#variant split retired!

[thebloodmoon-chaos-house]

Re-found a doodle I had made of Bloody and Fang together

The expected happened

Tho before that, let’s set the description for Bloody and Fang’s unique designs.

Bloody— he wears the same jacket Harvest and he got from Solar, a sloppily sewn together mix of red and black fabrics and the upper part of their original hoodie; only they have attached several things to the hood, two sets of hair pins right above both of his eyes, the right one in an x shape, the left one a rectangle, to the left side there’s two should-be-fluorescent earrings (that aren’t cuz I didn’t color them), and to the right there’s about three or four pinzas (plastic, small, to attach clothes to the clothing line to dry, I FORGOT THE NAME IN ENGLISH OK?!) attached together forming a small chain. Unlike Harvest or their together appearance, he has the sleeves all the way down, covering their arm warmers— which are mismatched red and black, and quite possibly are filled with holes or something. They wear the same scarf thing Harvest does. His shirt isn’t tucked in, and neither is it solid black but that detail can be ignored. He’s wearing actual shorts that look like shorts on them, presumably the pineapple shorts that had caught their eye in-canon (I am never letting that piece of characterization go). Instead of the boots the Twins would wear together, they have a red and black sneaker on his right foot and a pink and teal croc on his left, and under them he has mismatched socks, right one being a loose fitting purple with stripes, left one being a pink with polka dots one. Yeah their clothing is all over the place. Their appearance is basically the same as Retired’s usual looks, Second Version Bloodmoon, visible “eyebags”, presumably mismatched leg casing, though his right eye lacks the spirals it usually has.

Fang— the only things Fang shares with Swap’s together design and the canon//my interpretation of canon’s design is the color of casing and the hat fluff. Fang doesn’t really wear much clothing, having a hat, a skirt, and arm warmers. The hat is twin tailed much like the usual AI 2 First Version Bloodmoon here, only the colors and patterns differ, the right part of the hat being red with black x’s gradually intensifying towards the hat’s tail, the left part being black with red x’s that basically look the same as previously described. In between the top fluff there are two slightly curved horns. There’s fluff in Fang’s chest as well, covering the shoulders, chest, and upper back, white pentagram pendant lying in between the fluff. The arm warmers are black. The skirt is red and segmented, with usually four— technically five— segments visible at a time, these segments are stitched together by three x like patterns each. The technicality arises by the segment right in what could be considered the front//middle? Of the character, this segment doesn’t have the same x’s the others do and is longer than the others, being black with an inverted cross symbol that is not seen on any of the following drawings sadly. There’s another segment like this parallel to it which is actually longer but it isn’t very relevant here. Fang has animal like legs, specifically those of a cat or dog, the ones that go on a curve and then drop and then there’s the feet, those ones. The legs have fluff in the second joint. Fang also has a tail similar to what is usually drawn for Lunar designs, like a string with a ring at the end and a star, the star is white and the ring is red. Fang has closed eyes for the most part, but the one eye that is shown open twice is the left one which instead of a pentagram pattern has a simple white slit pupil.

Ok that enough yapping, doodle time

And a small comic, featuring Harvest and Scythe

Translation for the Swap Twins:

Scythe: Out here, living my best life

Fang: Harvest is drowning

Scythe: This isn’t about them

[katyspersonal]

I really enjoy your lore posts a lot! The Djura one you made recently is very well put. Hope you'll feel better soon!

Wait, I had like two posts about him recently, which one do you mean? xd Though they are roughly similar, only one is more serious than the other? I think that was less lore post and more me praising the character post, but thank you!

Djura symbolizes the exact kind of autonomy I respect and aspire for very much. Like I said once, he is the guy to insist writers should create anything as long as they appropriately tag their fanfics, as opposed to idea of banning the "problematic uwu" content gjhjfugjfjjkb

I see Brador as slightly similar vibe but a slightly more pessimistic? He ALSO encourages us to mind our own business instead of messing with something that will expire itself anyway but there is a difference between Djura's 'do not touch these beasts that can't harm people unless approached anyway, instead go hunt those roaming dangerous beasts!' and Brador's 'knowing horrible truth about how something happened and dismantling a place where the weakest must go to is not the flex that you think it is, it will avail nothing but ruining a fine system without guarantee you can offer something better instead'.

Yeah I know whereas Djura is objective and easy to conclude, Brador one is interpretation, but it seems so for me? Djura is 'Everyone must know their place in the scheme of things (affectionate)' but Brador is 'Everyone must know their place in the scheme of things (derogatory)'! Same vein how Ludwig is 'We must entrust the things smarter than us to cleanse the world from evil (affectionate)' but Logarius is 'We must entrust the things smarter than us to cleanse the world from evil (derogatory)'.

Djura is just more sympathetic and good faith! Again, rather ramblings than lore but I am glad someone likes me breaking down why this or that character is based, it is just that so far nobody is more based than him :thinking_emoji:

[originallandlockedmariner]

For three years running…

2020

Kobe. Pandemic. Lockdown. Koalas on fire. Harry and Meg retire. Toilet paper hoarding. Alcoholism. Impeach the f*cker. Parasite. Bonnie Henry. Tiger King. Working from home. Sourdough bread. Harvey Weinstein guilty. Zoom overdose. Dip your body in sanitizer. 6 feet. Quarantine. OK Boomer. Home schooling (everyone passes). Murder hornets. Dolly Parton. Don’t hug, kiss or see anybody, especially your family. Chris Evans’ junk. TikTok. Glory holes. Face masks. CERB. West Coast wildfires. Stay home. Small Businesses lose, big box stores win. F*ck Bozos. ‘Dreams’ and cranberry juice. Close yoga studios, but thumbs up to your local gym. Speak moistly to me. George Floyd. BLM. F*ck Trump. Phase 2, 3 and Summer. RBG. Baby Yoda. Biden wins. Bond and Black Panther die. No more lockdown. Back to school and work. Just kidding... giddy up round 2. Giuliani leaks shit from his head. Resurgence of chess. UFOs are real. Restrictions. Dave Grohl admits defeat. Monolith. “F*ck... forgot my mask in the car”. No Christmas shenanigans allowed. Bubbles. Alex Trebek. Use the term ‘dumpster fire’ one too many times. Jupiter and Saturn form 'Christmas Star'. Happy New Year Bitches!!!! 2021... you better not sh*t the bed!!

2021

“We love you, you’re very special”. Failed coup attempt at the Capital. Twitter, FB and IG ban Donny. Hammerin’ Hank goes to the Field of Dreams. Bozo no longer richest man but still a twat. Leachman, Tyson, and Holbrook pass. The economy is worse than expected. Kim and Kanye split. Brood X cicadas. Dre has an aneurysm and nearly has his home broken into. Bridgerton. MyPillow CEO is a douche. Covid restrictions extended indefinitely. Captain Von Trapp dies. Proud Boys officially a Terrorist Organization. Richard Ramirez. Cancer takes Screech. Travel bans. Impeachment trial (again?… oh and this was barely February? WTF??!!) Suez Canal blockage. Myanmar protest. Kong dukes it out with Godzilla, while Raya watches. Olympics. Friends compare elective surgeries. F9. Canada Women’s Soccer Gold. Free Britney. Multiverses. Residential Schools in Canada unearth children’s bodies. Kate is Mare of Easttown. Cuomo resigns. Disney and Dwayne cruise together. Wildfires. Delta variants. Musk passes Bezos. Candyman x 5. Capt. Kirk goes to space. F*ck Kyle Rittenhouse. Astros didn’t win. Squid Game. Goodbye Bond. Dune is redone. Angelina is Eternal. Astroworld deaths. Meta. Omicron. Three Spidermen. Tornados in December? World Juniors cancelled. Pills against Covid. School opening delayed. And Betty White dies. 2022… my expectations are ridiculously low…

2022

Wow… eight billion people. Queen Elizabeth II passes away after ruling the Commonwealth before dirt was invented. The monkeypox. Russia plays the role of global asshole. Wordle. Mother Nature rocks Afghanistan. Hover bike. Styles spits on Pine. Olivia Newton John, Kristie Alley, and Coolio leave us. Pele was traded to team Heaven. FTX implodes. Madonna and the 3-D model of her vagina. Pig gives his heart to a human. Beijing can brag that it is the first city ever to host both the Summer Olympics and Winter Olympics. Uvalde. $3 trillion Apple. Keith Raniere gets 120 years. The Whisky War ends with Canada and Denmark going halfsies. Mar-a-Lago. Nick Cannon brood hits a dozen. Shinzo Abe is assassinated. Inflation goes through the roof (if you can actually afford to put a roof over your head). Volodymyr Zelensky. European heat wave. Bennifer. Salman Rushdie is stabbed on stage, Dave Chappelle tackled, and Chris Rock is only slapped. Thích Nhất Hạnh. Heidi Klum goes full slug. Cuba knocked out by Ian. Liz Truss and 4.1 Scaramuccis. Taylor Swift breaks Ticketmaster. Human shitstain Elon Musk ignores helping mankind and buys Twitter instead. Riri becomes a mommy. NASA launches Artemis 1. Trump still a whiny little bitch. Music lost Loretta Lynn, Christine McVie, and Meat Loaf. Democracy died at least three times. Pete Davidson continues to date hottest women on the planet. Microplastics in our blood. Alex Jones is a cunt. So is DeSantis. Argentina wins the World Cup. Meghan and Harry. Eddie Munson rips Metallica in the Upside Down. tWitch. Roe vs Wade is overturned by the micro dick energy of the Supreme Court. CODA. James Corden shows he is a "tiny Cretin of a man". Amber (and the shit on the bed) Heard (round the world). Sebastian Bear-McClard proves he’s one of the fucking dumbest men alive. Latin America's ‘pink tide’. Anti-Semitic rants by Ye. Bob Saget. A verified blue checkmark. Godmother of punk Vivienne dies. And, Tom Cruise feels the need for speed yet again. 2023… whatcha got for us?!? Nothing shocks me anymore.

[slutsukio]

⋆˙꒰ SUKI'S ORIGINAL CHARACTERZ .ᐟ ꒱ prior to delving into my ocs, please acknowledge that every character that is presented on my profile are exclusively and personally owned by me. i have placed blood, sweat and tears into these characters, as well as their whole being + making. please do not plagarize + steal my layout, nor my characters.

☆ !? xoxo, yours truly !? ⋆

⋆˙kaito malikai jackson .ᐟᝰ

꩜ names + etymology. the name kaito has japanese origins. in japanese, if you split kaito's name in half, kai means "sea", and to means "fly", so all of it put together, his name can be interpreted ti mean "flying across the ocean." the name malikai is a variant of the more common name, malachi. the origin of the name malikai is hebrew, meaning "my messenger" or "messenger of God." lastly, the name jackson has english origins and is a patronymic surname, meaning it originally indicated "son of jack."

꩜ nicknames. kai, which is used by literally everyone.

꩜ family. kaito's parents, isaiah and amani, met at a wedding. it wasn't anything special, just talking about life, before isaiah asked amani if she wanted to go out some time. one thing led into another, and they soon got engaged themselves! while engaged, they had kaito. isaiah is a retired boxer, who now works as a personal trainer. and amani is a ghostwriter as well as a poet. kaito, doesn't have any siblings.

꩜ prns + gender + sexuality. kaito, an individual with a nuanced and unique identity, consciously embraces the use of he/they pronouns as an expression of their multifaceted self. in matters of romantic and emotional inclinations, kaito defies traditional expectations, expressing an appreciation for individuals of all genders, demonstrating a fluidity that transcends a specific taste or preference in terms of gender identity. despite his openness to diverse romantic connections, kaito steadfastly identifies as male, a core aspect of his self-perception that remains unwavering, signaling a resolute commitment to their identity that shows no intention of changing in the foreseeable future.

꩜ zodiacs. kaito is a pisces. pisces's navigate life with a unique blend of untuition and imagination, making them well-suited for artistic pursuits, and roles that require empathy and understanding. at times, their challenge lies in finding a balance between their dreamy inclinations and the practicalities of the everyday world. with a sun in pisces, kaito is known for his intuitive and empathetic nature. they tend to be compassionate, artistic, and deeply connected to their emotions, he is also an imaginative dreamers with a strong sense of creativity and spirituality. his moon in scorpio causes for his emotions to run deep. scorpio moons are intense, passionate, and determined. he has a strong sense of loyalty and can be incredibly insightful, making him excellent at understanding the motives of themself and others. finally, with a rising in leo, it adds a touch of confidence, charisma, and theatrical flair to his personality. leo risings often have a strong presence, love being in the spotlight, and radiate a warm, magnetic energy. they have a natural ability to lead and inspire others.

꩜ birthdate. march 6th, 2003.

꩜ age. 20.

꩜ race + ethnicity. blasian (jamaican + japanese). blasians, a vibrant fusion of jamaican and japanese heritage, embody a rich tapestry woven from the cultural threads of the caribbean and the far east. this unique blend encompasses the spirited rhythm of jamaican life and the serene elegance inherent in japanese traditions. from the sun-soaked shores of jamaica to the tranquil landscapes of japan, kaito carries the essence of two diverse worlds within his identity.

꩜ languages. english, japanese, jamaican patois (currently learning).

꩜ height. 6'1.

꩜ eye candy. angelino amari.

꩜ college major. kaito is pursuing his career by attaining his bachelors in archaeology.

꩜ hobbies. songwriting, poem writing, painting, thrifting, taking photos, journaling, lock picking (dont ask), collecting vintage items.

꩜ pets. none!

꩜ music taste. steve lacey, typer the creator, odd future, kids see ghosts, baby keem, mf doom, madlib, pete rock, sublime, slightly stoopid, tame impala, vince staples, death grips, joey bada$$, kendrick lamar, childish gambino.

꩜ birthplace. amid the diverse boroughs of new york, the bronx is know for it's vibrant upbringing in new york's dynamic urban landscape. a bustling borough within the heart of the city that never sleeps, bronx is known for its rich cultural tapestry, pulsating energy, and a history deeply intertwined with the rhythm of new york. dominated by the iconic silhouette of the yankee stadium, a symbol synonymous with the spirit of baseball and triumph, the bronx boasts an eclectic mix of neighborhoods, each with its own unique charm. from the historic grand concourse, adorned with art deco architecture, to the vibrant south bronx, a hub of creativity and cultural expression, the borough is a mosaic of communities that weave together tales of diversity and strength. as the sun sets over the city that never sleeps, the bronx skyline transforms into a captivating tableau of lights, mirroring the dreams, aspirations, and untold stories that unfold within its bustling streets.

꩜ mbti. enfp is a personality type with the extraverted, intuitive, feeling, and prospecting traits. these people tend to embrace big ideas and actions that reflect their sense of hope and goodwill toward others. their vibrant energy can flow in many directions. enfp's are curious, perceptive, entusiastic, excellent communicators, easygoing, good-natured, and positive. they are also people-pleasing, unfocused, disorganized, overly accommodating, overly optimistic, and restless.

꩜ personality quirks. obsessed with teeth jewelry and tattoos. kaito is ambidextrous. has a THICK bronx accent. this nigga has no matching socks, and if he does, he'll always end up losing one of the pairs. majority of his jeans are bigger than him. he never irons his clothes. spends too much money on clothes. is always suspicious of new people. kaito can literally sleep anywhere, anytime. he's always licking his lips too, like a lil weirdo.

꩜ personality 101. kaito is compassionate, empathetic, intuitive, confident, energetic, perceptive, and resillient. kaito is also indecisive, stubborn, jealous, secretive, and egotistical.

꩜ job. kaito stands out as a dynamic bartender at a lively bar, showcasing exceptional skills in crafting a diverse range of drinks tailored to the eclectic tastes of patrons. his proficiency in mixology is evident as he masterfully blends ingredients to create unique and flavorful concoctions that leave a lasting impression on customers. beyond the bar counter, kaito reveals another facet of his personality as a highly creative individual with a passion for the arts. during the rare moments when the bustling nights don't occupy his time, kaito channels his artistic skills into creating captivating visuals. transforming a blank canvas into an ethereal masterpiece, he brings his imaginative touch to life, showcasing a side of creativity that extends beyond the realm of mixology.

꩜ likes. astronomy, archaeology, fossils, comics, mountains urban exploring, fashion, thrifting, writing, painting, road trips, track, romance books, traditional jamaican + japanese food, keeping old movie tickets, headphones, chalk, social events, angelino *giggles*, skating (skateboarding + rollerskating), lego sets, patterned/weird socks, biking, uno.

꩜ dislikes. easter, too-nice neighbors, incense, throwing rocks, ugly sweaters, hiking, being too early, cemeteries, logic puzzles, pranks, moshpits, talking during movies, messy eaters, politics, facial hair, fungi, deers, inconsistency from people, hot air balloons, scarecrows, mazes, darts, boring documentaries, cold water, hot temperatures, heavyhanded people, necromancy.

❁ suki speaking — kaito is a mix of tyler the creator + vinz from mfkz, and has a gay crush on his best friend lolz :3, enjoy!

[supersimsstories]

Tale of Three Treasures

DISCLAIMER: I have a habit of feeling bad to invalidate a timeline variant so I just make really weird ways to merge the timelines together

The first part of this story comes from the 3 AGDI remakes of the first three King’s Quest games, and uses years before and after Graham’s coronation (BGC- before graham’s coronation and GC- graham’s coronation).

Due to a scientific revolution in the world that we call ours, humans, influenced by the words of intellectuals bound by their jealousy to those with magic, started to hunt magical beings to test their reality. All found solace in the wise and powerful mage Crispin, who vowed to find a solution. In 1695 BGC, using his magic, he was able to shift the axis of space (all worlds lie on a 2 dimension graph of time and space) and thus create a new world. To aid him to replenish civilization, Crispin drew magic from each star and personified it. He trained them all in magic, and they became The First Mages, from whom all the other mages (e.g. Manannan, Mordack, Hagatha, etc.) are descended from. He soon announced his prodigy, Legenimor, who was born from the North Star, as his successor and King of All the Land.

Legenimor ruled piously after Crispin’s retirement and created treasures to aid him in his rule, naming his serene kingdom, Serenia. This did not stop the other mages from harvesting their jealousy, and waging a war, known as the Grand War. After 715 years of violence, during which Legenimor’s general and younger brother Morgeilen (born from the little star next to the North Star) disappeared, Legenimor decided to end the war completely. In 980 BGC, he hid all his treasures and created one last one, a pair of hands made of emerald, which he held up, and through that, he relinquished his magic back to the heavens from which he was born.

Without his superpower, Legenimor was murdered and the war had finally come to an end. Before he died, Legenimor bewitched the crown of his kingdom to only fit the head of the true king, prompting the advisors to check the head of every figurehead in the court, until it finally fit the head of Grantithor, the farmer turned First Knight of Serenia. He was crowned king and aimed to rule with equality and justice for both the powerful mages as well as the helpless citizens harmed by the war. In honor of the citizens, he erected a well where the first tree in Serenia was planted, coincidentally by Grantithor’s father Dafa. He thus split the continent into half, keeping the western side as Serenia, and renaming the eastern side and the continent as Dafa’s tree, which became Daventry.

Grantithor’s many kids spread to new lands and founded new kingdoms, like Kolyma, Llewdor, Tamir, and more. He then decreed that if the king did not have any biological heirs, the throne should go to the First Knight if they prove worthy. To back up his decree, he married his eldest daughter to his First Knight,  born from the House of Cracker. Their descendants continued to be First Knights to the kings for centuries. The emerald hands, entitled The Item, alongside a green healing orb and the Chest of Gold, an everlasing chest always filled with gold, were buried with Legenimor, but stolen by the pirate, Saren.

In 900 BGC, Grantithor’s great-grandson, King John the Compassionate, accompanied by his second cousin, Sir Robin Cracker, defeated a bandit who, through a series of thefts stemming from Saren, obtained the Chest of Gold.

Legenimor gave his magic shield to the titan Oceanus for protection. Oceanus passed it on to his son, Asopus, who lended it to his daughter Aegina for protection from teh lust of Zeus. She was ultimately kidnapped by Zeus and given her own island, named Aegina, where she gave birth to Zeus’s son and teh first king of Aegina, Aeacus, who inherited the shield and passed it down to his son Peleus. Peleus married the Nereid Thetis, and they had Achilles, who inherited the shield. Achilles and his lover Patroclus were killed in the Trojan War, but were honored by naming the shield the Shield of Achille. For their valor in the Trojan War on the trojan side, Grantithor’s 16x great-grandson, Cassux, and his contemporary First Knight, Sir Polltor Cracker, were given the shield in 520 BGC.

Finally, Legenimor sent his friend Merlin back to our world, with the Magic Mirror, where Merlin died at the hands of his unreciprocated lover, Nimue. in 220 BGC, Grantithor’s 28x great-grandson, King Anthrovale, and his First Knight, Sir Gallevain Cracker, excavated the cave and found Merlin’s coffin, where they retrieved the Mirror.

The Crackers continued to serve the House of DeVentry as First Knight, until a romantic mixup in Llewdor years later...

[redhoodedangel]

Black Widow!Batmom!Reader Discovering her son, Jason Todd, is Back from the Dead

Yeah, you probably knew this was coming...

So, this is basically 'How Batmom!Reader, as the Black Widow, discovered that each Jason Todd variant in the multiverse is back from the dead' headcanons. By variant, I mean any version of Jason we've seen over the years in DC and Batman related media.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Comics!Jason Todd

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-The moment you saw Bruce carrying the body of your wayward son, your world came crashing down...

-You break down as soon as you cradled his limp body next to Bruce

-Jason was so young and he didn't deserve what the Joker had done to him

-You spent countless weeks and sleepless nights, mourning for him

-However, you slowly began to realize that in order to truly avenge your son, you would have to stray from Bruce's moral code

-This leads to an argument between you and Bruce, leading to separation and you donning a new mantle

-The mantle of the Black Widow

-As this new vigilante, you had no moral code

-At least, not one that was heard of

-You started killing criminals of all kinds

-Murders, offenders, drug dealers, terrorists, the list goes on…

-You then met your match, 5 years after Jason’s death, in the Red Hood

-He recently took hold of the drug-related crime groups

-You had a few encounters with him, fighting each other or together

-It wasn’t until one night, he showed up to your apartment, bleeding from his neck and hand… and without his helmet

-That’s because you saw who it is underneath

-“J-Jason?”

“Hey, Ma…”

-After dressing his wound, both of you made up for lost time

-Learning of his resurrection due to the League of Assassins and the Lazarus Pit

-You swear you haven’t cried that hard since he had died…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Arkham!Jason Todd

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-Seeing that video of what Joker did to Jason tore you apart

-Seeing him get shot sent you spiraling and looking for a way to avenge your lost son

-You cried for days, unable to stop

-Losing Jason led to a wedge in yours and Bruce’s marriage and you ended up splitting up in secret

-You abandoned the Batwoman mantle and dons the new mantle of Black Widow

-You became Gotham’s most merciless and skilled anti-heroine

-Almost three years of you plotting to take down the Joker after what he did to your son, he finally died by his own hubris… how ironic

-However, nine peaceful months after Joker was cremated, On Halloween night, all hell broke loose

-Scarecrow had taken over the city with Gotham’s most wanted… and a new face, the Arkham Knight

-This Arkham Knight character seemed to know you and Batman like the back of his hand

-You grew curious as to how and why…

-During that moment, your mind couldn’t help but drift to Jason

-You decided to find out for yourself if your hunch was correct… you headed to the Old Gotham Mall, where Jim Gordon was being held by the Knight

-Once there, you pulled out your gun and this happened:

AK: “Turn around…”

Y: “I figured you’d be here, waiting for the Bat…”

AK: “You shouldn’t be here.”

Y: “Well, too bad. Besides, you know who I am and I just figured out who you are… so, are we gonna talk this out like we used to… Son?”

-The Arkham Knight then sighs and presses a button on his mask, saying…

“You sure you really want that, Ma?”

-While your heart broke at the sight of the ‘J’ branded on his cheeks and the several smaller scars on his face, you were happy that you had found him again

-Even if it wasn’t how you pictured your reunion being like…

~~~~~~~~~~~

Titans!Jason Todd

~~~~~~~~~~~

-After retiring as Batwoman and Jason’s death, you became the Black Widow

-You had actually been the one to kill the Joker

-Bruce took the blame for you, leaving you to defend Gotham, along with the Titans

-You were aware of how the team treated Jason when he first joined and you took matters into your hands by talking to the group over a phone call

-However, when the Red Hood came along after three months of nothing new, and started causing mayhem, you knew what you had to do

-You had only fought the kid and you knew that he had to be highly trained

-However, you were thrown through a loop when he said this to you:

“A for effort, Widow…”

-You used to say that to Jason every time he felt like he had screwed up on something

-How could he have known what you used to say to your son almost all the time?

-It wasn’t until you received a phone call from your eldest son, Dick

“Dick, sweetie, what’s wrong?”

“It’s about the Red Hood, Mom. I know who he is…”

“You figured it out?”

“Mom… it’s Jason. He’s back…”

-Your heart burns, realizing that you were fighting against your son

-You had to take a few days off from vigilante work to process the new information…

-That’s when you had an unexpected visitor…

“Your stealth’s getting better…”

“Well, I did learn from the best…”

“… You’re here to kill me, aren’t you?…”

“What makes you say that?”

“You’re obviously here for something… and if you’re here like this, then… I did something wrong as your mother…”

-Jason then took off his helmet and drops it to the floor, saying…

“No… you’ve done nothing but help and support me… I would never want to kill you…”

-At this, you quickly got you from your seat and pulled him into a hug

-One you had both been needing for a long time…

~~~~~~~~~

[astral-glass]

Random TF2 Headcanon Post for y’all part 3: Retirement edition

( because I love to think about old gay people finding joy )

- Soldier never stopped being a mercenary. Even after RED disbanded, he continued to take on his own missions. Despite this, he always made time for family meet ups and get togethers. Because of his rockets, Soldier became mostly deaf. He talks EVEN louder than before, and Engineer made him a hearing aid. He knows bits of sign language as well, including his own made up signs.

- Scout died on December 4th, 1987. Spy told the rest of the team that he was doing a skateboard trick and fell on his head. No one believes him, but they know he won’t tell otherwise. When the team gets together for the holidays (usually at Engie’s place), they always pull out a 9th seat for the table. They’ve seen ghosts after all. Spy tends to stare at it when he isn’t conversing.

- No one knows what Pyro does. They gave everyone a hug goodbye when they split, and went off their own way. Some thought that pyro started a business again, others were suspicious of the multiple arson cases popping up around the coast. Either way, pyro ALWAYS came to family meet ups. Always in some variant of their suit and mask. Medic jokes that pyro looks as young as ever.

- Heavy used his mercenary fortune to buy a new, better home for his mother and sisters, where they wouldn’t have to eat bear everyday. Eventually his sisters left the home one by one, to start their own families and see the world. Heavy made sure to visit his momma up until she passed. 

Misha himself moved in with Medic in a nice home in Germany. Far enough from the fray that medic could experiment, but close enough that they could walk through town on good nights. They never got married, not legally anyway. They made their own rings and had their own (very untraditional) wedding. Most of the team attended. 

- Demoman went on to commission a castle in Scotland. The rest of his money went to giving his dear mother comfort up until her passing. He lives there, happy as ever, surrounded by his swords and trophies of the different cryptids and beasts he’s slaughtered. As he expected, Demo became fully blind. He also lost a good bit of his hearing like soldier. He always seems the happiest at meet ups, as he gets lonely.

- Engineer moved back to Texas and continued on with the Conagher tech business. It grew with the times, and his company became a national leader in technology and invention. He runs the business from a modest farmhouse, with his workshop attached. His house is the token place for get togethers. He eventually started a late family, and raised some kids. He hopes that one of them will continue his legacy. They love their Very Weird uncles that visit.

- Medic and Heavy moved to a new place in Germany together. Medic continued his medical practices, as well as his place in the organ black market. He continued to nurture his oddly long-living doves, who brought him a new generation of squabs to care for. Him and heavy like to sit on their porch in the evening and read together, or medic plays his violin and heavy just listens. They consider their retired life to be rather peaceful (when medic’s experiments don’t create monsters, that is)

- Sniper traveled for years. He drove his van until she eventually kicked the bucket beyond repair. He continued to do assassination work, visited different countries, hunted different animals. Eventually he moved back into his parents’ old place, after giving it some renovation. He liked living alone, aside from a variety of pets he’d accumulated. He found that being an exotic rehabber was a nice past time for an old Mundy.

- Spy disappeared. Many assume that he continued his life of uncovering secrets and snooping around, for whoever would pay. Perhaps even for his own enjoyment. He continued to support Scout’s ma, especially after his death. And despite his silence, he always shows up when they all meet. Always dressed nicely, smelling like cologne and cigarettes. Over the years, his snarky edge has faded into a more playful attitude. Family is family, after all.

[tl-notes]

Kobayashi’s Maid Dragon S2 Episode 9 Notes

...設立から大分地盤が固まってきており、少しずつだが、業態は改善さ��ている。

One thing to note here is that Kobayashi(‘s narration) isn’t saying the company has already made solid improvements, it’s that the company has finally established itself somewhat (as it was only founded relatively recently, and typically new companies are especially busy while trying to get off the ground) and now is starting to make improvements.

Similarly in the second sentence, it’s not “was” slow going, it’s “is still” slow going, and the working conditions “are” improving, not “have improved.”

This is がんば ganba, short of course for がんばって ganbatte, which I’m sure most of you are familiar with: the (in)famous “do your best.”

I only mention it because I like this shortened version of it. Ganba!

This is a fun little idiom(?)/saying: 鼻で笑う hana de warau (conjugated as hana de warawareta), lit. to laugh using the nose. It’s used to describe laughing at someone you’re looking down on for whatever reason (not necessarily in a super serious way, could just be a friend being dumb etc.; in this case it’s Elma’s being naive).

Typically it refers to like a “heh-but-through-the-nose” kind of “laugh,” but as you can see in this scene (where clearly Kobayashi is laughing with the mouth, even starting with “pff” lips) it works idiomatically even if the laughing isn’t only through the nose.

You may have heard that Japan is/was a “lifetime employment” country, where typically people would get hired right out of school and stay at that company until retirement. While that’s much less true today than it was even a couple of decades ago (and has become kind of controversial in ways), it’s still much more common of a practice than in say the US.

One result of this is that there’s a much bigger distinction placed between hiring people in spring as part of the annual graduation rush (the Japanese school year ends in March), and mid-career hiring. Typically you can’t participate in the fresh grad hiring if you aren’t one, even if you’re new to the field in question. 

For larger employers (i.e. 5k+ employees), roughly two-thirds of all hirings come from fresh grads, and only small employers (<300 employees) hire more mid-careerists than people directly out of school.

Of course, this split tends to apply mostly to “standard” full time jobs, not so much part time, and is not necessarily a thing in every industry/at every company.

Just as a minor point of clarity, this “organized text” in Elma’s document refers to the phrase まとめられた文章 matomerareta bunshou. In a literal sense, matomerareta can mean organized/consolidated etc., and bunshou text/passages, but meaning-wise it’s more like “writing that gets its point across clearly/cleanly.” 

This is a pretty big compliment and a very useful skill to have in organizations like this, as writing such that people can quickly and easily understand exactly what you’re trying to say often saves a ton of time and frustration.

我々はエルマの気迫に押されるがままにその書類を読み始めた。

Another minor point, but where the English could imply that they were overwhelmed by Elma’s intensity through the act of reading her report, the Japanese implies more that they started reading it because of how intense Elma was being. 

It doesn’t really make much of a difference either way, but it stuck out a little for me. 

To justify mentioning it, I guess I’ll explain the grammar point Kobayashi uses: されるがままに sareru ga mama ni. Sareru is a generic verb/verb conjugation for having something done to you (technically here it’s 押される, to be “pushed/pressed/pressured”), and mama refers to a state, condition, or “way” (like “do it this way”).

Put together, the whole phrase is used to indicate “you” do/did something that someone else wants you to, without (meaningful) opposition. (Something similar in raw meaning but with a very different connotation would be “going with the flow.”)

If a friend says “hey let’s go do something,” and next thing you know you’re out bowling despite preferring to stay at home, this is you.

You can stick the mama ni to various other things as well to come up with a similar idea, but without the sareru the nuance may end up different. 

The word for clairvoyance here is 千里眼 senrigan, lit. “eye(s) [that can see] a thousand li”, li being a Chinese unit of measurement for length (shorter than a mile, but for general purposes “eyes that see a thousand miles” is basically the gist).

Despite the perhaps physical-sounding nature of the term, it does actually describe the same power as “clairvoyance” in English: being able to perceive things outside your actual range of vision, including potentially into people’s hearts and minds etc.

Hence why it’s a thousand screen display, when she updates it with tech knowledge:

“Tainted by work” here is 職業病 shokugyou-byou, lit. an occupational disease. The “proper” definition is a disease one gets from working in a particular job, such as black lung for coal miners or even posture-related health issues for desk workers. 

Additionally, it’s used colloquially to refer to noticeable habits or quirks that people in a certain profession pick up, like a baker always waking up super early or a programmer using programming lingo out of context in normal conversation. The latter being especially noticeable in Japanese, as a lot of such terms are English in origin.

“Shocking” here is a fun word: ドン引き don-biki. “Don” here is added just for emphasis; the main meaning revolves around 引き hiki/biki, from the verb 引く hiku, meaning to pull. 

The idea is that someone does/says something that you recoil from. Maybe it’s gross (“I only shower once a week”), maybe it’s mean (“They didn’t smile enough so I didn’t leave a tip.”), maybe it’s creepy (“I sent like 30 texts yesterday but still no reply.”), just anything that has you feeling like you might want to create some distance because... phew. 

It’s kind of similar to the current use of “cringe” as an adjective/noun, though with less of an internet-slang feel* to it, and generally used more as something the speaker is doing rather than describing whatever/whoever is being cringe. 

(*I think it started being used popularly in this way in the early-to-mid 90s, with the “don”biki variant specifically popping up around 2005.)

A “Premium Friday” is the last Friday of the month, where you get to leave work at 3 pm. It is largely theoretical. 

The idea was created by the Japanese government as a way to reduce working hours and encourage domestic spending (boost demand), but it has not been implemented by all that many employers, and especially not many smaller employers. There isn’t, after all, any mandate or government-provided incentive for doing so.

Evidence from the places that did implement it suggests it is actually good for the economy, but good luck convincing bosses to give extra paid time off.

“Last Friday of the month” was chosen because most people get paid on the 25th each month (Japan tends to pay monthly instead of every two weeks), so it would usually be right after payday, when people are more willing to get spendy.

Kobayashi saying eight hours here reminded me of a “fun” fact: the typical Japanese work day is eight hours plus a one hour break. Plus a one hour break, not with. So a typical work day is actually nine hours. Most commonly 8 to 5 or 9 to 6. Not many “nine-to-fives” here.

The characters for Joui are 上井, which usually read as Kamii or Uwai. It’s “Joui” because that means, when written as 上位, “superior.” As in “a superior life-form.” Like a dragon, say.

でも、ゆっくりやる事業改善案を見せてもらえたじゃない？

This one is actually kind of a critical mistake. In the English it sounds like she’s talking about the improvement proposal that Elma made and that the boss looked at. In the Japanese though, she’s talking about a different plan, one the boss showed them*, that is similar in idea but is going to take longer to be fully implemented**. So we’re being told that while Elma didn’t get what she wanted as fast as she wanted it, it is still basically going through at a slower pace.

*In ”見せてもらえた misete moraeta,” the misete vs mite means they were the ones who got shown something, rather than the ones who got someone to look at their stuff. 

**Which you can tell from the ゆっくりやる yukkuri yaru, where yaru is basically “do” and yukkuri means (in this case) at an unhurried pace.

(Re previous note: Hence why she says “immediately” here.)

“Black (ブラック)” and “white (ホワイト)” in the context of Japanese employers refers to how well employees are treated: a company with good benefits/pay, reasonable levels of overtime, and feels safe to work at is “white,” while a company that has excessive overtime, often pays poorly, breaks labor laws, and allows harassment to fester is “black.” 

While “white company” was created simply in contrast to the term “black company,” the latter finds its origins in front businesses for organized crime, which were called “black” in the sense of “illegal” (similar to “black market” or something being in a “grey area”). Given the international reputation of Japanese work life, you can imagine that “black company” as a term sees much more use.

There’s been some discussion about maybe replacing it due to the racial implications (especially since it uses the English word “black”), but while typically English translations drop the color for that reason (e.g. ブラック企業大賞, an “award” given to Japan’s worst employer each year, is officially “Most Evil Corporation of the Year Award” in English), it hasn’t really penetrated to the mainstream at this point.

The rice there is in a 飯盒 hangou, a metal container that looks… like that, and is the stereotypical item of choice for cooking rice while camping. It has its origins in the mess kits used by the military, but these days they’re primarily marketed as portable rice cookers for camping use. 

You can get round ones too, but the bean shape is very popular.

“Settings” here is 設定 settei, lit. exactly that, “setting(s).” E.g. if you open a computer program and look at the settings menu, it’ll be settei in the Japanese language settings (settei). 

I bring it up here because there’s a bit of a difference in how it gets used colloquially like this. In English, the “setting” for a story typically refers to where and when it’s set. In Japanese, “setting” in that sense is usually 舞台 butai. But settei is still used when talking about fiction, just in a different, more expansive way.

Often in these cases settei is used to refer to the various conceits that provide the context in which the story takes place. In this show, for example, one such “setting” is that dragons are real: another is that magic exists. It comes up especially often in fantasy/sci-fi type stuff where there are major distinctions between that universe and the real world—not that stories in a real-world setting don’t have settei of their own, but they often are lumped into descriptions of the plot in that case (”a dragon comes to live with an office worker in her apartment”).

It also refers to the “settings” of characters, like name or age, and things like “they run a bakery that’s going out of business and are trying to save it.” Basically all the details you’d have in a character profile.

It also gets used in conversation to refer to pretend things or (basically) lies: like here, where Saikawa thinks Shouta is playing pretend with his ley-lines talk, or e.g. if someone is trying to tell you some outlandish story (“my uncle works at Nintendo…” or someone asking for love life advice for “their friend”) and you’re just like “Okay so that’s the settei here, I see.”

Not really a big deal, but Elma’s line here in Japanese implies she won’t let Tohru call her that anymore (see her もう mou). Tohru’s response is also more of a “I haven’t been?”, since of course she wasn’t aware of Elma’s-mental-image-Tohru tormenting Elma in the previous scene:

The word for “full of” in the title here is ざんまい zanmai (a suffix form of 三昧 sanmai), usually meaning that there’s a whole lot of [whatever] to immerse oneself in. I mostly bring it up because there’s a famous restaurant chain called Sushi Zanmai that specializes in, obviously, sushi.

And you know, Elma is a water dragon that looks kinda like an eel… I’m just sayin’…

Not really a translation note, but wild that Elma didn’t even touch her parfait. (Not so wild that Fafnir finished his so quickly.) Serious business ahead...

“Genuinely” here is 素直に sunao ni, where the “ni” is used like “-ly” to make sunao work as an adverb. Sunao itself is an interesting word that falls into that category of “simple concept that is often hellish to translate.”

For some context, the first character, 素, is also used in the word 素顔 sugao, which is a face without makeup and 素材 sozai, basically raw ingredients/materials. The second, 直, is used in words like 直線 chokusen, a straight line, or 正直 shoujiki, honest.

Put them together, and you’ve got a word with connotations of directness and being unadorned. The original definition of the word tends toward “simple, natural” in the sense of e.g. life growing up on a rural farm. 

The more common use for it these days is to describe people and their actions. Positively, it can mean something similar to a person being happy to help, or kind of like the opposite of conniving; open, frank, genuine. Less positively, it can mean someone is too trusting and easy to trick into doing things OR someone who is “too honest” and says hurtful things. 

(If it helps: tsundere characters are often described as explicitly not sunao.)

In this case, the idea is that Tohru accepted the invitation easily as-is, without putting any conditions on it, or doing any “ugh, what a pain, do I have to, jeez” rigamarole—she just accepted. Another way you could put it in this case might be “It’s even more unusual for Tohru to accept an invitation like this without a fuss.”

Just to point out the hand on head thing again.

Also just to point out that this is another example of otsukare, as a reminder of how ubiquitous that word is.

And it makes a good place to end on: thanks for reading!

[howtofightwrite]

Q&A: A Retired MMA Fighter Vs. an Armed Group

I have a character who was an MMA fighter, he is retired and now owns a gym where he trains people new to the sport. If he were to get jumped on the street by 4 men with improvised weapons, is his training any good in this situation?

This is a little tricky to gauge because there are a lot of potential, messy, outliers. The short answer is, probably not, and the slightly longer version could be summed up as, “probably not, but even if it is still useful, it’s still not going to be enough.”

As its name implies, MMA isn’t a single, uniform, martial art, while most MMA fighters don’t have combat backgrounds, it is possible (though, unlikely), that you’d find an MMA fighter with training in Military Krav Maga, Systema, MCMAP, or another practical combat martial art. In one of these examples, it is possible their training would be somewhat useful. However, if that’s their background, its highly unlikely they were using it in bouts.

When I say “unlikely,” I can count on one hand the number of Systema practitioners I can find who’ve competed in MMA tournaments. There could be more out there, but these kinds of martial artists don’t, often transition into sport fighting. A good illustration of why comes from the MCMAP training manual, which reminds instructors to watch for, and stop trainees engage in “sports fighting,” during training. All of these practical martial arts put a high priority on ending the fight as quickly and efficiently as possible. While it results in combatants who survive combat with minimal injuries, it’s not going to be an entertaining MMA match.

Having said all of that, if we ignore your character for a moment, and say that you have an ex-special forces operator who is unarmed, in that situation, facing four foes armed with improvised weapons, there is a very real chance that the ex-operator will end up seriously injured or dead.

With an MMA fighter, you’re likely looking someone with a background in Boxing, Wrestling, Kickboxing, Taekwondo, Muay Thai, Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, Karate, or Judo. TKD, and Judo both have practical branches, but with an MMA fighter, they’re almost certainly training in the sports variants of their martial arts. While this results in athletes who are certainly talented, they are training to fight in a very specific situation; one on one, unarmed, with a wide range of limitations designed to ensure the relative safety of all participants. It’s not simply a matter of saying, “well, this time I’m going to just cut loose,” they’ve trained to fight this way.

In some situations, their training can carry them through an actual situation. There’s enough youtube videos of amateur MMA practitioners TKOing an idiot on the street. The key there is the singular. They punch out one individual. They’re not getting into a fight with multiple enemies.

Combat against multiple foes requires you split your attention across the entire group. You cannot afford to lose track of them, because if you do, they will be able to exploit that. Keeping track of multiple foes in the chaos of a real fight is extremely difficult. Everyone’s moving, some are probably trying to flank, and no matter what you do, you have more foes than eyes.

Once you do start taking hits, it’s likely to become a death spiral. Even minor injuries will impair your ability to continue fighting, making it harder to defend against subsequent attacks. This isn’t a death by papercuts scenario, the first few hits might not do much on their own, but they’ll open the victim up to more devastating injuries.

If that wasn’t bad enough, getting hit basically ensures you’re going to lose track of some of your foes. This means that even if you successfully defend against a strike, there’s a real danger you no longer know where all of your foes are, and can no longer defend against some of them.

And it gets worse.

Dealing an armed opponent while unarmed is extremely dangerous. It is something that an experienced martial artist may be able to handle, if they’ve been trained for it. However, there are a depressing of stories of experienced martial artists failing to execute a combat disarm and being seriously injured or killed.

Dealing with an armed opponent means you cannot afford to lose focus on their weapon. You need to know exactly where it is at all times, and you cannot afford any lapses. If you get hit with a weapon (even an improvised one) it will be so much worse than an unarmed strike. You can continue fighting after taking a punch, you cannot continue to fight effectively after taking a blow from a crowbar. Survival depends on finding a way to neutralize their weapon as quickly as possible.

So, here’s a problem, you have multiple foes which require you to split your focus, and they’re all armed, meaning you need to individually devote your full undivided attention to each weapon.

If you’ve found a way to divide your undivided attention, congratulations, you’re now a superhero.

So, is your character’s training any good at this point? Yeah, if he understands how bad the situation is, and runs. Even at his age, he’s probably in excellent physical condition, and it’s very possible he can outrun them.

There is another problem, and it might impact his ability to run. Martial arts puts a serious toll on the body. This is especially true for competitive sports fighters. It’s entirely possible that he’d have mobility issues as early as his 30s. This also feeds into the reason why sport fighters retire at (relatively) young ages, or transition into less physically stressful careers. A career in competitive fighting will absolutely destroy your body. If you have someone who retired from the ring, it’s very likely that, due to a mix of old injuries, they’re physically incapable of fighting effectively. They can still coach people. They can train others. But, their body simply isn’t up to the task anymore. Throwing someone like that against a group of armed foes is a death sentence.

There are ways someone could get out of a situation like this alive. Like I said, running is probably the best option. If your character is in excellent physical condition, they will probably be able to outrun their attackers. If they can retreat to a fortified position, and hold out for help, that’s another option. A much riskier strategy is to immediately neutralize the group’s leader, as an intimidation tactic. This is more about convincing the remaining three that they have no chance of success, however, it’s a bluff, and one that can easily blow up in your character’s face.

Group combat is very popular in visual media because it’s dynamic. It looks cool. When you have an experienced group of marital artists working together, they can turn a group fight into poetry in motion. It’s not real, but that was never the point.

Because group combat is so popular, it can create an illusion about how accessible it is. Fighting multiple foes is extremely difficult and dangerous. Fighting multiple armed foes is the domain of superheroes and action movies.

-Starke

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Q&A: A Retired MMA Fighter Vs. an Armed Group was originally published on How to Fight Write.

[skyfire85]

-A Grumman E-1B Tracer of VAW-111 "Hunters" about to be launched from USS Bon Homme Richard (CVA-31) in 1968. | Photo: USN

FLIGHTLINE: 168 - GRUMMAN E-1 TRACER

Developed from the C-1 Trader COD airplane, the Tracer was the first purpose built airborne early warning (AEW) aircraft for the USN.

In February 1944 the US Navy ordered its first airborne early warning aircraft under Project CADILLAC. Based on research done at MIT in the early 1940s, the Cadillac radar, designated AN/APS-20, was fitted to a newly built TBM-3 Avenger. This XTBM-3W took its maiden flight on 5 August 1944 and was followed up by an emergency order for 27 additional conversion. Delivery of the TBM-3Ws began in March 1945, and the Navy anticipated four each of the aircraft deployed onto the carriers Enterprise, Hornet, and Bunker Hill in time for Operation OLYMPIC, the planned invasion of Kyushu. Ultimately, the use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki cancelled Olympic, but the TBM-3Ws, nicknamed Guppy, continued to serve with the Navy into the 1950s.

-A Guppy at the Naval Air Training Center, NAS Pax River, in 1946. | Photo: USN

AEW support for the Navy passed from the Guppy to variants of the A-1 Skyraider, Lockheed WV-2 and various blimps, but by the mid-1950s a new aircraft was desired. Grumman Aircraft offered a plane based on their C-1 Trader, itself based on the S-2 Tracker.

-Orthograph of the E-1 Tracer. | Illustration: Dr. Dan Saranga

One C-1, BuNo 136792, was pulled from the production line and modified with a new tail and mockup radome, but no electronics. The XTF-1W (later changed to XWF-1) took its first flight on 17 December 1956. After serving to validate the aerodynamic properties of the new aircraft's radome, -6792 was rebuilt as a standard C-1 (though it retained the modified tail) and served as a utility aircraft until 1983. The plane is now on display at the Quonset Air Museum in Rhode Island.

-792 after conversion to C-1A Trader. | Photo: USN

The production aircraft, designated WF-2, was 45ft long, and had a wingspan of 72ft. The wings were fitted with Grumman's Sto-Wing folding system, modified to fold the wing horizontally along the fuselage. The aircraft were powered by Wright R-1820-82A Cyclone piston engines, each developing 1,525hp at takeoff. The WF-2 had a cruise speed of 163mph and a max speed of 238mph, with range of 1,035mi and almost 7 hours endurance. Tracers were not aerial refuellable. The large radome, extending from the end of the cockpit to almost the rudder, contained a Hazeltine AN/APS-82 radar antenna, which incorporated an early Airborne Moving Target Indicator, which would differentiate an aircraft from surface clutter. Unlike the later E-2 Hawkeye, the Tracker's radome did not rotate, though the antenna did rotate within it. The standard crew of four was evenly split between the flight crew and radar/intercept controllers.

-An E-1B of VAW-121 "Griffins", operating from the USS FDR (CVA-42) in 1971. | Photo: USN

The WF-2 was accepted for Naval service in 1958, and was soon flying from carriers in both the Atlantic and Pacific. A total of 88 Trackers were produced. Although officially called 'Tracer', crews took to calling the aircraft 'Willy Fudd' (from its WF designation) or 'Stoof With A Roof' (the WF-2 was based on the S2F Tracker, hence 'Stoof', with the radome providing the 'Roof'). Under the 1962 tri-service designation reorganization, the WF-2 became the E-1B. Depending on the operating altitude, the APS-82 radar had a search range of 250-300 miles, and was capable of handling up to four simultaneous intercepts.

-An E-1B from VAW-11 "Early Eleven" unfolds its wings prior to being catapulted from the carrier USS Hancock (CVA-19) in 1962. | Photo: USN

WF-2s from VAW-12 "Bats" were deployed on USS-Essex, USS Randolph, USS Independence and the USS Enterprise during the 1961 Cuban Missile Crisis. The Willy Fudd saw extensive use early in the Vietnam War, providing vectors to MIG-CAP (MiG-combat air patrol) fighters, as well as controlling strikes over North Vietnam. Tracers also assisted during Search and Rescue (SAR) operations, as well as vectoring aircraft to tankers.

-An E-1B from VAW-11 "Early Eleven" in flight. | Photo: USN

Upgrades over the aircraft's lifespan increased their capacity and kept them current, but also added weight. Almost as soon as the E-1B entered service, the Navy began seeking a replacement, and Grumman was selected in 1957 to develop and build the new plane, initially designated the W2F-1, but was eventually christened the E-2 Hawkeye. Replacement of the Fudds began in 1966, but the war in Vietnam and the slow production of Hawkeyes saw the type remain in service until the early 70's. Up through 1973 E-1s were retired to Naval Reserve squadrons, and by 1977 the type was completely withdrawn from USN service. Five Tracers have been preserved in museums around the US:

E-1B, BuNo 147212: Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, New York City

E-1B, BuNo 147217: New England Air Museum, Windsor Locks, Connecticut

E-1B, BuNo 147225: On board the USS Yorktown (CV-10), Patriots Point, Mount Pleasant, South Carolina

E-1B, BuNo 147227: Pima Air & Space Museum, adjacent to Davis-Monthan AFB in Tucson, Arizona

E-1B, BuNo 148146: National Naval Aviation Museum, Naval Air Station Pensacola

Another 11 E-1s are in storage at United Aeronautical's surplus yard just outside Tucson, though their status is unknown

[dreamsofwhatlifemighthavebeen]

Fun times dealing with the equestrian center’s radio net. For the director of the equestrian center - who is here on a work visa, doesn’t have a car, and uses one from the equestrian center to take home - they just a few days ago retired a 1985 Chevrolet Chevette she had been using previously, and replaced it with a 2015 Chevrolet Sonic transferred over from one of my employer’s other companies. The Chevette did not have a radio installed in it, but they decided that the Sonic does need one. I don’t know if you’ve ever looked at the interior of a Sonic, but there really isn’t space for any sort of add ons in the interior. It could be installed on the center console on the passenger side and leave room to open the glove compartment, but I really don’t like the idea of having her look way down and to the right to see the radio if she has to switch channels and such, especially as she’s not a particularly fantastic driver to begin with. Even though we sell radios to the equestrian center at a much lower cost than we would for commercial customers, the owner of the equestrian center rejected that idea on cost, as she already knows she can buy TK-860 or TK-880 radios from us for substantially less. So, it looks like it’s going to be a Kenwood TK-880 (mobile radio to the left) mounted on the dash. Which, I don’t like doing dash mounts because I think it looks sloppy and I like my work to be professional, but it’s ultimately her call.

Honestly, I never saw any need to install a radio in her car... even the company which used it previously never saw a need to. So the owner says, “Well, she might drive it to events”. But never has she (the director) ever shown any interest in driving herself to those... if they’re taking the bus, she much prefers that, as she pretty much has a work center there which was made by taking some seats out of the bus and installing a small desk. Otherwise, she’d ride with someone else, even when given the opportunity to take a newer vehicle, and even when offered someone to act as her personal driver. She’s not into driving, and she’s not going to be now. But I lost that argument.

The equestrian center uses an organizational GMRS license which they had originally obtained in 1984 and have maintained since; thus, it was grandfathered in when the FCC stopped issuing organizational licenses in 1987. Originally, they had used the Motorola MR-355R (bottom left) and MR-356R blister pack radios. Problem is, they were buying these things at whatever big box retailers everyone else was buying them at, so we ended up with hordes of unlicensed users getting on the equestrian center repeater (there’s also a sorry saga of how GMRS users were screwed out of exclusivity on Channels 15 - 22 on account of squatters who bought the 22 channel “hybrid” radios en masse and completely ignored the blurb on the packaging which stated use of those channels required a GMRS license).

When I was given charge of the equestrian center’s radio net, I changed a lot of things. First, I limited who accessed the repeater. Crew and barn leads, admin staff, etc. Everyone working under the leads could use simplex, as they were never a far enough distance from each other to require a repeater. So, we were initially going to use BaoFeng BF-888S radios for the crew members who weren’t accessing the repeater, but we had difficulty finding a seller who could guarantee the radios they sold us had the FCC ID on them (a legal requirement in the US for operating transmitting on any service outside of Part 97 rules). We found one who could guarantee it if we bought the BaoFeng GT-1 (second from the left on the bottom row), which is internally the same as the BF-888S, but uses a different battery and case. For the crew leads, barn leads, admin staff, and those who were going to access the repeater, we went with the B-Tech (BaoFeng) UV-82C (not pictured), which is a commercial Part 90 type accepted variant of the UV-82 series radios. The dual watch feature also allows them to monitor both the repeater and their internal crew simplex net simultaneously without having to go into scan mode.

As the blister pack radios used a standardized list of CTCSS and DCS tones, I changed the repeater to split tones, with separate DCS tones for the transmit and receive side, and also used a mixture of non-standard and inverted DCS tones throughout the entire equestrian center net. So while someone running a police scanner or radio on carrier squelch can still hear our traffic, they won’t be able to talk to us or interrupt us with the blister pack radios, Midland radios, etc., as we had problems both with people intentionally getting on our repeater and also those running simplex who “coincidentally” used the same frequencies and DPL tones which we did. Once the FCC co-banded all of the FRS simplex and GMRS frequencies in 2017, we were left powerless to do anything about it (not that we really could before... the FCC was always pretty lax on their enforcement when it came to GMRS). If we run into a matter of getting disrupted by someone who successfully finds our DPL tones, then I have the means to require the radio’s PTT-ID to be on an approved list to trip the repeater.

For the riding instructors, we felt that perhaps something more durable was in order after one of the GT-1s broke. Initially, I took of the Motorola HT750s (second from the right on the bottom row) from the rental side of our business and loaned them to the equestrian center until we could figure out something more permanent. The permanent solution came when I happened across some Kenwood TK-350s (center of the bottom row) which were sitting in a bin and pretty much unwanted. So, after finding batteries for them, I was allowed to take those and donate them to the equestrian center. I actually had to lean how to use DOS in order to program them. Surprisingly, only one ended up preferring the HT750 over the Kenwoods. In the end - since she rents a room from and lives with me - I purchased one at cost from the business and donated it so that she could continue using one.

All the way to the right on the bottom row is one of my Kenwood TK-3180s, which I use both for the equestrian center’s GMRS net as well as the LMR radio net at my regular job. I was using one with the 16 key DTMF keypad (and the Tactical Features Set), but the owner of the equestrian center wants all radios labeled... while crew radios will tyically have only a number, the equestrian instructors wanted their names to be displayed on the radios they were issued, and I was instructed to do the same with mine. The running joke with it is, when we’re doing fundraising events (the equestrian program is a registered nonprofit), tours of the equestrian center, or other events, then husbands can try claiming they were only looking at the nametags on the radio to try remembering our names when their wives catch them staring at our asses. Since the DTMF keypad didn’t leave space for a label, I took one with the four button keypad and used that.

GMRS is regulated under Part 95E and requires a Part 95E radio. However, due to a lack of viable Part 95E radio options, many users have taken to using Part 90 LMR radios, as many of the UHF models cover GMRS frequencies. For example, the Motorola HT750 can be programmed with frequencies from 403  -470 MHz, and GMRS (as well as FRS) is a collection of 22 frequencies in the 462 and 467 MHz range. The use of Part 90 radios in GMRS plays fast and loose with the law, but acts in the spirit of the law, even if not the letter of it. The FCC has acknowledged the practice and has been leaving it alone, but they haven’t actually given approval to do that. To that end, we ensure that all radios are Part 90 (or Part 95E, as some employees have bought their own radios).

Which of course brings us to other problems in dealing with the radio net. A number of licensed GMRS users are quite upset about our use of a repeater on GMRS, especially given a lack of viable ones in the area. Some have identified the tower and have threatened to report us to the FCC (to which we tell them to go right ahead, as our use of that frequency is 100% on the up and up), some have tried to get us to make it a public use repeater (and typically suggest we use travel tone).

Then, of course, a number of the male employees - not content with the little GT-1 radios - always want something more “badass”. So I had one come up to me asking me if I could program his radio to the equestrian center net, and he hands me a BaoFeng UV-5R and told me the equestrian center owner gave her approval. Problem is, the FCC ID on that one - 2AJGM-UV5R - only shows Part 15 certification for 134 - 174 MHz and 400 - 470 MHz. So, outside of Part 97 (ham radio) use, it’s only legal as a receiver and scanner in those band splits. The ones which don’t have an FCC ID aren’t even legal for that. Had another one come to me with what looked like a Kenwood TK-3207... great 16 channel UHF radio, and the TK-2000/3000 series are becoming one of the mainstays of our rental service. When I removed the battery, it showed the model as TK-3000, but there was no FCC ID on it, so I asked him where he’d gotten it from. He said his brother used it for his business and had some extras. Just out of curiosity, I tried programming it with the KPG-137D programming software and was unable to. So I asked the brother where he’d gotten it from. He said he bought it off of Ebay. When I searched Ebay, I found a bunch of TK-2000/TK-3000 series radios from a seller out of China. So I installed KPG-137D on another computer and this time used the serial number for the UK/European version, and it successfully programmed the radio. All fine and dandy, but I gave it back to him and told him it’s not a legal radio for use in the US without an FCC ID being present.

I swear, I wear too many hats sometimes.

[random-thought-depository]

In another post I wrote:

“Like … right now I’m planning out a story I intend to write in January; it’s supposed to be a kind of deconstruction of the Fremen mirage, and very much one of the thoughts going into it is “yo, a Proud Warrior Race would be a horrible society to live in or have as neighbors, we shouldn’t romanticize them!” and yet … I feel that the “bad guy” culture in it is much better, from a literary viewpoint, for me having given some thought to the material base of their society and how that would shape their culture. I could have just written them as flat edgelordy-grimdark barbarians, but thinking about their culture in materialist terms gave me a more complex and nuanced picture that I think will make for a more interesting and nuanced story and a fictional society that feels more interesting and human and alive.”

So, I want to infodump a little about this fictional culture I’ve thought up! I decided to split my infodumping into three posts, of which this is the second. In my previous post, I talked about the material conditions and subsistence strategy that shape this culture. If you haven’t read it already, I suggest you click that link and read my last post before you read this one, as it’s important context for what I’ve written here. In this and my next post I’ll talk about these people as a culture instead of just as an economy. I was originally going to make this whole thing two posts, but there’s so much stuff that could go in the culture part I decided I better split that up. In this post I’ll make a broad outline of the less “where does the food come from and where does the sewage go?” aspects of these people’s social structure, try to give you a general picture of how their society works. In my next post I’ll try to give you a more intimate “human” picture of what these people’s lives are like and what sort of people they are; talk more about relationships and attitudes and so on.

History and context:

The ancestors of these people were abducted from Bronze Age Earth by imperialistic aliens and used as basically slaves and slave-soldiers by these aliens. Some time in the last millennium BCE these imperialist aliens and their enemies blew each other up in the interstellar empire equivalent of a nuclear apocalypse. In the aftermath of this war the alien civilizations never really recovered, but the descendants of the human slaves built their own interstellar civilization, and the space nomad raiders I’ve been talking about are one branch of that civilization (the surviving aliens now mostly live on a small number of their planets that avoided destruction during the big ancient war, while nowadays most inhabited worlds in local space are populated more-or-less entirely by humans). There’s complexity here I’m not going to get into now, but as I said in my previous post, a significant point is these space nomad raiders I’m talking about mostly interact with other humans; the foreigners they interact with are mostly other humans, and the victims of their raiding are mostly other humans.  The location of Earth was lost in the chaos of the big ancient war, and Earth continued its independent cultural development (i.e. real history) and was isolated from the rest of the setting and the rest of humanity for about 3500 years or so, with re-contact between Earth humanity and the rest of humanity happening maybe around 30 years before the story I’m planning to write (which takes place some time in the twenty-second or twenty-third century CE).

The story I’m planning takes place against a background of a utopian-ish future Earth society that was in the process of colonizing the solar system fighting an “alien invasion” of these space nomad raiders.

Gender weirdness:

These people went straight from Bronze Age to space age, they completely missed the Enlightenment etc., and their former alien masters had little interest in giving them a more “progressive” culture (and were kind of too starfish alien to even really think in those terms; e.g. they were genderless hermaphrodites, so why wouldn’t they more-or-less just shrug and accept a Bronze Age human’s ideas about human gender?). So, to us these people’s culture would look like a strange mix of the very primitive and the space age, with the two combining in strange ways.

These people have strong gender roles and no concept of gender equality in the sense we think of it. Their society still runs on a “men are warriors, women are non-combatants who at best get patronizing protection and at worst are part of the spoils the men fight over” paradigm. Most younger men are more-or-less full-time warriors; their lives are more-or-less completely dedicating to raiding, defending the community from raids, and preparing for doing these things. If they survive long enough to become too old to fight they usually “retire” and then spend their time doing maintenance work on the weapons and passing on their knowledge to the younger generations of warriors and warriors-in-training. Women do most of the non-combatant work.

This might sound like a recipe for a rather brutal patriarchy, and in a way that conclusion isn’t wrong, but... This means women are doing most of the work of keeping the space habitat running. And remember, much of the labor of keeping a space community alive is specialized skilled labor; the sort of work where trying to extract labor through simple brutality wouldn’t work well. Women are most of the machinists and the repair technicians and the nuclear reactor operators and the doctors and so on. As I said in my last post, you really don’t want to anger the person who fixes the machine that makes the air you breathe, one of the people who tend the nuclear reactor that provides energy to your community, or the person who might do surgery on you. So this is a society with lots of female power (which coexists with horrifying institutionalized abuse of other women).

Now, in my last post I stressed how a society like this will be labor-limited and want to make efficient use of labor, so you may be thinking that having half the population be full-time warriors sounds extremely inefficient. And it would be! But that’s not what these people do. For one thing, that’s a simplification of their system; there are gender-variant male eunuchs and enslaved men who do “women’s work,” and as I said retired warriors do maintenance work on the weapons and raiding ships. But what really helps in making their system viably efficient is their population isn’t 50% male. This is where it gets weird.

Remember when I said earlier that a small almost-self-sufficient space community would have tightly controlled reproduction? Among these people, there’s a powerful order of priestesses that does that. They regulate reproduction to prevent over-reproduction or under-reproduction and to minimize the effects of inbreeding ... but they’ve also spent the last couple of thousand years doing eugenics and genetic tinkering on these people. Partially they’re into creepy fascist trying to breed superior warriors stuff, but also at some point they fiddled with the human meiosis process to give these people a naturally unbalanced sex ratio. I’m thinking they got it to the point where something like 60% of the children born among these people are female. The sex ratio among adults is even more skewed because of higher male early mortality rates, a tendency to ritually kill male captives while keeping female captives, etc.. This gives maybe 20% of the adult population being active warriors (remember, the retired warriors are mostly functionally maintenance workers until they get too old and feeble to do that too), which is probably still inefficiently big but manageable.

So these people have some of the social structures and cultural attitudes of a patriarchal society, but they’re a society where men are a minority and masculinity is defined by doing something socially prestigious but economically marginal (and, incidentally to this point but important to understanding their culture, they’re a society where warrior vs. almost everything else is heavily gendered).

Tribal warrior barbarian hordes IN SPACE:

Another aspect of these people being a weird mix of the extremely primitive and the space age is that they have advanced technology but they are basically a patriarchal clan rule society.

The basic social unit of this society is the patrilineal kin-group, i.e. the patriarchal clan. Inheritance is patrilineal and marriage is virilocal; when a woman marries she moves into her husband’s family’s dwelling, she becomes part of her husband’s clan, and her children “belong” to her husband’s clan. Because social kinship is basically unilineal, these clans become quite big; a normal size is thousands of people (and that’s if you don’t count non-kin dependents). A typical habitat community contains maybe five or six of these big clans. Usually the most powerful clan (usually the biggest) is the “royal family” and exercises hegemony over the habitat, while the other clans are allied to it in an arrangement similar to feudal vassalage. Attached to these clans through various vassalage-like and slavery-like arrangements are a large number of non-kin dependents, who usually make up the majority of the community’s population (more on them later). These clans are very much families in the Mafia sense of the word. So, I said earlier that the mobile space habitat community is the basic political unit of this culture, but most of those communities are more like five or six allied big Mafia gangs/families in a trench-coat.

The social glue of this society is blood ties, marriage, vassalage, slavery, and other forms of what can broadly be called fictive kinship style relationships. The line between marriage, vassalage, slavery, and other forms of fictive kinship is often blurry - indeed, these are basically Earth Western concepts that I’m imposing on this society to communicate what it’s like; these people would not carve their own social reality at the places I’m carving it by using these terms. As I said, this is a clan rule society; your social position is basically entirely a question of who your relatives and in-laws are or who you are affiliated with or owned by; the concept of an individual having legal rights (or even really legal personhood) separate from their clan affiliations basically doesn’t exist.

Status and rank within a clan is mostly hereditary, though it’s mediated by gender and age, and there’s also a significant “meritocratic” charismatic component (e.g. a younger son of a previous patriarch who’s a distinguished warrior and popular with the cousins may be chosen for leadership over a less distinguished and less popular older son who all else being equal would have been ahead in the succession order). The clan overall functions as a disciplined hierarchical organization with a delegation of authority and duties that’s orderly enough to be more-or-less functional (patriarch bosses around his brothers and sons, who boss around his cousins, who boss around their cousins, etc.), but there’s a significant amount of jockeying and potential for overlapping conflicting authority within that. Note: I’m making this sound like a basically male hierarchy, but remember that this is a society with lots of female power, the wives of high-status men tend to be high-status themselves and often have significant power bases of their own, so high-status women are very much big players in this.

These communities are economically egalitarian but socially inegalitarian. Your clan leader isn’t much richer than you; he probably has some servants and a somewhat bigger apartment and somewhat nicer clothes and furniture and somewhat better food and so on, but that’s about it - but he can control your life in more-or-less the same way your parents controlled your life when you were 14, you must show him deference, and if he wants almost any sort of favor you’d better give it to him. Power in this society isn’t about having stuff, it’s about being respected and obeyed.

The clan is responsible for the conduct of its members and your conduct reflects on your clan, so this is an “honor culture” where reputation is very important; you can expect to get killed by your own relatives if you harm or embarrass your own clan badly enough, and on the flip-side if you do something heroic your whole clan gets a boost to its reputation and “soft power” by association with you. Between this and what I said in the rest of this section, this is a society where most people (of any gender) have little personal freedom.

One thing these people mercifully mostly don’t have is the spiraling inter-clan blood-feuds that often happen in clan rule societies on Earth. You really, really, really don’t want gloves-off open gang warfare in a space habitat. So, these people have developed powerful social mechanisms for resolving disputes before they get to the blood feud stage. Unfortunately, these dispute resolution mechanisms themselves include lethal violence, i.e. there’s a tradition of often lethal dueling. These basically controlled murders are a significant cause of male early mortality among these people, so in that sense this is a very violent society even internally, before you get to all the violence they inflict on outsiders. However, this violence is very gender-asymmetric; among these people the taboos against killing women are stronger than the taboos against killing men, and there are especially very strong taboos against killing female skilled specialists (doctors, engineers, etc.). Ironically, as a consequence of the way male eunuchs and enslaved men are considered not really men, they are more-or-less grouped with the women for purposes of these taboos, so they are often actually safer from intra-community violence than higher-status men are.

This basically fits with men in these communities doing something that is prestigious but economically marginal; they get some prestige and power and privilege, but they are treated as disposable, and you can interpret the dueling as them having internalized this collective judgment on them. Mind you, it’s mostly not the same people getting both ends of this deal; it’s mostly the high-status men who get the “prestige and power and privilege” end of the deal, and the low-ranking warriors tend to get more of the “treated as disposable” end of the deal. Though in fairness this society is one with an idea that a leader is supposed to actually lead in battle, so high-status men often do take the same sort of risks as their subordinates (on the other hand, the strong hereditary element of power in this society means it trends toward gerontocracy, so the guys at the very top are often “retired” from direct participation in fighting).

In my previous post I said that humans usually prefer sharing or trading to violent theft because violent theft means risk of injury or death. That’s kind of true of these people, but with these people there’s an internal social pressure that acts in the opposite direction. In this society, heroic deeds in battle reflect positively on your clan and increase its prestige and “soft power,” and also because of the charismatic “meritocratic” component of their hierarchy impressing people by performing heroic deeds in battle is one of the few avenues of social mobility available to men in this society (note: “heroic deeds” in this context often means things like pulling off some particularly audacious heist; things that directly benefit the community if they succeed, so in a sense this is a smart incentive system). So this society will have a lot of ambitious young men who at least kind of want battles to happen so they have opportunities to prove themselves, and clan leaders will similarly often want battles to happen so they have opportunities to increase the prestige and influence of their clan.  Also, individuals and clans who contribute to a successful raid often get to keep some of the loot or have the right to control how some or all of it is distributed, and that makes raiding tempting to people who aren’t satisfied with what they have in the status quo even if the community as a whole has enough resources. So this is a society that’s likely to be more violent than is “rational,” if you define “rational” as “acts like a hive mind instead of like an actual human community made up of people who have their own goals.” Their whole social structure basically reflects that sort of dynamic; their warrior class is probably inefficiently big, but masculinity and participation in the raiding have become so entwined that they can’t shrink it without facing ferocious resistance from people who have their whole identity invested in being warriors; you can’t take somebody who’s been literally raised from birth to do one thing and has their whole sense of self-worth bound up in it and just casually reassign them to a different job (I’m thinking the man = warrior thing started when these people were slave-soldiers + logistical support “camp followers,” and survived a transition from “we’re an army with some ‘live off the land’ short-term self-sufficiency capacity” to “we’re space nomads who use violence as part of our survival strategy”).

“Women’s spaces” and non-kin clan dependents:

Societies with very strong gender roles often have lots of homosociality, and these people very much fit that pattern. Because women do most of the productive work among these people, most of the habitat community’s work-spaces are female majority spaces that the male warriors don’t directly interact with much (there are male eunuchs and enslaved men working in there with the women, but in these people’s gender system those hardly count as men, and anyway the women outnumber them quite solidly). So, basically, this society has a more-or-less separate majority female social world that has its own social networks, its own strong affiliation/friendship groups (mostly work gangs), and its own centers of power.

Being a clan-based patriarchal society, these people also have a marriage system that’s kind of a bad deal for women (patrilineal and virilocal marriage strengthens male-centered social networks while disrupting female-centered social networks, and makes wives vulnerable to abuse). This is a society where patriarchal family institutions coexist with a semi-separate female-majority social world and lots of female power, so a lot of women respond to the former by never marrying. If this was a more conventional patriarchal society this might mean lots of childless spinsters, but this is a society where maintaining high genetic diversity is a community survival imperative and where a female majority population and high female homosociality makes it easy to create all-female cooperative child-care arrangements, so the result is lots of unmarried mothers.

Note: “unmarried” may be a simplification here, I’m thinking there might be a sort of “marriage lite” where the woman gets some of the benefits of marriage (e.g. her husband has “honor code” obligations to protect her and her children from harm and take revenge on anyone who harms or kills her or one of her children) but she and her husband keep separate residences and her husband and his kin have no authority over her. But if this status exists it’s basically a formal recognition of a boyfriend/girlfriend type relationship and the woman can “divorce” the man whenever she wants. Possibly the line between boyfriend/girlfriend and husband/wife in this culture is fluid (IIRC in a lot of past societies all a heterosexual couple had to do to be considered married was live together and call each other husband and wife, and I could see the sort of “marriage-lite” I’m talking about here being similarly fluid, though since the couple not living together is part of the point of it the details of how it works would have to be different).

Children of unmarried (or “married lite”) mothers are for purposes of clan affiliation considered to have no father. This means they’re by default more-or-less outside the clan system, especially if the mother doesn’t have a patrilineal descent connection to one of the local clans (e.g. if she’s an abductee who was taken in a raid). Because being an unmarried (or “married lite”) mother is a better deal for the majority of women, offspring of unmarried (or “married lite”) mothers are usually a majority of the habitat community’s population. So in a typical community of these people, the local big clans dominate the community politically but are actually a minority of the community’s population.

I’m thinking the way this is usually handled is legally fatherless people legally directly “belong” to the “king” (the leader of the community’s most powerful clan). But in practice legally fatherless children are usually raised by majority-female cooperative child-care groups in majority female social spaces that have a lot of independence, and if they’re female they’ll usually spend their entire lives in those spaces and follow the same reproductive strategy their mothers did. So the effect is to strengthen the semi-separate social world character of these female majority work-spaces.

That’s how it works with legally fatherless girls and women, with legally fatherless boys and men things are more complicated. If you’re a legally fatherless boy among these people you spend the first 11-12 years of your life with your mother, and then you’re given various aptitude and fitness tests, and if you fail you’re left with your mother to be raised to be a worker, and if you pass you’re taken away from your mother and given to a group of legally fatherless warriors and retired warriors to be raised by them and if all goes well ultimately become one of them. It’s a bit like what the Spartans did, though thankfully the training is actually significantly less nasty than what they did in the agoge; I’ll talk about it more in my next post.

I’ll generally talk more about the details of what life in this society is like in my next post!

[dailycharacteroption]

Races Among the Stars 1: Barathu (Early-Stage)

Not every sapient species in the Pact Worlds is of a traditional humanoid shape. Heck, a few don’t even have a spine.

Today we’re looking at the jellyfish-like barathu, natives of the gas giant Bretheda.

As a product of a world with no reliable terrain or easily extracted minerals, barathu rose to be the apex intelligence of their world, building their advancements not from surrounding materials, but from themselves. Indeed, barathu are famous for their ability to rapidly change their bodies, altering their shape and internals to support any manner of useful things. What’s more, they can join themselves both body and mind to others of their kind, creating great living structures that can perform all sorts of roles. Some of the greatest governmental and scientific locations on the gas giant are in fact massive barathu collectives forming organic senates, laboratories, and factories.

This tendency to split and merge as needs arise give the barathu a much more fluid sense of self than what most other sapient species view as normal, though this is in part fueled by their culture, as barathu that have grown up around other species tend to respect the value of individuality more. This is especially true for the relatively young “early stage” barathu that have not fully mastered their biological reshaping abilities or their ability to merge with others. This state is tied to age, but more and more of their kind have begun clinging to these “childish” mindsets. That being said, many barathu near the end of their lives retire into a collective mass so their biomass may help serve great works.

Many barathu are laid back and easygoing, since after all, if they need something, they can change themselves to better acquire it. It would be foolish, however, to think of them as passive, for they can be aggressive on both the battlefield and in the political arena. What’s more, they’ve made a name for themselves as one of the foremost innovators of biotech in the Pact Worlds, rivaled as a species only by the raxilites.

An early-stage barathu resembles a jellyfish, or more accurately a man-o’-war, having a translucent oblong and curving core body with tentacles descending down, the majority from the front end, while some descend from the middle of the body. At first glace they might seem to be incapable of manipulating their environment, but these tentacles are much stronger and mobile than those of a true cnidarian , and can be physically changed to become more suited for different sorts of work, thickening to lift heavy loads while their flotation sacs expand, or splitting into dexterous fingers for typing and whatnot.

 Barathu are tough and empathetic, but their balloon-like bodies are ungainly.

While not as adept as fully matured collectives, early-stagers still have the ability to adapt themselves in a variety of ways, shifting their grasping tentacles to be stronger, thickening their skin, altering their composition to resist energy, developing tentacles for land locomotion, or just extending their reach.

Typically, however, they prefer to fly everywhere, drifting in the atmosphere with sacs of lighter than air gas.

As beings capable of joining into collective minds, barathu can speak telepathically with others that share their language, which allows them to communicate without having to grow a mouth.

As one might expect, their mutable insides make it hard for disease to take hole and internal damage to stick.

Without any adaptation, barathu enjoy night-adapted photoreceptors.

 Of course, win a hyper-adaptable species like this, it only makes sense that there would be a lot of variety amongst them.

Sometimes barathu that have freshly budded from a collective or have split up from one after a long period of merging either retain some of the knowledge from that time, or else have a warped sense of self that makes mind-altering magic hard to stick to them.

Others focus on mastering their internal transformations in different ways, such as becoming biochemical plants capable of spraying acid, grease, or smoke, or inflating their gas sacs larger or flooding their own systems with neurochemicals to overwhelm mental effects.

Others that live on terrestrial worlds put the abundance of solid matter to work inside their ever-changing forms, hardening their bodies, growing natural weapons, defensive spikes, digging claws on powerful tentacles, or even encasing themselves in a shell, exchanging mobility for durability.

Some even give up their adaptability entirely, learning some psychic secrets from their cousin species, the dreamers of Liavara, gaining similar powers, though without losing themselves to the perpetual dream-state of their kindred.

 Early-stage barathu, whether they intend to be independent forever or will eventually join collectives as need be, can be a nice way to start branching out into non-humanoid characters in your starfinder campaign. Their high con and starting hit points make them surprisingly suited for a tanky build, particularly as the vanguard class, while their interest in biotech makes the wisdom-based variant of the biohacker appealing, as does the mystic class, particularly the geneturge connection. Beyond that, however, barathu can excel at pretty much any class, though they may not be as accurate with ranged attacks or as stealthy as others.

[originallandlockedmariner]

2020

Kobe. Pandemic. Lockdown. Koalas on fire. Harry and Meg retire. Toilet paper hoarding. Alcoholism. Impeach the fucker. Parasite. Bonnie Henry. Tiger King. Working from home. Sourdough bread. Harvey Weinstein guilty. Zoom overdose. Dip your body in sanitizer. 6 feet. Quarantine. OK Boomer. Home schooling (everyone passes). Murder hornets. Dolly Parton. Don’t hug, kiss or see anybody, especially your family. Chris Evans’ junk. TikTok. Glory holes. Face masks. CERB. West Coast wildfires. Stay home. Small Businesses lose, big box stores win. Fuck Bozos. ‘Dreams’ and cranberry juice. Close yoga studios, but thumbs up to your local gym. Speak moistly to me. George Floyd. BLM. Fuck Trump. Phase 2, 3 and Summer. RBG. Baby Yoda. Biden wins. Bond and Black Panther die. No more lockdown. Back to school and work. Just kidding... giddy up round 2. Giuliani leaks shit from his head. Resurgence of chess. UFOs are real. Restrictions. Dave Grohl admits defeat. Monolith. “Fuck... forgot my mask in the car”. No Christmas shenanigans allowed. Bubbles. Alex Trebek. Use the term ‘dumpster fire’ one too many times. Jupiter and Saturn form 'Christmas Star'. Happy New Year Bitches!!!! 2021... you better not shit the bed!!

2021

“We love you, you’re very special”. Failed coup attempt at the Capital. Twitter, FB and IG ban Donny. Hammerin’ Hank goes to the Field of Dreams. Bozo no longer richest man but still a twat. Leachman, Tyson, and Holbrook pass. The economy is worse than expected. Kim and Kanye split. Brood X cicadas. Dre has an aneurysm and nearly has his home broken into. Bridgerton. MyPillow CEO is a douche. Covid restrictions extended indefinitely. Captain Von Trapp dies. Proud Boys officially a Terrorist Organization. Richard Ramirez. Cancer takes Screech. Travel bans. Impeachment trial (again?… oh and this was barely February? WTF??!!) Suez Canal blockage. Myanmar protest. Kong dukes it out with Godzilla, while Raya watches. Olympics. Friends compare elective surgeries. F9. Canada Women’s Soccer Gold. Free Britney. Multiverses. Residential Schools in Canada unearth children’s bodies. Kate is Mare of Easttown. Cuomo resigns. Disney and Dwayne cruise together. Wildfires. Delta variants. Musk richest man but still a twunt. Candyman x 5. Capt. Kirk goes to space. F*ck Kyle Rittenhouse. Astros didn’t win. Squid Game. Goodbye Bond. Dune is redone. Angelina is Eternal. Astroworld deaths. Meta. … and we still got a month and a titch to go !?

@daily-esprit-descalier

[newstfionline]

Tuesday, February 9, 2021

Next stop Mars: 3 spacecraft arriving in quick succession (AP) After hurtling hundreds of millions of miles through space since last summer, three robotic explorers are ready to hit the brakes at Mars. The United Arab Emirates’ orbiter reaches Mars on Tuesday, followed less than 24 hours later by China’s orbiter-rover combo. NASA’s rover, the cosmic caboose, will arrive on the scene a week later, on Feb. 18, to collect rocks for return to Earth—a key step in determining whether life ever existed at Mars. Both the UAE and China are newcomers at Mars, where more than half of Earth’s emissaries have failed. China’s first Mars mission, a joint effort with Russia in 2011, never made it past Earth’s orbit. All three spacecraft rocketed away within days of one another last July, during an Earth-to-Mars launch window that occurs only every two years. That’s why their arrivals are also close together.

Around the globe, virus cancels spring travel for millions (AP) They are the annual journeys of late winter and early spring: Factory workers in China heading home for the Lunar New Year; American college students going on road trips and hitting the beach over spring break; Germans and Britons fleeing drab skies for some Mediterranean sun over Easter. All of it canceled, in doubt or under pressure because of the coronavirus. Amid fears of new variants of the virus, new restrictions on movement have hit just as people start to look ahead to what is usually a busy time of year for travel. It means more pain for airlines, hotels, restaurants and tourist destinations that were already struggling more than a year into the pandemic, and a slower recovery for countries where tourism is a big chunk of the economy.

AP-NORC poll: Few in US say democracy is working very well (AP) Only a fragment of Americans believe democracy is thriving in the U.S., even as broad majorities agree that representative government is one of the country’s bedrock principles, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Just 16% of Americans say democracy is working well or extremely well, a pessimism that spans the political spectrum. Nearly half of Americans, 45%, think democracy isn’t functioning properly, while another 38% say it’s working only somewhat well. The poll’s findings are broadly consistent with how Americans graded democracy before the election. But there are signs that Trump’s attacks on the democratic process, including his repeated argument that the election was “stolen” because of voter irregularities, resonated with Republicans.

Schools plan for potential of remote learning into the fall (AP) Parents of schoolchildren learning from home shouldn’t necessarily count on reclaiming the dining room table any time soon. After seeing two academic years thrown off course by the pandemic, school leaders around the country are planning for the possibility of more distance learning next fall at the start of yet another school year. “We have no illusions that COVID will be eradicated by the time the start of the school year comes up,” said William “Chip” Sudderth III, a spokesperson for Durham, North Carolina schools, whose students have been out of school buildings since March. President Joe Biden has made reopening schools a top priority, but administrators say there is much to consider as new strains of the coronavirus appear and teachers wait their turn for vaccinations. And while many parents are demanding that schools fully reopen, others say they won’t feel safe sending children back to classrooms until vaccines are available to even young students.

2nd major snowstorm in a week blankets Northeast (AP) A major snowstorm pushed through the Northeastern United States on Sunday, less than a week after a storm dumped more than 2 feet on parts of the region. By early afternoon, 5 to 7 inches had already fallen in parts of northwestern New Jersey and southwestern Connecticut. New York’s Central Park reported about 3 inches. The highest total was recorded in West Whiteland Township, west of Philadelphia, where about 9 inches had fallen. The National Weather Service predicted up to 8 inches of snow in New York City and 2 to 4 inches in Washington, D.C. Up to a foot was projected to fall on some areas along the Connecticut coastline.

Biden faces border challenge as migrant families arrive in greater numbers and large groups (Washington Post) President Biden’s more-welcoming message to immigrants is facing an immediate challenge along the Mexican border, where Central American families and children have been crossing in numbers that point to a building crisis. In recent days, U.S. authorities have seen the return of large groups of parents and children crossing the border in the darkness, a replay of scenes that occurred during the record influx of families who arrived in 2018 and 2019, overwhelming migrant shelters and Border Patrol stations. Republican critics of Biden say the new wave is the start of the crisis they have long predicted, invited by the new administration’s eager rejection of Trump’s deterrent approach. Yet Biden also inherited a highly improvised enforcement system from his predecessor that was already under strain and highly dependent on Trump’s diplomatic bullying of Mexico. Late last month, Mexican authorities in some areas of the border stopped taking back families returned by the United States under emergency pandemic health measures implemented last March. With the U.S. capacity to hold adults and children reduced by the pandemic and the temporary closure of the largest Border Patrol facility in South Texas, U.S. Customs and Border Protection began dropping families off at bus stations and shelters last week.

Ecuador’s election (Foreign Policy) Ecuador’s presidential election is set to go to a second round after early returns showed a split electorate. Leftist Andrés Arauz leads the count with 31.5 percent of the vote, while his closest challengers Guillermo Lasso and Yaku Pérez both received roughly 20 percent. As the margin between them is so tight, it’s not yet clear whether Lasso or Pérez will face Arauz in the April 11 runoff.

Brexit growing pains (Foreign Policy) Exports from the United Kingdom to the European Union fell by 68 percent in January, according to a trade group representing British truck drivers. The Road Haulage Association (RHA) attributed the drop to trade disruptions due to the end of the Brexit transition period, although the British government has said border friction has been “minimal.” The news comes as EU and U.K. representatives meet this week to discuss extending post-Brexit grace periods on the trade of certain goods.

‘Al desko’ (Foreign Policy) The French labor ministry says it will soon relax a ban on workers eating lunch at their desks in order to enforce social distancing regulations. France’s labor laws currently forbid employees from eating “al desko” and companies face financial penalties if inspectors catch them flouting the law. The country’s strict labor rights include a 2017 law that allows workers to ignore work e-mails outside of normal working hours. “We French and you Americans have totally different ideas about work,” Agnès Dutin, a retired Parisian, told the New York Times. “It’s a catastrophe to eat at your desk. You need a pause to refresh the mind. It’s good to move your body. When you return, you see things differently.”

Russia considering at least $6.7 billion spending package to ease discontent (Reuters) Russian authorities are considering a new social spending package worth at least $6.7 billion to address discontent over falling living standards before an autumn election, according to two government sources. The package, which one of the sources said President Vladimir Putin was likely to unveil in an annual speech to senior political figures in coming weeks, follows unsanctioned nationwide protests last month that hit the value of the rouble. The two government sources, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media, told Reuters the spending package was meant to make people feel the authorities are aware of their financial concerns and are doing something to help them.

Myanmar junta imposes curfew, meeting bans as protests swell (AP) Myanmar’s new military rulers on Monday signaled their intention to crack down on opponents of their takeover, issuing decrees that effectively banned peaceful public protests in the country’s two biggest cities. The restrictive measures were ordered after police fired water cannons at hundreds of protesters in the Myanmar capital, Naypyitaw, who were demanding the military hand power back to elected officials. It was just one of many demonstrations around the country. Rallies and gatherings of more than five people, along with motorized processions, were banned, and an 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. curfew was imposed for areas of Yangon and Mandalay, the country’s first- and second-biggest cities, where thousands of people have been demonstrating since Saturday. The growing wave of defiance—particularly in Naypyitaw, where such protests are unusual—was striking in a country where demonstrations have been met with severe force in the past.

Iran: US must lift sanctions before it lives up to nuke deal (AP) Iran’s supreme leader on Sunday urged the United States to lift all sanctions if it wants Iran to live up to commitments under its nuclear deal with world powers, state TV reported, but President Joe Biden says the U.S. won’t be making the first move. “If (the U.S.) wants Iran to return to its commitments, it must lift all sanctions in practice, then we will do verification … then we will return to our commitments,” state TV quoted Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as saying, in his first comments on the matter since Biden took office. Biden rejected the idea in a “CBS Evening News” interview taped Friday and airing Sunday. Former President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the U.S. in 2018 from the atomic deal, which saw Iran agree to limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. Biden has said he will seek to revive the deal, but insisted that Iran must first reverse its nuclear steps, creating a contest of wills between the nations.

Israel’s Netanyahu walks out on his own corruption trial (Washington Post) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told judges in a Jerusalem court on Monday that he is innocent of corruption charges before abruptly standing, saying “thank you very much” and leaving with his motorcade. Netanyahu quit the courtroom some 20 minutes after the start of Monday morning’s hearing, which continued on without him. The sessions kick-started the second phase of a precedent-setting legal procedure, which, for the first time, involves the indictment of an Israeli prime minister while still in office and campaigning for elections in the coming weeks—the fourth in two years.

Congo working to stop new Ebola outbreak in country’s east (AP) Health officials in Congo confirmed another Ebola outbreak in the country’s east on Sunday, the fourth in less than three years. On February 3, a woman died in Butembo town in North Kivu province, Minister of Health Eteni Longondo announced. This is the 12th outbreak in conflict-ridden Congo since the virus was first discovered in the country in 1976, and comes less than three months after an outbreak in the western province of Equateur, officially ended in November. The 2018 outbreak in Eastern Congo was the second deadliest in the world, killing 2,299 people before it ended in June. That outbreak lasted for nearly two years and was fought amid unprecedented challenges, including entrenched conflict between armed groups, the world’s largest measles epidemic, and the spread of COVID-19.

[evermore-fashions-blog]

Best amazing flatscreen TVs 2020

Looking for the best TV of the year? Look no further. TechRadar has united the greatest, most brilliant, and most elevated performing TVs to have ever passed by our eyeballs – and they're all accessible to purchase today.

A portion of our picks beneath speak to the outright crème de la crème of what TV producers put out in 2020 (see: LG CX OLED, the Sony A8H OLED and Samsung Q95T) yet we've likewise featured various TVs that give inconceivable incentive to your cash, as well. Joined, you have a rundown of the best TVs at any financial plan. click here

With the most recent couple of months of the year coming up, we have a couple of more models we'd prefer to get in for survey, however what you see underneath is practically the best TVs we will get before the special seasons hit.

On the off chance that you as of late purchased something from another producer that you love and you don't see it on this rundown, it doesn't mean we've deliberately scorned it. Lamentably, best-of records are minuscule and there are a lot of good sets out there. All things considered, we're continually adding more screens to this rundown, so make certain to return in a month or two to see the most recent options to this TV corridor of acclaim.

BEST TV

1. LG CX Series OLED TV

An entrancing OLED TV

48-inch: LG OLED48CX | 55-inch: LG OLED55CX | 65-inch: LG OLED65CX | 77-inch: LG OLED77CX

Heavenly picture qualityGorgeous super-thin designHeavy bass can distortNo HDR10+ uphold

The LG CX OLED is unquestionably the best OLED TV for 2020, and completely has the right to scratch the head of this rundown to the best TVs accessible today.

Repeating on a year ago's LG C9 Series, the LG CX probably won't appear to be too changed – and it isn't. However, by proceeding with a similar hypnotizing picture quality and champion webOS keen stage, with a couple of current updates like HDMI 2.1 and an a9 Gen 3 processor, it's figured out how to exceed its forerunner.

With another 48-inch OLED TV size now accessible as well, the CX is a significantly more adaptable recommendation for a more extensive assortment of wallets and homes. With a slimline plan and backing for Dolby Vision and Atmos – alongside roaring inherent sound – it's a phenomenal decision at any size.

LG is truly hoping to allure gamers with its 2020 territory, as well, with absolute bottom information slack, uphold for Nvidia G-Sync, and similarity with 4K/120HZ ongoing interaction for cutting edge comforts.

You won't get HDR10+ here, tragically, and UK watchers should abandon the entirety of their fave make up for lost time applications, however beyond a shadow of a doubt – this is the best OLED TV for you in 2020.

2. Samsung Q950TS QLED TV (2020)

Samsung's new leader 8K offers cutting edge execution... at a cost

85-inch: Samsung QN85Q950TS | 75-inch: Samsung QN75Q950TS

Amazing picture qualityStandard-setting HDRNo Dolby Vision supportLimited 8K content

The Samsung Q950TS speaks to the most recent 8K TV from the producer, joining all the advantages of a year ago's Samsung Q900 8K screen with developments initially presented the 2019 leader Samsung Q90 4K TV that hit retires not long ago.

Joined in one first rate QLED TV, the new Samsung Q950 offers a 8K board and AI-upgraded picture preparing, in addition to more extensive survey edges, an improved dark channel and standard-setting HDR execution. On the off chance that all that wasn't sufficient, Samsung's keen TV stage is the most far reaching available.

So in case you're searching for a cutting edge new Samsung TV – and wouldn't fret paying as much as possible for it – the Q950TS ought to be at the head of your short rundown.

3. Sony A8H OLED (2020)

Sony's reasonable OLED scores third spot this year

55-inch: Sony XBR-55A8H | 65-inch: Sony XBR-65A8H

Stunning, refined pictureGood sound qualityUltra-wide survey anglesNo HDR10+ supportSometimes fiddly working systemAndroid TV can baffle

By consolidating Sony's exceptional OLED picture execution with an incredible and direct stable framework, the Sony A8H OLED TV figures out how to be an amazingly convincing TV choice for genuine home film fans.

It conveys Sony's top-line X1 Ultimate processor, Sony's Pixel Contrast Booster (for more exceptional picture features), and another OLED variant of the X-Motion Clarity include Sony at first produced for its FALD LCD TVs.

On the sound side, then, Sony's standard Acoustic Surface Audio framework (where the TV's screen is really 'energized' into delivering sound) is joined by a two-subwoofer bass framework, and an Acoustic Auto Calibration framework that can improve the TV's sound to your stay with only two or three fast test beats.

4. Samsung Q80T QLED TV (2020)

Lively HDR makes this a stellar mid-extend model for gamers and cinephiles

No value data

CHECK AMAZON

Full exhibit backlight4K Quantum picture processorHigh top brightnessNo Dolby VisionNot the prettiest QLED

New for 2020, the Samsung Q80T QLED expands on the accomplishments of past models for a splendid HDR TV certainly worth looking at.

The most eminent element is the extraordinarily low info slack, settling on the Q80T an extraordinary decision for gamers who need responsive interactivity, however the QLED screen will likewise make general viewing a joy for what it's worth.

The Q80T is the least expensive 2020 Samsung TV to accompany a full-exhibit backdrop illumination, which means you'll get reliable splendor, however not a portion of the exceptional characteristics of better quality sets – henceforth why it lands lower on this rundown than a year ago's Q90 QLED. It additionally isn't exactly as a la mode as the zero-bezel Q950TS, with a thick body contrasted with different QLEDs in the current year's range.

Be that as it may, you'll despite everything get Samsung's most recent Quantum 4K processor, distinctive HDR hues, and progressed shrewd TV highlights through the Tizen OS.

In the event that you need to a greater extent a sparing, as well, the Q70R QLED is this current TV's forerunner, and will cost you a decent hardly any hundred dollars not exactly the new Q80T model (truly, it's the some product offering, and truly, the naming is confounding).

5. Sony Bravia X900H Series (2020)

Dynamic picture execution, splitting upscaling and the guarantee of HDM1 2.1

Dynamic, persuading 4K HDRImpressive upscalingFull-bodied soundNo HDR10+Brash Android interfaceLimited seeing edges

Sony's X900H Series does all that it decides to do, and in some style. Its image quality is very frightening in the correct conditions, its sound is more than sufficient by winning norms, it's easy to utilize and it doesn't look down on substance of substandard goal.

The board itself is a VA-type LCD, which in wide terms must be viewed as an overhaul on the IPS edge-lit board Sony sent on a year ago's equal model. The higher brilliance, more noteworthy shading volume and improved screen consistency guaranteed by a full cluster VA board should more than compensate for the fairly more limited review edge when contrasted with IPS. It's taking note of, as well, the X900H doesn't highlight the X-Wide review edge innovation Sony's leader X950H territory is hauling.

So, there's all that could possibly be needed going on here to make you neglect the absence of HDR10+ and excuse Android TV its arrogance. On the off chance that you've such a cash to spend on a TV of such a size, you completely need to try out it. read more