those too, I am ashamed to say. I am capable of some shame, not much, but some.

Look, I didn't listen because I didn't trust him. I just like to know things. People are always having such interesting conversations, don't you think?

If only listening in on his conversations drove me to some sort of action. But it didn't. He had the kind of debts a lowlife criminal with a former drug addiction came upon. Tertus did more crimes to make creds so he could pay those debts, circus work does not pay well, and in the process, he pissed some very bad people off. This place wasn't like Omega, where you can't throw a rock without hitting some wannabe mob boss, so he thought he would be safe traveling with a planet-side circus.

It was the morning before our first show in a new city, I'd been with the circus and Tertus for several months at that point (eight months and four days according to the local calendar, to be exact). We actually had an auditorium to perform in that time, and I was excited do all of my tricks. There were poles to climb, flowing fabrics to spin around in, things to dive off of. It was going to be magnificent, and people were going to learn my name. And Tertus and I were going to live happily forever. And he was late to meet me at a diner for breakfast. That wasn't very unusual, circus folk run on a different sort of clock - the kind that's always late.

But after an hour of waiting, I decided to go looking for him. As I was crossing over a foot bridge heading back towards the hotel most of us were staying at, I heard boots slamming on concrete. Have you ever heard a sound that's innocuous, an everyday sound, but it's so wrong it sets your teeth on edge?

Sun is warm on my back. One, two, three, four rushing steps, panicked breathing. I look up and see Tertus running full speed toward me. He doesn't see me at first, too focused on watching his feet to make sure he doesn't trip. His eyes meet mine, halfway across the bridge, eyes wide with fear. "Go! Run!" he shouts as he grows nearer to me. But I can see what he cannot.

Three men carrying assault rifles are gaining on him. Two turians, one krogan.

I know something that Tertus doesn't. You can't outrun a bullet. The world slows to a crawl. Fear roots me to my spot until it is too late to do anything to save him. I have never heard a gun fired outside of a range or without protection for my ears before. Three, four, five muzzle flashes. Cobalt blood like rain splatters across the ground, Tertus falls forward as though he has been pushed.

My training spurs me to action. I’ve never actually taken a life before, but these men hurt my Tertus. I run towards them, using my very unimpressive biotic talent to generate a barrier. Dodge to the right, jump onto the railing of the bridge, leap from the rail, use the momentum to snap the neck of the turian closest to me. Maintain my momentum, stay in fluid motion. There's a gun in my hand and the second turian falls with the sound of automatic gunfire filling my ears. It's too fucking loud.

Something burns in my leg and my stomach, but I can’t stop moving. If the krogan gets his hands on me, I'll die. I leap onto his back, I nearly drop the assault rifle, it’s too big for me. I launch myself from his crest plate and fire down into his neck while I’m still in the air. It's sloppy, it's messy, it's too fucking loud. He’s still coming, and I just keep firing. It's over. I'm covered in blood, indigo, cadmium orange, and my own emerald. A cruel painting in brilliant organic color. I run to Tertus.

He's already dead. Honey eyes glassy. Jaw lax, mandibles hang limp next to his dear, sweet face. I scream, everything hits me all at once. The fear, the anger, the heartbreak. But I have no time, I hear more boots on the ground, and I am surrounded by bodies and covered in blood.

I don't hesitate. I leap into the river and follow the current to somewhere new.

Please, don't apologize. Everyone on this station has a tragic backstory. I bet you have one that's a real doozy. The river flows out to the sea, and so too I've learned that you have to keep living. You humans have a saying, "Go with the flow." It fits very nicely with my personal philosophy. Which is why I have to insist that you keep your pants on and stay calm, our time will come. If you try to take your chance too soon, it fucks things up. Swim with the current, not against it, friend. You'll just make yourself tired fighting the undertow, and then you'll sink to the bottom.

We wouldn't want that, now would we?

Star System Hopping Woman of Mystery Thief

If you have to ask how or why I ended up on Omega, I'd have to ask you if you've been listening at all. True, I don't live here full time. I'm sort of a star system hopping woman of mystery. But I do end up on Omega very often. You'd be surprised how many art sellers and antique collectors are just straight up criminals. Or maybe you wouldn't be. You are in the same basement holding cell as I am, after all. Or did you come here for something other than stealing priceless relics from a murderer?

Please don't tell me you came here to steal his weapons! How uninspired.

Anyways, of course I mourned Tertus. But I was scared, possibly wanted for the murder of three people, maybe four if you account for the possibility that it would have been very easy for the local police force to pin the whole disaster on me. I was naïve, but I wasn’t stupid. So I did what every young, unfortunate fool who gets tangled up in big time criminal activity and is too stubborn to ask dad for help does: I caught the first transport to Omega I could get. (I snuck aboard some mercenary gang’s smuggling vessel. I fit into crates quite nicely, don’t you know?)

Here's what I learned my first week on Omega:

No one gives a shit about you. They don’t care who you are, who you were, or what you did. Minding your own business is a matter of survival here.

The pickpockets here don’t even try to hide what they’re doing. They just run real fast when they get caught. I always catch them.

The bartenders here have never heard of a Rough Tide. At any of the bars and clubs.

There are a lot of assholes here who think they’re hiding the fact that they have goods that are worth something.

Hallex is a great time if taken in moderation and while dancing with bright lights and pretty girls.

Oh, don’t give me that look. Go back to lesson number one and mind your own fucking business. I was dealing with the traumatic death of my boyfriend, and the guilt of killing people. Besides, you learn to have a more relaxed view of party drugs when your own skin secretes a toxin that makes people see sounds and hear colors. I’m a walking party drug. What? No, you can’t try! What, am I supposed to let a stranger suck on my fingers or lick my face just because they’re curious? I don’t know you well enough for that. There’s a two drink minimum for that kind of talk.

Besides, you’ll need a clear head to get out of here. Or did you forget that we’re in a warlord’s torture cave?

It didn’t take very long for me to grow bored of partying my feelings away, and even less time for me to start planning a heist. Eh, less of a heist, and more like I broke into some rich pirate king’s hideout and stole anything I could carry that was worth something. I also hacked his terminals and wiped all of his accounts and infected everything with a computer in the building with a virus. His operations came to a screeching halt, and I gleefully lined my pockets with his ill-gotten gains.

Oh, you thought I was one of those do-gooder thieves who robs the rich to feed the poor or whatever? You’re too funny! I have rules against stealing from poor folk, and I don’t use street kids and beggars in any of my schemes like some others of my ilk. But I’m in this business for myself.

Breaking into low security hideouts and penthouse suites when no one was home lost its luster very quickly. I’ve always loved a challenge, and I’m prone to acting unwisely when I’m bored. I started traveling again, I’ve hit museums, government archives, art galleries, even corporate research facilities. Sometimes, someone pays me (I come pricey) to steal something for them, but mostly I hear about something I really want to touch (or fence, whatever,) and I go and take it. If my marks don’t want me to steal it, they should secure it better.

Oh, you’ll love this. Once, I received word that a relic of one Earth’s ancient royalty was going to be up for auction at some high society party in Paris, yes that Paris. Collectors have been shuffling around Marie Antoinette's pearl and diamond pendant for literal centuries. It was one of those “benefits” that the rich and famous throw that never actually benefits anyone but their own image. Stealing it was surprisingly easy. I stole it before the display case ever made it to the auction floor, but they didn’t even notice it was gone until they unveiled it to start the bidding. It was my first, and only, taste of champagne.

A waiter wearing a tuxedo hands me a fluted glass filled with golden, bubbling liquid. I taste it, and I’m very unimpressed. It’s very bitter for something that looks so tempting. A warm chuckle takes me by surprise, and I turn to see a handsome young man, dark curly hair, very dark skin and wide brown eyes, who is watching me. “Not a fan of the beverage offerings, I take it?” he asks jovially.

“No, I’m afraid not. The drinks on the homeworld are much sweeter,” I respond. There’s a slim-to-none chance that a random human on Earth would know anything about Kahje, and an exactly zero chance that he would know about Rakhana at all. I could tell him literally anything about my “homeworld” (one which I had not been to since I was ten, the other a place that was more cautionary tale and myth than homeworld), and he would have to believe me. I set the glass on a nearby table.

"Are you here for the auction? There aren't very many aliens here." He nods his head back toward to crowd starting to form on the bidding floor. He's right, there are a few asari here and one salarian, bright yellow skin with emerald speckles on his horns and the backs of his hands. I know my time is coming soon. The man smiles, teeth shining pearls, his left incisor is too high on his gum, giving it the appearance of an animal's fang. I like it. It's a shame I'll be leaving soon. I never learn his name.

"I am as a matter of fact, here on behalf of a hanar friend. He has an interest in antiques from other cultures, but sadly, could not make the trip himse-" My lie is cut off by first worried tittering up at the stage and the chaos and panic erupts as they open the secure vault container and find it empty.

The man looks around frantically, trying to piece together what is happening until his eyes fall on me again. More specifically, to the necklace hanging framed by the daring neckline of my suit jacket. A single tear-shaped pearl hanging beneath diamonds arranged in a ribbon’s bow, and above that one large round diamond, all hanging from a cheap silver chain I nicked from a department store jewelry counter earlier that day.

I press my finger to my lips and whisper, "Watch this." I take off running for the open balconies, pushing party goers out of my way, one, two, three strides before I am standing on the balcony rail, the small barrier to a long drop and a messy death. I rip the pendant free of the necklace and place it in a secured pocket sewn inside of my suit and step off the balcony.

With a twist my body I am hurtling towards the ground in a dive. A press of a small button on my bracelet as I spread my arms, my daring fashion choice turns from a strange, webbed cape sewn into the arms and body of my jacket, into semi-rigid wings. Soaring between skyscrapers is one of the most freeing experiences I have ever had.

It took a little doing, but I managed to sneak off Earth the next day. I still have the pendant. I wear it to parties sometimes. What do you mean, why do I wear it? It's jewelry, isn't it? I don't have an art gallery, friend. I don't typically keep things in glass cases. But don't get it twisted, even if you found out where I keep my things and occasionally live, you wouldn't be able to get in. That pearl stays mine.

Oh! That's our cue. That sound that just rocked the very foundation of this building is how I'm getting out of here. If you would be so kind as to press down on the bench over there with your boot while I - uh - change positions here to - uh - get better leverage with a good kick. There's a cotter pin in there I can use to break the lock.

Alright, on three be ready so you don't eat it when the bench collapses. One, two, three!

Beautiful! Now while the guards are all going to check out the giant hole in the wall- why did I plant bombs? Rule number one of thieving, always have a plan for if you get caught. I wouldn't have been caught if it weren't for some clown getting caught with their grabby little hands in Epirian's weapons cache just as I was heading to my original escape route. Funny that. But it’s no sweat off my back (mostly because I don’t sweat) but also because I always have a secondary escape plan.

Though they aren’t usually quite so … explosive.

But all is not lost. These idiots couldn't do a successful pat down on me even if I was naked as sin. There's an OSD in a hidden pocket with clones of all of Sitis' terminals and datapads.

What? Oh, you thought I was here for the art or his antiques? Ha! I guess I did allude to the art quite often. No. Dear old dad needed a hand. Family business, and all that. Do you know how many creds those corporate bigwigs at companies like say ... Armax Arsenal will pay to keep proof that they've been dealing super advanced weaponry to pirate king arms dealers an ugly little secret?

So much it would make your head spin. Let's say that good ol' Sitis deals with a few of these bigwigs. Papa dearest collects the blackmail money from those nasty weapons manufacturers, and dear, sweet Inonsi helps collapse Epirian's little criminal empire. For purely selfish reasons, of course. (Dear, sweet Inonsi also makes a fat stack of creds in the process.)

Now, stop interrupting. This is a Saronis Applications Securitron-X78 model haptic interface lock. A baby could open this with the right tools, but I do still need to focus. Just insert the pin into this little gap here, use it as a conduit for a little biotic pulse like such and bingo! We're almost home free, my friend.

If you’re going to stick with me to get out of here, you’ll need to do what I say, when I say it. We go with the flow, take our opportunities as they come to us, not a moment before, not a moment after. If we play our cards right, we’ll slip out unnoticed. And hey, if you impress me on our way out, maybe you’ll get the pleasure of being another one of my best bad decisions. What do you say?

[zapperman26]

Dohwar: Psionic Merchant Penguins

Do you want to play as a Dohwar from Spelljammer Campaign Setting? Do the four foot tall, fanged space penguins merchant penguins with psychic powers appeal to you??

Then give this Homebrew Lineage option of mine a try!

Ability Score Increase. Increase one ability score by 2, and increase a different one by 1, or increase three different scores by 1. Alternatively, increase your Charisma score by 2, and increase your Constitution score by 1.  

Creature Type. You are a Fey.

Size. Dohwar averages 3 to 4 feet tall and 40 to 52 lbs. You are Small.

Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet, and you have a swim speed of 30 feet. 

Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and Dohwar; Dohwar is a language derived from both Sylvan and Aquan. 

Hold Breath. You can hold your breath for 30 minutes. 

Bite. You have a pair of hidden fangs that you can use to make unarmed strikes. When you hit with it, the strike deals 1d6 + your Dexterity modifier slashing damage, instead of the bludgeoning damage normal for an unarmed strike. 

Wheeler and Dealer. Dowhar have a natural propensity for mercantilism. You gain proficiency in Persuasion or Deception of your choice. 

Cold as Ice. Dohwar are from an arctic planet and enjoy similar climates. You have resistance to cold damage.

Merchant Mentalist. Dohwar are unskilled but natural psionics specialized in communication and short-term manipulation. You know the Message Cantrip. 

You can ignore the material components requirement in any spell usage associated with this feature. You can also cast these spells using any spell slots you have. Your spellcasting ability is either Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma (you must choose one when selecting this lineage)

 When you reach 3rd Level, you can cast Distort Value once using this trait per long rest. 

 When you reach 5th Level, you can cast Detect Thoughts once using this trait per long rest. 

If you have any thoughts, critiques, etc. about this homebrew, hit me up I am always open to constructive critique!

[afr0-thunder]

[Poor Chronicles Pt. 36]

Topics: College Football (CFP/NCAA)/Cellular Service (story)/Work (Social)/Girls/Weed

I’m feeling disrespected…Alabama’s in it. Versus the University of Michigan…who has #1 in a chokehold. At #2, I thought they’d get to the CFP Championship (or even sooner) and lose, but they actually might …fucking still do it (I changed my opinion mid-sentence). I thought Texas was out since they lost to Oklahoma, but I guess it’s loser season. Back to supporting the University of Texas.

By midnight, I had been asleep and had slept an additional 3 hours past. My cellular service was discontinued. I attempted to get there before close, but the store had been closed earlier than close time.

I went back yesterday (my off day) and it was STILL “not open” even though it was during store hours. She opened the door and said, “We’re not op-, we’re not open yet.”…she stuttered while doing so. I was informed a customer had broken all the keyboards in the store, I assume in a fit of rage, and that she was fixing them. I was told to come back in an hour. I went to get rubber gloves for changing the toilet seat and potato chips and decided to use the rest of the time viewing a nearby street playing, “Whose block is going to get blown down in the near future?”. I returned. She was now assisted by a man. I informed her of my situation, she still asked if I had my receipt. I said, “No.” and explain again. She is on the phone with the worker from the other day and tells her how to correctly perform this act going forward. It sounded like she has done this incorrectly before (payment option). I had assumed they all were just unskilled, the way the one on the phone had described it to me and that they were “usually by themselves”. The one in front of me installed my phone service though, initially. I thought, “Damn she’s stupid too?”. My payment was able to be reached under my phone number. It is apparently possible for the payment to linger as some sort of: Confirm/Decline or Accept/Later option. I was upset. I came prepared to deliver my speech about how I was fully prepared to pay. During the last portion of my customer service, an attractive dark skinned girl walked in. She also sobered me up. My high was lifted. I was informed my service would be restored in 5 minutes. I couldn’t wait, I walked for 3 minutes and then checked. I received a text saying it had been restored.

At my original location, I was scheduled with one of our newer, but veteran managers, the Hispanic one. Not the one who says, “Nigga!” to City Girls. He didn’t like me being the “funny man” and making all the jokes during my returning shift. He started to make a joke of it and then got real serious like he wanted to beat me up like a WWE wrestling backstage match. He did give me props for being a very helpful and outstanding worker during our team meeting as being sort of a model employee.

I messaged this other girl, from college (second one) - this is what FaceBook was intended to be used for, by the way (Ironically, she JUST replied, right now). When I met her she had the FATTEST ass, she has a baby now, but she’s a lot more fun than I thought. I thought she was some mean, boring, pasty bitch with a fat ass. Total opposite. Ironically reminds me of what I thought this other girl I fucked was like. I say this “painfully”.

Anyway, so I think she’s single now. Let’s see another love of my life walk away *peace signs*!

Dealer has missed on yet another advance, *$140. What a fool? His last pack severely burned my throat. Considered retirement. This other guy was quite the servicemen.

- MH (2023)

[12/15/2023 - 12:04PM]

[jamietukpahwriting]

The city required no medical background or training for coroners, even though they were charged with determining cause of death. The list of New York City coroners, from 1898 to 1915, included eight undertakers, seven politicians, six real estate dealers, two saloonkeepers, two plumbers, a lawyer, a printer, an auctioneer, a wood carver, a carpenter, a painter, a butcher, a marble cutter, a milkman, an insurance agent, a labor leader, and a musician. It also included seventeen physicians, but these, Wallstein pointed out, were men like Patrick Riordan, doctors who had lost their practice and turned to a political position. None of them were asked to pass a test in order to hold office, or exhibit any knowledge of the profession. As a result, Wallstein found, death certificates were filled out with no effort at determining cause. Among the entries were “could be suicide or murder,” and “either assault or diabetes.” In one instance a coroner had attributed death to “diabetes, tuberculosis or nervous indigestions.” A few death certificates simply read “act of God.” This was not, of course, a uniquely New York problem. A survey by the National Research Council concluded that the average coroner anywhere in the United States was an “untrained and unskilled individual, popularly elected to an obscure office for a short term, with a staff of mediocre ability and inadequate equipment.” The research council recommended that all coroner systems be abolished: “It is an anachronistic institution which has conclusively demonstrated its incapacity to perform the functions customarily required of it.”

—The Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Blum

[spacelazarwolf]

YEAH. this drives me fucking NUTS bc the term ghetto was first used in the 1500’s in venice to describe the neighborhood jews were forced to live in to keep them segregated from gentiles (mostly christians). there was another ghetto in rome. both of these were likely established when jewish populations in italy grew after the arrival of expelled sephardic jews escaping the inquisition.

here’s an excerpt about life in the roman ghetto from the wikipedia article:

Life in the Roman Ghetto was one of crushing poverty, due to the severe restrictions placed upon the occupations that Jews were allowed to perform. Roman Jews were allowed to work only at unskilled jobs, such as ragmen, secondhand dealers[6] or fish mongers. They were permitted to be pawnbrokers (which had been prohibited to Christians); and this activity excited the hatred of many Christians against them.

In the lottery game, they were allowed to bet only on low numbers (from 1 through 30), and all belonging to the same group of 10.[Note 3] In case of a draw of five numbers of that kind, the Romans said that on that day in the ghetto there was taking place a great feast.[7]

When Jews went outside the ghetto, the men had to wear a yellow cloth (the "sciamanno"), and the women a yellow veil (the same color worn by prostitutes).[6] During the feasts they had to amuse the Christians, competing in humiliating games. They had to run naked, with a rope around the neck, or with their legs closed into sacks. Sometimes they were also ridden by soldiers.[Note 4]

Jews had to petition annually for permission to live there. They paid a yearly tax for the privilege. Jews of Rome were required to swear yearly loyalty to the Pope at the Arch of Titus, which celebrates the Roman sack of Jerusalem of 70 CE. Each year, on the Campidoglio, the Rabbi had to pay homage to the chief of the city councillors ("Caporione"), receiving by him in exchange for it a kick to his bottom. This "ceremony" meant that the Jewish community had been allowed to stay one more year in Rome.[Note 5]

Every Saturday, the Jewish community was forced to hear compulsory sermons[Note 6] in front of the small church of San Gregorio a Ponte Quattro Capi, just outside the wall.[Note 7]

At the time of its construction, in the ghetto – as almost everywhere in Rome – there was no fresh water. However, some years later the Popes built several fountains in the rione. One fountain, designed by Giacomo della Porta, was to be placed in the Piazza Giudea, the site of a market, inside the ghetto, but Muzio Mattei used his influence to have the fountain, the Fontana delle Tartarughe (Turtle Fountain), located in the Piazza Mattei, in front of his residence.[Note 8][8][9][dubious – discuss]

As the Jewish community inside the ghetto grew, there was severe overcrowding. Since the area could not expand horizontally, the Jews built vertical additions to their houses, which blocked the sun from reaching the already dank and narrow streets.

The great number of people living in such a small area,[Note 9] together with the poverty of the population, caused terrible hygienic conditions. The district, lying very low and near the Tiber, was often flooded, and diseases like cholera and malaria were endemic. During the plague of 1656, 800 of the ghetto's 4,000 inhabitants died. In 1867, just three years before the abolition of the ghetto, there was a cholera epidemic.[4][10] Sant'Angelo, which was the smallest rione by area, also had the highest population density because of the presence of the ghetto.

The Jesus/Judas Complex

The only Good Jews are the Jews who are self-sacrificing, who will go willingly to their deaths for the salvation of others. The Good Jew, who will willingly undergo torments unto death, is the only Good Jew.

The Good Jew will absolve their murderers. The Good Jew will 'turn the other cheek'. The Good Jew will write "I still believe that people are good at heart" when being persecuted. The Good Jew will lay down and die for the comfort and education of others.

But for all other Jews who fail to attain such lofty standards?

They are betrayers, corruptors, colonizers, genociders, child murderers, blood drinkers. Capitalists and communists. Sexually depraved and yet sexless, where even the Jewish men are emasculated. They are White, yet also still Other. They are rootless cosmopolitans, from nowhere, yet told to go back where they came from. Their mere presence is a taint, and yet they hide among the disciples of the Good Jew, waiting for their chance to betray and sell out.

The only Good Jew is a Dead Jew who goes willingly to die, on the cross of the Romans or from the knives and guns of terrorists. All other Jews, who refuse to lay down and die, who dare to say "Am Yisrael Chai", that the Children of Yisrael Live, are therefore innately evil and irredeemable, and must be shunned for daring to cling to life.

[cohesiveenergysolutionz]

MOZAMBIQUE POWER SITUATION

They are powered from the hydro power facility at the Kariba Dam. The national electricity provider is ... I dunno. Doesn't matter. But I know the Kariba Dam is where the electricity is generated. Just curious, did the Orange River Dutch Fuckinny not hear the local Tsn Yami Yam tale. Or did it just not sink in until everyone watched in horror as the Neolithic Kodak Creature did a seal or dolphin trick, except he eats the cow, hanging from a hook on a frame, inbetween the waterfall and the 'mainland', having dangled the just-give-me-a-little-more-time treat, hoping for some slack. Feed me, Seymour.

Needless, to say, the river God and Goddess have been reunited, the dam burst and the Kodak, having washed up in the sea - much to the relief and delight of the Zim Prez.

After having visited Mozambique myself, I discovered that every single lodge, hotel and guesthouse well as hospitality venues such as bars and restaurants, all had air-cons that were in disrepair and a variety of aircons installed at different places that had been broken for a number of years.

Just off the subject

Made with only 2l plastic Coke bottles, 2 wooden boards and a bit of paint, it can lower a room temp by 5°c. It works as the result of the physics behind it. I'm just not sure if the wider or narrower end goes on the outside.

#justsaying #NettZeroCarbon

This tells me there is a major degradation of the electricity generating and service providing, happening to the country, as the result of electricity being outsourced. Electricity and all electrical devices/appliances/machinery and civic and business infrastructure are all currently unmanned. When the Portuguese left after the 48/48 consignment - poor, uneducated and grieving Africans, from the losses of a civil war and the brunt of fighting colonizers for freedom, left little time and opportunities for untrained and unskilled Mozambiquan people; who had not been permitted to learn any skills or to qualify in anything and had only been used by the Portuguese as manual labourers.

The Portuguese left and Mozambiquan people were on their own, so to speak. Too sleg to even impart the skills necessary to fix an air-conditioner? God. I hate whites. Until you ALL face the mess you made of Africa and African people's lives, you will never prosper.

This sad, megalomaniacal need to control everything by withholding necessary and life-saving skills from the indigenous people of Moshaambeekeh is despicable. After the weary years of poor survival; seen in the state of the people's personal effects or lack thereof, their general knowledge or experience of anything money and the broken 1-orphan families trying to survive in this dystopia is only bearable when I see the beautiful but weary, weary faces of people, who themselves have suffered at the hands of non-Africans, who jovially come and fetch me for our next capoeira roda, greeting, hugging and laughing at my poor Portuguese and my poor capoeira and sharing what may be their last with me. A more innocent, gentle people who love one another because that is all that they have left to share, after a pack of anti-biotics or prophylactics is haggled out of a "merchant" - those are the dealers and the medication, like illicit drugs; expired and exhorbatant - is handed out to everyone upon receipt: only 1 pill per person. Like naughty people doing something unpermitted, they take their 1 anti-biotic capsule or pill and feel that sense of a lucky occurrence on a lucky day.

All this residue poverty and suffering is as a direct result of colonizers, who wussed-and-goed without a backward glance, thought or money transfer. Whilst the financial and moral responsibility does lie with the colonizer nations and individuals - it's fair to assume we are not going to be getting any help from them. Or reparation and restitution funds.

No. They prefer to wait until 3rd world Africa get up and just refuse to sell food to anyone who didn't make a concerted effort in the next 20 years to support Africa the way Africa has supported the Whole World for as long as anyone can remember.

This gap in knowledge of how to fix aircons or how to install a toilet or how to run a business or be audited or be the boss - without having to feel intimidated or at a loss or standing, with your emaciated, starving little legs and curly hair, wringing your wrists readying yourself for the next trouble you might be in, for God knows what and having to try to smile politely and say the right things. Like a 3rd World African country's ambassador to a 1st World diplomat or head of something; hoping to sway his 1st world feel-ok-about-Africa 3rd world budget, in your country's direction.

All this, whilst knowing so-and-so (country) is a better investment option than us, they are not a junk status country or a country that is defunkt: with no flag, no anthem, no government or ruling party.

Just a President, who is an unrecognized and broken man, sitting, for one more generation, in a refugee camp; sneered at and harassed occassionally by the younger men, who don't recognize him.

This is dangerous. Leaving people who have survived hell, who do the very best that they can with FUCKALL, their spirits forwarding long after their weary, starved bodies have given up. I know a pinch of that feeling: can I just die now? please?

We, the world cannot just stand by and watch it like a movie; all these efforts Africa makes and then flops or GETS DONE IN AGAIN because Africa is maybe not as World Wise as the rest or maybe we put all of our eggs in international baskets and forget we have brothers and sisters, just here, other side of the border. We needed people we can trust and who we can cohese with and who we know. Money will come. When there is no sikhosa and plenty of Money, that money will feel like toilet paper or the equivalent. With your country(Africa)men, you know, everything has to work because if it doesn't my heart will shatter if I have to bear witness to even more suffering or even worse, another disappointment. And so will yours. And when we have that in common, it works. Can't we all agree to end it? The suffering, I mean. Is there not enough, as the breadbasket of the world, to go around? And for Africa to be paid market competitive prices and not the lowest price you can scrounge out of us?

By following Shanduka (Black Incubatorship and Mentorship Umbrella Foundation - now renamed the Cyril Rhamaphosa Foundation) principles and hosting an 'exchange worker' programme that will boost Mozambique's economy, we can train, accredit, finance and gear up individuals to start businesses that side, after an acceptable level of workmanship has been achieved, through workshops, online and mentor learning experiences.

Also.

We have many Zimbabwe nationals, in SA and all over Africa; who are well-qualified in business and vocational career paths and would make ideal Vocational and Business Mentors. Mozambique is in dire need of some Big Brother take-you-under-my-wing type assistance. As soon as we start putting our back into hand-upping someone in even more kak than we are in, it tends to wipe everyone's tears and soothe everyone's heartache. And it gets things done.

[usedcarsforpennsylvania]

Score the Best Deal on Your Dream Car: A Savvy Buyer's Guide to Used Car Shopping

One of the biggest pains of being a car owner is the cost. For many people, car payments are their single-largest monthly expense. But buying new doesn't have to be an expensive way out. In fact, you can get a great deal on a used car if you know what to look for—and that's where this guide comes in handy! We'll take you through everything from finding the vehicle of your dreams to negotiating for it and even researching its history before making your purchase.

Bellefonte, PA is an excellent place for shoppers to save money on the perfect used car. In this article, we're going to offer tips on how you can score the best deal on your dream ride, as well as some useful information regarding the best-used cars to buy.

Know the Car You're After

Before you start shopping, it's important to learn as much as possible about the kind of car you want. Know the make and model of the car that interests you. Research how much it costs new and how much others are selling theirs for via online resources such as Autotrader or Craigslist.

You should also consider which features are important to your lifestyle--for example, do you need a vehicle with good fuel economy? Do you need lots of cargo space? Is it important that the vehicle has Bluetooth connectivity? If so, this will help narrow down your options when looking at used cars in person because most models include these features by default nowadays (although they may not be working).

Find the best deal on your dream car. Explore what makes your ride unique, and how to select the right features for your lifestyle. This buyer's guide is a must-have resource to learn how to negotiate deals, identify brands with high quality and low prices, and find the best values on used cars for sale.

Negotiate Your Way to a Better Price

Negotiating for your dream car can be a challenge, but it's not impossible. The first step is understanding the value of what you're buying and selling--and knowing how much you want to pay.

You should know how much money you want to spend on a used car before shopping at all; that way, when dealers start throwing numbers around, you'll know whether or not they're in line with what's reasonable for an affordable model in good condition. If there's no way for them to meet your price target without losing money on their end (or if they won't even try), then walk away from those negotiations immediately--you'll find another dealer who will be more willing to work with you!

When negotiating over financing terms as well as the price itself, don't forget that there are other ways besides cash payment through which buyers can secure financing: loans from banks or credit unions; personal loans from family members; etcetera."

Check the Car's History

Check the Car's History

Before you commit to buying a used car, make sure it hasn't been in any accidents or suffered severe damage. You can do this by requesting a CarFax report from your dealer and/or having them run their own check. You should also check the odometer reading on your prospective vehicle--if it's been rolled back, that could mean trouble down the road. Additionally, look for signs of flood damage (rust) and major accident-related repairs that may have been done improperly by an unskilled auto body shop worker (such as paint overspray).

Do Your Due Diligence on the Dealer

You should also do your due diligence on the dealer.

Check to see if they are a member of the Better Business Bureau, and if so, what rating they have received. You can also check with local law enforcement to see if there are any complaints against them. Many states require dealerships to disclose known defects in vehicles so you know what you're getting into before making a purchase. If you feel like something is off or shady about your chosen dealership, don't hesitate to walk away!

Ask friends and family members who recently purchased cars from other dealerships whether they would recommend their experience as positive or negative -- this will give you an idea of what kind of service level customers can expect at each location (and whether it matches up with your expectations).

Decide How Much You Can Afford to Pay Down and Outright

Before you get to the dealership, it's important to have a good idea of how much money you can afford to pay down and outright. You'll need to consider this when deciding on the best-used car for your budget.

How much can I afford in monthly payments?

This is an important question because it will help determine the kind of used cars available within your price range--and whether or not they are worth buying at all. Many buyers opt for financing options that allow them more flexibility in their monthly payments by stretching out loan terms over longer periods than typical loans do (e.g., 72-month vs 60-month). But this strategy can also backfire: If interest rates rise during those extra years, then suddenly what seemed like a great deal becomes less so very quickly!

Buying a used car can save you lots of money and hassle.

Buying a used car can save you lots of money and hassle. If you're looking for a new car, but don't have the cash to buy one, consider buying a used one instead. You'll be able to find a reliable vehicle that suits your needs without breaking the bank.

Buying used also gives you more options than buying new: there are more cars on the market at any given time than there are made each year by manufacturers (if not more). That means that if we want something specific--such as a convertible or 4x4 truck--there's probably one available somewhere out there already in our price range just waiting for us!

Workman Auto Inc is a used car lot located in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania. We specialize in all types of preowned vehicles, from minivans to pickups and everything in between. We work hard to make the buying process easy for you by offering our customers a hassle-free buying experience where there is no pressure whatsoever.

Buying a used car is a great way to save money and hassle. The key is to do your research, know what type of car you want, then negotiate with dealers so that they give you the best deal on their vehicles. You can also check out their history before buying from them--this will give you peace of mind knowing that your new ride won't break down on its way home from the dealership!

Workman Auto Inc

310 W College Ave, Bellefonte, PA 16823, United States

(814)-359-2000

https://www.workmanauto.com/

[candywithanm]

This is such a great web toon and it’s seriously ramping up. It’s on a hiatus right now so that gives people time to catch up! Read HERE

Summary: All Isaac the beta wants is to live a normal life as a slightly unskilled florist and leave his turbulent past behind. That dream quickly goes out the window, however, when the infamous arms dealer Felix waltzes into his shop and takes a liking to him. It just so happens that Isaac's family needs protection from a mysterious enemy, and luckily, Felix is more than willing to provide it in return for Isaac's body. The more Felix falls for the reserved florist, the more he wants to unlock his many secrets. And as things heat up in the bedroom, Isaac finds it harder to resist the handsome alpha and his powerful pheromones. Meanwhile, the secret about their shared past hangs in the air like a ticking timebomb...

And if you can read Korean it’s also a novel do you can read it buy buying it HERE!

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Ballet: A Secret Weapon Keeping Brazilian Kids in School

An innovative after-school program boosts students' performance in the classroom – and on stage.

[Image description: ViDançar students at a pre-pandemic show.]

Deep within Rio de Janeiro’s sprawling Complexo do Alemão favelas, tutus and ballet slippers are helping young people stay in school – and thrive. Behind their success is Ellen Serra, an attorney who in 2010 hired a ballet teacher out of her own pocket to give instruction to 10 kids from the community. That idea has since grown to become ViDançar, a social project with over 300 students who pirouette and plié before getting help with their homework and English lessons.

Serra didn’t grow up in Complexo do Alemão, and before starting the program had no prior contact with dance, much less classical ballet. But as a survivor of abuse, both as a child and as an adult, she was looking for ways to heal, and was told that volunteering to assist others might help.

“A close friend introduced me to some amazing people doing social projects in Alemão. Working with them started to bring me back to life and soon I felt like I needed to do more,” Serra told AQ.

Serra thought the discipline inherent in ballet training could give kids living in poor and violent environments a way to imagine a future beyond unskilled labor and the influence of local drug dealers.

Among Alemão dwellers, 69% of teenagers report having experienced violence toward themselves or someone close to them, according to a 2020 study. “These children go to sleep and wake up hearing gunshots. There is also hunger, which is another form of violence,” said Serra.

To have an impact beyond the dance studio, ViDançar stays closely connected to its students’ traditional schooling. Young people in the program have to be enrolled in school and share attendance records with Serra and her team. The project celebrates school milestones, distributing medals and commendations based on report cards. And while the ballet classes are free, parents have to “pay” by showing up for bi-monthly parent teacher conferences, turning the project into a support network for parents as well.

All this has translated into a high school graduation rate of 92% for ViDançar’s students, in a country where more than 60% of people over 25 never finished their studies.

Continue reading.

[antoine-roquentin]

The Fed said that the 2 percent target was symmetric. But in practice, the Fed’s reaction function was asymmetric. The asymmetry of the Fed’s response  was so strong that it generated a systematic bias in the Fed’s forecast and actual inflation. While the technocrats at the Fed have persistently expected long-run inflation to be 2 percent, actual inflation has undershot the target in 80 percent of all quarters since 1995. But the problem went even deeper than the asymmetric response function of the Federal Reserve.

Long after its demise, the technocrats continued to believe and rely on the Phillips curve model of inflation which said that we should expect inflation to rise whenever labor markets tighten sufficiently enough. This theory of the inflation process was baked into every single quantitative model of the economy ever considered by the central bankers. But the inflation process had transformed out of recognition by the system-wide buildup of overcapacity and the rise of global value chains. What has determined inflation since at least the mid-1990s is not the tightness of domestic labor markets, even in the world’s largest economy, but the degree of slack in the global production system as a whole:

Where there should’ve been a new theory of the inflation process, there remained a mental rigidity acquired when the central bankers had been in graduate school at Berkeley and MIT in the 1970s.

These three rigidities of the mind structured the Fed’s reaction function, the logic of financial discipline to which all economic actors were subjected, and the possibility space contemplated by political authorities. This was the process of structuration that generated the secular downward cycle of the past fifty years. What has happened since the financial crisis is the process of destructuration whereby these intellectual rigidities have been abandoned one by one.

The first to go was the belief in the wisdom of financial markets. This was a direct consequence of the global financial crisis. Wall Street’s pretenses of being the smartest guys in the room were irredeemably destroyed when the market-based credit system erected by the dealers endogenously generated the greatest risk to economic fortunes world-wide since the 1930s. Despite suspicions that nothing much had changed at all, the megabanks were, in fact, tied down with a whole series of regulations that gave the Fed authority to directly control their capital ratios, liquidity ratios, and even decisions on whether and how to reward their shareholders. Anyone who doesn’t understand the scale of the transformation of the goings-on at the banks has not been paying attention. What we had in 2006 was unfettered global finance; what we have now is global finance closely supervised and controlled by technocrats at the Fed, whose authority has increased in leaps and bounds. We are very far indeed from high neoliberal global financial intermediation. So a central structural feature of neoliberal political economy was unmade quite early on after the financial crisis.

For a few years, this seemed to be enough. The political authorities and the technocrats came to believe that the Band-Aid was enough to restabilize the system. This was the ‘false dawn’ of the 2012 election that Adam Tooze wrote of in Crashed. In reality, the process of destructuration was far from complete. This was the risk of writing contemporary history for Tooze. Just as he began writing the conclusion to Crashed, the stable world that the Obama-era elites believed they had achieved began to unravel at the hands of forces that they were completely unaware of.

They knew that the neoliberal institutions had destroyed the working-class. The New Economy that obtained with the capitulation of social democracy had led to the rise of an overbearing class of prestige-schooled meritocrats who began to claim a larger and larger share of the income, esteem and even work. What obtained then was an ‘hourglass’ occupational structure where most of the new jobs created were either for the highly-skilled meritocrats who run everything from the New York Times to Goldman and Google, or for unskilled day laborers at fast-food chains and grocery stores. This dual economy echoed the Lewisian model in monstrous reverse: instead of workers leaving the traditional low-productivity sector for the modern high-productivity sector, working-class breadwinners were pushed out of middle-skilled occupations that vanished from the industrial sector and into either the low-productivity sector or to the margins of employment and a life of dependence and indolence.

The New ‘Hourglass’ Economy undermined the reproduction of the working class family, even as the middle class family was restabilized with divorce rates and child out of wedlock-rates falling for the latter but not the former. The unraveling of working-class families and communities led to an epidemic of ‘deaths of despair’ starting in 2000. Yet, for 15 years no one even noticed. It was only in 2015 that Case and Deaton would document the wholly exceptional rise in ‘deaths of despair’ among whites without college degrees — the bulk of the American populace.

Elite-mass relations began to break down almost immediately as anger among ‘the losers of neoliberal globalization’ began to grow. The blame was not placed on the owners of capital and corporate power of the Marxian imaginary, but rather on the new class of meritocrats who began to dominate the airwaves over ‘flyover country’ in a one-way traffic of symbolic production emanating from the coasts. The hated ‘coastal elites’ in turn began thinking of working class whites as stupid racist bigots who didn’t know what was good for them — this was the development that Thomas Frank described in his 2004 polemic, What’s the Matter With Kansas?  

Even as working class whites increasingly abandoned the Dems for the GOP, the latter continued to espouse free-market orthodoxy and cultural hot-button issues that did nothing at all to address the elephant in the room — the decline of working-class families and communities with the vanishing of broad-based growth. The brutal process of downward mobility was accompanied by the demise of institutions that intermediated between the working-class and the political and economic elites, that Putnam has documented. All organic connections between elites and masses were thus severed with ‘the big sort’ whereby the social classes became geographically segregated from each other over time.

These developments left late-neoliberal elites completely clueless about was happening to the middling bulk of American society far from New York and San Fransisco. So when Donald Trump came down that escalator, he was simply dismissed as a buffoon. No one among the elites saw the threat in real time. But Trump had inadvertently tapped into something altogether bigger than electoral politics. To mix metaphors, Trump was carried along the tide of history by the tectonic forces of class politics. The masses had simply had enough of the fucking technocrats from Harvard and Yale. By 2015, they were ready to burn the world constructed by the elites to the ground.

Even after the shock of 2016, elite resistance to the recognition of political realities remained in place. But the process of destructuration began to accelerate. Elites became more and more convinced that something — anything — had to be done to re-stabilize the system and contain ‘the threat from below’ revealed by 2016 [Richard F. Hamilton, 1972]. Yet, metal rigidities continued to thwart real solutions. Stuck with the old habits of thought, the Yellen Fed began hiking in anticipation of inflation as labor markets tightened in 2016. Democratic primary voters threw their weight behind the equivalent of a safety school despite a charismatic cast of pretenders.

The first intimations of a structural break with the old ways of thinking began to emerge in the discourse of the New American Left. Although it would later be taken over by antiracist activists unconcerned with the fortunes of the working-class, Bernie’s revolution was initially focused on bread and butter issues of everyday people. While Democratic primary voters could not be persuaded to cast their lot with the radicals, the ideas that emerged on the left of the party would strongly condition what was to come later, after the pandemic. What was truly pathbreaking about the new intellectual movement afoot was the complete abandonment of any commitment to fiscal discipline. MMT was only the tip of that iceberg. The general idea gaining adherents on the left was that power was to be taken back from the technocrats by political authority and the state’s capabilities to improve the lives of people was to be reconstructed.

Before the pandemic, this idea of breaking completely with the neoliberal playbook was contained. A half asleep old white guy would be put in the White House by the risk-averse Democratic majority. So it seemed for a while that neoliberalism was to be resurrected. But the Schmittian emergency of the pandemic brought these ideas back to the center of the policy discussion. Power was to be taken back from the technocrats after all. The intellectual revolution within political circles was accelerated by the constraints of the electoral clock. After winning the Senate runoffs in Georgia, the Dems now owned all federal policy. And they had two years to show their work — otherwise they’d lose control of Congress. The idea thus began to emerge among Democrat political strategists that you had go in heavy with all guns brazing right from the start. This is how we got the $1.9 trillion package.

Meanwhile, frustration had been building among the technocrats themselves. With the policy rate close to the zero lower bound, they had been pushing on a string with bond purchases which stimulated asset prices but have only a weak effect on economic activity because the rich refused to spend their capital gains. The desire to effect a handover to fiscal policy thus began to grow. The Fed responded to the pandemic by pulling out the bazooka. But that was not nearly good enough. The desire to handover control over economic affairs to the politicians became all-consuming in 2020.

With the Biden White House contemplating a $1.9 trillion fiscal package, the only question was whether the Fed would play along. Would they start hiking in anticipation and kill the party before it got started? The answer became crystal clear yesterday.

Lael Brainard, the real hero of the story, had been the lone voice at the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) arguing for abandoning the old way of thinking about the inflation process in the mid-2010s. Her idea got a shot in the arm when, in 2017, Bernanke presented a proposal to target the level of prices over the cycle instead of the rate of inflation. The proposal contained an implicit but damning critique of Fed policy. What it showed was that the Fed had been wrong to hike in anticipation of inflation — Fed policy, including and especially forward guidance, had been way too tight. Thus began a major rethink among the central banking technocrats. Brainard’s new way of thinking about inflation, supported by research from the Bank of International Settlements and a host of younger economists, began to gain influence within the FOMC.

Even before the pandemic, the Powell Fed had been moving to an empirical stance — actually waiting for inflation to overshoot instead of relying on model predictions ultimately based on the defunct Phillips curve. With the shock of 2016, the technocrats began to pay more careful attention to how their policies affected the fortunes of the working-class. They realized that containing ‘the threat from below’ actually required making progress on broad-based growth — the objective that had been abandoned in 1979. As the evidence began to come in after 2016 that one could run very tight labor markets without inflation reappearing, Brainard’s way of thinking became more and more compelling.

The central bankers had come to realize that the only way to achieve broad-based growth was to run the economy really hot. Only when labor markets get very tight (unemployment below, say, 5 percent) do working-class wages and the wages of minorities start growing as fast as middle class salaries. This idea of running the economy really hot to deliver broad-based growth could only work because, while inflation does not respond to excess demand in the way they had thought it would (the Phillips curve is dead), wages do (the Wage Curve is alive and kicking). That is, they could have their cake and eat it too: they realized that they could run the economy really hot and generate broad-based growth without unnecessarily running the risk of high inflation.

“The key to the whole thing,” as Chair Powell put it yesterday, is that almost no one believes that the Fed can’t tame inflation if it were to reappear — inflation expectations are firmly anchored on target. So they can afford to be very generous in bad times because everyone knows the Fed won’t let inflation expectations get de-anchored ever again — the great lesson of the 1970s’ stagflation crisis. In other words, they had come to realize that we live in the best of all possible worlds. And the systematic policy mistake of the past decade or decades was that they had been unnecessarily pessimistic and cautious.

So when Summers and Blanchard reached for the old ways of thinking, something entirely unexpected happened. Where there should’ve been a loud debate structured by the idea of fiscal discipline, there was one big yawn. The doyens were largely ignored or dismissed by both the technocrats and the politicians. This surprising development revealed that the intellectual revolution among elites, triggered by the Polanyian counter-movement from below that Trump rode to power, had been consummated. Yesterday’s press conference confirmed that the process of intellectual conversion of the technocrats is now complete.

Such were the makings of the perfect storm. With fiscal policy not only revived but virtually on steroids and with monetary policy accommodative for the foreseeable future, we’re now looking at the greatest economic boom in living memory. The Fed now reckons that the US economy will grow at 6.5 percent in 2021. Goldman is more bullish. The 38th floor at 200 West believes that the US economy will grow at 8 percent instead. The strategists are probably closer to the mark.

But this is the short-term conjuncture. Why would I call the turning point of the secular cycle?? The coming economic boom is not enough. The turning points of the secular cycle need not just the destructuation of features that generated the secular downcycle but also  restructuration with features that generate the secular upcycle. What has created the conditions for new features to emerge and consolidate is the climate crisis. The success of climate activism has convinced elites that a solution must be found to the planetary impasse. Moreover, elites have come to believe that any solution to the climate crisis cannot come at the cost of the working-class — otherwise the threat from below will threaten the stability of the system as a whole. So the way is now open for at least a decade-long great green boom. The plan is now for the technocrats to handover control over economic affairs to the politicians, and for direct fiscal stimulus to give way to an infrastructure and green tech investment-driven economy. This is probably the only way out of the impasse of American class relations. Even those who don’t get it now will get it eventually.

quibbles with parts, but it’s a good narrative

[knight-queen]

Lunatic Parade Subaru Sakamaki– (Chapter 4)

[Chapter 1] [Chapter 2] [Chapter 3]

Place: Hotel • Mortstein,Guest room / ホテル•モーントシュタイン客室 

Yui: (I feel like tiredness is still left on my body but...I must refresh myself.)

(Umm...Subaru kun is…)

Subaru: nh...nnn…

Yui: (He’s still sleeping…)

Subaru kun, good morning.

...Time to get up already!

Subaru: ……

Yui: (Oh no, he’s not in the mood to get up…)

Subaru ku一

Subaru: Nnh...whatta disgusting pillow…

Yui: Eh…!?

*Holds her*

Yui: (...kh…!)

(He’s misunderstanding me by thinking that I’m his pillow or something…!)

Subaru: Nnnh…

(On the first day, he was the one to say “Do not cross over on his bed-part…!”, but now he’s…!)

Subaru: ……

Yui: (What shall I do?)

→  Selection

Forcibly rub / 無理矢起理こす 

Let him just sleep quietly / そっと寝かせておく(+Correct)

Yui: (But…)

(He was more exhausted than I was, so it should be okay to let him sleep a little bit more.)

(...Aight, it’s decided.)

Subaru: Zzz….

Yui: (Fufu...looks like he’s having a peaceful time while sleeping.)

(May it’s good that he didn’t wake up….!)

*After a moment*

Subaru: Nng…?

*Fades to CG*

Subaru: ……

Yui: (H- he woke up…?)

Subaru: …...Yui?

Yui: Eh...Err...good morning…

Subaru: ...kh!

Wha...What are you doing here!?

This was my bed-part! Do ye’ think it’s alright to enter my bed-side like this!?

Yui: (He’s saying the same thing he said on the 1st day…)

Yo- you’re wrong…! When I was about to wake you up, then you did this while sleeping…!

Subaru: HAAH!? ME!?

kh...I see.

Yui: (Uuh...this situation is embarrassing…)

A- anyways! You have to wake up already!

Subaru: Tch...I have to huh. I’m gonna wake up…

*CG Fades*

Yui: (Last day of the parade…)

(If we complete the orders of the antique art-dealer, we can properly apologize to Earl Walter afterwards…)

(I must get back my heart from him…!)

Place: Aizen Stahl, Antique Art Store / アイゼン シュタール古美術商店 

Yui: Hello, good morning!

Antique Art Dealer: Ooh, you two! I have been waiting. How’s your condition?

Yui: We’re already fine. Thank you for carrying us all the way up to the hotel yesterday.

Antique Art Dealer: Nope, don’t worry about that.

Subaru: If so, then don’t leave such notes which reach my nerves.

Yui: Wai- Subaru kun…!

Subaru: Hmph. And...What’s the last task?

We aren’t gonn’ have a leisure time today after all.

Antique Art Dealer: That’s right. Well then, I shall present today’s mission for you.

I want two of you to search…

My pet.

Yui: Ehh…!?

Subaru: Your pet!?

Antique Art Dealer: Mhm. When I took my pet to the Saint Honore Park today, it escaped away.

Yui: Escaped away...Err, by the way, what kind of pet…?

Antique Art Dealer: A parrot.

Subaru: Haah!? Is there any idiot to ever exist who’ll take a parrot outside!?

Antique Art Dealer: You can see, right in front of you.

Subaru: Don’t ye’ talk back!

Yui: Th- there, there...we’ve got no other options since it ran away…

Let’s go searching?

Subaru: Aah...right…

Yui: (Parrot huuuh...I hope we can find that out without any troubles…)

Place: サントノレパーク通り/ Saint Honoré Park, Street

Yui: (We’ve come here but…)

...It’s unbelievably crowded compared to the first day…

Subaru: ...Haah...earsore…

Yui: If there’s so many people, then we can’t ask around one by one.

Where should we get started…

???: Oh my? Could it be you two are…

Yui: (Hm…?)

Clown A: Yeah, looks like so! We’ve also met before!

Yui: Ah…!

Subaru: You are…!

Yui: (He’s the Mr Clown that we had met on the first day…!)

Clown A: Seems like you are being in trouble in this amusement park this time too~

Oh, plus did you find the head-mask?

Yui: Ah, yes! Thank you for helping us that time!

Clown A: Don’t mention it. By the way, are you trying to find something today as well?

Subaru: Yeah...we’re searching a parrot around.

Clown A: Parrot? ...Could it be that belongs to the person who was screaming today saying his pet escaped away?

Subaru: That’s right. We must gotta find out that old guy’s parrot.

Yui: Have you seen it somewhere?

Clown A: Umm...I’ve seen that today, but I don’t know where it is now…

Yui: I get you…

Clown A: Ah, that’s right! What if we distribute everyone a notice-poster?

Subaru: Poster?

Clown A: Exactly! Since there are so many visitors here today and,

If we pass out posters about this everyone, then you may find that pet out quickly.

Of course, we will support you in delivering those posters.

Yui: No kidding!?

Clown A: Sure thing! We also have a debt of gratitude for your show-performance.

Yui: What should we do? Subaru kun

Subaru: It can't be any help just by asking four or five. If it’s the case then I’ll agree on passing out posters or whatever it takes.

Yui: Aight, let’s start making posters right away!

*After a while*

Yui: (It’ll be better if it has an illustration which is easier to understand and helpful to find out.)

(Drawing a parrot is difficult but...I can count on the photo that they’ve shown us a while ago…)

Subaru: ………

Yui: ...Alright, it’s done!

I’ve drawn it this way, how’s it!?

(I’m thinking it looks good even someone like me has drawn it…)

Subaru: ……

...Isn’t that a crumbled cake?

Yui: Eeeh!? You’re wrong, it’s a parrot!?

Subaru: ...My bad, but whatever it’s looking like, it doesn’t look like a parrot…

Yui: N- no way…

Subaru: Parrot...hm...I also don’t know that much though…

*he starts drawing*

Subaru: ...Shouldn’t it...pretty much look like this?

Yui: Wah...cool…! It’s a parrot…!

You’re unexpectedly good at painting!

Subaru: Surprisingly you say, but it’s needless. By the way...you’re awfully unskilled.

Yui: Uuh…

(I can’t say anything back about it…)

...Anyway, I think we should now scatter so many copies of it.

Clown A: Leave it to me!

I’m gonna distribute in the middle of this park, soI bet you can get some kind of information!

Yui: W- we’re looking forward to that!

(I hope we’ll get a little bit of information by doing it…)

*After a while*

Clown A: Heyy!

Subaru: What’s up?

Clown A: Looks like we’ve come up to know something at once! That pet it possibly in the street over there!

Yui: (Looks like it was effective to make posters!)

Let’s go there!

Place: サントノレパーク通り/ Saint Honoré Park, Street

Subaru: Fuck, where did that damn parrot go!?

Yui: ーAh! Look, Subaru kun! It’s on the roof of the attraction box office!!

Subaru: Tch...this guy playing stupid with us arround…!

Yui: (...It has reached such a place like in the roof huuh…)

*parrot screeches*

Yui: What now, if we just wait here then it’s gonna fly away…!

Subaru: ...I’m gonna fly there and get that.

Yui: Eh!? You can’t! That parrot is pretty big plus...

Subaru: If I take a lot of time just climbing on the roof, it’s gonna run away.

Yui: But…

Subaru: Just be quiet and wait ‘re.

….gh…

*Footsteps*

Yui: (Hm…? Ah, the child is…!)

Subaru kun, waitー

*Screen shakes*

Subaru: ...kh, haa?

Vampire Children C: Ah...I’m so sorrー

Ah...my ice-cream is…

Yui: (It fell off when he collided…?)

Subaru: Oi! Look front while walking! It’s dangerous!

Yui: Su- Subaru kun, calm down…

Err...are you okay?

Vampire Children C: Uuh...my ice-cream...it fell…*crying*

Yui: (He’s crying…!? Oh no!?)

Subaru: Tch...stop it…

Anyway, I am gonna get the parrー

*Parrot flies away*

Subaru: Oii!! Wait up!!

Yui: (It escaped…)

Subaru: Of shit...I was very close…

Vampire Children C: Uuuh….uuuh…

Subaru: ...che.

Yui: (I’m Subaru kun is very angry?)

I- I am sure...this child didn’t get bumped onto you willinー

Subaru: Yeah...I’m aware of that.

Oi, brat.

Vampire Children C: ….Big brother, I’m so sorry...it was my fault…

Subaru: That doesn’t matter now. Above that...you dropped your ice cream huh.

Vampire Children C: Y- yes…

Subaru: ...Which shop is selling it? I’m gonna buy you a new one in exchange.

Yui: Subaru kun…!

Subaru: Even though it’s just an ice-cream to me...but to this brat, maybe it’s something more than that.

Yui: (I see...so that’s why…)

Vampire Children C: Thank you, Oniichan, Oneechan!

|| Oniichan means big brother and Oneechan means big sister in Japanese.

The shop is right over there! I’ll lead you the way.

Monologue  

After this, the boy take us to the shop but一

We were too late, so the ice-creams were already sold out.

This child who was tearing up Subaru kun bought him a pudding from a different shop. For that, somehow he stopped crying.

For a moment, I thought what bad could come up, but the boy returned to his parents while waving his hand to us putting on a smiling face at last 一

End of Monologue

Yui: At the end, that boy was having a happy face right….!

Subaru: Aah...with this, finally it got settled.

Yui: Yes. Thanks for working hard.

Subaru: Well...time to go back for the main task. We’ve lost so much time for sure but 一

*Parrot screeches*

Yui: Eh...that sound of a bird…! It means…!

*Flies*

Yui: Kyaa…!

(Now, it just flies though in front of us!?)

Subaru: That bastard...found it…! This time I ain’t let ‘em escape for sure!

Place: Gardening Shop / 園芸店 

Yui: Haah….kh...haah…

(We had to run quite a bit...this place...a granening shop…?)

*Parrot screeches*

Subaru: Tch...where is it planning to go…!

Place: Garnering Shop, Glasshouse/ 園芸店 温室

Yui: (It’s taking us in such kind of places…)

(Ah...it has stopped on this tree…!)

Subaru kun, it’s the right chance, yes?

Subaru: 一Hold it. Don’t go now.

Yui: Eh...but why…?

Subaru: The tree where the parrot standing is...the Devil’s Tree.

Yui: Devil’s Tree…?

Subaru: This is a tree which reacts to a small stimulus and aimlessly attacks the ones who will go nearby it...

Once you get entwined with it’s branches, it won’t be easy to escape away from it.

Yui: Such a tree is…

Subaru: Yeah...that’s why the only way is to secretly go near it and wait for the perfect chance…

Do ye’ even try to make noises that much.

Yui: Yes…

(I’ll do my best…)

Subaru: ...Aight, just a bit一

Clown A: Oooi~! You two!

Yui: Eh?

Subaru: Aah!?

Clown A: That’s good! I’ve been searching for you!

Subaru: Oi, ye’ dummy! Be quiet!

Clown A: Eh? What do you just say?

Subaru: I said...SHUT UP!!

*Slightly hit the tree*

Yui: Ah, Subaru kun, if you do so, then the tree will…!

Subaru: Ah, oh no…!

*The tree starts attacking*

Yui: Kyaaa!?

(The branch is...wrapped around my body…!)

Subaru: Che…! Let go!!

*Punch*

Yui: Oh no, if you do so then, again…!

*Screen shakes*

Subaru: Uwaa!?

Yui: Kyaaaa!?

*After a while*

Place: Diamante Fountain / ディアマンテ泉

Subaru: Haah...oh shit, we had to face something terrible…

Yui: Yes...you’re right…

(In the conclusion, when一)

(We couldn’t move at all, then we were somehow saved…)

Clown A: I’m sorry...I thought to give you the information about the parrot right away and…

Subaru: Even if so, there was a Devil Tree out there

You knew that, no!?

Yui: W- well, well...but he didn’t have any bad-intention and also…

If Mr. Clown wouldn’t help us then I don’t know what bad could happen…

Subaru: Tch…

...It’s fine. Chasing after that parrot comes first over anything now.

Yui: (Exactly...Before a while, the parrot escaped away when we couldn’t move ourselves for that tree…)

Clown A: If it runs away even if you chase after that then,

What about luring out that parrot instead?

Yui: Luring…? Even if you say that, but how 一

Subaru: No, wait. There’s a way I guess.

Yui: Eh…?

Subaru: You see, that Old-Uncle mentioned before. The tarts which is selling out in the Tart • Tatan. Tarts are it’s favorite dish.

Yui: So, if we lure the parrot using tarts…

Subaru: ...We’ll be able to catch that for sure.

Clown A: Tart • Tatan is nearby this place, however一

Subaru: Near? Then we’re on our way.

Yui: Yes…!

(Let’s do our best so it’ll go smoothly…!)

*They walks away*

Clown A: ...However, tarts may have gotten sold out since today’s the last day of the Parade, I wanted to say.

I hope everything’s gonna be okay…

Place:Tart Tatan,Glimmer Street Shops /タルト• タタングリンマーストリート店

Yui: ...kh…!

Subaru: Aah? What’s up with this crowding…!

Yui: An- anyway, let’s ask the people whether this shop’s selling out tarts or not.

Err, excuse me! We want to take-out some well-known tarts from this shop…

Tart • Tatan Clerk: My sincere apologies. We’ve served too many customers today so,

So the tarts which were for take-out have already sold out…

Yui: So- sold out…!?

Subaru: Then, it’s okay even if we don’t take-out that. We can get the tarts by using the reserving-food method.

Yui: Oh, that’s right. Sorry for that, then we’re gonna reserve tarts for 2 person一

Tart • Tatan Clerk: Actually...the reservation is not available since the customers have already filled that over…

Subaru: What!?

Yui: S-such…!

(We had come this far but…)

Subaru: ...At the end, the only way is to chase after that huh…?

Yui: As you see, it’s the only way I think…?

???: Ah! Oniichan! Oneechan!

Yui: Eh, this voice…

Ah, look Subaru kun! The child who’s waving his hand to us is….

Subaru: Ah? ...It’s the kid from the before.

Yui: (Ne-nevertheless, the food that’s decorated like a mountain on their table is...Tart…!)

Vampire Child C: What are you doing here?

Yui: Umm…

Subaru: Honestly, I don’t wanna ask for the tart to a kid but...we got no other choices…

Yui: Looks like...so…

(I don’t know if he can give us one or two tarts but...let’s try it by asking him…)

Well, you see…

*After the conversation*

Yui: ...that’s what happened.

Vampire Children C: That parrot, it’s the bird that I saw while I collided with Oniichan?

Subaru: Yup, that one.

Vampire Children C: I see. Then I’ll ofcourse give you! It will do, right?

Father: You two were the ones who gave my son pudding, huh.

I am sorry that earlier my child has burdened you with unreasonable things. If this tart will come out handy then take as much as you want.

Yui: Eh, really!?

Father: Ofcourse. You were the one who took care of my child earlier.

Mother: Yeah, we’re really grateful for that.

Yui: Thank you so much!

Subaru: No kidding…?

Your kindness has come out as a huge help…

Yui: Y-yeah….?

(It makes me happy that he said it but…)

(But we don’t have time for that.)

Yui: Then, let’s use this tart and lure out the parrot!

Thank you so much!

Vampire Children C: Mhm, do your best!

Place: Onyx Tower, Inside Hall / オーニュクスタワー内部ホール

Yui: Phew...is it okay to arrange these like this?

Subaru: Yeah...all we can do now is to just wait.

Yui: (I spread it here, from where the smell should get spread the most but…)

(I really hope it’ll come, please…!)

*Wind blows + parrot comes*

Subaru: ….Hm?

Yui: Ah!

(It comes…!)

*parrot(s) screech*

...here, they go!?

(For some reason, so many of them have come!?)

Subaru: Oi, oi, what’s going on!? Where did they come from!

*Parrot(s) screech*

Yui: (Wah...they all have started to eat these all at once…)

Subaru, what can we do!? I am not that sure which one of them is the parrot that we’ve been searching…

Subaru: Me neither! By the way, the fastest way will be to get the Old-Uncle for conforming.

Which’s why...we gotta catch all of ‘em right now…!

*After a moment*

Yui: Haah...hah...kh…haah…

Subaru: ....kh...with this...we’re done catching each of them…?

Yui: Pr- probably…

(We’ve caught all of them when they’ve gone crazy eating the tarts but…)

(But I’m tired beyond my imagination…)

Subaru: ...Haah...now, we gotta call out that old-uncle for confirming in one of these一

Antique Art Dealer: 一Oh my, oh my...you have caught unexpected number of them.

Subaru: kh...you…!

Antique Art Dealer: Yeaah, I’ve come here to visit when I heard that so many parrots are gathered on the top of the tower…

I didn't think you’d catch so many of them.

Subaru: I think yer’ parrot in one of them! Check out!

Antique Art Dealer: Mhm, I will.

Subaru: ……

Yui: ……

(God please…! I hope his parrot is one of these…!)

Antique Art Dealer: ...Yup! This one!

*Parrot screeches*

Yui: Eh...It means…

Antique Art Dealer: Yeah, your mission is complete!

Subaru: OH YAAAAY!!

Yui: (That’s great…! Finally we’re done with these…!)

Subaru: Oi, you’re satisfied now I guess. Then hurry up and handover the things that ya’ promised us.

Antique Art Dealer: Ofcourse, I am aware of that.

Look, I’ve brought those with me.

Yui: (Ah...that’s right...it’s not over yet.)

(We have to go to the place where Earl Walter is.)

Subaru: Finally we’ve got to the starting point…

Yui: (Subaru kun had to face so many difficult things till now, yet…)

(He’s still dealing with these …)

Yui: Umm...Subaru kun, I am sorry...you’re having so much trouble for me…

Subaru: Ah? What are you saying such things, don’t worry.

It was originally my fault starting with and…

...I am gonna go to meet Earl Walter. You wait here.

Yui: Eh...But…

Subaru: I’ll...hurry up and get back your heart at once.

Who can be silent to a guy who’s doing whatever he wants to with any kind of people around.

Yui: Subaru kun…

Subaru: Ah...which is why...you should just be silent and listen to what I say. *blushing*

Yui: Yes…

But, I can’t make you feel hurt all by yourself.

That’s why I also want to go and apologize with you.

Subaru: ...Tch, do as you wish.

Antique Art Dealer: ...Hehehe. You don’t have to go there.

Subaru: Ah? What? What’s so funny?

*BG blurred to white*

Subaru: ...kh…!?

Yui: Wh- what!?

(Smoke is getting filled here…! I can’t see the front…!)

Antique Art Dealer?: ...You two did well.

Yui: (Eh...this voice…)

Subaru: ...kh, this bastard is, Walter!?

Earl Walter: Kukuku...Hahaha…!

*BG is back*

Yui: (Ah...the smoke disappeared一)

*Clothing sound*

Earl Walter: ...Is it the first time to see me in this appearance?

Yui: You are...Earl Walter…?

Earl Walter: Certainly. I have been observing your actions very closely.

Subaru: Closely you say...you mean by distinguishing yourself to an old-man!?

What was that...it means we’ve been rushing around for abiding your orders all these times…

Earl Walter: I think that I was a little bit mean with you. However, you were the one to break the goods of my castle to begin with.

This is why I wanted you to feel grief by doing these tasks.

Subaru: ...Hmph.

Earl Walter: ...Then, we shall move onto the main issue. Yui Komori, I’m talking about your heart.

Yui: ...Yes.

Earl Walter: The fact that you’re the one and only person who’s worthy to possess this treasure,

I have gotten the proof of this claim clearly with my own eyes.

...Therefore, I shall give your heart back.

*Heart’s pounding*

Yui: ...kh…

*Screen’s white for an instant*

Yui: (...kh...for a moment, I felt something strange in my body…)

(My heart is...back…?)

Subaru: ...Oi, you alright?

Yui: I- I think so…?

Subaru: ...ngh…

*Subaru gets closer + loses her dress*

Subaru: Kyaa…!?

Subaru: ...I’m gonna confirm it. ….nnnh...mnn…!

Yui: ...eek…!

(His fangs are…)

Subaru: ...Haah...mnn…!

...Haah...the taste is the same as always…

(Eh...it means…!)

Earl Walter: Heh...told you right? “I’ll give her heart back.”

Yui: ...Thank you very much!

(I’m relieved now…!)

Earl Walter: From here on, walk on your life by being worthy of having this heart.

Yui: Yes…!

Subaru: We'd know it even if you wouldn’t say!

Earl Walter: ...Fufu, good.

Well then...the finale of the parade is coming soon…

Enjoy that till the end upto your heart's content.

With this, I am going to take my leave.

Earl Walter: Kukuku...Hahaha!

*Sound*

Yui: (Ah...he disappeared…)

Subaru: Jeez, what was wrong with that guy…

Yui: Yes...he’s a very mysterious person.

(But…)

(I feel like he has taught us a very important lesson.)

The END of Chapter O 4 一

[isgull-moved]

willa vasilyan, victor of the 58th hu.nger ga.mes.

*this is an adaptation of the female morphling victor from district 6. TW: violence, forced pr*stitution, drug/painkiller abuse

like all other districts, life in district 6 is difficult and rife with insufficiency for its inhabitants, but the vasilyans are slightly more privileged than most. her father, rover, is one of the district’s smartest engineers. he made a groundbreaking innovation with the capitol’s hovercrafts for which he was rewarded with very generously. they’re not as wealthy as the mayor and his family, but they’re relatively well off.

willa was eighteen when she was reaped for the games. unsurprisingly, she was devastated; it was her last year for eligibility and her name just had to be the one on that slip of paper. she was a sickly kid growing up and was excluded from a lot of physical activities, so people greatly theorized that she’d be one of the first to go in the games. her district partner, mott, was fifteen.

being unskilled and clumsy with the big weapons, her mentor advised her to be more resourceful instead. willa learned how to start a fire, identify poison plants, set traps, and climb great heights with the few weeks she had in the training center. her most useful skill was her painting ability, as she used it to learn how to camouflage herself in different settings.

the arena for the 58th hunger games was styled as a tundra that progressively followed the freeze-thaw cycle: it was winter for majority of the game and summer towards the end of it. she and mott made no agreements about teaming up for a while in the arena, though she did seek him out for the first few days. they eventually met under unfortunate circumstances at the start of the second week; one of the careers slit his throat from behind and his body fell right on top of willa’s concealed one in the terrain, bleeding out all over her as he died.

nobody was rooting for her in the beginning, but willa quickly became the dark horse of the competition with how she always narrowly escaped death with her expert camouflaging. she basically made it through the games by hiding from the other tributes and had only one kill — she strangled the boy from district nine with a rope to get the backpack of food he managed to snag from the cornucopia. it came down to willa and the girl from district four in the end, and the girl did all the work for her by unknowingly consuming nightlock.

willa didn’t have nightmares after the games but that was only because she could hardly get herself to sleep. eventually, she sought out a dealer during her champion’s tour at the capitol for sleeping pills, but was offered morphling instead for quicker relief. the morphling not only gave her dreamless sleep after dreamless sleep but kept her numb during the nights she had to visit her “lovers” for a rendezvous. willa’s mentor warned her about how she’d continue to be snow’s pawn long after her win, and she knew she had no choice but to comply if she wanted to keep her family safe. not even the morphling could keep snow’s haunting, taunting voice out of her head when he told her what would happen if she refused his demands.

her morphling reliance predictably turned into an addiction a little over a year after her victory at the games. willa was slated to be a mentor in the 59th hunger games, as is tradition, but the state of her health prevented her from doing so. her addiction was hard to deal with and she actually hated it, despite how much she couldn’t stop. but it had one silver lining: her “lovers” stopped calling for her as the addiction made her look less desirable in their eyes. she recovers gradually, but her stock of morphling never runs dry, and her body is never clean of it again.

[rpgsandbox]

The Gaia Complex is a cyberpunk RPG set on earth in 2119. Towards the end of the 21st century, the third world war, which became known as the Resource War, pushed mankind to the brink of destruction and brought ruin to the Earth’s atmosphere. Small pockets of humanity survived this horrific conflict, eventually forming the eleven metropolises. These incredible mega-cities have since grown and prospered, largely due to developments in atmospheric processing and significant technological advancements. Now cut off from each other, these heaving urban landscapes must each face their own difficulties and hardships. The Gaia Complex focuses on the largest of these metropolises; New Europe, a single sprawling city that covers much of what we currently know as mainland Europe. New Europe is a world of street violence, corporate espionage, vampiric uprisings and an overzealous A.I., known as Gaia, which functions as the city’s governor and the protector of its citizens.

The Gaia Complex is a dystopian world of urban violence, exploring the age of cybernetic enhancement through a vision of Earth that is somehow ‘changed’. This vision of the future injects both vampires and a strange species of people known as ferals, who are able to enter the minds of animals. This is a game of conspiracy and brutality, where players take on the roles of Mercs; former police officers, hackers and street-savvy dealers who are hired to fight back against the system and ultimately unravel the secrets of The Gaia Complex.

Of course we'd love you to back this campaign and be a part of making The Gaia Complex a reality, but before you do, maybe you want to give it a whirl for yourself? Good news - you can do this right now.

While this campaign and the updates throughout will talk about the game setting and rules, our free (well, 'pay what you want', but please, enter £0 and just grab a copy!) 48-page Quick Start for The Gaia Complex is out right now and will allow you to read and play for yourselves. This PDF contains a huge amount of lore surrounding the game, offering an in-depth insight to the world of The Gaia Complex and what it means to be a Merc in 2119. In addition, the booklet is jammed full of gorgeous artwork and gives you a good idea of what to expect from the full core book.

Go and grab your copy of the Quick Start by clicking this link

                   The cast of playable characters from the Quick Start

The Gaia Complex core book will be 'at least' 256 pages of full-colour hardback beauty - take a look at the Quick Start for a general idea about how it will look. We say 'at least' as we have a whole host of extra content that we might just squeeze in, either through stretch goals, or because we end up deciding certain things just need to be there.

At the time of launch, the core book writing is roughly 90% complete and layout for final proof-reading has already been completed for some chapters - this is a significant strength for this project, having completed so much of the writing ahead of launch. Artwork at this point is around 40% complete and new art is in the pipeline to be finished (and shown off) during the campaign. The art direction for this book is very important and great care is being taken to ensure the visuals support the writing as closely as possible.

The structure of the book is split over 12 chapters, plus an NPC (non-player character) library at the end. We'll go into more detail about the chapters over the coming weeks via the campaign updates, sharing some key information as we go. Alongside the rules, background and resources for playing the game, the book also includes multiple pieces of short fiction that slowly unfold the real story behind The Gaia Complex. These stories, and the characters they describe, lay the foundation for the world in which the game is set and allow us to explore New Europe in 2119 in much more cinematic detail.

The engine behind The Gaia Complex is called 12.3 and can be taken for a test drive in our Quick Start by clicking HERE.

The basis of the system uses 2d12 (that's two twelve sided dice - but you're all roleplayers, so I'm sure you knew that!) to make the majority of tests on a 'roll under' basis. Whenever a test is required, the GM determines a potential difficulty for the test, ranging from 1 (easy for a child to accomplish) to 11 (impossibly hard). A character will compare the difficulty to their relevant statistic and if the stat is equal to or greater than the difficulty, the test is a success - There is an emphasis in the game on keeping the action flowing and not making tests unless they are really needed.

If the character's stat is less than the difficulty, a test is required: the player rolls 2d12, requiring a result that is equal to or less than their relevant stat. An 11 fails (without cybernetic enhancement) and a 12 is a Critical Failure. To pass, a character requires one or both d12s to succeed depending on whether they are skilled or unskilled - The Gaia Complex does not consider 'ranks' in various skills like the majority of RPGs, instead a character either possesses a skill or does not (though becoming a specialist in certain skills is possible).

During combat, d3s are also used to determine damage - you can use funky d3s like the ones available on this campaign, or simply use common d6. The engine for the game uses d3s to enable a more consistant result when rolling multiple dice together and to remove the chance of whiffing a result of a 1 in situations that should always achieve a minium degree of success (thus 3d3+3 damage represents a weapon with more consistent output than one that does 1d12 damage) .

Of course, the game includes many other rules - some core, some optional - covering a huge array of options, but at its root, the game falls back on 12.3 to keep it rolling (pun intended).

During the course of the campaign we'll dedicate a couple of updates to specific areas of the rules and give you a deep dive into them beyond what you can get your hands on in the Quick Start.

Characters in The Gaia Complex are known as Mercs. At their core, Mercs are citizens of New Europe who have chosen to rebel against the system and take up arms by making themselves available on the freelance market. The seedy clubs and bars of NeoMunich are the most common place to find Mercs and while their work is entirely illegal, there is enough anonymity that it isn't worth the expenditure of resources for Gaia or its police force to worry about shutting down the network.

Most Mercs are hired to run jobs against one of the many corporations in the metropolis. From hacking R&D servers to kidnapping, assassinating or Bio Hacking company execs; there are few limits when it comes to taking a job. Ironically, the primary employers are the corporations themselves, all looking to get a leg up over their rivals, employing Mercs to do the dirty work in order to maintain complete deniability. Of course, it's not just the heaving corporations that are the enemy; outsider vampires that lurk in the subway tunnels and outer fringes of the metropolis, the cybernetic police force controlled by the LE1 A.I. subsystem, or even Gaia itself - the all seeing ruler of the metropolis - everyone is a potential mark if the score looks big enough!

The core rules contains a detailed character creation process, allowing players to play either human or feral (a mysterious group of people who can enter the minds of the metropolis' animals) characters from one of ten varied roles, each with their own unique rules, benefits and style. Characters can choose from:

Operator - Former law enforcement, corporate security and guns-for-hire that pack the hottest weapon tech that the black market has to offer.

Core Hacker - Hackers and coders who live their lives in the digital pathways of The Core.

Bio Hacker - A new wave of hacker, dedicated to hacking the cybernetic brains of their targets and inducing 'forced servitude'.

ParaMed - Former TactaMed paramedics who have realised they can earn more money patching up Mercs by being one of them!

CyberDoc - Back-alley hackjob specialists and cybernetic installers. An often riskier, but cheaper approach, to main stream cybernetics clinics.

MilTech - Weapons techs, tinkerers and specialist drone pilots. MilTechs keep the team's gear working and provide invaluable technical support.

Mech - Drivers, pilots and expert mechanics. Mechs keep the metropolis rolling and give Merc teams much needed access to reliable transportation.

Tech Trader - Black market dealers, handling everything from illegal weapons and stolen cybernetics, to narcotics and false credentials.

Data Dealer - Information traffickers and dealers of stolen secrets. If there is something worth knowing, you can probably buy it... for a price.

Handler - Exclusive to ferals. Handlers have dedicated themselves to honing the feral's ability to step into the mind of an animal. This is the feral in their purest form.

We'll be taking a more in-depth look into each of these roles as the campaign unfolds.

Kickstarter campaign ends: Wed, October 7 2020 6:59 PM BST

Website: [The Gaia Complex] [facebook] [twitter]

[akallabeth-joie]

Brickclub Les Mis 1.5.9

In the ~1.5 years Fantine has been in Montreuil, she’s gone into debt to the tune of 150 francs on rent and furniture. The first six months of that she had pre-paid the Thenardiers, then paid them 42 francs over the next 6 months, and around 72 for the next half year (12/month after the first year), and now needs to find 15 francs/months aside from her own food, and lodging. As Hugo points out, by time Fantine’s sewing, she’s earning 12 sous/day and needs 10 of those just for Cosette. The remaining two sous per day (totaling 3 francs over a month) isn’t going to feed her*, much less cover the rent or put anything towards her debts. 

Poor Fantine.

[Err, I think I started figuring things to approximate how much Fantine may have been getting paid in the factory, but all we know is that it’s probably more than 12 sous per day, and that she was going into debt at nearly the same rate as she was initially paying for Cosette. Looking at the other working class labor** we see in the book, and noting that Fantine isn’t particularly good at what she’s doing, but that JVJ is generous, she was maybe in the ballpark of 20-25 sous per day.]

Anyway, Mme Victurnien is horrible, and everyone else sucks, except Marguerite, who is a blessing, and deserves all the nice things.    

The landlord and the furniture dealer both address Fantine with “vous”.

*Marius’ exemplary poverty involved 20 sous per day for food, with 4 of that covering an egg and a bit of bread for breakfast. Messing around with the historical currency converter (giving 1 pound sterling ~ 25 francs) and someone else’s stats on historic English bread prices, I’m getting a very approximate cost of 2 sous per pound of bread, which puts Fantine at maybe 1200 calories per day, if she spends all her non-Cosette money on bread. 

**”Unskilled” is a terrible term, and we hates it forever, Precious.