#buys a book on the ethics of robotics for a laugh

[ridley-was-a-cat]

What I Watched This Week 7/23 – 7/29

Concrete Revolutio - I saw this called out in the sidebar on Reddit, and figured I might as well give it a try despite its sub-7.00 rating on MAL. It's hard to sum up the kind of story this was, but I guess you could say it's an ambitious anime original about a group of superhumans, aliens, time-travelers, and yokai working for the government that asks a number of questions about ethics and justice. I don't think it ever really delivers any good answers to the questions, and one of the main female characters was unbearably naïve and too wrapped up in her crush on the main character for my tastes, but it was well-animated and perfectly entertaining as a simple magic and robots action anime. A mixed bag. 7/10

Initial D Fourth Stage - Now 19 years old and out of high school, Takumi has joined up with the Takahashi brothers to form Project D, where Takumi and Keisuke go around to other prefectures and race their top racers with the support of Ryousuke and a small army of mechanics. I know the Takahashis come from a rich family, but I have no idea where all the money they would need for this endeavor must come from, but that's beside the point I guess. A couple of things bothered me in this season, mainly the girl who raced Keisuke and then developed a crush on him, as this series can't seem to imagine a female character that isn't romantically involved somehow with one of the male characters. However, the big highlight for me was Takumi's father buying his own car, absolutely smoking Takumi on the downhill at Akina, and just being like "stay humble, squirt". 100% chad dad behavior. 8/10

My Neighbors the Yamadas - The reviews for this on MAL gave me a hearty chuckle, as half of them are satisfied viewers who enjoyed the vignettes about this typical Japanese family going through their daily lives, and the other half are furious that something from Ghibli would have such simple art and no plot, the horrors! For my part, I really enjoyed both the art and the disconnected little stories of everything from leaving the youngest child at the store by accident, to grandma talking down a motorcycle gang. The art gave the impression of a greeting card or story book, which matched the wistful, nostalgic vibe of the stories. It's a look at a typical flawed family that laughs at itself affectionately. 8/10

#concrete revolutio #Initial D #my neighbors the yamadas #backlist anime #anime

[mothbug]

benny objectively the best dnd character of all time

#really into wildlife and poetry and WOMENS HONKERS #Uh oh i’m an ecoterrorist he he ^-^ #thinking abt her in her cute overall skirt with little flowers in her hair DRENCHED IN BLOOD yet again . she’s so funny #buys a book on the ethics of robotics for a laugh #i am an innocent 2 or 20 or 50 year old robot who only wants to act and be happy :( #INVENTED BRUNCH ON ACCIDENT. took a woman she has a crush on to go see her wanted poster #her backstory. well. i will not dare to speak of it on this blog for there are some BITCHES here who would SEE it smh #oh benediximus how i love you . i can’t believe i started playing her as so intimidating but she’s never killed anyone. she is a beast tho #i’ve written poetry in character that’s how you know she has charmed me to the core <3 #i don’t think she knows lying to cops is a crime but it is her favorite activity #dnd

[benevolentlibraryghost]

Heliophilous robots and genetic mutation

When I read this book I realized how much I had missed fiction that doesn’t take place in the world as we know it. Instead I was able to enjoy a futuristic dystopian world, one that I was able to lose myself in, trying to solve all its mysteries.

The world that Kazuo Ishiguro has cooked up is complex and, despite also being intriguing, quite terrifying. Problems in today’s world are highlighted and taken as the ‘personality’ traits for this one. Children grow up lonely and divided. Some are upper class and have parents that work hard and are determined to make their children succeed in life. Others are not that lucky. Most of the schooling is online for the ‘lifted’ children (don’t worry no miss rona here). It is not spoken about quite literally what divides these ‘lifted’ and ‘unlifted’ children and therefore it is left in the dark what it truly means. My guess was that it has to do with whether or not parents are able to pay for genetic mutation of their children.

Luckily they are also quite ‘nice’: in order for their children not to get lonely and have some sort of social contact, they often buy a robot for their child. It is not an artificial intelligence that could overpower a human, but instead is an artificial friend; a robot who has the ability to learn by observing its surroundings. One of these robots is Klara, the narrator of this story. She is an intelligent one and a fast learner. Her knack for observing began when she was in a store for AF’s and further develops when she is bought for Josie, a fourteen year-old who is suffering from an unnamed illness. 

Klara describes a most confusing world in a child-like way. It makes parts of the world confusing, for example the ‘lifting’ process, but also has a sense of warmth to it and makes it possible for the reader to feel like this shocking world is somehow familiar. The book is easy to read but also disconcerting.

As noted before, this novel addresses what the discoveries in the field of artificial intelligence and genetic engineering could entail and what ethical questions it might raise [if you read the book; there is one particular plot-twist in chapter 4 that I am currently referring to]. This was quite a smart move in my opinion, as you have to somehow read between the lines to grasp the message. 

I found the books pace to be quite slow at times, especially at the beginning. But when Klara was bought and got wrapped up in the family drama, I was able to enjoy it and laugh, gasp and cry. Ishiguro has done a great job at leaving me confused and heartbroken.

Rating: 4/5 Bubble Games

#books #klara and the sun #kazuo ishiguro #review

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Kauri and Keira

CW: Implied/referenced noncon/serious dubcon, implied/referenced abuse

He slides out of the bed when the world is quiet, when Owen’s breathing is deep and heavy. He doesn’t weigh that much, really, so it’s easy to shift his body slowly, back and back, without disturbing anyone. 

The sheets are soft as silk against his skin - he’s so lucky he lives somewhere with such a good bed, some owners make their boys sleep in the boxes they came in. He pulls on the black jogger sweatpants and matching sweatshirt Owen brought home last week - how lucky, so lucky that his owner lets him wear such comfortable, soft things - and he’s so quiet, and moves so slowly, that his collar doesn’t even clink against itself.

He places each step carefully, but he doesn’t really have to. This place - condo, but he’ll forget that in a second - is new, top of the line Owen says. Owen is always saying how nice this place is, how good it is that he gets to live here.

They used to not allow pets, but they make an exception for nonproductive, Owen had bragged to him once, the two of them bundled on the couch to watch movies. There are movies the booklet suggests they not watch - a short list - but Owen doesn’t seem to care.

He likes when Kauri is scared, and he can hold him and make him feel better, pet through his hair and whisper that he’ll never let Kauri get cut up like the person on TV. He’ll never let him bleed like that. All the ways that Owen hurts him don’t really count as hurt, not compared to those other owners, the other pets.

It could have been so much worse.

Owen’s touch is safe, is the only safe place, the only safe thing.

645898, what do you say?

T-Touch is safe. Their touch is s-s, is safe, whoev-ever they are.

Look at him, he’s still buzzing, don’t you think?

All their nerves buzz after a jolt like that. He’ll be fucked up all day now. 

Yeah, well, at least yours reacts. Mine just stares at me now.

Stop overusing your baton and he wouldn’t. 

He earned it, cheeky fuck. Again, 645898.

Touch is s-safe. I want to be tuh-… touched. W-Want to be. It’s s-safe. The owner’s touch is s-s-safe.

See? Was that so fuckin’ hard? Your owner’s touch is safe, right? Say it again.

Oh-Owner’s touch is s-s-safe. Soh-horry, my voice won’t-

Yeah, don’t fuck up next time. 645898, lights out.

The lights are out as he creeps through the bedroom door, closes it silently behind him. The only sound is the low whirr of the nearly-soundless appliances in the kitchen, and Kauri smiles to himself, fingertips trailing the weird stone countertops that Owen was so proud of, had spent so much money on. 

Clean enough to eat off of, and sometimes he made Kauri do just that.

In the dark, Kauri is a little nervous, but it’s not so bad. Everything has a place and stays there except for Kauri, really, and Owen doesn’t mind that he walks around at night as long as he doesn’t wake him up. Kauri doesn’t need much sleep - how long has it been, 645898, three days? - and as long as he’s back in bed before Owen wakes up, so he can be right there, it’s okay, Owen doesn’t mind.

A lot of owners don’t let their pets roam at night.

Kauri is so lucky.

“So fucking lucky,” He sneers, and feels a thrill of fear up his spine, but no one hears him. No one else is here but Owen, and Owen won’t wake up until his third alarm goes off, even though Kauri is usually up before the first

Out into the living room, where the cool floor turns to a soft carpet under his bare feet. He finds her just where he thought she’d be, in her docking station underneath the couch, beeping contentedly in the darkness. 

“Keira,” Kauri whispers. “Keira, are you up?”

Hello Kauri, the Roomba replies in its slightly digital female voice. Owen had asked for the Roomba to have a female voice - you got to pick, he told Kauri, who had only nodded silently like he understood. Time: 3:15 AM. Cleaning routine commences?

“No, not yet. You might wake him up if you get stuck again. Can you come out of your station and sit with me?”

The Roomba is silent for a moment, then whirs out of the docking station on its tiny wheels, a perfect flat black circle with two blinking red spots on the top, like eyes. Kauri smiles, a little, and pats it on the shiny part on top, where he imagines she likes it. The whirr of her little wheels changes, and it sounds like a purr. Affirmed command. Kauri directs.

“I don’t direct anything,” Kauri says softly, and when he moves back across the room Keira follows at his heels, moving effortlessly over the carpet, bumping into him a couple of times in what he pretends is affection.

The doors to the balcony don’t squeak or creak - Kauri is careful to keep the hinges nice and oiled, although he’s not sure how he knows to oil them, because he can’t remember every being taught. Kauri opens them up and lets the cooler night air in, taking a deep breath. It smells like the trees with white flowers down below, along the walkway, where he has never been.

He knows it smells like the tree-flowers, because Owen told him so.

Owen tells him all about these things, and he is so nice compared to other owners, who don’t tell their pets anything at all. Owen is very careful to be ethical and humane, and he never leaves bruises.

But there are other ways to hurt someone.

Commence balcony? Keira asks, whirring at the edge of the doorframe. Kauri assist. Kauri assist. Kauri assist-

“Yeah, I got you, girl, hold on.” Kauri drops into a crouch, picking the Roomba up carefully by the middle part where her circle is widest. The wheels keep spinning as he holds her and moves out onto the balcony, but when he sets her down again she moves over to a corner by one of the big planters - this one has some kind of miniature tree in it, surrounded by flowers that Kauri carefully waters and gives plant food at Owen’s direction - and settles in, beeping her happy little contented noise. “There, that’s better. Go ahead, we’ll be outside for a little bit, okay?”

Gratitude. Grateful. Kauri is good. Keira balcony commence.

Kauri beams at the praise, and settles into one of the thick padded outside chairs, pulling his knees up to his chest. “Thanks, Keira. I just thought maybe I could look up tonight, and you could come out with me.”

Kauri is good. Keira grateful.

“Kauri is grateful, too,” Kauri replies, but really he isn’t. Owen is very kind to him - he’s so fortunate to have someone buy him who is so kind - but he can’t be as grateful as he’s supposed to be. 

He looks up at the dark night sky, clear as glass that he can look up into and see the stars. The condo practices minimized light pollution, Owen tells him. It’s far enough from the city to avoid more than a hint of the reddish orange glow of those lights, off in the distance Here, the condo is surrounded by old trees allowed to keep growing and carefully managed. There is no one but the condo people for miles and miles and miles.

There are no lights at night between midnight and 5 AM. Instead, over Kauri’s head, the sky is a riot of white pinpricks he used to know the names for, and doesn’t remember anymore.

He sits quietly, looking up at them, letting them wash over him. All their designs turn into pictures if you connect the little dots, the sense that there is something so big out there and he is only the smallest, tiniest part of it, and so it doesn’t matter if he is hurt, because there are bigger hurts out there, and he is only dust on a planet orbiting a distant sun-

645898, what do you remember?

Kauri’s fingertips start to tap on the arm of the outside chair, nervously.

I-I-… I don’t know, it hurts, please stop, please-

Tap. tap.

No. I asked you a question. What do you remember?

Taaaaap. Tap. tap.

Taaaap. Taaaap. Taaap.

Taaaaap. Tap.

Tap.

Taaap. Taaaaap. Taaaap. Taaaap.

Tap.

Taaaaaaap.

N-Nothing! I don’t remember anything! I don’t remember, I’m sorry, I don’t know-… I don’t know anything!

Good. Get 645898 back to his Cubicle.

Keira beeps once, and he thinks she might sound worried, but he keeps his eyes up on the stars, and he lets his heart beat faster. 

Tap. Taaaaap. Taaaaap.

Tap. Taaaaaap.

Taaaaap. Tap.

Taaaaap.

Pick up the pen.

N-No! I don’t want to do this! I don’t want this!

Pick. Up. The. Pen.

I don’t want-… Stop! Stop hurting me!

Kauri’s breathing has gone shallow, stutter-skipping breaths that make Keira beep again and he shakes his head at her. It’s only safe to think at night, when Owen is sleeping. Owen didn’t buy him to think, Owen bought him to be pretty, to have blue eyes and black hair. Owen paid a lot of money, Kauri is an investment, and he’s lucky he’s worth so much money or he could have been sold to someone worse.

“L-Lucky,” Kauri whispers, but his voice shakes.

Taaaaaap.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

“I’m lucky.”

Tap. Tap.

Kauri heartbeat accelerating, Keira says, and her robotic voice drops a little, a mockery of the kind of concerned whisper Kauri sometimes uses with her. Kauri physical condition deteriorating?

“No, I’m f-fine,” Kauri says softly. “I’m fine, Keira, thank you. Thank you. Just, just give me a second. I’m okay. I just need-”

I need him to not be touching me right now.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

He remembers stars, before. Lying on his back on a blanket in the grass, with Keira beside him, only it was a different Keira, then, and he was a different person. They had a book with constellations in it and they were pointing out all of the different ones, laughing like idiots.

645898, unacceptable incorrect thought aberration.

No, please, I didn’t mean to, I didn’t mean-

Unacceptable. Come here.

N-No! Please, please don’t do it, please-

Then learn to fucking forget when we tell you to, 645898. Dumbass

Please, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I-… I-…

“I’m so lucky,” Kauri whispers. “I’m so lucky that I’m not in the facility anymore. I need to not go back to the facility. I need to not go back. I need to not-”

There’s a beep and small thump, and Kauri looks down to see Keira bumping the leg of the outside chair, scooting back, and then bumping again. Kauri reassurance require. ‘I don’t want this’. Keira provides. Reassurance Kauri. Keira provides. Kauri assist? Kauri assist. Kauri assist-

He unfolds his legs and leans down, sweeping Keira up into his arms, holding her rigid little metal body with the wheels spinning, although they settle and stop once he has her on his lap, his hands resting on the smooth curved plastic and metal shape. Her little red lights look right up into his eyes. She whirrs, softly.

Kauri reassurance require, Keira intones, and Kauri tightens his hands on her, just a little bit. Keira provides. Keira reassurance provide. Acceptable?

“Yes,” Kauri replies, and then he holds her up in his arms, vertical, hugs the rigid, unforgiving metal and plastic to his chest. “Kauri reassurance requires.”

645898, say it again.

Touch is safe, touch is s-s-safe, touch is-

“I’m so lucky,” Kauri says, voice soft and sweet. “I’m so lucky I have you. I’m so lucky I signed the contract. I’m so lucky I have Mr. Owen. I’m so lucky, I’m so lucky, I’m so lucky.”

Keira understands. Reassurance Keira provide. ‘I don’t want this’, Keira beeps, and Kauri holds her tighter. Kauri heartbeat elevated. Keira reassurance. ‘I don’t want this’.

“Me neither,” He whispers. “But I’m so, so lucky.”

Tagging @pepperonyscience who asked to be tagged but I’​m pretty sure someone else did and I can’t remember who they were! Aaaahh! I’m sorry. If you want to be tagged for Kauri updates, please leave a comment on this and I’ll make an actual honest-to-God list I can keep track of

#whump #isolation #isolated whumpee #whumpee #conditioning #brainwashing #tw: implied/referenced noncon #box boy #box boy cinematic universe #Kauri #Owen Grant #Erase to Control #tw: implied abuse #intimate whumper #creepy whumper #whumpees r us universe #conditioned #brainwashed #Captivity

[yoursinfulurges]

Neo Host Club

Part 1.

Description:

Sm academy is a school for the riches kids in the country. If you have way too much time in your hands, have the school' host club take care of it for you. The host club is compiled of 21 members, im sure one of them will fit your preference. Indulge in fine dining as handsome rich men accompany you, showering you with love and affection. The host club is here to fulfill all of your fantasies of having a handsome rich man as your boyfriend. We encourage you to join us. Neo Host Club is your perfect vacation, we are here to aid you from all your stress.

Lies. All lies. At first everything was perfect, no bumps or kinks in the road. Being with Jaehyun was like a dream come true. But, like all dreams, at some point you have to wake up. Everything could've gone much more smoother if you would've never gotten involved with him in the first place. You went from being a one-time customer, to his personal call girl. You loved him with all your heart, but he loved himself way more. He took it upon himself to choose his pride over you. The host club wasn't as perfect as it seemed. It was not a picture perfect place where nothing could go wrong, It was just a utopian world made up by troubled kids, who hoped to forget their miserable lives outside of school. You know that now... He could've chosen love over tragedy, but his pride prevented him from doing so. He had a reputation as the host clubs most charming member to up hold, and he certain couldn't risk it for some girl he sleeps around with. He chose his pride, not you, thus shattering your relationship... or, whatever it was that you two had....

You were left with a shattered heart, he left you to pick up the pieces all on your own. It was not love, but instead a tragedy.

Warning: multiple smut scenes, bisexuality, grammar errors, implication of Asian reader, degrading terms, and over all a whole shit show

Word Count: about 5.k

___________

You gazed out the window of your limousine and sighed. Your face contorting into an expression that displayed 100% discomfort; you looked as if you were about to throw up any given minute, soiling the red velvet rug and your brand new uniform. The tingling sensation in the pit of your stomach seemed to be like a never ending stream. An endless flow of nervousness and anxious thoughts, feeding your anxiety like a wild fire, stirring up a cyclone of possible panic attacks or mental break downs. It felt as though you were on the verge of crying and shitting your pants.

Today, you'd be starting a new chapter in your life. You were finally attending the infamous SM academy, a school known for its excellent education system and outstanding clubs. You've heard many rumors about SM, but the most repeated are about a particular club called neo host club. It's apparently compiled by 18 charming male students, proudly running the club in it's second year at SM academy. The club was said to be extremely gifted, talents ranging from singing, dancing, rapping, and even magic acts.

You were sure they were nice and all, but you weren't buying it. A group of extremely good looking men with impeccable manners. It was almost too good to be true. What is this?, a sappy fanfiction written by a fourteen year old high school student that has nothing better to do? Yes. From what you've heard, they seemed like robotic brain washed idiots, fooled into acting like manga characters. It was best to not interact with them, given your long track record of obsessing over anime characters. You came to this school to learn, not to get involved with boys. No love affairs or scandalous awkward run in's. You were here to further your work ethics and that's all, there was nothing in your itinerary about getting involved with boys. Besides, something about them seemed fishy...

-

You gazed at your parents one last time before finally stepping out of the car. It was evident from your expression that you did not want to be here. You've protested a million times and made it completely obvious to your parents that you didn't want to attend SM. Originally, you wanted to go to JYP Arts, a school who focuses more on creative liberty rather than academics. It's most commonly known as a school who values creativity more than anything else, earning it a bad reputation from parents such as yours. You wanted to attend JYP rather than SM due to your passion for art, but your parents disapproved and left you with no other option but to attend SM.

They insisted that art wouldn't get you any where, and that it was more of a side hobby rather than a job you can actually make money off of. You were crushed, but weren't surprised. Your parents had always raised you to value money over happiness. Ever since you were little, you were tought that living in luxury and loneliness was better than living poor and surrounded by love. The only time you actually made your parents proud was when you won a hefty prize on some petty competition; not when you won a trophy for your outstanding literature work. Not when you donated half a million dollars to charity, in fact, they seemed bitter about it, rather than proud.

To them, your trophy room filled with over 200 golden medals and trophies was nothing compared to the dollar signs you'd rake in. As a child, you've always joked that your parents were like the cookie monster, but with money. Having always seen them in the study, counting huge wads of 100 dollar bills, usually accompanied by other stacks of fresh paper; Naturally, you saw them as a psychopath with an unhealthy obsession over money, greedy and hungry (but without the blue fur and garbage can of course.) None the less, they still treated you with love,... In their eyes.... You were sure that in their own twisted way, they loved you with all their hearts. They just didn't show it much, or at all....

Life with them as parents was....rough... You would've been fine if you had other siblings to socialize with, but your parents thought of children as a menus and that you were far than enough for them. You figured out pretty quickly that you were only born because they needed a heir to the family business. You weren't aloud to talk nor even look at the children that would play outside the gates of your mansion. They iced you out from everything outside the walls of your house. Forcing you to make friends with the statues and paintings that littered your home. It was indeed sad, sad enough for the staff to take pity on you and go well out of their way to interact with you.

Thankfully, making some great friends in the confinement of your own home. Over time, you weren't so lonely anymore. There was Mrs. Kim, your librarian and teacher who home schooled you up until this point. Mr. Kim, the gardener. Mr. Lee, the chef and baker. Emily, one of the maids around the same age as you. Sehun, the son of your head maid. And lastly, Mrs. Oh, your head maid and Sehun's mother. They weren't exactly the normal group of friends people your age would have but they were great. So much fond memories were made with them, they raised you more than your parents ever did.

-

Morning classes flew by quicker than you expected, and before you knew it it was time for lunch. Your morning mainly consisted of you arriving to classes late due to your unreliable locker not wanting to cooperate, and boring lectures given in both 2 classes. You still couldn't shake off Ms. Lee's lecture about sexual intercourse, she had practically begged and yelled at your table to not have sex. Yes, specifically your table, earning lots of snickers from the other students and shy glance from you while your seat partner tried not to piss her pants. You did not expect a 40 year old lady in a purple get up to yell at you about sex on your first day of school. You expected your day to go much more normally than this, hopefully your evening will go on much more smoother. But some good did come out from Ms. Lee's excessive screaming.

While your loony teacher was yelling at another group about something you couldn't quite understand, you had managed to make a friend somehow. Her name was yeri, at first you'd expected her to one of the more quiet students, but boy were you wrong. The moment Ms. Lee stomped over to your table yeri's lips were practically bleeding, due to her bitting down on it way too hard to prevent herself from laughing. You liked her a lot, having shared some common interests and surprisingly similar personalities.

She even invited you to sit with her and her friends at lunch. You agreed of course, not wanting to look like a fool by sitting all by yourself. You would be vulnerable to judgmental stares and occasional murmurs. After class you stuck by yeri like gum to a shoe. She had informed you that it was usually her job to witch hunt her friends down. Understandable, given that the school was at least the size of fifteen malls. One could easily get lost. This 'witch hunt' however, wasn't as complex as you'd expect it to be. You had managed to find all four of them in under five minutes. Though it was painstaking,  mentally wise. Yeri said 'seek for those that look ill minded'. It had taken you a while to figure out what the hell that meant, as you did not speak her witch lingo. But after a few seconds you had managed to translate it as 'look for the idiots'. You left it to her to find them though, as you weren't the judgmental type. And sure enough she did.

They were all huddled around a girl; and from what you can see, she seemed to be distressed in a way. Vulgar profanities spill from her lips as she aggressively throws books into her locker. They were all pretty, but looked very intimidating. From what information you can gather with your eyes, they definitely weren't the most well-behaved students here. One opted for a leather jacket instead of the required school blazer. Some wore fish nets instead of stockings. Two wore plaid skirts. And almost all had hoop earrings on, which you know for a fact is not allowed. They all sported bright, eye catching makeup; with hair ranging from violet high lights to straight up platinum blonde. The contrast between yeri and them was unimaginable, but fitting. The only remotely juvenile thing about her is her ash grey high lights. Other than that, she seemed like your typical well-mannered girl.

"Oof, whose the babe." A very pretty girl with red lipstick and perfectly lined brows said whilst pointing at you with her lollipop. You looked her up and down and immediately got chills. She wore black latex thigh high heels; a plaid miniskirt with a leather belt, accompanied with chains; and an off white blouse, nearing grey in the color spectrum; with a sleek black leather jacket, that tied the look all together.

"This is y/n. She's new. Y/n, seulgi." Said yeri. Her hand landing at the dip of your back, pushing you forward gently but with the foundation of force. The grip  you had on your books tightens, pulling your notebook closer to your chest. You weren't necessarily scared, just weary.

"Ou, fresh meat." This,... Seulgi uttered.

"Careful she bites. Hi, I'm wendy." Stated the girl that was distraught earlier, as she moved her locker door a bit to take a peek at seulgi. Observing her, you smiled back.

She wore her hair in space buns with red and purple highlights; complementing their whole 'grunge chic' look. Her outfit was all mixed and match, from a yellow plaid mini skirt and red tank top, to a lilac and pink wind breaker. Chaotic, but stylish. Her gaze shifted from seulg to you, with a pleasant smile on her lips. To which you return, as you didn't wanna be caught observing her... She then aggressively shuts her locker door before turning your way.

"Cafeteria?" She questioned and you all nodded. You weren't one to oppose a grumbling stomach after all, so you complied.

-

Once seated in the cafeteria, you took a minute to take it all in. The place looked like the queen's ball room with the fancy domed roof and pillars, not to mention the giant chandelier that hung in the middle of the room. It was quite spacious, fit for the only finest. You couldn't expect any less from Korea's top school.

"Look whose here." The girl whom you've come to know as irene spoke, nudging her head towards the brown double door entrance. Your gaze following, and landing at a group of boys. All handsome and well dressed... I guess you were staring at them way too intensely, since one of the girls spoke up.

"Careful, you don't wanna get close to them." Wendy whispers in your ear.

"Why not?" You ask, turning her way.

Seulgi scoffs. "They're a bunch of a-holes but everyone here's too dumb and blinded by their looks to figure it out." She states while probing her miniscule fork in the air in their general direction.

"Seems like you have something against them." A sly tone laced your tongue as you spoke. You didn't know where this new found comfort came from since you were antisocial as fuck. But it was quite easy to adjust to them. They weren't as bad as you thought. They were actually very nice and well-mannered. They just have trouble obeying rules... You felt comfortable with them, almost like you've known them your entire life.

"Ya!? Well, I do!"

"Last summer seulgi got into some beef with taeyong, the guy with red hair and the leader of 'nct' as they call themselves. Anyways, They dated but seulgi came out as les and he got really salty about it and released nude pictures of her and her titties." Joy laughed while seulgi scoffed once more.

"They were nice though..." Wendy informed with a mischievous laugh.

"I know! If anything it just made the girls fond over me more. I mean get a load of these double D's." You spat out your tea as she pushed her breast together and leaned forward to attack you with them. Everyone bursts into a giggling fit as you coughed vigorously.

"But still, it pissed me off!" With her eyebrows furrowed she threw the tiny fork in her hand at her empty tray. The laughter didn't seem to die down and you thanked joy for the napkin she handed you to recollect yourself. You thought to yourself, maybe this wasn't so bad.

Not much had happened since lunch. Third period wasn't that bad since irene and joy accompanied you in math. Not to mention that it was practically a free period due to a technical difficulties. Last period was with seulgi and wendy. The three of you spent majority of language arts goofing off as the teacher read segments from Romeo and Juliet. Wendy made exaggerated expressions as the infamous "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore arth thou Romeo" line was read off... resulting in her being sent to the principal's Office...

-

And now you were back at your miserable humble abode, wilting away like a plant without water. It was only then when your macbook started vibrating with notifications, that you decided to take a break from painting.

Instagram: Yeri_is.petrified started following you...

Instagram: TheWendyBird started following you...

Instagram: Joy¡!_xoxo started following you...

Instagram: Irene♡_ started following you...

Instagram: Seulgi_ started following you...

Incoming call from: Yeri_is.petrified +4 others.

[Decline]  [Accept]

You furrowed your brows in confusion, how did the manage to find your account so easily. You sighed unknowingly as you clicked the accept button.

AznBabe_ has accepted call...

"Hey bitch." Yelled seulgi. You looked at her side of the screen. Instantly you noticed her odd preference in decorations as her room looked like a night club. There were mixtures of reds, purples, and blue illuminating lights. You presumed that were caused by various neon signs of some form. Her roomed looked like a strippers den. Especially with the red and black silk sheets she had.

"Asian babe, really?" Asked Irene. Her room was definitely more mellow. It fits her whole "your mom wished she gave birth to me" vibe. Very prim and proper, her color palette from what you can see is mainly black and white, with a plant here and there.

"Ya, lol..." you deadpanned. "How did you guys even find my IG?"

"It took a lot of searchin. By the way, love the whole edgy-urban- im-a-badass-dont-mess-with-me thing you have going on in your feed." You laughed as wendy emphasized her words, using hand gestures to prove her point.

"Ya, totally different from the whole good girl thing you have going on. It's hot. I like it." Added joy. Understandable since to took pride in reinventing yourself just for the internet. In the eyes of your followers you were a rebellious lil demon' that smoked and road motorcycles. But in actuality you were a goody-two-shoes that just so happens to vape and have access to thousands and thousands of urban clothing. You did ride a bike though but you preferred the rose gold custom Lamborghini you got for your birthday last year.

Truth be told, it was just an act. You weren't entirely sure what prompted you to create this edgy persona of yourself. I guess it was just to distract yourself from the oh' so pitiful life you lived now. A double life if you will...

"You should dress like this tomorrow. You'll fit right in." Said yeri as she held up her left hand in the form of a 6 sign.

"Why'd you losers called anyways?" It's funny how comfortable you've gotten with these girls that you've barely known twelve hours ago. You felt like you've been apart of their friend group since the beginning even though you've just met them today.

They all shrugged before going back to the task at hand. Irene was probably finishing up next weeks homework. While Yeri and Joy were mindlessly scrolling through their feed. Wendy has her camera off but by the sound of things she was probably cooking. Seulgi, well she was just laying in bed smoking. As for you, you were just tidying your work station.

"Are you guys planning to go to yukhei' party tomorrow? I heard he's going to have a cheese fountain." Wendy announced as she turned her camera on, giving you full view of the mess she made. Stains ranging from red to greenish yellow adorned her white shirt. And the gold spatula she was holding had burnt pieces on it.

"The boy loves his cheese." Laughed seulgi as she talks another drag from her blunt.

"Wait a minute, isn't he that guy from the club you said to stay away from?" You questioned, looking up from what you were doing to give them a look of confusion.

"He throws really good parties." Irene shrugged, not bothering to look up from her notebook.

Wong Lucas was Indeed a questionable man, but there was no doubt that he threw the craziest parties. He was pretty much what you'd expect a nineteen year old rich kid to be, wild and rebellious. It was a known fact that he got his spot at Neo through one of his parties. He was the one that arranged most of the clubs events because he was really good at it. For the most part he has a pretty squeaky clean record. Aside from little rumors here and there.

-

And that's how you found yourself dressing up hot and steamy for a party you didn't even know the location to. You decide to go casual yet still sexy. It didn't take you long to decide on a red latex, skin tight skirt with a Gucci belt, paired with a black lace bracelet styled top, and black velvet thigh highs. As for your hair and makeup you kept it simple, opting to just curl your hair with a subtle black winged liner and a bright red lip, also accompanied by perfectly lined brows and extra gleaming highlight.

Seulgi was already at your house since she insisted on getting dressed there. The party didn't start till nine and it was only seven twenty so you had plenty of time to lounge around. Seulgi went with a dark purple velvet off shoulder flaired dress, with black thigh high heels that laced up at the front. Her hair was styled in a bun with her bangs hanging loose. And her makeup was very minimalistic, similar to yours except she had a nude lipstick on.

"Smile for a picture slut!" She yelled, positioning the camera in front of you both. You did your go-two insta hoe pose; shoulders back, one eyebrow slightly raised, gaze soft yet sassy; lips pressed together but lightly tugged into a small smirk. You figured out that the pose made you look irritated and confused yet still hot. The next picture was just of you and seulgi giving the camera the middle finger with your eyes closed and tongue stuck out.

"You look hot in all of these." Seulgi complimented as she scrolled through the pictures. Deciding the top five that worked well in her favors before posting it on her IG. Not so long later the doorbell rang, indicating that someone was present at the door.

Seulgi_ tagged you in a photo

[Image]

10,000 likes

Born in the pussy, i'll die in a cunt.

579 comments

_JaeD_ +58 others has started following you...

The party hadn't even begun and already the place was packed. Cars ranging from Lambo's, Royce', and Mercedes littered the place. Luckily Irene found a place to park her convertible. You knew that this place was heavily guarded since it was known to be one of the more classier part of Seoul. So when wendy suggested to park in the streets, none of you seemed to worry about any possible theft.

The house was huge, certainly not as large as your house but definitely enough to fit a hundreds of people. From your knowledge of revenue, or just money in general, the house looked to be worth a good nine million, ten at most. It was a modern home so you knew that it had to be well over a million. Since most houses that have that specific structure were more on the heftier side of things. And there were stone statues everywhere. Those aren't cheap to come by.

You all walked up to the security man with a guest list and patiently waited for the group of girls to finish. You knew judging by their clothes that they weren't from the privileged life. The knockoff Gucci was a huge give away. Normally you wouldn't have a problem about these kinds of things, but knowing how upper class parties work, the odds are they were going to get thrown out.

You watch as the girl whined and screamed to be let in, claiming that she'd tell her father about him. You almost took pity on them, enough to say they were with you. You would've if it weren't for half of them giving you the stank eye.

"Step aside. Name?" The man asked you.

"Lee Y/n, of the Lee dynasties." You said confidently, staring back at the girl who had been glaring at you the second you walked up here.

"And you know who we are." Joy piped.

"Hi wonho!" Greeted wendy.

"Right this way girls." The guard known as wonho smiled before opening the door for the six of you.

"We're with them." One girl said.

"No you're not." You laughed at Irene's words, strutting into the home. It reeked of alcohol and drugs. The air was littered with smoke from the smoke machine, and atmosphere gave off a more chill-club kind of vibe from the red and blue lights the laminated that places. The place was jammed pack with people, some you recognize from school.

"Let's go get a drink." Seulgi whispered in your ear. You nod whilst looking around. She mumbled a inaudible 'this way' before pushing your forearm to the direction of the kitchen.

Your jaw drops. There really was a cheese fountain...

The kitchen wasn't as compacted as before, leaving room for you to actually wonder. There were only a few groups of people and from what you can see out the sliding doors, they were all outside by or in the pool.

"Look theres pizza."

"Theres a cheese fountain. A fucking cheese fountain! I thought it was a joke-"

"Ohhh nooo, Yukhei never jokes about cheese..."

-

You watch in amusement as yeri chugs down her twelfth glass of martini blue. (S/o if you get it). At this point in, you've lost count of how many shots you've had and the many types of alcohol you drank. Everything became a drunken blur, gaze hazy, mind fuzzy. The blaring music was coming through filtered, like you were under water. Everything felt like a mirage. Every action your body did, your brain did not comprehend. Thus resulting you on time out, under the watchful gaze of wendy and Irene.

A huff leaves your lips as you slumped and grabbed another slice of pizza off the counter you sat atope of.

"Why can't I just have another one..." a pout forms on your face as you groan in frustration.

"Because y/n you've already had 24 shots of that neon green stuff." Says wendy.

"Hey Yuk, what is that stuff?" Irene grabs a hold of the muscular male that happened to pass by, pointing at the  suspicious looking bowl of glowing green liquid.

"Oh, that?.. ask Sicheng and Nakamoto, they made it. But I think its mountain dew and monster with vodka and sprite, something like that." Lucas says before placing down three boxes of pizza and tacos and leaving. Leaving the two to groan in agony, somebody had to take care of you.

"I'm going to the washroom..." you say, hopping off the granite counter and wobbling off to a random hallway.

"Okay..." mumbled Irene as she takes a sip from her plastic red cup.

Uncertain where your legs were taking you to, you watch as seulgi pushes a girl into an unoccupied room. You were unsure of her name but you've seen her in your fine arts class. She hangs out a lot with those JYP kids.

"Have fun Seul!" You laughed, banging your forearm into the wooden door before drunkenly walking off.

Somehow you had managed to find the washroom. You swiftly made your way in and locked the door behind you. Clearly missing the figure that smoked in the shower. You blink meekly at the sink, forgetting why you went to the washroom in the first place.

You sigh, propping yourself up on the counter. Your body swayong lightly to the current migos song blasting through the speakers outside. You yawn lightly, thanking god that the red and black aesthetic happening outside correspondent in the bathroom as well. The red led light that illuminated the room was certainly much more calmer than the yellowish lights in the kitchen. It made things a lot easier to actually see.

The male watches you with amusement in his eyes. Taking another drag from his blunt, he shifts his weight onto the shower wall.

"What's a pretty girl like you doing here?" He asked, nodding is head upward before tilting it to the side and taking another drag of his cigar. His hazel brown eyes staring down at you as he lifts an eyebrow, waiting for a respond.

You hum lightly, swinging your legs absentmindedly. "Just chillin!" He laughs slightly at your answer before making his way to you and leaning against the bathroom counter.

"Then lets chill together. My names Yuta. You?" Evident in his voice that he wanted more than to just relax, but it only goes by unnoticed to you as you happily told him your name.

5 minutes later...

"Oh fuck!! Just l-like that! Shit!!!" You scream loudly as you grip onto Yuta' hair. A smirk forming on his lips as he looks up at you with sly eyes. A milky way of lust and hunger filled his hazel ord. (Pun not intended) Moans fall out of your mouth as Yuta sucked on your clit. Your vision fogs as your intoxicated mind tries to comprehend every wave of pleasure coming your way.

"I-im coming! Fuck!!!" Screaming at the top of your lungs, your breath increases as you struggle to unleash the tightness in your stomach. Your pitch rises ten octaves as you release onto Yuta' mouth. Your mind in a blissful ecstasy as you ride out your high.

"Well, that was fun." He says in a sly tone, lifting his head and licking his lips.

"Visit me if you ever want more..." A chuckle erupts from his mouth as he handed you a pink card with golden accents on all four corners. You watch as he leaves before reading the cursive golden letters on the card.

|                      Neo Host Club                        |

                           Empathy,

           We turn dreams into reality.

|                Room: 127  7am-6pm                 |

You raise your brow in confusion as you examine the card front to back. We turn dreams into reality? What the hell did that mean? An escorting buisiness perhaps.. though you highly doubt the school would allow such a thing. Regardless of the clubs purpose, it was still worth checking out. As the name and slogan intrigued you very much.

And thus, you began your journey down the rabbit hole of poorly chosen decisions and midnight drunk hook ups. But sooner or later the spiral will begin to unwind and all will be revealed. After all, they didn't call him the king of hearts for nothing...

How was that huh? Probably not what you expected but oh well :/ don't expect for part two to be out any time soon!!! Currently working through writers block :(

#kpop #kpop smut #nct smut #nct #kpop is life #kpop scenarios #nct 127 #nct scenarios #nct u #kpop fanfiction #kpop imagines #nct angst #nct imagines #nct 2018 #kpop imagine #kpop stories #nct dream #kpop text #idk #nct aesthetic #nct au #kpop news #story prompt #nct as things #nct chats #nct lucas #nct johnny #nct mark #nct jaehyun #nct china

[scandinaviacroatiaengbergs]

Sunday: Oslo to Gothenburg (Bye-Bye to our Car, for Now!) and on to Copenhagen

There are a few things I wanted to note, just in general, but I’ve been forgetting to do so.  One: there are wind turbines all over the countryside in Norway and Sweden.  Two: the recycling program in Norway is very ahead-of-our-time (or the U.S.’s time, and I know to roll out such programs on a nationwide scale is easier to do in a smaller country than a larger one) and everyone recycles and composts  and the robot-directed sorting of bags of garbage is a sight to see (I saw it in a video that Ryley showed me).  Three: there are sooooooo many Teslas in Norway.  It is an actual fact that there are more Teslas per capita in Norway than in any other country (per my source: Eric Engberg).  Now, you’d think that this must just mean the people are super stoked to protect the environment and have loads of money to spend on buying expensive electric cars, and that is partially true, but Ryley and Roar said that many people spend way beyond their means and the government really incentivized electric car ownership, and Tesla was a huge resulting beneficiary of that.  Electric cars could drive in the bus lane for a while and there were more benefits, too, which I am forgetting.  It is really crazy how many Teslas there are on the road, and aside from that, there are just a lot of new cars, with very few that would qualify as “old” in the central city.  When we drove out of town, we saw more older models, but in the city, nope. I’ve also been thinking a lot about immigration in the late-19th and early-20th century to the U.S. from Scandinavia.  So I will digress for a minute: I know that when countries are war-torn, it makes a lot of sense for individuals and families to leave those regions, when they can (and as we see globally today and throughout history, there are so many tragic regions in which civilians are stuck in unlivable circumstances with no respite from the wars surrounding them). I also know from my own family history that people fled, say, Ireland because of famine, or Lithuania to seek an improved life in the U.S., even before abject ethic and religious persecution made conditions unsurvivable. I need to learn more about the causes for migration out of Scandinavia during the turn of the last century.  But, the lure of the “American Dream” was strong, even when a country wasn’t in a depression or there wasn’t a crop failure (though Norway had a huge potato crop failure that made many people leave, at the same time as Ireland, according to Roar), as far as I know.  And we see that immigrants from the turn of the last century to the U.S. have, by and large, left improved socio-economic legacies for their  descendants. But, when I travel to these areas today, and see some of the beauties of their regions, and size of cities and how these countries are able to develop social systems where there are many fewer people in poverty per capita than there are in our own U.S., I realize I need to learn more about why so many people left in the first place, and what the crises they were fleeing were, or whether they were just leaving to pursue riches in the U.S. when its doors were more open to such waves of immigrants (I mean, I wrote a book about this period, so I know very well the increasingly tight immigration laws of the late-19th to early-20th centuries and what “kinds” of people they privileged).  Anyway, I thought this about my Grandpa Sam too when we were in Lithuania, since he could certainly not have predicted the genocide that would develop there thirty years after he left.  He came to the U.S. alone from his family of two parents and five siblings (all but one of whom perished in the Holocaust), and seems to have traveled with a cousin. I do think about the asylum seekers who I’ve volunteered with in Albuquerque and somewhat like my uncle, they were really going into the unknown, because they hoped that gamble would make their lives better.  In the case of the asylum seekers, they’re often fleeing so much death, corruption, and destruction around them, and they hope that in the U.S. they’ll have a safer home for their children and more viable earning options for themselves. So, I am sorry to go along this tangent for so long, but I really do drive through the countryside here and I wonder why so many people left in the first place – simple as that.  I am sure different people left in different decades for very different reasons. Anyway, our last morning in Oslo was leisurely. We had to go out and find an ATM, though, since I had to leave about $70 for our Airbnb hosts to pay for parking, since we’d agreed upon this. To find an ATM on Sunday, though, was no easy task, so we went on a long walk to get to the nearest one, but that actually turned out very well, because we didn’t have to be out of the apartment at a particular time and we got to see some more neighborhoods that we hadn’t seen before.  We even found a little park right near our place that had a high hill, and we could see quite a panorama from the top. So, around 1, we left Oslo, avoiding by the smallest margin a collision in a roundabout (the Volvo’s brakes work really well, we learned!), and then made it to Gothenburg without much trouble at all. Eric booked our Airbnb in a suburb, and by the time we got in, the kids were ragged, unruly, and wild as hyenas with their squawking and back-talking and general silliness.  It was a mess. It took some stern words and some taking away of things (Rowan’s beloved Blundstone boots) to get them to know that they needed to pull it together, which they did, and we went to the Willy’s grocery store and got some dinner and got back and ate dinner, and the kids ate voluminously. After that, we tried to get the kids to bed, but that, again, was more protracted than ideal, and they weren’t asleep until nearly 10 p.m.  I should mention that the navigation in this suburb called Askim was hilarious and so convoluted; it was like driving from driveway to driveway, on tiny, tiny roads that, before GPS, I have no idea how anyone could’ve given directions to anyone unfamiliar with the area. So, the kids needed one thing after the next at bedtime – a story “from your mouth” (specifically, the serial saga of the cats Pickles and Mr. Pink that I’ve been telling since last summer), a story from a book, some water, to go to the bathroom, it’s too hot, there’s too much light, I want to sleep in with Cece, I want to go downstairs, etc. etc.  It was endless.  But, finally, they both zonked out, and then I couldn’t fall asleep until after midnight. I hope it doesn’t seem like I am complaining about the kids or their behavior a lot, because really, they roll with all of this traveling and moving from town to town pretty well, and they seem to love the adventure, and Rowan even expresses how much he loves it, repeatedly, and how sad he’s going to be when it’s over (though he has his art camp later this summer, and he *is* excited for that). But, our kids really are the loudest kids in any given room and the goofiest, so that is fun for us sometimes, but sometimes we need a knob with which we can dial down their volume considerably. We dropped our Volvo off this morning for its journey home, and while we were there, we saw another family, with two kids ages probably 8 and 6, and they were just sitting at a table with their parents while they waited for their car to be brought out. Our kids, by contrast, were needling each other and I actually heard a scream out of Cece when I was in the bathroom right before we left. Some great things can come out of their energy and curiosity, and we’re grateful for that, but, as I noted, sometimes, a dial would be useful ;)  I guess what goes around, comes around, since my mom once left my brother and I (at ages 4 and 6) with the guard at the front of some Smithsonian museum because we were being intolerable and she wanted to see the exhibit without our annoying behavior, so with the guard we sat.  That was also the day I flat-out insisted on wearing pleather boots and jeans in the humid, insane D.C. summertime weather. Anyway, I guess my kids come by their low points honestly ;) Anyway, so we *did* return the Volvo for its ocean journey home!  And now, I write this from a train to Copenhagen, and we’ll spend two nights there before flying to Croatia, land of my grandmother’s mother and ancestors.  The kids and I know, from Grandma Marion, how to say “I love you!” in Yugoslavian (as she calls it), so we’re ready for our travels there! This train ride started a bit stressfully, a) because we have a lot of loot to get situated on board, and b) there are no seat numbers above all of the seats, so it was a total frustrating guessing game to figure out which seats are ours.  But we did, and since then, the ride has been uneventful, with some beautiful ocean scenery and small towns (and some not-so-small towns) with red houses and intensely green fields. The kids have had some iPad time (Cece is doing a Montessori “hundreds board” right now and Rowan was laughing loud enough for all in our car to hear to Shawn the Sheep).  They are going to be tired tonight in Copenhagen, but we might tow them around in a bike trailer, so we’ll see what develops! More soon!

[astronomeher-blog]

reading the work #5

The end of my book seems almost like the last laugh by the author towards the main character. Deckard uses all the money he got from killing androids to buy himself a real animal. However, as revenge, Rachael kills his goat. Then Deckard is driving and finds a toad; elated, he runs home to his wife who promptly tells him it is an android. I guess it just reinforces the whole lack of true distinction between androids and humans. In the end, when thinking about all the killing he did, Deckard says, 

“Mercer said it was wrong but I should do it anyhow. Really weird. Sometimes it’s better to do something wrong than right.”

I think this line encapsulates the dilemma which makes us human: empathy and whether or not what we are doing is right or wrong. This book is kind of abstract but it makes me a little scared about how I might be losing my own humanity and empathy, and how I see society losing its empathy towards others as well. I think that with the advancements in AI, the whole android-human-rights debate thing will become prevalent in the next century at least. Just recently, Google started an ethics board to guide it’s AI development. AI is beginning to take over our world--with self-driving cars, rovers in outer space and Sophia the robot, we need to start talking about our relationship with technology and how far we truly want to proceed. It truly is crazy that we live in an age when a lot of science fiction is actually starting to become a reality. 

#aplit19readingthework

[arrogance-is-my-middlename]

Vanguard Legacy

My take on how the Vanguard fits together, and what it means to take that position. 

******

“You’re really making this dare?”

Andal smirked. “Gonna turn it down?”

Cayde chewed on that for a moment before slowly shaking his head. “Since when have you known me to turn down a bet? Just don’t see why now you’re throwing this one at me. Thought you loved your job. Sitting at a desk, ordering greenhorns about, all that jazz.”

“I do,” Andal replied, not a trace of sarcasm in his voice. “The Vanguard is what keeps the Tower from collapsing in on itself, and we make sure the Consensus doesn’t turn on each other every week.”

“So why call it quits now?” Cayde pressed.

Andal’s smile took a slightly more somber form, and Cayde got the terrible feeling that Andal desperately wanted to say something, but couldn’t. He got like that sometimes, always telling Cayde that “Someone who can only understand by doing wouldn’t get words.” It was the truth, Cayde knew that well enough not to take offense. He wasn’t stupid, not by any means, but things didn’t really click with him until he saw it for himself. Still, Cayde missed the days when the two would laugh and joke easily without that look crossing Andal’s face. Cayde had always been the wilder (by quite a long shot) of the two, but Andal was still a joker and a gambler at heart. Now though, even his jokes had a bit of an edge to them. Their conversation about Cayde being Rasputin wasn’t just for laughs, and while the two of them had been in stitches about it afterwards, Cayde suspected Andal had more than just absurdity on his mind.

“Look, Brask, I don’t really get what you’re doing here, but I just wanna ask one more time before we do this. You sure I’m the right choice for this?”

Andal laughed at that. “Six, you’re the only the choice.” Cayde wasn’t sure if that was a good thing.

***

Andal still remembered the first time he met his Vanguard. Osiris had spared him a terse nod and launched into a discussion about where the next strike would be most effective, and what subclasses would prove best for the job. Saint 14 had welcomed him aboard warmly, and then immediately pulled Osiris back to the reality that the City was still reeling too hard from the Battle of the Six fronts for an effective series of off planet strikes.

Neither of them had noticed a fireteam walk in, bruised and battered from the wilds, and ready to hand in a report.

Andal had quickly realized that the Vanguard wasn’t a collection of a Hunter, Warlock, and Titan meant to represent each class and their strengths, but rather the Vanguard was a careful balancing act of personalities that would best balance the needs and wants of the Consensus with the military duties of the Tower Guardians. Osiris was wild but forward thinking, and he responded to every threat with action and fire. He could see consequences of consequences, and wanted to act in advance to manipulate events into their favor, but he had no tact and little care for the matters at home. Saint 14, infamous for his crusades against the Fallen, was intend on protecting Earth above all else. They were a good balance for each other, certainly, but they still struggled. While they were both heroes and figures so mighty that they had been defied among the Tower, neither understood the importance of interpersonal relationships. Osiris would go on for hours about the proper combination of subclasses in a strike, but it was Andal who knew which Guardians by name would best fit that task, and how their dynamics would affect the fireteam. Saint 14, in all his eagerness to protect the City, thought that the best approach to any situation was direct confrontation and had the subtlety of a bared handcannon, so it was Andal who personally dealt with the Consensus, and maneuvered faction politics. Saint 14 and Osiris were names whispered in awe amongst the Tower plaza, but it was Andal who met with the fireteams and debriefed them. He picked up on the details that Osiris would analyze and fully understand, even when the Warlock failed to notice them in the first place, and it was Andal who put together the fireteams that Saint 14 would have patrol the walls so that they had the best compatibility to work together.

Their system worked, and while Andal was never as close with his fellow Vanguard as they were with each other, both of them knew when to defer to him on certain matters.

When Osiris left, and Saint 14 when to chase him, things changed for both the better and the worst. Andal knew Ikora personally (he had met her plenty of times as she trailed behind Osiris, and he had personally assigned her on missions with Cayde 6 more times than he could count because of how well they worked off each other), and she had all of the restraint and in the moment wisdom that Osiris had lacked. She didn’t have her predecessor’s foresight, but she was committed, and never showed the slightest inclination of forsaking her duty. She was fierce and aggressive when she needed to be, but her many years spent as a renegade had taught her when to act and speak, and she was humble in a way so few Warlocks were.

Zavala had an uncanny work ethic, and he was easily able to work on both protecting the City and advancing the front. The newly minted Vanguard Commander never struggled in choosing between the two biggest draws in this war of theirs, and instead fully comprehended the importance of balance between the two. He commanded respect from his part in the War of the Six Fronts, and where Osiris had garnered the title of Commander through power, Zavala had earned the title through respect.

Ikora balanced out Zavala’s tendency to leap into action with the information he needed to properly adjust his tactics to achieve victory, and perhaps most impressive of all, both of them were deeply invested in knowing the Guardians under their command.

In short, Andal provided assets to the two of them that they already had in spades. He came to understand that Ikora, for all her brashness and temper in her younger days, had tempered that side of her with a sense of duty and patience (no doubt a necessity after working under Osiris for as long as she had). Zavala and Ikora rarely struggled on knowing when to act and hold back, but Zavala’s tactics (while effective and by the book perfect) lacked the all too important ability to improvise, and Ikora’s improvisation were too much of a shotgun approach—all power and force but lacking nuance. And both of them were by far too serious, and Guardians, known for being best when they were wild forces of nature given a direction to wreak destruction, struggled under their somewhat overly disciplined leadership. They needed that wildness in their leadership, that ability to improvise any situation and wreak havoc in every movement. In short, they needed someone like Cayde, or better yet, Cayde himself. Andal Brask was many things, but he was no Cayde 6, and he was smart enough to know when it was time to step down for the better of all. He just hoped his age-old friend would understand when the time came.

***

The Titan and Warlock Vanguard passed on their seat when it was time, when they either died or left, and it often went to a rising star amongst their ranks or a personal apprentice. Hunters did things differently. All Guardians had a streak of madness and illogical daring in them (comes with looking death square in the eye on a daily basis and being yanked back by a talkative sprite of a robot companion), but Hunters were infamous for it. Oh, Warlocks were obsessive in their passions and would lose their minds to the depth of the secrets and power they pursued, and Titans would become so drunk on combat that they would lose themselves to the thrill of it all and ditch firearms in favor of fists and headbutts—even against the imposing might of the bloodthirsty Cabal Gladiators, but it was the Hunters that spun legends of infamy and madness amid their ranks. Stories of walking into enemy territory with nothing but their telltale combat knife and walking out with a cloak made from the torn skin and flags of their enemies. Hunters, who were known to walk into combat laughing and shooting from the hip and landing every shot perfectly just because they could, Hunters, who were assigned assassination missions because only they could walk in and out of a room unseen and leave nothing but the cold grasp of death in their wake. It would follow that their manner of succession would have to entice their wild “sensibilities”. Thus came the Vanguard Dare, the only bet where victory could be dreaded by the winning party. There were no rules, as a dare between Hunters would of course be full of cheating and trickery (all Hunters were known cheats), but it relied upon the peculiar code of honor that all Hunters held onto: always repay your debts, and always honor your word when it came down to it.

It was that very code that Cayde now cursed, looking at the cloak in his hands. Andal hadn’t supposed to die on this damn Dare, that duty fell to Taniks. Taniks who still lived and had driven a blade through Andal’s Ghost when the little thing had tried to bring back the fallen Hunter. Cayde didn’t want the duty, the responsibility, the pain that came with being the Hunter Vanguard, but Andal Brask had thought he could do it for some reason, and Cayde was an exo of his word. He would take the position, and he would make sure his friend would be proud.

***

Andal had told Zavala that Cayde 6 was a wild card, an idiot, and a loudmouth. Zavala had quickly realized that all of these things were dreadfully true, but it was the second half of what Andal had said that Zavala now understood were so much more important. He remembered his last conversation with the man all too well.

“He’s gonna drive you up the wall, and I really don’t recommend sending him to deal with the Consensus unless you need to buy time or piss them off. Which, you’ll need to eventually, just saying.”

“He hardly seems Vanguard material,” Zavala had grumbled.

“Just hear me out,” chided Andal. “Yeah, he’s a moron, but do you know why he’s so successful in the field?”

Zavala stayed silent.

Andal continued. “He can always puzzle himself out of anything. It might not be instant, it might not be pretty, but if you have Cayde, you’ll never face a situation you can’t get out of. We’ve faced down hell before Commander, you’ve been at the front lines for it. But we both know the Fallen aren’t packing the same heat that the Cabal, or even the Hive have at their beck and call. Cayde has solo’d expeditions into the Hellmouth and come out whistling, with fully detailed maps of areas we didn’t even know existed and the heads of several commanders tied to his belt. You need that kind of thing here. When your clip runs dry, it pays to have a boot knife, and Cayde’s the best we got.”

Zavala frowned, turning towards Ikora. “You’ve worked with him on several sorties, and you used to run with him in the Crucible. What do you think of this?”

Ikora was silent for a long moment, appearing to have simply ignored Zavala while she read whatever was scrolling across her tablet. Just as he was about to repeat his question, Ikora spoke, still not looking up. “He’s come up with plans I’d never even consider, and they’ve always been successful in one way or another. Besides that,” she looked up with a small grin. “Cayde 6 makes me laugh. He’s a good morale boost.”

Looking back on the conversation, Zavala realized all of his doubts had been so very, very misplaced. When Oryx had attacked, it was Cayde who got them on the Dreadnaught. Cayde had went after Ghaul himself, and it was Cayde who so very often kept their Guardians smiling and gleefully blowing their enemies to Hell and back. Andal had been right, and while the man would be a presence that could never be replaced and always be missed, he, Osiris, and Saint 14 had left them the legacy of the Vanguard. A Legacy that could not have been as proud, or as successful, without Ikora and Cayde standing by Zavala’s side. The Tower would always miss their fallen and lost comrades, but their predecessors had left the City in good hands, and the future was all the brighter for it.

This particular topic has been touched on so often by the community that it’s practically an old hat, but this is my take on it regardless. Third fanfic in a week, I’m on a roll huh? Message me if you’ve got questions on why I wrote anyone the way I did, trust me I’ve got my reasons. Also it’s 5 am.

#destiny2 #destiny 2 #destiny the game #Cayde 6 #Zavala #Ikora Rey #Vanguard #Andal Brask #Osiris #Saint 14 #Vanguard Dare #fanfiction #my writing

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Expert: Stealing Life with the Big Bad Retail King — One-third of All Buying Transactions  Good name in man and woman, dear my lord, Is the immediate jewel of their souls. Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing; ‘Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands; But he that filches from me my good name Robs me of that which not enriches him, And makes me poor indeed. — Iago, Shakespeare’s Othello It’s more than disconcerting to hear the blathering now, September 2018, about Jeff Bezos. About Amazon dot com as richest company ever. To hear the fawning love of the rich guy, now, when we were predicting a slave master killing publishing, killing independence; news reports and tribute after tribute for this full-fledged Midas of tax cheating, our homegrown monopolist of the highest order, anti-American who gives a shit about main street America, a misanthropic fake news purveyor, a full-bore felonious PT Barnum and smoke and mirrors double shuffle guy who thinks of his tens upon tens of thousands of warehouse workers as spindles, interchangeable parts, and to hell with their precarity, their one nose-bleed from homelessness. This is a time of same sides of the coin of the realm: the conservative and the liberal, the War-Mongering Democratic Party drooling at the McCain fiasco and the Sycophantic Zio-Christo Republicans confused about who is going to own what while scampering away like rats into the alleys as the headlights of their narcissist-in-chief blowtorches the world. The most important characteristics of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) are grandiosity, seeking excessive admiration, and a lack of empathy. These identifying features can result in a negative impact on an individual’s interpersonal affairs and life general. In most cases, on the exterior, these patients act with an air of right and control, dismissing others, and frequently showcasing condescending or denigrating attitudes. Nevertheless, internally, these patients battle with strong feelings of low self esteem issues and inadequacy. Even though the typical NPD patient may achieve great achievements, ultimately their functioning in society can be affected as these characteristics interfere with both personal and professional relationships. A large part of this is as result of the NPD patient being incapable of receiving disapproval or rebuff of any kind, in addition to the fact that the NPD patient typically exhibits lack of empathy and overall disrespect for others.** ** Note that NPD runs through the DNA of these ministers like Jimmy Swaggart or Billy-Franklin Graham, through the family RNA of so-called royalty of the world, in the brain chemistry of the likes of a Henry Kissinger or Adolph Hitler, in the hypothalamus of fruit-salad bedecked generals and in the frontal cortex of all great and not-so-great thespians, from politicos to actors. Moreover, this Bezos, our great Albuquerque-born plumbing showroom huckster peddling absolutely all the stuff we do not need piled up in his fulfillment centers, represents those two sides of the same coin: powerful, libertarian, ruthless and spirit-less, driven to conquer/distribute/hawk all the stuff in any sort of catalog that exists out there to fulfill the needs and mostly not so necessary junk of obsolescence and consumer addiction. A cold anti-philanthropy multi-billionaire, whose net worth of $160.7 billion is headline news now as the TV clowns present the Top Five, Top Ten/Twenty diligently, Bezos is the top of the dung heap according to another rag with all the news unfit (for humanity) to print . . . . . . Who is the richest person in the world? While Forbes updates their list of the world’s billionaires in real time as markets fluctuate, the magazine also releases a more static list each year. The total net worth of these money-makers when the 2018 list was released in March was $7.67 trillion. Click through to see 2018’s top 20 richest billionaires on the planet. With his company — which epitomizes the heights of death star techie logic, next gen robotics, drones, massive crisscrossing of products through a digital satellite-fed network of Prime Time orders — Bezos has continually kicked out with the help of Seattle PD we protesters with one share of his shit stock at shareholder meetings protesting his sadism around refusing to air condition fulfillment centers while instead putting rent-an-ambulances outside the doors! Oh, this economic disruptor of small and large businesses, all part of that gift of unfettered homicidal capitalism a la retail conglomeration, is reviled, hated, but will be the big section in those econ books from many years to come. Bernie Sanders wants a special tax on this white shark-eyed Jeff Bezos? Funny follies of the political kind. Imagine, justifying all the tax evasion and felonies of the billionaires and millionaires and banks and hedge funders and the rest of the elites — that’s the cool truth of our state of misrepresentation in Washington. Never political cries of “tax them all for their externalities — all the damage capital and capitalists have done to the world.”  Major and minor municipalities and entire states fall over themselves with money dripping tongues out of their mouths while courting this company with so many freebies in the billions to get another load of office buildings or fulfillment centers or even another headquarters/campus or pod of fulfillment centers. At any cost. Walmartization of the world, or was it McDonaldization first, or Fordization, but now Amazonization of the culture outstrips anything up to this point in this country’s lunacy. You can get anything anytime anywhere for anyone from this five and dime on steroids. Or, The Details About the CIA’s Deal With Amazon: A $600 million computing cloud built by an outside company is a “radical departure” for the risk-averse intelligence community Just in Time Employment, 11th Hour appointments, Permanent Temp, a Precarity defined as the New Almost Slavery Gig gigs — Coulda Been HuffPost Slave Yet, on Democracy Now, again, in September 2018, we are led to believe we now have to be aghast about those fulfillment centers and those Americans being worked to the bone, worked down to the shredded screws in their hip replacement hardware, worked to confusion and exhaustion and then discarded for not working hard enough for this Master Blaster of the Retail Monopoly. Juan Gonzalez of DN tells us about these “cutting edge” stories from his Rutgers University Department of Journalism and Media Studies students working on this “breaking news,” while Juan laughs and smirks at the reality of “us” (not me) ordering everything on Amazon. Here, the DN reports: As Amazon Hits $1 Trillion in Value, Its Warehouse Workers Denounce “Slavery” Conditions Exposed: Undercover Reporter at Amazon Warehouse Found Abusive Conditions & No Bathroom Breaks Ahh, but we over at DV have been printing these stories for more than six years: * Punditry of Shit-Hole Thinking  * On-line Dildo Salesman Bezos is the News Fit to Print * Amazon.com Don’t Need No Stinking Climate Change Badge, No Stinking Corporate Transparency Crap * Books, Bountiful Ethics, Brave Buyers Nichole Gracely / May 21st, 2012 Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley (LV) is a distribution hub, and many fellow Amazon associates and Integrity Staffing Solutions temps had previously worked in other local warehouses. I have and I can say that they’re typically rough workplaces. At first glance, Amazon’s LV fulfillment center appears benign. Primary red, yellow, green and blue splashes of color brighten the place, and motivational posters and friendly educational signs that feature cute characters provide guidance. Hundreds, sometimes thousands of workers populate the warehouse at once, diligently taking direction from hand-held scanners or computers, and the place is enormous so it doesn’t appear cramped. Seriously, the place could house a small city. Physical strength is not a necessary qualification to perform any of their warehouse job functions, and management is ostensibly concerned with worker safety. Just about anyone could staff Amazon’s FC, especially since it only takes a couple of hours to train workers to perform any specific job function. It’s safe to say that anyone laboring in an Amazon FC has fallen into hard times, and many of my former coworkers’ resumes featured distinguished past titles, impressive demonstrations of manual skill and ability, and/or lofty educational attainment. Many never thought they’d wind up in a warehouse and so, yes, this was all foreign for many. Other workers who staffed other warehouses in the past didn’t know what to make of the place because there is something different about Amazon, something alien. “Chairman” Bezos once said that Amazon workers don’t need a union because we own the company. “Chairman” Bezos has zero tolerance for union activity and several Amazon unionization attempts were summarily squashed. After two years on the job an Amazon FC associate is entitled to eight shares of stock. If Amazon is trading at, say, $250 a share, that’s $2,000. Ownership? $250 per share is a generous projection. Seasoned investors are baffled by AMZN’s current overvaluation because of its unhealthy 188:1 (fluctuates, yet always unhealthy) price to earnings ratio, and they’re waiting for the bubble to burst. Nichole went on to write a piece in the Guardian: Amazon Seasonal Work  And the Guardian published another one, more than four years ago: Being homeless is better than working for Amazon Bread and Roses — 106 Years Ago, Back to Now: Strike Amazon, Strike US Correctional Institutions, Boycott I got this from a friend, Andy Piascik, a long-time activist and award-winning author whose most recent book is the novel In Motion. He can be reached at ###. In the end, in the face of the state militia, U.S. Marines, Pinkerton infiltrators and hundreds of local police, the strikers prevailed. They achieved a settlement close to their original demands, including significant pay raises and time-and-a-quarter for overtime, which previously had been paid at the straight hourly rate. Workers in Lowell and New Bedford struck successfully a short while later, and mill owners throughout New England soon granted significant pay raises rather than risk repeats of Lawrence. When the trials of Ettor, Giovannitti and a third defendant commenced in the fall, workers in Lawrence’s mills pulled a work stoppage to show that a miscarriage of justice would not be tolerated. The three were subsequently acquitted. More than a century ago and it’s rabbit-holed history . . . and what do we fight for in this country now? We have fear of unions, we embrace the gig economy/outsourcing on Kratom (called near slavery by socio-economists), and the unimaginable bullshit and shit jobs have generated aimlessness, screen addiction, be mean to thy neighbor mentality, cold hearts and Homo Retailipithecus. Bullshit jobs, as Graeber states: A world without teachers or dock-workers would soon be in trouble. But it’s not entirely clear how humanity would suffer were all private equity CEOs, lobbyists, PR researchers, actuaries, telemarketers, bailiffs or legal consultants to similarly vanish. Shit jobs tend to be blue collar and pay by the hour, whereas bullshit jobs tend to be white collar and salaried. We have become a civilization based on work—not even “productive work” but work as an end and meaning in itself. What is Labor Day or May Day now in a world of Marvel comics and infantilization of every intercourse we have with every sort of humanity? Do we care about solidarity? Do we know how to build communities? Do we see neighbors and people in and on the streets as equals, people, us? What is the value of work when it is drudgery, dog-eat-dog, king of the hill and top of the dung heap relationships? We have to go beyond now this simpleton way of seeing the world from the bifurcated Groucho Marx eyeglasses. This is a great time of upheaval, splintering, hot house planet, Sixth Mass Extinction, a world of capital making more capital off of war, resource theft, thievery of other nations’ and cultures’ futures. Jobs, Who Doesn’t Choose to Collapse, Hothouse Planet, People As I continually teach young people to think, you are what you eat, what you do, what you think, what your read, what you say, what you believe, what you aspire to, what you hope for, what you do or not do to be one with humanity. If your life is one of toil, what is inside the heart, and what do you do with those beliefs and philosophies while slogging away? Are you a believer in exceptionalism, Zionist or Christian superiority? Is the white shade of skin the defining element in your life? Do you have passions that are your own, or are they manufactured, designed, and cajoled by the money changers and propagandists?  The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too. This line was from a speech by Rose Schneiderman, Polish-born socialist and feminist and prominent labor union leaders in America. It’s a phrase embodying everything today we workers need to utilize as a galvanizing force upon our souls to break away from these people like Bezos and the entire master crafters of our pain, poverty and penury. When I say “our,” I mean the world’s collective pain in the form of billions of people, for whom Western Culture (sic) has set loose a wildfire of forced displacement, murder, resource extraction, war and disease of the mind and body. It was also a successful textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, during January–March 1912, which is pretty much universally referred to as the “Bread and Roses” strike. Pairing bread and roses not as counter-balances — fair wages and dignified conditions. Defining “the sometimes tedious struggles for marginal economic advances in the light of labor struggles as based on striving for dignity and respect,” as Robert J. S. Ross wrote in 2013. I imagine the Bezos types wanting every last penny from every last $2-a-day inhabitant on earth, and I imagine this fellow is as steely-hearted as any in an Upton Sinclair book — and note this first quote by Sinclair is for me about men and women working today, even though Sinclair was writing about a living livestock animal torn from life: One could not stand and watch very long without being philosophical, without beginning to deal in symbols and similes, and to hear the hog-squeal of the universe…. Each of them had an individuality of his own, a will of his own, a hope and a heart’s desire; each was full of self-confidence, of self-importance, and a sense of dignity. And trusting and strong in faith he had gone about his business, the while a black shadow hung over him, and a horrid Fate in his pathway. Now suddenly it had swooped upon him, and had seized him by the leg. Relentless, remorseless, all his protests, his screams were nothing to it. It did its cruel will with him, as if his wishes, his feelings, had simply no existence at all; it cut his throat and watched him gasp out his life. ― Upton Sinclair, The Jungle It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it. ― Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked Delusions  of Terra-Forming and Mickey Mouse Grabbing Adults’ Attention So what do we do with these Titans of idiocy, with their billions and their algorithms, with their broken telescopes peering into the black hole of humanity? What about the 150,000 chemicals in human cells created by the industrialists, those synergistic variant effects we have zero knowledge about, which have helped push our American society into a chronically ill species of over 50 percent of a population cycled through Western (Un-)Medicine. Children with autism or on the spectrum — count that as possibly 30 percent of all births by 2040. Diabetes 1 and 2, more than 15 percent or more of the population by 2040. According to Dr. Winchester: This is a really important concept that is difficult to teach the public, and when I say the public, I include my clinical colleagues. Still, atrazine is not the only human hormone-altering chemical in the environment. Dr. Winchester tested nearly 20 different chemicals and all demonstrated epigenetic effects, for example, all of the chemicals reduced fertility, even in the 3rd generation. Still, why do 150,000,000 Americans have chronic diseases? Researchers believe that every adult disease extant is linked to epigenetic origins. If confirmed over time with additional research, the study is a blockbuster that goes to the heart of public health and attendant government regulations. According to Dr. Winchester: This is a huge thing that is going to change how we understand the origin of disease. But a big part of that is that it will change our interpretation of what chemicals are safe. In medicine I can’t give a drug to somebody unless it has gone through a huge amount of testing. But all these chemicals haven’t gone through anything like that. We’ve been experimented on for the last 70 years, and there’s not one study on multi-generational effects. Environmental Working Group tested more than a dozen brands of oat-based foods to give Americans information about dietary exposures that government regulators are keeping secret. In April, internal emails obtained by the nonprofit US Right to Know revealed that the Food and Drug Administration has been testing food for glyphosate for two years and has found “a fair amount,” but the FDA has not released the findings. Ahh, the melting planet, the water cycle’s disrupted, the entire mess of planetary re-shifting is on a collision course with Homo Sapiens. Everyday I get more and more notifications from friends and thinkers about the impending collapses, the impending peak this and peak that (Peak Everything). Globalization makes it impossible for modern societies to collapse in isolation, as did Easter Island and the Greenland Norse in the past. Any society in turmoil today, no matter how remote … can cause trouble for prosperous societies on other continents and is also subject to their influence (whether helpful or destabilizing). For the first time in history, we face the risk of a global decline. But we also are the first to enjoy the opportunity of learning quickly from developments in societies anywhere else in the world today, and from what has unfolded in societies at any time in the past. That’s why I wrote this book.” ― Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed Feudal Factories of Propaganda and Propagating .001 Percenters — Water, Man, Water We trust ourselves, far more than our ancestors did… The root of our predicament lies in the simple fact that, though we remain a flawed and unstable species, plagued now as in the past by a thousand weaknesses, we have insisted on both unlimited freedom and unlimited power. It would now seem clear that, if we want to stop the devastation of the earth, the growing threats to our food, water, air, and fellow creatures, we must find some way to limit both. ― Donald Worster, Under Western Skies: Nature and History in the American West We are seeing this circling of the billionaires’ wagons (vultures circling the 7.8 billion marks, us), this Bezos and Musk lust for space, for some planetary gated-armed-Utopian community. These fellows and dames are something else, and the conjurers of news unfit to consume fall over them, recording and publishing story after story about their wisdom and foresight and shamanistic ways of predicting the future. Remember George W. Bush and his big ranch buy in Paraguay? That was 12 years ago, readers, yet, back to the future, with news (sic) report after news report (sic) keeps tracking the next billionaire economic ejaculation. W, and we thought he was only painting pets! The Chaco is a semiarid, sparsely populated area known — to the extent that it’s known at all — for its abundant wildlife, rapid deforestation, nothing in particular… and what lies beneath it… Our Real Wealth Trader and Outstanding Investments contributor Jody Chudley thinks he knows the true gen about the Bush land grab. Jody says he has a “secret” about the Bushes. And he adds, “It has to do with an investment idea that’s hardly on anyone’s radar.” The real reason Jody thinks Bush 43 and family snapped up nearly 300,000 acres in those semiarid, sparsely populated wastes of Paraguay? Water. That’s right, blue gold. Bush bought the rights to a veritable ocean of fresh, clear-as-glass, Grade A water. His land rests atop one of the largest freshwater aquifers in the world: Acuifero Guarani, by name. According to Jody, “Acuifero Guarani covers roughly 460,000 square miles under parts of Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina. It is estimated to contain about 8,900 cubic miles of water.” If you can’t quite imagine 8,900 miles of water, picture a pool nearly three times the size of California. That should give you a decent idea. A fair amount when you consider that 98% of this planet’s water is salt water. Of the other 2%, almost 87% of it is trapped within glaciers, hence inaccessible. Jody’s “trusty calculator” informs him that only 0.25% of the water on this cosmic ball is fresh (underground, or in rivers and lakes). Just a drop in the figurative bucket… Now, we knew this sort of stuff was going on with the elites, who look at us all as easy marks, broken money bags, the fat cows or broken pigs of their global stockades. What’s happened is this trickle-down lust-love-longing for these people who get plastered in the headlines as being grand and philanthropists, deserving of every cent and every billion made on the back of people, earth, cultures. Their trans-capital and monopolies  and viral presence like Google, Facebook, Walmart, and on and on sucks the revolution out of revolutionary, since we are now shackled to their ways of doing things. The goal of the capitalists is to harmonize their theft with our survival, whatever it takes to put five to a studio apartment (of course, sneaking the other four into the room in the dead of night), whatever it takes to just float through a gridlocked urban and suburban world. So, from Bush and Paraguay, to this Gawker Killer Thiel, we have enough evidence of their feudal ways, their slippery snake eyes methods of shitting on we underlings: Here is Robert Hunziker: Peter Thiel, the PayPal billionaire and renowned super-super-super libertarian and unapologetic Trumpster love-fester achieved New Zealand citizenship in only 12 days and bought not only his citizenship but a $13.8 M estate in Wanaka, a lakeside community. According to a phone interview with the former PM of New Zealand John Key, “If you’re the sort of person that says I’m going to have an alternative plan when Armageddon strikes, then you would pick the farthest location and the safest environment – and that equals New Zealand if you Google it… It’s known as the last bus stop on the planet before you hit Antarctica. I’ve had a lot of people say to me that they would like to own a property in New Zealand if the world goes to hell in a hand-basket. Hell in a hand-basket, from the former prime minister of New Zealand — 1935 Book, quote: If the average white New Zealander takes the Maori seriously as a human being, he is usually rather too ready to blame him for characteristics which more careful study will show not to be inherent at all but actually the result of the coming of the Europeans themselves, the extensive destruction of Maori life and the virtual dispossession of the Maori people. Little attempt is commonly made to understand the causes which produced, for a time at any rate (for they are passing) those Maori characteristics which have become almost proverbial amongst us. To put it frankly, we blame the Maori for becoming what we have made him. It is interesting to realise that similar circumstances of the contact of peoples have occurred before, and in view of the people referred to there is one instance which it seems particularly fitting that we should bear in mind. The instance comes down to us from the days when another great Empire, an ancient one, was civilizing native peoples. There is on record a letter from a wealthy Roman landowner to his agent in Britain telling him to ship no more British slaves “as they are so lazy and cannot be trusted to work.” Similar causes produce similar effects; we should be less ready with hasty judgment and hasty blame. There is a widespread belief, and it is one certainly cherished by the average white New Zealander, that no native people have ever been so fairly treated by Europeans as have the Maori people. As a matter of fact, if it is fully and frankly told, the story of the contact of Europeans with native peoples is much the same everywhere. What we have are so many varieties of what a leading anthropologist has recently termed “the tragic mess which invariably results from the impact of white upon aboriginal culture.” It is true that the Maori people have survived, but this, on careful analysis, proves to be very largely due to their own qualities and their own efforts rather than to any specially favourable mode of treatment. If we are honest there is little ground for pakeha self-congratulation. Ahh, the evidence of climate change (global warming–hot planet) was there in 1896 researched, formulated and discoursed by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius (and then later, amateur G. S. Callendar ramified the greenhouse effect of burning fossil fuels, and then later, C. D. Keeling measured the rising CO2 levels tying that to the greenhouse hot house effect), but for which has been swept into confusion by those marketers and mad men. Imagine, average planetary temps going up from  2.5–11°F by 2100. Imagine that! The more civilizations evolve, the more energy dependent they become, so it’s possible that trillions of civilizations in the great continuum of space evolved, rose, fell and disappeared. If you develop an industrial civilization like ours, the route is going to be the same. You’re going to have a hard time not triggering climate change. For a civilization to destroy itself through nuclear war, it has to have certain emotional characteristics. You can imagine certain civilizations saying, ‘I’m not building those [nuclear weapons]. Those are crazy.’ But climate change, you can’t get away from. If you build a civilization, you’re using huge amounts of energy. The energy feeds back on the planet, and you’re going to push yourself into a kind of Anthropocene. It’s probably universal. —  Adam Frank, astrophysicist Interlude, Interglacial Periods, Working for the Homeless — Flailing at Windmills   Yeah, these big ideas I broach with homeless veterans and their attendant family members, and while the Gates-Kochs-Zuckerbergs-Bloombergs-Adelsons-et al have zero concern about us, the proles, the  detritus of their Capital, I believe working to change one life at a time — even if it’s a life riddled with evictions, felonies, relapses, epigenetic familial hell, PTSD, trauma, spiritlessness, physical decay — has meaning since in that process I have incredible interchanges with people who sort of want the same thing — paradigm shifts and de-industrialization and ecosocialism a la Marx 3.0. I try to find peace in writing, even these polemics at DV or LA Progressive; and in my own world of fiction-poetry-creative nonfiction, the windmills abound because of a rarefied culture of the M-F-A (masters in fine arts) elite — those gatekeepers of the small literary kind, or even the National Book Award kind. This country is not big on real outliers in anything tied to the arts, and I am one of those round pegs looking to splinter the quintessential square hole. Short story collection? Who the hell would read that? Well, try out a project of mine to get the stories —  thematically (sort of) threaded (sort of) to the “Vietnam experience” — as a hard copy from a small press, Cirque. You can read one of the stories, “Bloody Sheets,” here, starting on page 115. The collection, Wide Open Eyes: Surfacing from Vietnam, is a gathering of fiction, much of which has been published in literary journals. I have succumbed to a Go Fund Me “deal” to help balance-offset the costs of printing a book on paper with ink. I have no idea if a Go Fund Me will even take off. The first and only donation is from filmmaker Brian Lindstrom. Amazing, a struggling documentarian throwing in FIRST. But we are in a new normal of shitting on writers, expecting us to have our day and then our night jobs and then write-write-write for free. That is the question, really, who wants to spend their time reading short stories, outside the very narrow readership of Masters of Fine Arts aficionados who in many regards can be pedantic and puffery artists? Vietnam, no less, in a time of Tim Burns rotting the foundation of the war we committed, or the Obama administration’s scrubbing of the war in his effort to commemorate it (Obama gives killer Kissinger awards). Vietnam. One of my short journalist pieces for an old weekly I worked for in Spokane. How many died in Vietnam and Indochina? 3.8 million? Oh, that Nobel Cause (War) myth I run into daily at a homeless veterans shelter, that is was winnable and worthy. Killing farmers, man, in their rice paddies! Whew, only a Zionist could write that script. Read my short story collection for a different way to frame creativity and that time period, that narrative framing, that time in history that has defined and redefined the ugly wars of today. I am going to give this a shot in a time of blatant skepticism and group-think/act/do. Wide Open Eyes: Surfacing from Vietnam. Be part of the creative impetus. The energy. The publication of a short story collection. With that “ask” of the reader who then gives will receive another book of mine, Reimagining Sanity: Voices Beyond the Echo Chamber. In my view [Dan Kovalik], this Noble Cause myth may be the most powerful and enduring propaganda trick ever perpetrated. And, it works so well because the audience for the trick — the U.S. people — are such willing and eager participants in the charade. To explain the power of the Noble Cause myth, Marciano quotes from Harold Pinter’s 2005 Nobel Prize lecture.  I set forth a larger quote from the lecture than appears in the book because it is so profound: The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven. Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn’t know it. It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis. John Steppling, my fellow writer who studies intersections of culture-mimesis-art-politics (My review of his book,  Aesthetic Resistence and Dis-interest. That Which Will Not Allow Itself to be Said, here at DV) discusses the MFA phenomenon, a true watering down and controlled form of check and balances fiction: So, the fact that The Rockefeller Foundation underwrote (and still underwrites) a good many MFA programs (and not just in literature, but in theatre and fine arts) is both relevant, and not. Or maybe a better way to address this is see The Rockefeller Foundation as symptom. I received a Rockefeller fellowship, which I hadn’t applied for. But, the very fact that creative writing programs boomed after WW2, and permeated the academic landscape is without question linked to the patronage of institutions like The Rockefeller Foundation (and the MacArthur Foundation, and…). And to deny that the tacit influence of these institutions is idiotic. Now, it’s also true that what John Crowe Ransom and Stegner and Burrows preached is correct. Or it’s correct up to a point. It is revealing that Melville was derided, because Melville wrote a lot of ideas, and additionally observed the ways those ideas and that knowledge existed in the world. But it is equally true that you do not observe those harpoons so closely, or closely in a particular way, that all you get is a harpoon description. And a so described harpoon that never participates in riots or social unrest, and whose production is unexamined and the harpoon company that distributes it is left blank…the better to describe the fluted morning dew that bifurcates my tabby cat’s shadow on the harpoon handle, and etc etc etc is only a individual’s sensory observation. The harpoon must be known, not just observed. The real point here is that what Iowa started, and many other University programs followed, was to narrow down the definition of “fiction”. Dante would not be considered fiction today. While there is a point in demanding a concrete description, and not a generality, the exclusive focus on the concrete meant that ideas were being eliminated in fiction. The world is not abstract… but that includes History and politics and tensions of daily life. Those offices in New York, or those bad marriages, are not separate from the Chinese Revolution, or U.S. Imperialism, or the blockade of Cuba or the present two million men and women in prison in the United States. ‘Greatness’, whatever that means, and I have no problem with that word, or the ideas behind it, is in discovering both what that connection is, and ..and this is important I believe…how our own personal emotional and psychic formation, and development are related to both Mao and our failed marriages (or, even the successful ones). The emphasis on observation, on brute description, however eclipsed ideas as a subject for fiction. You may not sit down to write ideas, per se, but you certainly have an idea of what a harpoon is. You have to know certain things, and, in fact, the best writing is that which tells you what you don’t know, not describes nicely what you already do know. And there is a tendency in young writers to generalize. So on the one hand it’s natural to emphasize the concrete, but the result, perhaps intentional, or partly so (given the Rockefeller project) was the elimination of ideas in prose, and the narrowing of the definition of what constituted “fiction” http://clubof.info/

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Puffin Book Cover Competition - Ethical Considerations

The new unit brings excitement in hopefully entering my work into the Puffin Book Cover Competition! This year’s book (Children’s Category) is The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, by Sue Townsend.

Although I’d never read the book beforehand, I’ve been reading through it for the brief and to get a feel of Adrian Mole’s visual world, and there are a few things I’ll have to consider, in regard to both the audience (older children-late teens), potential customers (children themselves and/or parents buying the book for them), and judges at the competition.

Appropriateness Obviously, this book is written by Townsend through the eyes of a pubescent lad, and there are topics such as sex, relationships, and puberty. Although they are brought up in the book, they’re brought up in a comical, light way. For instance,

“Looked at Big and Bouncy. Measured my ‘thing’. It was eleven centimetres.”

Clearly, we know what Adrian’s been up to; and apparently this is normal or teen boys (I honestly wouldn’t know). However, this is kept so user friendly as there aren’t any expletives or crude descriptions used. Anyone at the ages for reading would be able to know what he’s on about, as well as appreciate that it’s not crude. It’s particularly important that I keep my work to this standard visually, as not only is it a front cover design, I can’t make a mess out of the book, or put a bad image on myself, university, or Sue Townsend, as it is her work, and Puffin represent her.

Ways of doing this, could be subtle/metaphoric communication - looking through past covers for the book, one stood out in particular - although it’s not for this book specifically, it’s one of the Adrian Mole books and communicates a teenage, pubescent topic in this way - it’s light, comical, and not too risqué for a book shelf. Hell, it might even make the strictest of parents laugh, so this is something I need to learn from! (I couldn’t find the illustrator for the cover).

Sensitive Issues Throughout the book, we find that Adrian’s parents split up - there are naive hints beforehand of an affair between his mother and a neighbour, and teenagers reading this may have been though, may be going through, or may go through the experience of their parents separating in the future. Therefore, I’ll have to either avoid any use of too raw imagery of marital separation/issues, however I feel that there are other events/objects that could be used on the cover much more.

Gender Neutrality We’re in 2017, and although it’s not 1982 anymore, it’s still important that both boys and girls feel that they can read this book. When I was younger, I’d play with both Barbies and Hot Wheels. This is perfectly normal, and parents of this generation are much more aware of the importance of children dressing, playing, and being who they want to be, either masculine or feminine. Personally, I’m sick of seeing girl’s sections of *certain toy catalogues* and programmes/toys bright pink, frilly, with high voices, little skirts, growing up to be “pretty” and “popular”, and likewise with boys, blue, robotic, mechanical, a precursor to them growing up to be boyish, playing rugby and ‘being boys’.

I’m going to completely avoid such disgusting stereotypes. Children can be who they want to be, and if this is an opportunity for me to as an illustrator, I’m going to ensure as much as I can that every child, boy or girl, feels that they’re able to read this book. There’ll be no garish blue or boyish things. I’m obviously still going to ensure there’s any imagery that the book is about a boy, but that’s not going to put any young girls off.

aaaaaanyway!

Type/Typography I’m really excited to be having a go at developing and using my own type for this competition. As well as looking more prosperous, I feel that doing this really opens the window of the industry much more for me. Considering this, I need to consider the range of readers that this book will be available to.

Children wanting to read this book may suffer from Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, have different reading abilities, or may not have English as their first language. With that in mind, I need to create a type for the title, and all copy Puffin have provided, that is legible for as many children as possible. I want to keep in mind the atmosphere of the book, teenagery, immature, quirky, funny. At the same time, as much as I’d like to keep to the book being in diary form, I don't want to introduce a type that is scrawly, smudged, or too messy. It’d be a shame for people to not be able to read or understand an item they’ll potentially be buying/reading. To overcome this, I’m going to ensure whatever media I use to progress with creating my type, I’m going to explore and ensure tidiness when needed, as well as keeping it to a professional manner - no Comic Sans, please.

#uni #personal #development #ethical considerations