#same goes for every other giant company that loves capitalism

[newstfionline]

Sunday, September 19, 2021

In edgy Washington, police outnumber Jan. 6 protesters (AP) In a city still on edge after the Jan. 6 insurrection, law enforcement bore down in large numbers on the Capitol on Saturday over concerns that a rally in support of the jailed rioters would turn violent. It didn’t. The crowd was sparse and incidents were few. The low turnout called into question whether such rallies will have any staying power as the organizers attempt to tap into the rage of Jan. 6 without the presence of the former president. Law enforcement had prepared for a confrontation by erecting temporary fencing around the Capitol and deploying heavy dump trucks to ring the rally site. Local police departments and the U.S. National Guard were on standby.

Crews watching weather as wildfire burns near sequoias (AP) Crews were watching the weather this weekend as they battled California wildfires that have burned into some groves of gigantic ancient sequoias as they try to protect the world’s largest tree. The National Weather Service issued a weather watch for critical fire conditions in the Sequoia National Park in the Sierra Nevada, where the Colony Fire was burning about a mile from Giant Forest, a grove of 2,000 giant sequoias. Firefighters have wrapped the base of the General Sherman Tree in fire-resistant aluminum of the type used in wildland firefighter emergency shelters and to protect historic wooden buildings, fire spokeswoman Rebecca Paterson said. The General Sherman Tree is the largest in the world by volume, at 52,508 cubic feet (1,487 cubic meters), according to the National Park Service. It towers 275 feet (84 meters) high and has a circumference of 103 feet (31 meters) at ground level.

Official: US to expel Haitians from border, fly to Haiti (AP) The Biden administration plans the widescale expulsion of Haitian migrants from a small Texas border city by putting them on flights to Haiti starting Sunday, an official said Friday, representing a swift and dramatic response to thousands who suddenly crossed the border from Mexico and gathered under and around a bridge. Details are yet to be finalized but will likely involve five to eight flights a day, according to the official with direct knowledge of the plans who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. U.S. authorities closed traffic to vehicles and pedestrians in both directions at the only border crossing in Del Rio, Texas, after chaos unfolded Friday and presented the administration with a new and immediate challenge as it tries to manage large numbers of asylum-seekers who have been reaching U.S. soil. U.S. Customs and Border Protection said it was closing the border crossing with Ciudad Acuna, Mexico, “to respond to urgent safety and security needs.” Travelers were being directed to Eagle Pass, Texas, 57 miles (91 kilometers) away.

Argentina Crisis Deepens as Vice President Blasts Fernandez (Bloomberg) Argentina’s powerful Vice President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner slammed President Alberto Fernandez in an open letter, heightening the political crisis that has roiled the government since it lost an election Sunday. Kirchner, who governed Argentina from 2007 to 2015, published a letter Thursday blaming Fernandez for a “political catastrophe” she says was caused by his economic strategy. Their coalition’s loss in the Sept. 12 midterm primary vote was largely due to the government’s mistaken policy of fiscal austerity, she said, adding pressure on Fernandez to ramp up spending. The crisis blows open the political divide between the two factions: Kirchner and the radical Peronist officials close to her; and Fernandez’s more moderate cabinet allies. With no access to international credit markets, the government cannot easily heed Kirchner’s calls to ramp up spending without the central bank printing money and worsening one of the world’s highest inflation rates.

Dutch are world’s tallest people—but they’re shrinking, study shows (Guardian) It is, perhaps, with just a hint of satisfaction that the Dutch office for national statistics has confirmed that the men and women of the Netherlands remain the tallest people on the planet. But the government’s statisticians have had cause to report a further potentially humbling twist: the Dutch are shrinking. For the last six decades, the people of the lowlands have stood imperiously at the top of the world height league table, with the latest data suggesting the average 19-year-old man stood at just over 6ft tall (182.9cm) in 2020, while women born in the same year measured in at 5ft 6 in (169.3cm). The finding by the Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (CBS), a government institution, means the Netherlands maintains its lofty spot, which it has held since 1958. But based on surveys of 719,000 people aged 19 to 60, the CBS has had to report that after a period of stagnation and now clear contraction, Dutch men born in 2001 are on average 1cm shorter than the generation born in the Netherlands in 1980, and Dutch women are 1.4cm smaller.

Afghan chaos leads to resignations and reshuffling—in Europe (Washington Post) After a majority of the Dutch parliament affirmed this week that the government had mishandled evacuations from Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover, Sigrid Kaag said she had only one option: resign as foreign minister. On Friday, Kaag was followed by another member of the Dutch cabinet, Ank Bijleveld. The defense minister released her own statement of resignation, noting that she could “no longer adequately take responsibility for my people” amid the criticism. The moves in the Netherlands are another sign of how the collapse of the Afghan government, preceded by the Biden administration’s decision to withdraw all remaining U.S. troops from the country, appears to be causing more disruption in European capitals than in Washington. In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson reshuffled his cabinet this week—demoting ally Dominic Raab from foreign secretary, one of the highest political positions in the United Kingdom, and reassigning him as justice secretary. Much of the criticism of government action in Europe has focused on the slow and chaotic reaction to the fall of Kabul and the ensuing scenes at the city’s airport.

Fearful US residents in Afghanistan hiding out from Taliban (AP) Every night in yet another house in Afghanistan’s capital, a U.S. green card-holding couple from California take turns sleeping, with one always awake to watch over their three young children so they can flee if they hear the footsteps of the Taliban. They’ve moved seven times in two weeks, relying on relatives to take them in and feed them. Their days are an uncomfortable mix of fear and boredom, restricted to a couple of rooms where they read, watch TV and play “The Telephone Game” in which they whisper secrets and pass them on, a diversion for the children that has the added benefit of keeping them quiet. All of it goes on during the agonizing wait for a call from anybody who can help them get out. They tried and failed to get on a flight and now are talking to an international rescue organization. Through messages, emails and phone conversations with loved ones and rescue groups, AP has pieced together what day-to-day life has been like for some of those left behind after the U.S. military’s chaotic withdrawal -- that includes U.S. citizens, permanent U.S. resident green-card holders and visa applicants who aided U.S. troops during the 20-year war. Those contacted by AP -- who are not being identified for their own safety -- described a fearful, furtive existence of hiding in houses for weeks, keeping the lights off at night, moving from place to place, and donning baggy clothing and burqas to avoid detection if they absolutely must venture out.

Photos show North Korea expanding uranium enrichment plant (AP) Recent satellite images show North Korea is expanding a uranium enrichment plant at its main Yongbyon nuclear complex, a sign that it’s intent on boosting the production of bomb materials, experts say. The assessment comes after North Korea recently raised tensions with its first missile tests in six months amid long-dormant nuclear disarmament negotiations with the United States. “The expansion of the enrichment plant probably indicates that North Korea plans to increase its production of weapons-grade uranium at the Yongbyon site by as much as 25%,” Jeffrey Lewis and two other experts at Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey said in a report.

Amazon adds tuition for workers (The Week) Amazon last week became the latest large employer to offer free college as a workplace perk, said Annie Palmer at CNBC. The e-commerce giant said "it will cover the cost of tuition, fees, and textbooks for hourly employees in its operations network after 90 days of employment," with the benefit applying to "hundreds of educational institutions across the country." Amazon said it will also cover "high school diploma programs, GEDs, and English-as-a-second-language certifications." More companies are dangling educational benefits as a lure for hiring and retaining workers amid an increasingly competitive labor market. Walmart said in July it would fully subsidize tuition and books for 1.5 million part-time and full-time employees, and expanded its college partners. Target, Chipotle, and Starbucks have made similar commitments.

#headlines #news

[potteresque-ire]

(I wrote this as a response to another post. It got long, potentially upsetting, so I decided to move it here.)

(TW: Criticism of Draco Malfoy under the cut.)

I think the best analogy I can come up with for Slytherins in an Americanized Hogwarts is if they are the children of the tech giants (Hello Draco Bezos) and multi-company conglomerates, the top-earning Wall Street hedge fund managers, the property moguls like the Trumps and the Bloombergs, and the legacy politicians like the Bushes and the Kennedys. This would be a fairer comparison to the social-economic power of Slytherin families in the books because conservatives in the USA mostly do not come from privileged homes. And I suspect even this American analogue may pale to its UK counterpart, for it lacks the centuries of practice ("tradition”) as a convenient excuse for continuing its underlying bigotry.

Draco Bezos or Draco Trump or Draco Bush has as little choice as being of these surnames as Draco Malfoy. The members of the Americanized Slytherin house, likewise, don’t deserve to be seen as all evil, and maybe — and very likely — they’re not. But consider what Americanized Ron would think about the Slytherins as a group, bearing in mind that the books are written in the POV of Harry, a child himself and Ron’s fierce friend, if…

(Under the cut, for I’m VERY talkative today ...)

- If this Americanized Draco still buys his way into the Quidditch team with a Nimbus 2001. The obvious bribery aside, everyone in this Slytherin team can readily afford the same thing, and likely already has, at least, a Nimbus 2000 in possession.

- If Americanized Lucius also interferes with school policy with connections to Washington; he rubs shoulders with Secretary of Education Umbridge, who he got to know back when they were lobbying together in the capital.

- If the execution weapon of choice for Buckbeak is a golf club, a gift from the President Goyle of MACUSA. Walden McNair, former Slytherin, has just received a medal of honour for being able to wield it with style. This is a tale retold by a very bitter Theodore Nott, whose father owns the golf course resort where President Goyle plays but Nott Sr. only gets to keep the hamburger wraps of the President’s lunch. The other regular attendee of these lunches is the landowner of the entire Hogsmeade, who happens to be Gregory Goyle’s father.

And speaking of Hogsmeade...

- If Goyle Inc. hikes the rent of the town after every visit by Hogwarts students. Prices of items sold in Hogsmeade shops hike accordingly to deflect the cost. The Weasleys haven’t been able to afford anything there for years.

Goyle Inc. has also been looking to invest in Ottery St Catchpole, re-develop the area into one with ... farmer’s market. Lots and lots of farmer’s markets where a loaf of bread costs $10.00 apiece.

- If American Hogwarts is also free but God knows for how long. Its profits from the previous years — sorry, not profit, but endowment as should be referred to for non-profit organisations — has been channelled into the stock market and the stock market hasn’t been doing so well. Mrs Zabini, the manager of the fund, still gets her commission even if Hogwarts goes bankrupt. In fact, a volatile market with high trading volumes is a godsend for her income, and her yearly bonus is large enough to run Hogwarts for a year. She’s very generous, however, and donates 1% of it to the school, which gets her name engraved on the Gryffindor-Zabini Tower.

Meanwhile, if the Weasleys go home every summer not knowing if they can return to the same tower on September 1st.

- If Skelegro and other potions in the infirmary are rationed due to high cost and every time a Weasley find themselves injured in a Quidditch match, the Malfoys, father or son or both, would remark on the Weasleys having more children than they can afford, and recommend the school board that these potions should be rationed by surname as well. The Slytherins have no such concerns of course; the Parkinsons are heads of an international potion conglomerate and they can always import extra potions from Brazil, which are sold at a small fraction of the cost they sold to Hogwarts (yes, they have the licence and patent to produce the Skelegro. Why did you ask?).

…

Perhaps -- assuming my understanding of UK’s class system isn’t too off the mark -- these if’s can provide a sense of Slytherin’s privilege in canon to the American audience, and related to this, how Draco’s prejudice towards Ron cannot be put on the same moral scale from Ron’s prejudice against Draco. I’d also like to emphasize this: I haven’t touched at all, on this list, on Voldemort’s reign of terror. I haven’t touched, at all, on the fact that Voldemort’s war had been spearheaded by the parents of many current Slytherin students, and this war had only been suspended -- not ended -- for just short of a decade when the Class of Harry Potter entered Hogwarts. The wounds were still fresh. Arthur and Molly could’ve easily suffered similar fates as the Potters and the Longbottom’s. The bigotry of the Slytherins, and of the Malfoys, wasn’t merely a suspected thing in the canon years, like how we feel about a celebrity who’s made a questionable tweet. Not only was their bigotry a fact in the canon years, but it was also a real, ongoing threat that, if permitted to run its course, could and would ruin the lives of the Weasleys.

Ron seeing the Slytherins as a threat arguably served the dual function of keeping him safe -- perhaps not at the moment, but in the future. Draco, on the other hand, had nothing to fear about Ron and above all, the socioeconomic class that the Weasleys represented.

They never stood on equal grounds.

And here’s the thing I don’t understand. Or I think I understand it, having seen this Ron-is-as-bad-as-Draco-and-Slytherins-are-victims-of Dumbledore’s-prejudice debate in various forms over the years — this isn’t new or controversial, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this has become the dominant view within the ship — and I’m not sure I can get myself to face what I’ve understood, because what this is is worrisome for me.

Please hear me out.

The Drarry fandom on Tumblr has, in my observation, always taken a very strong, hardline stance against prejudice. The post that says something along the line of 10 people who sits with a Nazi makes a table of 11 Nazis get numerous likes and reblogs. And yet in this situation, we have a boy, Ron, who is directly affected by the prejudice, who’s familiar with the connections between his Slytherin classmates and those who have not only worked to make their brand of bigotry the law but helped murder those who do not agree, and his distaste for these oppressors as a group is somehow seen as equal as his likely future oppressors’ disgust at his presence.

The reason given is inevitably a variation of this: Draco was a child. He was parroting his parent’s beliefs. He was too young to be responsible for his words, or his actions. He was a victim.

I’ve not seen this defence offered, not even once within the Drarry circle, for a real-life bully. Tumblr’s user base is young, and many have a history of being bullied due to their race, gender, sexuality, disability, socioeconomic class. After a bit of subtraction (Young Age - Bullying History in Years), I’d take that many of these RL events happened when the victim and the perpetrator were about the age of Ron and Draco in canon. And yet, not once have I seen a shipper on my dash suggest the bully was a victim, or that they weren’t at fault because they were only parroting the prejudice of their conservative families, their schools, their religion etc. That maybe they didn’t mean what they were saying or doing.

This is a (very) good thing. But it also makes me wonder: defenders of Draco and the Slytherins do know, deep down, that the excuse they’ve offered Draco isn’t nearly good enough to exempt him from his behaviour.

Draco might not have understood the greater political ramifications of his bullying, but he knew he was hurting Ron. Bullying cannot a be mindless act; it cannot be a passive reflection of one’s lessons from school or family for It’s a pre-meditated, targeted behaviour, and a good bully like Draco — he came up with a bullying chant that the whole school knew in the end — tailors his acts to serve a specific purpose of hurting the victim. Draco might not have known that calling Hermione a Mudblood could devalue her life enough to make it ripe for elimination when Voldemort came to power, but he knew perfectly well that the term was derogatory. This is especially true if one agrees with the common headcanon that Draco was second only to Hermione in marks in school, that he was no Crabbe or Goyle and he was intelligent.

Our ship celebrates Draco’s sharp tongue, but that tongue was used exclusively to ridicule, to bully in canon -- it’s fandom that has given it a better / higher / romantic purpose. His father’s tongue spoke the language of bigotry to the ears of the Ministry; this was the Malfoy’s weapon of choice and Draco was forging his own in the books. His bullying ways in canon was written with humour, with Weasley is Our King being the epitome of the laughs. I don’t believe it was JKR’s intention for her readers to fall in love with Draco via his bullying style, however. The HP world was built as a mirror of our own (rather than as a manual of what an ideal world should be, as many in fandom has seemed to assume), and Weasley is Our King showcased how easily bigotry can creep into our day-to-day language when it’s masqueraded as a joke (Even Luna was singing it at some point):

Oh, relax! It’s perfectly fine for everyone to know the Weasleys were born in a bin, into poverty! Funny, isn’t it? HAHAHAHA!

Imagine seeing this kind of behaviour on Tumblr. Imagine trying to defend this kind of behaviour on Tumblr.

I have faith that most of my Drarry friends cannot, will not do the latter.

So please, please reconsider what you’re really saying when you call Draco the victim, the vulnerable one, when you insist that he and the Slytherins had been wronged. I don’t mean to start another debate and I don’t plan to engage in one; this isn’t a call-out post either, I enjoy reading all the opinions expressed and I understand many of the sentiments I’m questioning comes from a place of love. I just hope that everyone who’s reading (thank you) can sit back, think a little. Imagine for a moment that table with the Nazis. Even if, at the table, there’re actually 10 Nazis and 1 who isn’t, who is more vulnerable? The non-Nazi sitting with the Nazis? Or the person who refuses to sit at the table and makes a bad judgement call on the 11th sitter by assuming they are a Nazi as well? Who is more the victim, or more likely to become one? The 11th sitter who’s wrongly labelled? Or the standing person who is being eyed by the 10 Nazis with disgust, the 10 Nazis who already have a family history of hunting down the standing person’s family and friends?

Or does the answer -- and this is the understanding I’ve got but haven’t dared to face -- does the answer depend on if he character in question had white-blond hair that glinted so beautifully in the sun? Is that the reason why Draco Malfoy, bigot, bully, has been given this special treatment, this carte blanche in the sense that he’ll always remain on our good side, be exempt from our moral judgement regardless of what he did, because his physical description doesn’t contain a single hint of melanin?

#pie speaks #hp meta #pie metas

[catatonicengineers]

A Defense of Cait Sith

Plushie Princess Saga:

A Hundred Ways to Put the WRO Back Together

A Hundred Ways to Wreck Shinra HQ

Reeve’s Adventures in Babysitting and World Saving:

And Take a Stand at Shinra

While There’s Still Time

On Plushies and Oppenheimer:

A Defense of Cait Sith

~

“We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent.” - J. Robert Oppenheimer

I was eight-years-old when I played Final Fantasy VII for the first time, exactly one year after its release. Like many 90’s gamers, FFVII was a turning point into the world of RPG’s from which I’ve yet to recover. Kids today will never understand the coming of age that occurred somewhere between Yoshi’s Island and grappling with the ethos of Avalanche blowing Sector 1’s reactor sky high. It’s no surprise that my 3rdgrade brain found an essence of familiarity to cling to amid the existential dread and ecoterrorism that was the greatest game ever made.

Cait Sith was the cute, cuddly party member that validated my love of cats and ignited my adoration for moogles. I would relentlessly make room for him in my party, despite his terrible combat stats, and hurl endless Phoenix Downs every time he fell.

He was quirky, he fought with a megaphone, his limit breaks were oddly sparse compared to the rest of the cast, and his home base of Gold Saucer looked like a unicorn threw up all over a casino. What’s not to love?

According to recent Reddit threads, Youtube comments, and rage bloggers, apparently a lot.

The advent of the long awaited FFVII remake rightfully caused a massive revival of the excitement first felt by long time fans of the franchise. The release date has been confirmed for March 3, 2020 – two days before my 30thbirthday. Not gonna lie; feels like the universe aligned to bless the official passing of my youth with this nostalgia bomb.

It’s with this love of all things FFVII in mind that I’d like to formally pose a defense of the game’s most hated character.

Cait Sith/Reeve, this one’s for you.

The Laughter

We first meet the lively, dancing robo-moogle and cat combo in Gold Saucer and we’re not quite sure if this strange entity should count as one party member or two. Either way, he joins your crew as the quintessential comic relief with nary a backstory in sight. That’s right; you are now the proud owner of Cait Sith. A “fortune teller” by trade, Cait Sith’s motivations remain as murky as your party’s future.

At first glance, it’s easy to pass Cait Sith off as a filler character, the cute one added for giggles. The one the writers never bothered to flesh out because, let’s face it, that moogle is mostly fluff anyway. The “most useless character” title isn’t entirely unjustified.

If this was where Cait Sith’s story ended.

I still remember the day my older brother announced that he’d read ahead in the player’s guide (this used to be a thing, kids) and discovered Cait Sith was a Shinra spy. I’m pretty sure I went through all the stages of grief before settling on denial and assuming he was playing a joke on me. Surely, my favorite slot machine loving companion couldn’t be a traitor.

Enter Reeve Tuesti, the man behind the moogle. He’s the head of Urban Development at Shinra Electric Power Company. He wears a signature blue suit to work everyday. He hates board meetings. He’s not fond of his coworkers. Like Tifa, he’s an introvert. And he’s the guy who engineered the Mako reactors.

If Hojo is Dr. Frankenstein, Reeve is Oppenheimer. The tragedy of the monsters we create is always greater when it’s a monster we loved. Where the other Shinra execs are motivated by greed, power, and a desire to play God, Reeve is the only Shinra higher up we encounter with genuine empathy and a sense of advocacy for the people. It’s easy to assume that Mako reactors would improve lives, but as Marlene so eloquently asks, “isn’t that because we were taking away from the planet’s life?”

When faced with the guilt of a design gone horribly wrong, those in authority have two choices; own the guilt or double down. And Reeve doubles down.

I’ve never been a fan of the way modern RPG’s have everything clearly spelled out and spoon fed to the gamer. The reason we don’t need further backstory for Reeve is because his character arc is already apparent if we do a bit of digging. I was surprised to learn that the common conjecture behind the exact mechanics of Cait Sith involved him being a remote controlled, autonomous but non-sentient robot. Given that assumption, it’s fair to say that Cait Sith is a worthless character who lacks emotion or consequence.

One opinion I’ve seen trending is why not simply make Reeve join the party, sans the giant stuffed animal? After all, we’d get to see how he grapples with his role in Shinra and eventual betrayal of Avalanche.

Two words; cognitive dissonance. You have to question what kind of 35-year-old executive creates a plushie cat proxy to begin with. See I’ve never thought of Reeve and Cait Sith as separate. The gritty psychological mechanics that are Reeve have always been there, plush or human. Reeve has developed an alter that’s effectively a form of escape. The assertion that Cait Sith lacks consequence isn’t false – a robot carries out its duty, incapable of harboring guilt, blame, or moral repercussion. That’s a pretty darn good way to remain detached enough to stab your party members in the back!

Cait Sith is also an outlet for everything Reeve’s repressed executive life lacks. As Cait Sith, he’s silly and carefree, though not completely unfamiliar. Glimpses of Cait Sith’s witty quips are echoed in Reeve’s mock nicknames for his colleagues – “Kyahaha” and “Gyahaha” respectively. When life is tough to take, we laugh so we don’t scream.

Plus, the idea of Reeve controlling Cait Sith in real time, much like an MMORPG avatar, is just plain hilarious. I’ve always imagined him as the kind of guy who rolls up to his 9-5 office job, pops open a spreadsheet to look busy, and boots up Cait Sith in the other tab. He’s the OG Aggretsuko, the guy making Jim Halpert faces at the camera every Shinra board meeting.

And I get you, Reeve. Really, I do.

The Tears

Cait Sith’s sacrifice was a cop out for killing off a real character. Why didn’t Reeve just die instead of the plushie?

First of all, how dare you.

Second, not all deaths need be literal.

A pervading theme throughout FFVII is the concept of identity. Are we born into an existence we have no control over or can we choose who we are day by day? It’s easy to want to be someone else, the First Class Soldier who sweeps in, keeps his promise, and saves the girl. Our reality is often less of a fairy tale and riddled with our own failures.

By the time the party reaches The Temple of the Ancients, the line where Cait Sith ends and Reeve begins is blurring. Reeve speaks more often as “himself” through the plushie and the nuances in their speech and mannerism are blending. It’s no accident that this shift happens as Reeve becomes more at ease around Avalanche, ultimately switching sides.

I’ve heard a lot of criticism on the seeming lack of motivation to Reeve’s redemption. If we examine the cognitive dissonance theory that governs his character, the switch is far less sudden.

Cait Sith’s death is necessitated by Reeve’s accountability. The innocent plushie alter isn’t working anymore. It’s not enough to keep him from recognizing the horrors he’s been complicit to. Sacrificing this part of himself is the ultimate acknowledgment of culpability. It’s arguably a more important death than if Reeve actually martyred himself. Like Cloud, he no longer needs to be “someone else” and has started down the path of doing what only he, and not Cait Sith, can; stopping Shinra.

There will be more wonderful, fluffy moogle-cat plushies, but the need to disassociate completely is gone. He’ll confront whatever comes without a crutch – or in this case a teddy bear. Reeve reminisces that the original doll was “special” and we end with Cait Sith reminding him(self) not to forget this.

The Silence

In 1953, J. Robert Oppenheimer was denied all security clearance and effectively blacklisted by the McCarthy administration for his strong opposition to nuclear warfare.

Sometimes we find ourselves in a place we never hoped or expected to be in, surrounded by people we despise, and convinced the world is going straight to heck. We can either get out of dodge or stay.

If Reeve had indeed sacrificed himself rather than Cait Sith, this would simply have been yet another escape. He stays. He works. He gets Marlene and Elmyra out of Midgar. He spies on Shinra. He finally tells Gyahaha to stick it. He goes on to head the WRO and never stops advocating for the people.

Reeve’s not a fighter. He can barely get by with a handgun in Dirge of Cerberus and Cait Sith’s megaphone is no Masamune. Despite this, he takes a big risk by being the only insider on the team. We’re pretty sure Shinra doesn’t share Reeve’s opposition to capital punishment either.

Maybe this is why I’ve always loved Cait Sith/Reeve. I’m intrigued to see if Square Enix will add any further insight into our favorite plush moogle-cat-spy, but if they don’t, that’s alright too. Cait Sith is still a pretty solid character. After my brother spoiled one of the game’s major plot twists for me, I ended up reading the player’s guide for myself. And he was right. But he was also wrong. I recall marching proudly into the living room to declare that while yes, Cait Sith was a traitor, he was also a hero.

So fight your fight. Fail and fall. Hurl some Phoenix Downs and get right back up again.

#ffvii #ff7 #reeve tuesti #shinra #cait sith #.txt

[leam1983]

Post-Quarantine Musings  - Hardspace: Shipbreaker

I book car showroom appointments for a living.

There’s more to it, seeing as I’m the office’s resident IT drone, proofreader and occasional copywriter, but it boils down to this. My job in these parlous times is to get you to strap on that dodgy graphene-filter mask you bought off of Wish or Alibaba and drive to your local showroom so you can socially distance yourself from a guy who really, really wants you to disregard the fact that payment delays on a 20K$ vehicle just isn’t a worthwhile deal in times like these. Money’s tight for everyone, but Honda, Nissan and everyone else’s plant workers need to put food on the plate - and that means buyback offers. Lots and lots of buyback offers, most of them being shockingly cheap and poorly thought-out.

Over the last few days, though, I’ve been poking at Blackbird Entertainment’s Hardspace: Shipbreaker, of which the basic setup uneasily mirrors the decidedly crapsack world we find ourselves living in, lately. Work is scarce for some, so blue-collar postings suddenly start to have some allure. What happens, then, when said blue-collar work takes you out of Earth’s gravity well?

The year is 2355 or thereabouts, and inflation’s made it so that a lower-middle class bloke having over nine million dollars in debt is totally normal. You’re one such average Joe, the game opening with the anxiety-inducing din of your cramped mega-building apartment. Your financial imprint is in shambles, creditors are after your ass, and your inbox varies between impassioned pleas from your mother and curt title lines coming from repo agencies.

You’re deep in it, safe to say.

Luckily for you, you’ve also applied to the LYNX Corporation’s Shipbreaker program, wherein all debts are shouldered by the company as well as all living expenses, so long as you don’t mind leaving your family and loved ones behind to spend your hours between work shifts in a pressurized habitat that’s essentially left out in the open space of your new workspace’s offered ship berth. The profile setup is presented diegetically as the world’s mortiferous take on Capitalism, wherein LYNX reserves the right to clone you, if you happen to sever the right fuel line at the wrong time. The company expects total obedience and even dictates who you should vote for, in the coming global elections. You’ll make millions of bucks per shift, but most of it will go to fruitlessly attempting to sponge off a debt not even your children’s children will have any prayer of making a dent in.

“But hey,” says Weaver, your supervisor, in his nonchalant Midwestern drawl, “work hard, and you too just might work off your debt, like Simmons did.”

In the beginning hours, it’s not hard to get the sense that Simmons might be a company-created chimera, a figment of corporate imagination - the Guy Who Made It.

In practice, your new job involves floating around in the zero-G confines of a spaceship berth, flanked by furnaces to smelt down what can be salvaged or repurpose what can be quickly reused. Everything else, from cots to pressurization units and loose personal O2 tanks, you have to fling down into the giant space barge that partially blots out your view of a brownish, detritus-covered Earth. Every work shift lasts fifteen minutes, and every shift comes with Work Orders, or tasks that need to be prioritized. Your tools of the trade include precision cutting lasers and beamsplitters, along with an energy-based grapple gun. The brunt of the work involves worming your way inside your Derelict of the Day, which another team’s already stripped down to the I-Beams and connecting points - and reducing all of the massive, yellow-marked solder points to slag. A little thruster work adds momentum to gigantic steel, aluminium or nanocarbon plates and walkways that you free from the ship’s armature, at which point you can slither out and guide all freed loose items and plates to either the Salvage, Furnace or Reclamation points.

Early on, it feels like you’re playing Operation inside the innards of some gigantic steel-borne beast - but the fifteen-minute timer soon starts to loom over you, as your Work Orders become increasingly complex. Soon enough, your safe and definitely OSHA-compliant procedures are set aside for hacky and mildly suicidal means of reaching your goals as quickly as possible.

Normally, creating a safe working environment involves depressurizing each wreck from within, using the provided consoles. Nevermind why, but LYNX supplies its wrecks with a remaining atmosphere and plenty of unsecured flotsam floating around. If you’re on the clock, you can also just hang onto the pilot’s cockpit with your magnetic gloves, aim your laser at the front windshield - and then hold on for dear life as all ninety-seven tons of atmosphere in the hauler you’re assigned to forces its way out into the void, through a space that has about the width of a finger. The resulting force rips through the front cockpit, turning the usually easy-to-handle ‘nano panels that line the ship’s outer plating into dozens of annoyingly small fragments you’ll later have to spent long minutes bundling together and flinging down the Reclamation chute.

The same goes for fuel lines, really. You only have a few minutes left and need the few million creds an intact thruster block sells for? Cut open a hole in the ship’s flank, near the stern, expose the fuel lines, line up your shot while going as far back as you can while still having a chance to make your target - and fire away. You’ll tear the entire back half open and even possibly kill yourself, but that’s what company-produced clones and mnemonic transfer jobs are for, right?

I mean, the ship’s half-ruined and LYNX’s just lost a few cool billions of expensive tech but, hey - the thruster block’s intact (miraculously) and that’s going to cover your equipment leases being commuted to a for-life permit! Woohoo, no more payments for my precision laser!

Of course, nothing says blue-collar tedium like Space Bluegrass, and that’s what you’ll be listening to for most of your run. Shipbreaker is still definitely barren on the audio spectrum, although a good chunk of it is by design: you’re in space, in a near-complete vaccuum, and the only clear sounds you’ll ever hear are broadcast out of your suit’s radio. Everything else is muffled and distant, with even your ship-rending occasional reactor failures only manifesting as a bright glare and a low whoosh.

The main draw quite obviously is the game’s zero-G physics engine. Fans of Space Sims like Elite: Dangerous will feel right at home, with the obviously small-scale setting being less focused on your pulling off Top Gun stunts in space and more with providing chunks of metal weighing a variable amount of tons with the ponderous floatyness to be expected - and small bits with the life-ending velocity to be expected when your non-compliant shenanigans result in your helmet cracking and your air reserves oozing out. The end result is surprising, seeing as what looks like a Homeworld-era cruiser bursting open like a beached whale barely taxes an i7 7700K, 16GB setup. The game is rather lightweight, technically speaking, which allows it to be impressively forgiving, based on the two machines I was able to fiddle with, one of them an entry-level gaming rig, and the other being more of an enthusiast setup, with an i9 and 32 GBs of memory.

If anything, you’re likely to notice that there’s a bit of a disconnect between your rough, dusty and used hand-crafted environments and the polygonal and simplistic construction of the vessels you’re tasked with decommissioning. That’s mostly a result of the game needing an efficient way to handle one interactive object splitting off into potentially dozens of physics-based objects. Keeping things sleek obviously makes sense, considering, and it also helps that Hardspace rests on the handiwork of a few ex-Relic Entertainment designers. Hiigara’s natives aren’t too far off if you look at the ship designs, with only the texture work suggesting that you’re a Blue Collar Joe or Jane working on an old tug that’s had just as rough a life as you.

The question is, however, if I’d recommend it. I would, but only if you’re the type of gamer who enjoys optimizing things. Shipbreaker is built from the ground-up to either be played like a reverse Bonzai tree simulator, or as a cool physics sandbox wherein cutting open fuel lines like a moron, rupturing power cells or letting the onboard nuke go critical all become cost-effective approaches. If you do, chances are you’ll find yourself strapping on your best or worst drawl and commenting on seat-of-your-pants escapes from technical disasters like they’re just the stuff of your average Tuesday.

You’ve got a debt to clear, after all, and enough clones to turn your grisly demise into an unfortunate bump in the road.

#game #review #hardspace:shipbreaker

[imagitory]

D-Views: Muppet Treasure Island

Hi, everyone! Welcome to another installment of D-Views, my on-going written review series for films that fall under the Disney umbrella, as well as those that were influenced by those films! For more reviews for movies like Mary Poppins, Treasure Planet, and The Prince of Egypt, please consult my “Disney Reviews” tag and, of course, if you enjoy this review or any of the others, please consider liking and reblogging!

Today’s film is one of my childhood favorites, starring a cast of some of my favorite people, as well as frogs, pigs, and even whatevers. This is Muppet Treasure Island! (Thank you for your votes, @the-alexandrian-alchemist, @silvvergears, @extremelybears​, @livinlifelikeishould​ and @karalora​!)

Ever since 1976, the characters of the Muppet Show have been American pop culture icons. The show itself won a total of 21 Emmy nominations and four television awards over its long run, and by 1990 its cast had also starred in several critically acclaimed films (The Muppet Movie, The Great Muppet Caper, and The Muppets Take Manhattan) and the very popular animated TV show Muppet Babies. And all of that wouldn’t have been possible without the Muppets’ creator, Jim Henson.

Like at the Walt Disney Company, the loss of their leader in 1990 hit Jim Henson Productions very hard. One silver lining, however, is that just like with Walt Disney, Jim Henson was memorialized not just by the characters he created, but by his many achievements and the many friendships he’d made in life. He received a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame alongside Kermit the Frog; was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame; earned a memorial in his hometown Hyattsville, Maryland; was posthumously named a Disney Legend; was the focus of the heartfelt TV special The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson; and was laid to rest with two formal funeral services complete with performances of some of his favorite songs. And just like the Walt Disney Company, even after the death of someone who meant so much to them, Jim Henson Productions got back up and promised to do more in the memory of their lost leader. Jim’s son Brian Henson took the reins and directed the Disney-co-produced Christmas movie The Muppet Christmas Carol in 1992, before he moved on to their next project and today’s subject, Muppet Treasure Island.

So, here’s the thing -- I have a LOT of nostalgia for this movie. I will be upfront about that. But even with that acknowledged, I was sort of stunned when I found out how lukewarm the reaction to this movie was, when it was released in theaters. Sure, I knew it hadn’t broken the bank, but even if it earned about $34 million worldwide, it received no honors or awards, only hit third at the box office opening weekend behind the movies Broken Arrow and Happy Gilmore, and even now only boasts an average 73% rating at Rotten Tomatoes. Critics at the time criticized how it was more “Treasure Island” than “Muppet”, with Roger Ebert calling it “less cleverly written” and Gene Siskel even more coldly deeming it “boring.” Although I’ll readily acknowledge that reading those reactions makes me want to run outside and scream “FUCK YOU, GENE SISKEL” at the top of my lungs, I promise to give a more rational review of this movie instead, one hopefully that acknowledges any possible shortcomings, but also will celebrate this film and how completely NOT boring it is.

One of the best things about this movie hits us in the face right off the bat -- the music, written by scoring giant Hans Zimmer and Nick Glennie-Smith. As much as I enjoy a lot of Muppet musicals, I attest that Muppet Treasure Island has the most cohesive score overall of any Muppet production. The Muppets were always creatures of the short, sweet vignette -- of the variety show -- of many disparate pieces sewn loosely together into a whole like a patchwork quilt. Even though The Muppet Christmas Carol’s soundtrack comes very close in its cohesion and I would say The Muppets (2011) -- my personal favorite Muppet movie -- is truer to the spirit of the Muppet Show in its music while also paying tribute to old-fashioned movie musicals, Muppet Treasure Island just paints a full-bodied picture from the off-set, building on refrains that return and morph over the course of the picture. From the very beginning, we get that this venture is NOT a standard Muppet movie. Like The Muppet Christmas Carol, the Muppets’ humor will only be part of the story told -- in TMCC, it takes a backseat to sincere emotions like love and redemption, while here in MTI, it takes a backseat to adventure and swashbuckling action.

The score also seamlessly flows into our first song, “Shiver My Timbers,” which just screams “pirate!” I’ve loved pirates ever since I was a little kid, and Muppet Treasure Island was one of the main reasons why. I was okay with Peter Pan, but Muppet Treasure Island was what really got me excited about pirates. They were rough, ruthless, and dangerous, but it was exciting to face off against them in an epic musical adventure, even if your only weapons were a couple of artfully thrown starfish. In the 90′s, pirate films weren’t really “in” -- it wouldn’t be until 2003 with the release of Pirates of the Caribbean that they became popular again -- but I think Muppet Treasure Island, through its music, really embraces the fun, action-packed thrills that Disney would later capitalize on in the Pirates films.

After our prologue, we meet Billy Bones (played by the perfectly cast Billy Connolly) and, of course, our hero, Jim Hawkins, played by newcomer Kevin Bishop. Kevin was the very first of a hundred kids who showed up for the audition to meet the casting agents, and he was selected for the part then and there. Sadly post-Muppets he moved on to stage and television, but for what it’s worth, I quite like Kevin in the role of Jim. He’s distinctly depicted as a boy, complete with a pre-puberty “boy soprano” singing voice (which I acknowledge is an acquired taste, but I personally enjoy), but that characterization only serves to accent how large of an arc he goes through over the course of the film. He starts off as smart, sincere, honest, and dreamy, but also very innocent and trusting, and over the course of the story, he learns to ground himself in who he is and what he believes in, to the point where he has to sever ties with someone he once considered a friend and mentor. Accompanying Jim in his journey are Gonzo and Rizzo, who largely serve as comic relief but do still serve as good friends and companions to Jim, as evident by the three characters’ “I Want” song, “Something Better.” Yes, Gonzo and Rizzo are sidekicks, but they’re still distinct personalities that bounce well off each other and “straight-man” Jim. Originally the filmmakers had considered simply having Gonzo and Rizzo being two characters called “Jim” and “Hawkins” respectively (splitting the part in two, not unlike what they did with Statler and Waldorf in The Muppet Christmas Carol), but due to concerns that the choice would result in a lack of heart in the finished product, that idea was scrapped. I think it ultimately was the better decision to leave the drama to the humans -- it’s not that the Muppets can’t conjure sincere emotion (just look at “Pictures in my Head” or “Man or Muppet”), but I still think having any of the existing Muppets fulfill the “coming of age” narrative the original Jim Hawkins goes through would’ve been a bit of a stretch. Even in The Muppet Christmas Carol or non-Muppet-show Jim Henson production Labyrinth, the main characters with a story arc are played by human actors who are able to ground the picture despite the cast of colorful, irreverent characters.

One of the main criticisms that critics of the time lobbed at this movie is that it feels more “Treasure Island” than “Muppet”, and in a way it’s a decent point, if not phrased very badly. Unlike in other Muppet projects, the humor plays second fiddle to the plot and the characters are not the characters we know from the Muppet Show with their Muppet Show backstories and consciousness. In The Muppet Christmas Carol, the film could very easily be seen as a “production” being put on by the Muppets, even if it’s never overtly stated as such, thanks to Gonzo (as Charles Dickens) constantly breaking the fourth wall. In Muppet Treasure Island, however, Gonzo and Rizzo have their own non-Muppet-show history as friends of Jim Hawkins way before ever meeting the other Muppets like Kermit and Sam the Eagle, and Kermit and Miss Piggy have a whole soap-opera romance that involves a wedding and getting marooned by pirates (we’ll get to that later). So yes, this is more “Treasure Island,” but it’s not less “Muppet” -- it’s less “Muppet Show.” These Muppets have different histories, but they’re the same characters despite this. Gonzo is an eccentric thrill-seeker -- Rizzo is a cowardly cynic -- Kermit is a soft-spoken pacifist -- Fozzie is a lovable dimwit -- Piggy is a self-centered diva. Think of Muppet Treasure Island as a Muppet AU fanfiction -- these may not be exactly the characters you know, and yet...they are! They’re the exact same big personalities with the same quirks, strengths, and weaknesses, just in an alternate universe. And honestly, I think it’s really cool, to see these sorts of characters so exclusively used for comedy in a world that’s not flat-out comedic -- one that’s kind of dirty and rough around the edges, with swashbuckling action and real danger around every corner.

The nice thing is that although yes, the comedy isn’t the central focus anymore, there is still really good humor in this film, a lot of it thanks to the shift in tone. There’s just something so very, very funny to me about Billy Bones’s death scene being followed up by Rizzo, Gonzo, and Jim just flat-out freaking out and dashing out of the room screaming like stupid kids, or the tense action scene where the pirates storm into the inn being punctuated by Rizzo trying to help Gonzo load the gun, only to spill the bag of bullets, or the epic entrance of the illustrious Captain Smollett’s carriage ending with the tall, solemn coachman stepping aside to reveal the Captain himself, played by Kermit the Frog. I think it plays into the ideas of subverting expectations and building up a punchline properly before delivering the joke -- as each scene is built up, we’re left constantly unsure if the film’s going to play things straight or just be completely irreverent, and the contrast is what can make a joke much funnier than in a purely, solely humorous scenario. There are a few points where the contrast can become a bit labored, but I laugh so much more during this movie that I ever have watching my favorite reruns of the Muppet Show, no matter how much I enjoy them. It’s something that, again, the Pirates of the Caribbean films would capitalize on much later. (Too bad they couldn’t incorporate that humor into any catchy musical numbers! Disney, where’s my Pirates of the Caribbean musical?)

Aha, and now we come to the brightest of the shining stars in this film -- our villain, Long John Silver, played by the amazing Tim Curry. I’m sorry, it’s an incontrovertible truth that Curry is a unique, magical ingredient that, when added to any movie, just elevates the cinematic dish to a whole new level and leaves you drooling for one more scene with him. I remember someone once saying that Curry is sort of like a Muppet in human skin thanks to his outrageous, yet likable acting, and...yeah, it makes it so that he fits perfectly in this movie, where he has to interact so closely with the Muppets. The nice thing is, though, that he also has a lot of chemistry with his human co-star Kevin Bishop, to the extent that you sincerely feel for the relationship that forms between Jim and Silver even if you know Silver’s intentions from the start. I particularly like their exchange in the ridiculously catchy “Sailing for Adventure,” as well as their scene at the front of the ship where they discuss their fathers and the stars.

Just as the adventure is getting going, however, it stops dead with the wind’s abandonment of the Hispaniola. Out of nowhere, the ship breaks out into the most ridiculous, most “Muppet” of all of the musical numbers, “Cabin Fever.” The song was one of my favorite parts when I was little and it’s always made me laugh, but it’s definitely the biggest detour of the movie that up until that point lived in its own pirate-centric world. It’s a very short-lived detour and as I said, it’s ridiculously funny, but it doesn’t have any bearing on the plot and I could see how people might find it kind of pointless, particularly since it doesn’t even feature three of our main characters, Jim, Silver, or Smollett. One other critique I will give the film is that some of the effects nowadays don’t look very real, like the Hispaniola being composited over still matte paintings -- there are points where the production values remind me a bit of the old Wishbone TV series, where they have to angle the shot just so or get creative just to try to make the ship look as big as it should be. But honestly, there were points where Wishbone impressed me with those same sorts of layering and green-screen effects despite its limited budget, and those cheaper effects don’t look tacky or out-of-place, so I personally don’t mind them that much.

Because this is a Muppet movie, it’s unsurprising that our Mr. Arrow (played by Sam the Eagle) isn’t really killed, instead just being tricked off of the ship by a manipulative Silver, but it says something that, even with that softened plot turn, the stakes are not completely dismantled. We still see the pirates as a legitimate threat when they kidnap Jim and take over the Hispaniola, even when they burst into song. Tim Curry’s “only number,” “A Professional Pirate,” is a perfect expression of his expert, charming showmanship, which in my mind truly can’t be matched by any other performer in Hollywood, past or present. No one gives a performance like Tim Curry. It makes it so that even when I was a bratty kid getting irritated about Silver calling privateer Sir Francis Drake a pirate and using “buccaneer” as a synonym for “pirate,” I would sing this song at the top of my lungs, trying to even reach 75% of the energy Curry put into his vocals.

At long last, Miss Piggy makes her grand debut as “Queen Boom Sha-Kal-a-Kal,” a.k.a. Benjamina Gunn. Although the diva doesn’t end up getting much screentime, she certainly gets a grand entrance, complete with an elephant steed decorated with flowers and a full musical number complete with a tribal chant and ethereal vocalizing. And true to form, when she lays eyes on her one true love, Kermit...she smacks him so hard that he’s thrown backwards off his feet and into a gong. What’s particularly interesting about Piggy in this movie is that although she and Fozzie are voiced by Frank Oz as always, both she and Fozzie were actually puppeted by Kevin Clash, as Oz was unavailable during this film’s production, and Oz’s vocals for both characters were added in post-production. Despite the difference in puppeteer, however, both characters are just as likable as ever -- I’d honestly had no clue that they weren’t performed by the same person! The film even got to use the full-bodied remote-controlled puppets for Kermit and Piggy for the love duet “Love Led Us Here,” which is kicked off by an Evita joke I never got as a kid but as an adult makes me grin like a friggin’ idiot. Fortunately the duet is inter-cut with Silver and the pirates finding the treasure, rather than it being chock-full of romantic flashbacks or prolonged looks between the two lovebirds, giving it a lighter tone than it would’ve had otherwise.

With a much reduced crew comprised only of Rizzo, Gonzo, Squire Trelawney, Dr. Honeydew, Beaker, and the newly returned Mr. Arrow, Jim comes to Benjamina and Smollett’s rescue and returns to Treasure Island to face Silver and the pirates. The action scene is full of humor, but because of the world established in the rest of the film, I would argue it still has stakes. The blows still hurt and there’s still a threat of defeat and danger, most notably when Long John Silver prepares to fight. Even if you don’t think the Muppets are going to die persay, you still feel the suspense in wanting to see what’s going to happen next. And when Silver surrenders, he himself can see the real treasure Jim found on his adventure -- a family...a group of people Muppets who will support him and encourage the very best in him.

Silver’s escape scene is a beautifully heart-wrenching scene -- one that could only have been earned by two excellent performances over the course of the film by Kevin Bishop and Tim Curry. Even though both Silver and Jim know that they’re different people and they could never walk the same path, it doesn’t mean that they don’t still greatly esteem and care about each other. In Jim’s case, it’s especially difficult, given that in parting ways with Silver, he has to cut loose of a very poor potential father figure who would’ve only dragged him down in the long run, but who was so likable in his own damaged way. It proves to be a very bittersweet scene sprinkled into a very happy, cheerful ending, complete with the chipper island-inspired end credits bop “Love Power.”

Muppet Treasure Island is -- in my opinion, at least -- one of the best Muppet movies ever made. It broke away from quite a few Muppet conventions, like the characters breaking the fourth wall and being aware of themselves being in a movie or TV show, and embraced a much less humorous tone in both its writing and cinematography. Yes, it reimagined a classic book like The Muppet Christmas Carol did, but this movie took the next step, embracing the world of the original novel as well as the set-up and immersing the Muppets’ cast of characters in it. Although I can see why some people would be more partial to the original Muppet movie formula and love it a lot myself, I really, really respect Brian Henson and the rest of this film’s crew for taking the Muppets in such a different direction. It was an entertaining, action-packed, funny pirate movie before those sorts of movies became popular again, and it remains my favorite “pirate” movie of all time, as well as my personal favorite incarnation of the Treasure Island story (barely beating out Treasure Planet). I know childhood nostalgia can play a role in what media can give you joy as an adult, but I truly don’t think it’s the only factor here -- it’s also just a really good movie, and I can only hope that more people will consider giving it a chance and have just as much fun Sailing for Adventure as I did!

#d-views #disney reviews #muppet treasure island #the muppets #reviews #opinion #analysis #oh boy here i go #brian henson #tim curry #kevin bishop #billy connolly

[sciforce]

Understanding Your Startup

There is nothing new under the sun, even your startup is merely one in a myriad of others. Yet, it does not mean that the ideas or the products you have are not unique — it means that practically all startups fall into one of the well-defined categories and can be expected to operate in a specific way and to live for a specific period. Good news: if you know what type of startups your company is, you are better prepared for the future and, which is most important, know where to look for funding.

The main types of startups are the following:

Small business startups

Small businesses are the most widespread type of startups and make up the major part of any country’s economy. On the one hand, they do not require too much capital and investment and therefore are easier to start up; yet on the other hand, they do not usually bring a lot of profit and serve their owners to cater for their families. They are not designed for scale, go largely unnoticed by investors and their employees are either the family relatives of friends, but they create local jobs and by sheer numbers they form the core of “entrepreneurship”.

Scalable startups

When we imagine startups that bring billion profits and hit all headlines overnight, we think of scalable startups: Google, Twitter and Facebook are examples. Such startups rely on their owners’ belief that some day they will thrive and develop into another giant. The owners are usually visionaries that hope to change the world — and attract rich investors. The concepts with which such startups are formed are powerful and the startups themselves tend to group together in innovation clusters.

Large company startups

Large companies despite their seeming stability and large revenues are constantly threatened by inventive and innovative competition from other large organizations. Together with changes in customer tastes, new technologies and legislation such competition can create pressure for more disruptive innovation. This means that companies have to invest into improving efficiency and also fresh skills and structures, requiring development of entirely new products that might be sold to new customers in new markets.

Buyable startups

Buyable startups are companies that were started to be sold to a larger company in the niche. Such companies are usually started with little capital, developed and quickly sold off to other companies when their value peaks. As a result, their owners earn several thousand to millions of dollars and are ready to use the revenue to redo business and earn more. Such startups usually involve web and application development with the aim to be bought by internet conglomerates.

Lifestyle startups

More than any other type of startups, lifestyle ones are about passion as profession. Their owners usually try to generate profit by living the life they love. The most common examples of such businesses are giving surfing lessons or yoga classes by enthusiasts, starting a photo studio or a gym to serve other people with the same interest and make money.

Social startups

This type of startups involves usually some form of charitable foundation. Their goal is to make the world a better place, but, unlike scalable startups, their owners are not driven by the wish of wealth or power. In principle, these startups can be organized as a for-profit, non-profit or hybrid and they usually depend on donations from the likeminded people.

However, every startup goes through similar stages during its life, though the scale and the aims may vary from type to type.

The most crucial resource that any startup requires is funding, and it is the most challenging part of running a startup business to find a right investor. There are several types of investors coming to help at different stages to businesses that they find promising:

Let’s start with the very beginning of your startup. You have a rather vague idea of what might become your business; maybe you have a concept or a working prototype. At this moment, you are looking for opportunities to enhance your personal investment with external funding. A pre-seed funding round is exactly for early stage product development of a minimum viable product. The goal of funding at this stage is to maximize the future fundraising opportunities through testing of the product, finding an optimal core team and building beyond a prototype. The amount of money is usually relatively small because the business is still in the idea or conceptual stage, but there are still several options depending on the type of your startup.

Personal savings: To be honest, your personal capital will always be the first one to be used. It is a quick decision because money is already on hand and you do not have to go into debt or in search for investors immediately. However, entrepreneurs often seek out investors because in many cases their personal savings simply aren’t substantial enough for their needs or they do not want to gamble with money they earned.

Personal investors, or FFF a.k.a. Friends, Family and Fans: A logical step for startups owners is to rely on family, friends or close acquaintances for investment, particularly in the beginning. This type of funding is the most popular at the pre-seed stage. However, there is a limit to how many of these individuals can invest in startups because of their limited resources.

Business angels: While the previous types of investors offer help for all types of startups, tech startups tend to have more options for funding. One of such options is to turn for help to previous startup founders who decide to invest the money in other startups or investors that despite not having a tech-related background back companies in the field in view of their potential growth and current market situation. Contrary to Venture Capital firms, business angels often invest their own money at riskier stages for startups, usually at the seed stage, but also at the pre-seed one.

Accelerators: The rise of tech startups has given birth to multiple startup accelerator programs. They provide capital, mentorship and office space to teams in exchange for 5 to 10% of equity. If five years ago there were only a few of them, nowadays there’s an accelerator in every single big European city.

At the seed stage, funding is necessary to a company running and to try to find a product-market fit, to scale, to grow and to become a competitor in the current market place. Startups have already validated their value proposition and have achieved a consistent and relatively constant monthly revenue and their business is growing. The main providers of capital at this stage continue to be business angels, plus super angels and to some extend early-stage Venture Capital firms. However, in recent years more players have joined the game changing the rules of the game and offering more options for getting funds.

Super angels: These interlopers represent a hybrid between angels and Venture Capital companies — the two investing models that have long led the startup funding. They raise funds similar to venture capitalists but invest early like business angels. By being smaller, faster, and less demanding than Venture Capital firms, super angels are getting first dibs on the best new ideas.

Angel syndicates: in this form of angel help, angels with good track records lead investments in early-stage startups and allow other angels to co-invest by syndicating deals with them. In this case, lead angel investors can choose without having to provide all the capital. With getting help from several angels, startups can get more money and faster.

Crowdfunding: This is an alternative form of financing by raising small amounts of money from a large number of people, often via the Internet. In the startup landscape, there are two types of crowdfunding.

For hardware startups and creative projects there’s the type of crowdfunding sometimes called called “reward-based”, where users can back the projects they like and get something material in return (physical or digital products and services), receiving no equity from startups. Charity crowdfunding campaigns for social startups fall into the same group — only participants receive not a material reward, but a feeling for being a part of an action.

The other kind of startups crowdfunding is equity crowdfunding where backers (investors) get equity in return, thus becoming shareholders of the companies able to participate in the future returns. This type of investing is often carried by aggregator platforms that select startups and invite backers to invest in them.

Startups that pass the seed stage and get to the stage of growth have already figured out their product, their market and at this moment they need capital to scale, to improve distribution systems or to establish a business model.

At this stage they pass several series, or rounds:

Series A, the beginning of the growth stage, still remain riskier for investors, given the doubts surrounding the startups, their products and their teams.

Series B are “all about scaling” when successful startups have an established user base and a working business model and wish to expand.

Series C and later stages, show that startups have reached maturity with a working business model and an expanding user base.

Startups at this point can receive investment from venture capitals and banks.

Venture capital firms: though some funding from venture capital companies might come already at the seed stage, it is the growth stage, when a business begins to show significant revenues, that is dominated by this type of investors. These investors are notable and usually invest a substantial amount of money. They gain their returns through “carried interest,” or a percentage received as compensation from the profits of a hedge fund or private equity.

Banks: banks are a classic source for business loans. However, startups owners will be required to produce proof of collateral or a revenue stream before their loan application is approved. Because of this, banks are seen as an option for established businesses.

Personal borrowing. is useful for entrepreneurs with particularly strong credit scores (700 or higher) and a high personal net worth. To obtain capital for their new business, these individuals may take out a personal loan or apply for a new credit card. The risk (as with borrowing of any type) is the possibility of falling behind on payments, lowering your credit score and sinking further into debt.

Peer-to-peer lenders: A more recent development, this type of investors are individuals or groups that offer funding to small business owners. Startup owners usually file an application to companies specialized in P2P lending that match lenders with borrowers through online services. Online operations allow for lower overhead and cheaper service comparing to traditional financial institutions. As a result, lenders can earn higher returns compared to savings and investment products offered by banks, while borrowers can borrow money at lower interest rates.

As you can see, there are quite a lot of opportunities for all types of startups at every stage. However, it is getting more obvious that the IT-related startups get more attention from wider circles of investors even at the earlier stages. What it means is that you’d better go digital in this digital world! Even your hobby or a tiny coffee corner can become a source of inspiration for a mobile application and another side of your startup. Or shall it be an AI-driven coffee-client matching program? The crazier your idea is the better.

#venture capital #startup #businees #entrepreneurship

[sunmisgirl]

Demon!EXO Reaction to Human Not Signing Contract

Exo demon reaction to their assigned human not wanting to sign a contract (to give their soul in exchange for sth)??? -🌹 anon P.s. I live for your reactions you're such an amazing writer!

Side note: You’re so kind; thank you for taking the time to read my reactions. I hope you enjoy this one. I also wrote a spin-off to this here.

Xiumin:

Xiumin finds you busking at a street corner singing the words to “Wonderwall”. He’s seen you perform at various street corners around the city trying to pick up extra tips and hopefully get scouted by a talent company. He approaches you and places a tip in your guitar case. You acknowledge his donation with a nod and smile as you continue singing through your performance. He patiently waits for you to finish before complimenting you on your voice and dedication. “You sing with so much soul and passion coursing through your body. It would be a crime to let that talent go to waste. I have friends in high places. I could recommend you to a music executive. All I want in return is a little bit of that soul.” Your eyebrows furrow in confusion at his request, but shyly decline his offer and gather up your guitar case and leave for the day. Something about him felt very odd and you decide to stop playing in public for a while. 

Suho:

Suho is your regular customer at the diner. He’s pretty decent compared to the other patrons. He always leaves a hefty tip and makes good conversation with you. You’ve managed to form a friendship and share with him your woes about paying for college and balancing two jobs to do so. One night he appears at a booth and orders his usual meal. When you serve it to him, he stops you and asks, “Haven’t you ever thought about leaving this job? I see the way some of the sleazy customers treat you.” You sigh and run a hand down your apron. “Remember I need this extra income to pay for the semester? I can’t quit now especially around the holidays when more people dine in.” 

He lightly chuckled to himself and said, “What if I supply you with the extra income? Imagine paying off college and buying anything else you desire. Moving out of this town…hell maybe even buying this diner if you so desire. I just need something in exchange…more specifically your soul.” You blink at him a few times and swear you notice his eye color shift to red and back to brown in an instant. You become uncomfortable and excuse yourself from the booth. Suho took the hint when you never returned from the kitchen and left his usual tip on the table. You never saw him again after that.

Lay:

Why? Why must you always be the victim of Cupid’s arrow? Your love life isn’t successful, and you’re close to giving up on finding any happiness until you run across an ad for a dating company guaranteeing love. At this point you have nothing to lose and decide to stop by the business on the way home from work. You walk up to a tidy shop named Master of Love. You almost cringe at the cheesy name but enter the shop anyways. You meet the owner of the shop and he sits down explaining how the company works, filling out applications, and showing your potential matches. 

Before you sign the contract, he goes over some rules with you. Lay says, “Just as a reminder, if you are to find a perfect match, we must maintain communication. I can’t lose a valuable client like you.” As he says this, you witness his eyes shift to a different color. “You may have a perfect match here in the physical world, but in the afterlife you’re all mine.” You abruptly stumble out of your seat and flee for the door and away from the shop. You don’t will yourself to look back in fear he is standing by the doorway of the shop watching you go.

Baekhyun:

All these dating apps have brought nothing but misery and wasted time. Your friends push you to attempt speed dating, so you attend an event at a local café. Baekhyun was already seated at a table far away and you couldn’t keep your eyes off him. Even the other speed daters notice and make no attempt to engage with you. Once you finally sit in front of him, his charming smile and smoldering eyes make your heart skip a beat. Your speechless state causes him to laugh and he reaches out to caress your cheek. “Seems like we’ve already made a match. Isn’t it exhausting to go through countless dates and never find the right one?” You sigh and nod your head. He suggests, “I think this relationship could last forever…that is if you want it to. I need your heart, body, and soul in this agreement.” You don’t miss the way he emphasizes the word soul and push his hand away from your face. He never does get your response though because the timer rings. You rush out the door mentally cursing your friends for dragging you into yet another weird guy’s arms.

Chen:

Kim Jongdae stands as one of the most popular stylists in the industry. Every model and rising celebrity hopes to be selected as his muse and face of his seasonal line. It’s quite surprising when he asks you to be a visual for his spring line. You haven’t made much waves in the modeling industry, but you’re not about to decline this opportunity. His aura is slightly intimidating when you first meet, but you suppose that’s because he is such a popular figure in the industry. 

After your fitting, you bump into him at the elevators. You thank him for selecting you as his visual and he shrugs it off stating he sees much potential in your future compared to the others. He suggests an easier rise to stardom by forming a partnership with him. “Just think about it. A rising model and a popular stylist duo taking this industry by storm. Can’t you see it too?” He begins gripping your wrist tightly and you glance at him with an alarmed look. “With the partnership, we’d be inseparable. Your mind, heart, and soul are mine and vice versa.” His eyes turn red the second he mentions your soul and you yank your wrist from his grip and race out the elevator not caring that you’re calling attention to yourself.

Chanyeol:

Every successful band experiences a few pitfalls and missed opportunities. Your band has gained enough attention to go from bar performances to small concert venues. However, it’s been a difficult time to get the attention of any record label companies. One night, your band finishes a set and clears the stage. You’ve still got that adrenaline high when a tall man approaches you. He reaches out to shake your hand. “I’m Park Chanyeol. Your group has got some serious talent. Your voice is incredibly unique as well. My record label is seeking talent just like you. I can already imagine thousands of adoring fans screaming out your lyrics and, in a few years, even a Grammy nomination is possible.” You scoff at his wishful thinking and utter, “That sounds way too good to be true. What do I have to do, sell my soul?” A chilling smile appears on his face and you kindly decline his offer and pray you never cross paths with that odd man again.

D.O.:

Moving out of your hometown seems to be one of the dumbest choices you’ve ever made. Your apartment isn’t the best and you constantly beat the radiator to emit heat during the winter months. Your boss criticizes your work ethic and coworkers always gossip about you. You wish you could pick up everything and move back home, but of course money makes the world go around. Having to balance paying off your student loans, countless GrubHub orders, and rent is taking a toll on you. 

Kyungsoo moved in a few months ago, but you never crossed paths until today when you checked the mailbox. You yell in frustration after seeing more bills and dramatically toss them to the floor. Kyungsoo is checking his mail at the same time and notices your meltdown. He suggests a close friend that lends people money without questions asked. You stare at him in disbelief and say, “There must be some catch to this.” Suddenly he dons a serious expression and replies, “A special agreement has to take place. You have to give up your soul but think about all the financial issues that will melt away with this solution.” You conclude your neighbor is insane and walk back to your apartment. All night his words toss around in your head until you look for him the next morning. When you knock on his door, you find an empty apartment.

Kai:

Kai watches you from afar as you struggle to nail your choreography in the dance studio. You’ve stumbled repeatedly and the aches in your muscles beg you to give up for the night. You grumpily pack your belongings and head home. This part of town isn’t the safest, but your place isn’t too far from the studio. However, tonight you feel an eerie presence lurking nearby and meet eyes with a man—or so you assume is a man. He walks towards you and your guard goes up immediately. He keeps a distance from you and says, “Don’t you get tired of constantly failing? Your peers are exceling and performing on stages in New York City while you’re stuck here in this small town. What if I offered you an opportunity to showcase your talents? Surpass everyone and make yourself worldwide known. All I need in exchange is your soul.” You mutter a “no thanks” and sprint to your place before he can reach you. You think to yourself, I’m so tired of these drunken creeps in this town.

Sehun:

Last Valentine’s Day proved that love is crap and the holiday is a product of capitalism wrapped in pretty colors and adorned with flowers and chocolates to trick lovesick couples. Your partner decided it would be appropriate to break up with you the day before Valentine’s Day so they could dodge your dinner plans and run off on some “journey of self-discovery”. Whatever. You’re not buying it. This year you’re sipping a bitter cup of coffee seated by the window of your favorite coffee shop. You’ve witnessed tons of people passing: some carrying giant stuffed bears to bring to their partners, some looking guilty and carrying bouquets of roses, and others blissfully walking hand in hand. You sigh wondering if you’ll ever find your special person.

Sehun sits nearby noticing your gloomy expression. “Valentine’s Day is a double-edged sword. It forces singles to feel bad about not having a special person and guilts couples to buy gifts for their partners.” Your eyes widen as you turn to look at him. “Yes! Exactly!”, you exclaim in delight because finally someone doesn’t think you’re just bitter about the breakup. You two speak more and eventually start talking about your ex. He can tell you’re still hurting from the breakup and offers a solution. “Maybe I can help? I can get your ex to fall in love with you again. All I ask for is your soul in return.” You glare at him and dump the rest of your coffee on his head and leave the shop. You switched coffee shops after that just to avoid the weirdo.

#this is prob one of my best works lol #exo #exo scenarios #exo imagines #exo reactions #exo requests #exo au #kpop #demon!au

[processing-yang]

The American Army: I’ll make a wall and make Mexico pay for it.

The American Army is not only great for patriotism. It gave Americans jobs and made other countries pay for protection against communism. So that the plague wouldn’t hit American shores. It was a version of I'll build a wall and make Mexico pay for it. LOL. 

Obviously, the American government did have to pay for everything to work out. But the basic idea was that pouring money in was fantastic for the American economy and lifted America out of the Great Depression. 

It made sense in hindsight when economists looked at Keynesian economics. Which by the way, was ironically inspired by the same understanding of the contradictions of capitalism that Marx explained many years prior; The bourgeois economic theory. You see how the stars align?

But somehow, even though it worked then, it didn't work quite as well in 2008-2018. It helped the top 20% of people and their communities because the 4 trillion was pumped into banks> But obviously, for the bottom half, it just meant that the world did not collapse. Their lives were not made any better. 

(The world breathed a sigh of relief though; when all major leaders chose to save the banks that bought into America's debt instruments. )

In the Great Depression, companies closed. 1 in 4 families did not have income. It was so bad, it gave birth to the unemployment rate. But suddenly, the Army hired people and pumped money into families and created the trickle-up economy that Yang advocates. This is called the multiplier effect that is endorsed by all economists I've read about. So maybe it is because you put money into the average American’s hands, instead of the banks. 

But even Milton Friedman, the economist that Yang name drops so often,  states that the effects are not as great as Keynes made it out to be. So, it is not just about the multiplier effect that the Army was good for. So what is?

Remember how I said that the world's banks bought into America's debt instruments? Ever wondered how that happened? You know that America affects the world, and if you are as old as I am, you would have heard "Americanisation" before you heard "globalization". I posit that the American Army made America relevant to the world. America wanted to protect the world from communism before it hit their shores, and we welcomed it. The American dollars, entertainment, ideas, language, food, culture, that the soldiers brought with them became relevant. All things American had an inroad into many countries, all over the world. These are called distribution channels.  

"Hope cannot be said to exist, nor can it be said not to exist. It is just like roads across the earth. For actually the earth had no roads to begin with, but when many men pass one way, a road is made." - Lu Xun. 

If all roads led to Rome, all (or most) distribution channels lead to America. I saw an image of the said round-about in Rome that inspired the phrase, and it made so much sense. I'll give you an example, banks like JP morgan make it possible to trade large amounts internationally in seconds. The money goes from country A to America, and then to country B. Much like the Rome roundabout. For you to go from A to B, you need to go through that roundabout.   If you learned management 101, you would know how much cash flow is necessary to oil a company's supply chain. If the USD died, or US banks died, that's a huge amount of cash in companies all over the world being affected. If banks close, it's like your money route being blocked. 

And it is not just cash. If you look at the most prominent media outlets, tech giants, pharmaceuticals, they are in America. Why? Just being relevant to the world, helped your grandparents build the distribution channels into all the countries of the world. Do you know what it is like to live outside of that bubble? The stupidest things that go viral in America, gets to the world. But the greatest things that get viral elsewhere? No one sees it unless America picks it up first.  

So this is what I'm saying. The tech check is great. It empowers Americans in every neighborhood, just like it empowered your soldiers. But you need to be relevant to the world. China is trying to do that with the silk road bullshit because it was the center of the world during those times. China's mandarin name is literally "middle kingdom" because of that. But we don't want that. We want America to stay relevant to us. Not some big bully.

That is why I love Andrew Yang's idea of sending your army of green tech into the world. Because we don't need to be protected from the communist anymore. We all need to protect the world's environment and fix the Cancer that is climate change all over the world. 

So maybe, it could still be the poster "I want you. Enlist in the US Army." But this time, it would be for the Green Army. You can also allocate more army hours to environmental research programs but not move them. (Otherwise, places like Okinawa would just die, I think.) If communism was plaguing the earth, climate change is killing us now. Honestly, rich people are moving out of some countries because they don't want their kids to get cancer from bad air. THAT'S CRAZY. I absolutely abhor the idea that clean air could become a privilege and not just, a given. 

#Andrew Yang #Yang Gang #potus 2020

[namjuicyy]

Three’s A Crowd - Chapter Three

Masterlist | Requests are open.

Genre: Angst, fluff, smut.

Genre of this part: Fluff.

Word Count: 2.3k.

Summary: Your childhood friend shows you a whole new world, but no one expected what came afterwards.

Warnings: None.

2012. Summer. You had spent your time complaining to Jimin about how hot your country was getting this time of year and how much you hated it. To which Jimin would always respond with, "you could be living in Korea." You'd have loved that statement to be true.

Jimin had grown into a strapping 17-year-old man, 18 if you aged him by Korean standards. Though, despite his body getting taller and buffer, he hadn't changed a bit. He was still that determined, hard-working and sweet boy you met all those years ago. As promised, you spent every summer since you were 13 in Busan with Jimin, so you were counting down the days until your school broke up for the school year and you'd hop on the first flight out to Seoul.

First thing in the morning, you received a call from Jimin. He'd invited you to video chat, one of your breakfast-dinner dates. Despite the fact that, this morning, you didn't want him to see your puffy face and tired eyes, you made the exception and accepted the call. "Good morning!" He said to you, his voice cheerier than usual.

He wasn't in his bedroom. In fact, he wasn't anywhere in his house. You didn't recognise this room. "Where are you?" You asked immediately.

Jimin's voice pitched higher than usual. "Good morning, Jimin. How are you?" He returned to his usual tone. "I'm good thank you, ___. Thank you for asking. How are you?" Your tone. "I'm tired, Chim-Chim." His. "I can see. You look like shit." Yours. "Chim-Chim! Don't be so mean." His. "Well at least I'm being honest."

"Very funny. Where are you?" You asked again.

Jimin rolled his eyes. "I'm currently in a hotel in Seoul."

"Why?"

"Remember how I told you a while ago that my dance teacher told me I should audition for a few companies? Well, I'm taking her advice. I have an audition with a company called BigHit tomorrow, so I'll let you know how it goes. I'm so nervous."

"You'll get it."

"You don't know that."

"I do."

"You don't."

"Jimin, how many times do we have to go through this? I've known you for ten years now. I've seen you dance on multiple occasions. Trust me when I tell you that you are a phenomenal dancer and they will offer you a place. You going for backup dancing?"

"Yeah."

"Are you auditioning anywhere else?"

"A few other places so hopefully someone will take me."

"They'll be fighting over you, Chimmy."

Soon enough, you received a call from an excited Jimin telling you that he'd passed the audition process and that BigHit wanted him. "The only problem is, they want me to rap too." He'd told you.

"Rap? What?"

"I know. Apparently they're debuting their first boyband and that was what the audition was for. I don't rap. I can't rap."

"Well, I mean I've never heard you rap so I can't comment. What about singing?"

"I can't do that either, but they said if worse comes to worst they'd make me sing. I've got a few vocal lessons lined up but... I'm moving to Seoul."

"Woah... wait... just like that?"

"Just like that. Apparently they have an apartment ready for us. I'm the last member. The other six are already living there. So I'm going home to get things straight then coming back for the foreseeable."

"Six!?"

"Yeah, I know. There's going to be a lot of us. Seven in total."

Everything seemed to be happening so fast. It wasn't even your life, but you'd begun panicking. He was leaving his home and his family, and living alone for the first time in Seoul – the capital city. Not to mention the fact that he would be moving in with six other men, men he'd never even met before. Jimin wasn't exactly shy, but it took him a while to get used to new people. He seemed excited and happy, though, so you didn't want to air your concerns and deter him from his dreams. But you were terrified for him.

Despite your fears, you were also incredibly excited for him. He was living his dream, he'd be dancing for a living if all of this took off. He rarely sang, and despite him being a little flat you loved his voice, so you knew he'd be wonderful at that with a little help.

"She was... worried, to say the least." Jimin continued. The entire room had been captivated by his story thus far, silencing every device they had, not just for filming purposes but because they didn't want any distractions. It was the first time anything like this had ever been talked about in such depth and, of course, everyone was so intrigued to hear as much as they were allowed. "She's always worried about me, and sometimes it's with good reason."

"How so?" The interviewer asked.

"We'll get to that later."

"Okay. So, when was the first time ___ met your bandmates?"

"Debut day. We were to air on television for the first time and we were all so nervous for it. We didn't have long to plan and prep for anything either, because we weren't supposed to be on that show. An artist had pulled out last minute and we were the last resort, I guess. We were all so anxious to debut successfully. ___ was there because I invited her – or rather, emotionally blackmailed her into being there. When she landed in Korea, she had to get the taxi straight to the venue because we were already there going through rehearsals. The taxi charged her a lot more than what she originally thought, so she was livid."

"200,000 won that trip cost me!" You grumbled. Jimin had to come and meet you at security because they didn't believe that you were with anyone performing on the television show. It wasn't until Jimin and one of their managers came to your rescue, you were able to enter the long corridors of the Korean TV studio. The only thing Jimin could hear over the sound of your angry voice was your suitcase rolling along the hard wood floors. He chuckled to himself as he listened to you rant about being overcharged, and how you thought all Koreans were lovely and polite, not thieving crooks who would quite happily take you round the houses despite the fact you knew the area well. Jimin held the door open for you so you could wander into their dressing room. "I'm foreign," you continued, a little louder than intended, "not stupid."

The dressing room chatter died down at the sound of an unfamiliar voice, and all eyes in the room turned on you. Your face turned red at the sudden attention, your blushing making Jimin howl in laughter at your embarrassment. "Fuck you, Park Jimin." You muttered to him. His laughter only increased at your words.

You couldn't count the amount of people who were in the room with you, there were just too many to comprehend. More than your classes at school, that's for sure. Everyone apart from a few young men returned to their jobs, attacking some of the young men with make-up and hair styling and pottering about generally doing their own thing. "This is the BigHit family." Jimin stated proudly. "Well, not everyone. Obviously these are only the people who need to be here. Bang PD-nim isn't here."

"Bang who-nim?"

"Bang Shihyuk-hyung. He's the founder of the company."

Jimin stumbled forward and groaned in surprise as someone had jumped on him and latched on for dear life. The boy was young, you couldn't tell his age exactly because everyone in this room looked young. But you could tell he wasn't out of his teenage years. He had light brown hair and dark eyes. Smooth skin and a sharp jawline. His eyes were coloured in happiness and his smile was boxy and charming. His long arms wrapped around Jimin's neck, and his legs around Jimin's waist.

"You're heavy!" Jimin complained. "Get off me."

The boy laughed but did as he was told. He hadn't noticed you standing there – not properly anyway. So when it registered that Jimin wasn't alone, his smile faded and the happiness in his eyes sparked out leaving something there that you couldn't recognise. Was he shy? Maybe. You couldn't read him, he was difficult. "Who's this?" He asked Jimin. His accent was thick, and different to Jimin's Busan accent. It was much faster, making him sound impatient.

"Oh, Taehyung, this is ___. ___, this is Taehyung."

You held your hand out to shake his, and he took yours in his large hand, fingers wrapping quite far around yours and shook it, bowing in the process.

"You know about ___, Tae." Came another voice from behind you. You turned to see another man standing there, young and strikingly beautiful. He was dressed in all black, as a majority of the young men in the room seemed to be. His leather jacket and rough, yet neat hair style made him look the perfect mix of bad boy and sweet. And it was the strangest contradiction. His voice, just like his eyes, was soft and gentle. His smile was wide and his presence airily demanding. "She's all Jimin can ever talk about."

"Ah, hyung!" Jimin exclaimed. His tiny fist balled and collided gingerly with his arm. You laughed.

"Don't hit me! I'm three years older than you. Where's your respect?"

"In the same place as your subtlety." Jimin shot back.

"This is Jin, by the way." Taehyung introduced you to him amongst the chaos of Jin fighting against his dongsaeng.

Throughout the course of the day, each and every band member had been introduced to you. Namjoon was the leader of the group, and was the easiest to recognise given the giant, black afro on his head and the 'RM' shaved into one of the sides.

Yoongi, also known as Suga, was described to you as quiet by Jimin, yet he was one of the members who didn't seem to shut up around you. He tried his best to make conversation with you, even if it seemed a little awkward at first. Yoongi was incredibly beautiful in your eyes, too. He had soft features and eyes that resembled that of a feline. He had a gold chain around his neck, that appeared to be heavy, and a moody look to him that completely shocked you. Or rather, when he proved to not be moody, that shocked you. His demeanour was not at all reflective of his personality.

Hoseok, or J-Hope, was smiley and bubbly, almost as bubbly as Jimin, and you could see why they got along well. Hoseok was an amazing dancer, you were told, but of course he was coy about it and acted modestly to you. His hair was black and spiked up in different directions, and despite his sweet nature, he had an aura of dominance that made you want to shrink every time he was around you. He intimidated you completely, and you found yourself becoming uncharacteristically shy around him, despite there being a lack of need to. He didn't intentionally scare you, it was just his general persona. So you tried to avoid him, but he wouldn't let you. He'd approach you when you were alone and make conversation with you. You got to know him fairly quickly, and despite seeing his kindness, you couldn't shake your fear.

And finally there was Jeon Jungkook, the maknae of the band. He was only 16-years-old, which was surprising to you. He was shy around you, the shiest of all the members. He didn't even look at you when you spoke to him, and couldn't speak directly to you. He either had to ask someone a question about you for it to be relayed back to him, or he just wouldn't look at you as he asked you himself. The smiles he shot you were fake, but you could tell that he was trying. He was absolutely adorable, and you just wanted to wrap him in cotton wool and protect him from the world.

You watched from backstage as the boys performed their first song on the stage, pre-recording it for airing later on. Jin came off the stage much happier than he was when their rehearsal ended. He felt like he'd done a better job than before, and wasn't as disappointed in himself and it was nice to see. You'd only known them for three hours, but they'd already started fighting their way into your heart. Especially in how they treated Jimin. There was such a nice family feel to them and it was nice. You certainly felt happier about leaving Jimin with them, seeing how they all took care of each other and loved one another.

"I pretty much forced her to come to award shows with us, too." Jimin added. "I managed to get Bang PD to allow her to join the crew and get her to come with us. It made sense as she'd been with us since the very beginning. She was, even though she wasn't employed by BigHit, just as much part of the family as everyone else was. She was at times our strength. When she found out that one of our managers had been mistreating Jungkook, she was there for him every step of the way. She even went to Bang PD-nim to get him to fire the manager. She threatened to take the story public, but she didn't need to in the end as the manager accidentally exposed himself and was caught threatening Kookie. Fans were livid, but no one was angry as ___.

"She saved my life once, too."

"She saved your life? How?"

"I was on the right path to accidentally killing myself, and if it wasn't for her getting me back on track I wouldn't be here right now."

#bts #bangtan sonyeondan #kim namjoon #kim seokjin #min yoongi #jung hoseok #park jimin #kim taehyung #jeon jungkook #namjoon #seokjin #yoongi #hoseok #jimin #taehyung #jungkook #rm #rapmon #rap monster #jin #suga #min suga #jhope #hobi #v #taetae #jk #jimin smut #jimin fluff #jimin angst

[newstfionline]

Saturday, March 20, 2021

More than 40% of people reported depression and anxiety symptoms since start of pandemic, survey finds (Yahoo News) When COVID-19 was first reported in the United States, many were optimistic that it would come and go quickly enough. But after a few weeks, reality set in and took a toll, not only on our physical selves but on our collective mental health as well. Over the past year, a lot of people have struggled with feelings of isolation, anxiety, depression and despair due to the global pandemic. Many have lost loved ones, missed funerals and births and other milestones, and dealt with emotions that some may not have even experienced before. What has been the overall mental health impact on our nation’s people in the past year? According to a recent survey by Yahoo/YouGov, 35 percent of adults in the U.S. report that their mental health has worsened since the start of the pandemic. And an even larger percentage (44 percent) report an increase in depression in the past year, with 48 percent stating that their anxiety symptoms also increased. “The mental health impacts of COVID-19 are just beginning to be understood fully,” says Catherine Burns, a Vermont-based psychologist and clinical supervisor for COVID Support Vermont. “As time passes, we are developing a clearer picture that increasingly highlights experiences of stress, anxiety and depression across the globe.”

Polluted waters around the world (Reuters) About 4 billion people experience severe water shortages for at least one month a year and around 1.6 billion people—almost a quarter of the world’s population—have problems accessing a clean, safe water supply, according to the United Nations. While the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals call for water and sanitation for all by 2030, the world body says water scarcity is increasing and more than half the world’s population will be living in water-stressed regions by 2050. In the run-up to the UN’s World Water Day on March 22, Reuters photographers used drones to capture dramatic pictures and video of polluted waterways around the world. In one image, a discarded sofa lies beached in the Tiete river, in Brazil’s biggest city Sao Paulo, into which hundreds of tonnes of untreated sewage and waste are tipped each day. Others show domestic waste clogging the Citarum river in Bandung, Indonesia, and sewage flowing into the Euphrates in Najaf, Iraq.

Gunmen kill 13 police in daytime ambush in central Mexico (Reuters) Gunmen killed at least 13 Mexican police in an ambush a short distance outside the capital on Thursday, local authorities said, in one of the worst mass slayings of security forces to rock the country in recent years. Photos of the grisly scene circulated on social media showing a bullet-riddled police car and an unmarked truck, along with officers’ bodies scattered out along the street or still inside the car. The convoy of security personnel was attacked in broad daylight by suspected gang members in the Llano Grande area in the municipality of Coatepec Harinas as it patrolled the area, said Rodrigo Martinez-Celis, security minister for the State of Mexico. The area is southwest of Mexico City and about 40 miles (64 km) south of the city of Toluca, the capital of the populous State of Mexico, which surrounds much of the capital.

British Airways considers selling its headquarters after homeworking switch (Reuters) British Airways said it was considering selling its headquarters building because of a switch to homeworking during the pandemic means it may no longer need so much office space. The shift to homeworking over the last year has already prompted some of Britain’s biggest companies to make changes to their office footprints. Banking giant Lloyds said it would cut office space by 20% within three years, with HSBC aiming for a 40% reduction.

Locked-down Spaniards seethe with envy as Germans flock to Mallorca (Reuters) Tens of thousands of Germans are planning last-minute Easter getaways to Spain’s sun-kissed islands, leaving many Spaniards, who are not allowed to do the same because of a travel ban, upset. “It makes absolutely no sense that in Spain we can’t move between regions but any foreigner can come in ... and spread infection,” said Emilio Rivas, 23, who lives in Madrid. The young tax assessor wanted to get out of town for the holidays but must instead stay home because Spain banned travel between regions over Easter to avoid a repeat of a spike in contagion seen after an easing in restrictions over Christmas. But tourists from European countries with higher infection rates like France or Germany can fly in for a holiday as long as they have a negative covid test result—something even top health official Fernando Simon described as “incongruous.”

Paris goes into lockdown as COVID-19 variant rampages (Reuters) France imposed a month-long lockdown on Paris and parts of the north after a faltering vaccine rollout and spread of highly contagious coronavirus variants forced President Emmanuel Macron to shift course. Since late January, when he defied the calls of scientists and some in his government to lock the country down, Macron has said he would do whatever it took to keep the euro zone’s second largest economy as open as possible. However, this week he ran out of options just as France and other European countries briefly suspended use of the AstraZenca vaccine. His prime minister, Jean Castex, said France was in the grip of a third wave, with the virulent variant first detected in Britain now accounting for some 75% of cases. Intensive care wards are under severe strain, notably in Paris where the incidence rate surpasses 400 infections in every 100,000 inhabitants.

US-Russia ties nosedive after Biden-Putin tit-for-tat (AP) U.S.-Russia ties nosedived on Thursday after Russian leader Vladimir Putin shot back at President Joe Biden’s description of him as a killer. In taking a tough stance on Russia, Biden has said the days of the U.S. “rolling over” to Putin are done. Also Wednesday, U.S. intelligence released a report finding that Putin authorized influence operations to help Trump’s re-election bid. Later that day, Putin recalled his ambassador to the U.S. and on Thursday he pointed at the U.S. history of slavery and slaughtering Native Americans and the atomic bombing of Japan in World War II. Responding to that, the White House said Biden would continue to look to work with Putin on areas of mutual concern but stressed that he was “not going to hold back” when he has concerns about Putin’s actions. Putin had been asked about Biden’s comment during a video call marking the anniversary of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, and he responded along the lines of “it-takes-one-to-know-one,” saying his counterpart’s words reflected the United States’ own problems. At the same time, he offered to have a phone call with Biden to discuss issues of mutual interest.

Myanmar security forces kill eight as Indonesia calls for end to violence (Reuters) Myanmar security forces shot dead eight opponents of a Feb. 1 coup on Friday, a funeral services provider said, as Indonesia sought an end to the violence and urged that democracy be restored, in an unusually blunt call from a neighbour. Ousted lawmakers explored whether the International Criminal Court (ICC) can investigate crimes against humanity since the coup, while authorities arrested two more journalists, including a BBC reporter, media said.

Lebanese are gripped by worry as economic meltdown speeds up (AP) Shops closing, companies going bankrupt and pharmacies with shelves emptying—in Lebanon these days, fistfights erupt in supermarkets as shoppers scramble to get to subsidized powdered milk, rice and cooking oil. Like almost every other Lebanese, Nisrine Taha’s life has been turned upside down in the past year under the weight of the country’s crushing economic crisis. Anxiety for the future is eating at her. Five months ago, she was laid off from her job at the real estate company where she had worked for years. Her daughter, who is 21, cannot find work, forcing the family to rely on her husband’s monthly salary which has lost 90% of its value because of the collapse of the national currency. The family hasn’t been able to pay rent for seven months, and Taha worries their landlord’s patience won’t last forever. As the price of meat and chicken soared beyond their means, they changed their diet. Taha’s family is among hundreds of thousands of lower income and middle class Lebanese who have been plunged into sudden poverty by the crisis that started in late 2019—a culmination of decades of corruption by a greedy political class that pillaged nearly every sector of the economy. More than half the population now lives in poverty, according to the World Bank, while an intractable political crisis heralds further collapse.

Fear and Hostility Simmer as Ethiopia’s Military Keeps Hold on Tigray (NYT) When Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, began a sweeping military operation in the restive region of Tigray on Nov. 4, he cast his goal in narrow terms: to capture the leadership of the region’s ruling party. The party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, had brazenly defied his authority for months, and then attacked a federal military base. But four months on, the operation has degenerated into a bitter civil conflict marked by accounts of egregious rights violations—massacres, sexual violence, ethnic cleansing, and fears that starvation is being used a war tactic—that have set off alarm across the world. In Mekelle, the region’s biggest city, many Tigrayans say they feel that they, not their leaders, are the true targets of Mr. Abiy’s military campaign. Hospitals are filled with casualties from the fighting that rages in the countryside, many of them terrified civilians arriving with grievous wounds. Schools house some of the 71,000 people who fled to the city, often bringing accounts of horrific abuses at the hands of pro-government forces. A palpable current of fear and resentment courses through the streets, where hostilities between residents and patrolling government soldiers often erupt into violence.

Goldman Sachs analysts say they work 95-hour weeks and endure ‘inhumane’ treatment (CNN Business) A workplace survey from a group of junior analysts at Goldman Sachs is about to make you feel a lot better about your job. About a dozen first-year analysts say they are working more than 95 hours a week on average, sleeping just five hours a night and enduring workplace abuse. The majority of them say their mental health has deteriorated significantly since they started working at the investment bank. “There was a point where I was not eating, showering or doing anything else other than working from morning until after midnight,” one analyst says in the report. The survey comes from a self-selected group of 13 first-year analysts who presented their findings to management in February, a spokesperson for the bank said. Few people entering the cutthroat world of Wall Street banking would expect a tidy nine-to-five. But the analysts in the survey are essentially pleading with their employer to cap their weekly work hours at 80.

#headlines #news

[mvadowes]

DORCAS CLEMENTINA MEADOWES is 26 years old and works as a DRAGON RESCUER/SPY and is loyal to THE OOTP. she was a RAVENCLAW and is a MUGGLEBORN. SHE looks like DIANE GUERRERO. ( and it’s cami, bitch !! )

dorcas was born into a rather large working-class family in leeds, and quickly stood out ( some would say, for all the wrong reasons ). the meadowes were quite proud of the respectable reputation they’d earned inside their social circles over the years, and expected their children to be models of just that - quiet, obedient, polite, soft edges.

she was different from them all long before she knew magic ran in her veins

the mere concept of reputation always felt absurd to her, even as a little girl who dared to look in the eyes those who’d even consider glancing at her. her parents thought her daredevil and somewhat cynical behaviour would tire itself out and she’d eventually copy her siblings, but they were wrong.

something fiery in her was intensified by the weird occurances she couldn’t explain, and when her tongue grew sharper, more imaginative, she was uncontrollable. sometimes even to herself. dorcas meadowes was born a wild card.

the very muggle meadowes didn’t take lightly the news that their odd girl was a witch, and that aversion never really went away. inside the household, the reactions would always range from complete disinterest in anything magical to terror of what she could TECHNICALLY do. she’d accidentally won the power struggle in the family. she simultaneously held it all and none. the double edge sword of her status made it so that no one even tried controlling her anymore, but also left her lonely and lacking affection, regardless of how much she insisted she did not need it.

ravenclaw, home of the curious, imaginative, individualistic sharp-witted. dorcas fit right in, although that didn’t stop her from being in all other common rooms at all times. hogwarts was the biggest playground she could have asked for - somewhere new where no one knew who she was; somewhere magical where her curiosity could be fulfilled; somewhere where suspension of disbelief was common; a bubble she could experiment with. of course she’d tried lies back at home ( how many times had her mother bitterly called her a liar anyway ? ) but this was storytelling. dorcas sharpened her lying skills like one sharpens a weapon, and after some trial and error she found her tricks. after that, the options were limitless. she was a social butterfly, telling 10 different life stories in the same day, carrying them over for months. once she fooled a single hufflepuff into thinking for 4 weeks that she was in his house and year. even got a hufflepuff tie.

despire hogwarts being where she truly learned how to lie and how to put up fortresses around her, it was also when she was at her most internally chaotic. her identity was still shaky and between her crisis and her offputting ways, she truly opened herself up, more than before and certainly more than after. she holds dear to her heart the friendships she’s made back at hogwarts, with a special place dedicated to the so-called d squad, or dick squad. she’s made up so many stories about they all met that she now can’t pinpoint how exactly they all came together, but the four wild cards that are dorcas meadowes, daisy hookum, mundungus “dung” fletcher and caradoc “doc” dearborn eventually united and brought terror upon hogwarts. marauders who? golden trio who? the dick squad was chaos and friendship and family - she cares for all of them very specially and very individually, and to this day they’re the ones she always goes to.

hogwarts was also where she found her love for magical creatures. growing up, she’d bring home bugs and lizards, tried to take in stray cats, wanted to be a vet. magic opened up a new world of animals and her personal favourite - dragons. giant flying lizards that burned down entire fields? y e s.

after a few summer internships, she graduated with a job at a dragon reserve, but it wasn’t fulfilling. not just yet. after falling victims to too many of her lies, her superiors realised where she’d be able to put those skills to use, and as such she became a dragon rescuer. with no real experience, she was tasked with giving herself a cover, a way into a dragon smuggling ring, get vital evidence and then let the authorities tear it down. she succeeded. it was addictive.

soon she built up her little network of other spies, ID forgers, crime connections - dorcas is represented in every seedy corner, hears talks in every dark bar, has covers to pick and choose from. the latter, the criminal world is one she dips her feet in far too often, honestly just for the thrill of it. a lot of what she does can be justified with that.

the order too knew how to use her skills. when she isn’t on dragon missions or visiting a reserve to help out, she’s spying for the order. once again, contacts everywhere, dorcas meadowes is always listening.

is she way in over her head? yes. dorcas is young, reckless, only has SIX years of experience in spying and is honestly just making it up as she goes. does she see that?absolutely not. that’s her mortal flaw; she can’t see mortality. even in a war, surrounded by death, the concept is foreign. it’s a mix of her bravado and her detachment from reality what causes it. it’s this what gets her killed in a year.

activist to her very core. can always be seen arguing about something, especially animal rights. has been arrested for trying to free the gringott dragon. will keep on being arrested.

openly anti-government. anti-capitalism. anti-separated muggle and magical worlds. long live the anarchy.

part of her misses being a full-time dragon carer. even though most of her missions are animal traffic and animal cruelty related, she doesn’t spend quite as much time with the dragons as she used to. 

loves the punk rock underground scene and all of her muggle friends are from it. catch her going to weird secret bars and rocking out to ‘noise’.

she has very few things grounding her, since for the most part dorcas is like a ghost. she has no home, living off a backpack and couch surfing, has no telephone, no fireplace, very few photographs. disappears for missions or just to satisfy a need to not be stuck in the same place far too often. dorcas meadowes will come into your life after two weeks of radio silence, with two dragon eggs and a simple ‘i’m staying with you this week’.

gets in trouble far too often. always did like to hang around the wilder more out fringe groups of society, and can also usually be found in the company of aurors. has a need for danger and excitement. would light up a car just to see how that happens. doesn’t lead the healthiest life, far too much alcohol and party drugs but hey at least she always sleeps a lot ??

she does have a fascination with fire. lieks to watch things burn, gets lost in the beauty of flames !!

lowkey just needs to learn how to be more emotionally honest and how to accept the rawness that comes with it, and to not run away every time something arises. lowkey needs to learn how to emote and live like other people. lowkey never will.

basically ??? she’s an irresponsible couch surfing slightly pyromanic compulsive liar anarchist, with a passion for animal rights and especially the breathing fire type, and an intense lack of emotional abilities

character parallels: gina linetti, eleanor shellstrop, cristina yang, elektra natchios, doug judy, veronica mars, natasha romanoff, malia tate, daisy johnson, heather davis, mazikeen, jason mendonza, gilderoy lockhart, peter quill, ilana wexler, jo wilson, titus andromedon, daenerys targaryen

some wanted connections:

- hogwarts enemies: dorcas got in everyone’s business all the time and also spread lots of fake rumors just for the fun of it. she’s bound to have upset someone.

- post hogwarts enemies: the exact same thing from the first one IHFBGJSHDBV

- a different life: people who know dorcas but as someone totally different. different name, story, maybe even looks due to polyjuice. oops.

- the name is bond: SPY PALS. people dorcas has worked with or against, who happened to meet through their missions or their contacts and understand each other, the way they live in lies...

- hot: someone please fuck dorcas. she loves fun so yall can’t tell me she isn’t boning at least one person. no feelings needed, just screw her.

- okay but someone love dorcas please

click here for a bad pinterest board and hmu for dorcas to come ruin ur life

#maraudrs:intro #animal cruelty tw #animal abuse tw

[magicalsalamander]

Masterlist

▸Key

Fluff  ♡ | Angst ✰ | Smut ✕ | In progress ✏ | Complete ✓ | KLF Universe▼| Horror θ |

 ▸Schedule

      —— Recent

  → 01.02.2020– Sangre Solium

 → 01.19.2020– Show Me Your Teeth

 04.05.2020– Flowers that Speak Poetry

       NEWEST  → Lacuna – 11. 29. 2020

▸ Disclaimer

I do not allow my work to be re-uploaded anywhere, I hold an account here (Tumblr), Wattpad, and AO3 all under the same alias (magicalsalamander). If you see that someone is doing so please inform me immediately with a link if possible. I do not allow my works to be translated. Everything is a work of fiction on my own basis of creativity. I do not hold an affiliation with any company regarding the artists I write about. Anything marked M for Mature has sexual, graphic depictions, and explicit content.

Copyright 2017 © by magicalsalamander. All rights reserved.

↳ Min Yoongi

  ― Kitten’s Little Flame ―

| ♡✰✕✓ | Childhood friends | College | Hybrid | BFF2L |  

→ Growing up, Yoongi became your hearth and home. From your first day at a new school all the way up to college he’s been by your side. What happens when a dragon and cat realize that maybe being just friends isn't all they want, but more?

   ▻ Parts: I.  II. III.  IV(M).  V (M; Final). Epilogue (M)

        ↦ Moodboard. Art Journal, Dividers

  ― At Your Service ―  

| ♡ ✰ ✕ ✓ | Hybrid |

→ Your Grandpa adopted him to keep the auto shop safe. He had to fulfill his vicious guard dog hybrid appeal, but he was putty in your hands. However, when an unexpected event happens you take ownership of Yoongi, your best friend…but when tensions build, will he want to stay with you?

       ↦ Moodboard.

  ― Sangria Wine ―  

| ♡ ✰  ✓ | Vampire | CEO |

→ When rent is cutting short and you’re at your last resort. Your job has been cutting your hours slowly, and bills were stacking up. You walk into a donation center, blood donating center for the undead to earn some quick cash, but…the thing is…you’re afraid of needles.

   ▻ Parts: Sangre Solium, Sangre X, Sangre X, Sangre Savia

      ↦ Moodboard [Sangre Masterpost]

↳ Kim Taehyung

  ― The Firefly that Guards the Fox ―  

| ♡✰✕▼ ✏ / ✓ | Hybrid | Lawyer | Murder Mystery |

→ His mother and father weren’t supposed to fall in love. They weren’t supposed to find a mate in one another. They weren’t supposed to. After losing his father years ago, Taehyung vows to find and avenge the injustice his family has gone through. You were childhood friends with Taehyung. He called you Firefly, you called him Tae-Tae the fox. Was your fate supposed to end there in the past with your childhood?

   ▻ Parts: I.  II.  III.  IV.  V.  VI.  VII.  VIII.  IX.  X.  XI(final).  Epilogue(M).

      ↦ Moodboard 1, Moodboard 2 , Fan Art, Dividers

  ― Moon Breaker ―

| ♡ ✰ ✕ ✓ | Werewolf |  

→ Tales as old as time were passed through the werekind. If a human and a kind were to be mates, the moon would take them, the misfortune, to serve the Goddess. Taehyung, a kind, had always heard of the tales told by his elders. The next alpha of his kind. He didn’t expect to find his mate, one of the non-kinds. Would the moon reap her back?

     ↦  Teaser

↳ Kim Namjoon

  ― Cooper Scales and Blue Wings ―

| ♡ ✓ | Hogwarts | Mermaid |  

→ Kim Namjoon, a Ravenclaw, ends up finding out the secret of a Hufflepuff  by stumbling upon something he shouldn’t have seen that leads him entangled and protecting her secret. Leading to a connection they would’ve never expected to tie them together.  

  ― Aurelius ―

| ♡ ✰ ✕ θ ▼ ✓ | Werewolf

→ When the daughter of the secretary for the Minister for Wolf and Canine relations is the last living member of her clan, she must find a way to avenge her family. She must find a way to put an end to the hunters whose sole purpose is to cleanse the world of werewolves. The golden one hasn’t forgotten. Will she be able to get the revenge she needs?

   ▻ Parts: 0. I. II, III, IV., V., VI (M/Final)

     ↦ Moodboard. Dividers.

  ― Threads of a Resurgent ―  

| ♡✰ θ ✓ | Grim Reaper | Witch |

→ That dress. It was all because of that tainted dress. The dress you found at a second-hand store wasn’t just a pretty thing on the rack. When the grim reaper sits across from you telling you he’s come to collect, your life takes a turn. How will you mend the threads and save your soul in time before he collects you?

    ↦  Moodboard [Teaser], Resurgent’s Dictionary

↳ Seokjin

  ― Business Affairs ―  

| ♡ ✕ ✓ | E2L | Office |

→ When the unexpected happens and here you are hours away from home your professionalism is put to the test. Your longtime rival, Jin, always shows up at your worst moments. What happens when the world seems to be against you and the only one you know is Jin?

  ― The Act of Persuasion ―

| ♡ ✰ ▼ ✓ | Hybrid | Actress | CEO | Arranged Marriage | Single Parent |

→ When two critters arrive at his doorstep he didn’t know that they would cause a bear who marched to the rhythm of the ants realizes there more to life walking in straight lines. However in order walk out of those lines he had to make a deal to save others and his two little ones, but at what cost? Then there’s me, the one who only sees in parallel. I walk in the footprints my parents have made in the path. What happens when my perspective changes because of a silly bear?

   ↦ Moodboard, Divider

  ― Gold Embers Touch the Blue Veil ―

| ♡ ✕  ✰ ✓ | Avatar:TLAB | E2L |

→ Your grandparents were refugees of the Southern Water Tribe after the start of the 100 year war. Lost without a home your family blended in at the Fire Nation’s Capital forgetting the ways of being a water bender. For generations, your family blended, but that was until you. You broke every single rule. Seokjin, the son of a General in the Fire Nation Army, was royal by military status. He always knew something was off about you, he could sense it in his chi. What happens when he sees something he’s not supposed to?

    ↦ Moodboard [Teaser], Preview

  ― Flowers that Speak Poetry ―

| ♡ ✕  ✰ ✓ | Tattoo Artist | Childhood friend | Alien |

→ You—Butterfly, a servant to the Flower Inn, home to Anemonas of Anisum, was your home and it was all you knew.  Jin painted with needles on bodies, but for you, he painted with brushes butterflies on your skin. Deeper secrets lied within covered in ink. However, will your heart always be able to flutter when another offers to buy you from the Inn?

     ↦ Moodboard, Teaser

 ― Lacuna ―

| ♡ ✕  ✰ ✏ | Law Students | Werewolf | Childhood friend to e2l |

→  Lacuna(n): (1) In law, a non liquet (commonly known as "lacuna in the law") is any situation where there is no applicable law. (2) An unfilled space or interval; a gap.

You are well equipped at handling whatever life throws at you. You had worked hard to erase the past and mold a new you, and the future were to become a lawyer. Well, everything was planned expect for your ex best friend who came back into your life like a crashing gavel. Just when you thought you could deal with his presence, he was now your partner on a case that was bigger than you had ever imaged.

    ↦  Teaser  ― NEWEST 

↳ Hoseok / J-Hope

   ― Sunflower ―

| ♡ ✰ ✕ ✓ | Tattoo Artist | Childhood friend | Dragon hybrid |

→ Growing up Hoseok was the one that brought you out from the shade and into the sun, his sunflower. As adults, will your relationship blossom into more than just friends?

      ↦ Moodboard;  Dividers

  ― Soleil Chaser ―

| ♡ ✰ ✏ | GOT | Dragon Rider | Pirate King |

→ Soleil was your dragon and the last remaining family you had. Hoseok, the Sun King of the Jade Sea, was a man every soul feared. He proposes a deal to you, join him or die trying. What will you choose?

    ▻ Parts: I. II. III [Final]

↳ Jimin

― The Last Light Keeper  ―  

| ♡✰ ✓ | Gargoyle | Light Spirit |

→  When everyone left the twin islands, you were left behind continuing to protect the light of the lighthouse. Across the way on the other island, folklore whispered about a gargoyle that protected the church, but don’t dare cross his path. However, what happens when your fates intertwine?

      ↦  Moodboard [Teaser 1], Moodboard [Teaser 2]

  ― Show Me Your Teeth ―

| ♡ ✰ ✕  ✏ |  Hybrid | FBI Agent |  

→ H.O.U.N.D, pronounced hound, is Hybrid Operation in United Negotiation of Defense, an allegiance of hybrids and federal officers. They were weapons breed for tactic and war. Special agent Y/L/N came back marked a failure after your secret last mission. Politics involved, you were to be assigned a Hound officer. What happens when the monster, Cerberus, gets assigned to you?

   ▻ One Shot. Two Shot [Final]

       ↦ Teaser

↳ Jungkook

  ― The Rabbit on the Moon ―

| ♡ ✰ ✕ ▼  ✓ | Police | Rabbit Hybrid | Single Parent |

→ Jungkook worked as an officer in the hybrid unit, to protect other hybrids. You were owned by a devil. What happens when the devil meets his match?

  ▻ Parts: I (M). II. III. IV. V. IV (M/Final)

     ↦ Moodboard. Dividers

  ― Opal Eyes of the White Fang ―

| ♡ ✰ ✏ |  Hogwarts | Dragon Hybrid|

→ Jungkook, a gentle giant and Gryffindor with a soft spot for Beast, Beings, and Spirits, is a Magizoologists that works for the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures in the Beasts Division. However, he doesn’t abide by the rules. What happens when a rumor unknowingly to him contained a beast beyond his imagination with opal eyes. What will he and the C.7.A do when the rumor goes deeper than they could’ve ever imaged?

 ▻ Parts: I. II. III. IV. V(Final)

    ↦ Moodboard [Teaser]

↳ Shownu

  ― At Your Service  ―

| ♡ ✰ ✕ ✓ | Hybrid |

→ Your Grandpa adopted him to keep the auto shop safe. He had to fulfill his vicious guard dog hybrid appeal, but he was putty in your hands. However, when an unexpected event happens you take ownership of Hyunwoo, your best friend…but when tensions build, will he want to stay with you?

↳ Jinyoung

  ― Business Affairs ―

| ♡  ✕ ✓ | E2L | Office |

→ When the unexpected happens and here you are hours away from home your professionalism is put to the test. Your longtime rival, Jinyoung, always shows up at your worst moments. What happens when the world seems to be against you and the only one you know is Jinyoung?

↳ Kyungsoo

  ― The Curse of the Egnatic ―

| ♡ ✰ ✕  ✏ | Mafia | Demon |

→ You moved away from your family, grandfather and mother, away from your hometown. The family business was ludicrous; it took your father. Now, it took someone else away from you. The past was calling you. You had to choose…to go back to the city or be cradled in the arms of the devil?

   ▻ Parts: I (M). II

  ― Fire Escape ―

→ Words of comfort when you feel alone

Updated: 11/18/2020

#masterlist #kpop #bts #monsta x #got7 #exo #bts scenarios #exo scenarios #monsta x scenarios #got7 scenarios #bts smut #bts angst #bts fluff #bts hybrid au #got7 hybrid au #bts imagine #bts suga #bts yoongi #bts rm #bts namjoon #bts jin #bts j-hope #bts taehyung #bts jungkook #bts jimin #got7 jinyoung

[coeurdastronaute]

Either/Or: Krypton

Supercorp AU where Krypton never exploded but Kara & Lena still meet & fall in love anyways. Whether Kara still ends coming to earth or Lena goes to Krypton.

It was the squint of light that finally reached her eyes that woke her, though she battled it tiredly, digging her head into her pillow. The long night mingled in her bones, making itself nice and cozy in the sheets of the bed, tangling up in her limbs and keeping her disinterested in leaving. Until she remembered.

With a start, a messy head of curls shot up, slightly dazed and confused at the quick movement, slow thoughts, and uncooperative limbs. A hand slapped her own eye as she misjudged distance and tried to rub it while the day woke well ahead of the body, so that even the normal morning song was already finished, further confusing the poor, hard working artist-in-training.

“I’m late,” she coughed to herself, still unable to move herself until her limbs caught up, and then surpassed her thoughts. “Rao no, not today. No no no nonononono.”

Books tumbled to the floor as legs knotted into themselves earning a body on the ground with a loud oomph. Kara pushed herself up, quickly shoving her papers and books together again, hoping that her newest transponder and tablet weren’t broken again as they all were put back onto the pile of her bed while she looked for pants.

She was a rarity, for her age. Done with her core schooling, and even past her testing, she was into her apprenticeship, which was very different than her friends. She got lost for hours in the Great Archives, while others trained with the Warriors or studied with the Thinkers, and whenever asked what she did, all she could say was that she looked for truth and purpose, though it was less tangible than calluses and experiments.

There were bruises though still.

“Clothes. I need clothes,” she muttered, frantically tugging at anything she could get her hands on until she was at least not completely naked. She did, however, in the process of getting dressed, knock over a pile of books, some instruments, and the astrolabe on her desk.

The clock told her she was so late it was going to be impossible to catch up, though that didn’t stop her from trying. Long legs leaped over her bed as she sprinted from one side of her room to the other, slamming into the door before opening it and continuing the marathon through the halls of her ancestral home.

It was in this way that she differed from others her age as well. While most left home, moved in with a group from their trade, or friends, Kara remained in the giant citadel that was her family home as was required by her name and lineage. It only made her trip into Argo City even more difficult though. On any other day, she loved her home. Today, when she needed to get downtown quickly, it was a prison.

No one remained at all, their dwelling silent. Her mother was gone for the day, her father, most likely left before her. It was maddening to even imagine they wouldn’t wake her. But still, Kara didn’t have time to think of her own mistakes. Instead, she tapped the button to the lift impatiently.

Her foot tapped as she slowly descended until she prepared herself a few floors before the end, ready to take off once they doors opened again.

The Loop was the quickest method of travel, and it still felt like a million years. As soon as her feet touched ground at the closest station downtown, she didn’t breathe. Like that, she was gone as soon as it opened, weaving her way through the streets toward the transportation, hoping she could make up any sort of already lost time.

Her mother was going to kill her, surely.

“I’m sorry!” she yelped, barely dodging a neighbor. “I’m late. Hello, Jran Shara. Apologies,” she bowed her head and slowed, showing the utmost respect she could in her frantic state to the bespeckled, elderly woman who worked with her mother. “Lovely day today.”

Not kill her, but definitely give her that exasperated sigh and look. But it wasn’t Kara’s fault other than it being completely her fault. She didn’t really have time for the ambassadorship program. She didn’t feel the need to spend her time with some aliens from Earth on an anthropological and political excursion. In just six lorakh she would finish her apprenticeship in the archives, and the final part of her studies was exhaustively complete. But Kara would support her mother and father because it was not just expected, but rather something that she believed in more than anything. That duty, the honor of their deeds.

“And that is the true purpose of everything we strive to accomplish,” Kara’s mother addressed the crowd formed to welcome the first ship from Earth. “We seek to welcome these ambassadors and accomplish a peace between our worlds. For while the universe is vast and dark, there is light in the form of our friendships, holding hands across the infinite expanse. We can learn so much from new cultures, and it is in this that I am overjoyed to welcome the team from Earth.”

Applause rang out in a steady wave as Kara clapped and wiggled through the crowds toward her father on the side of the stage.

“As we once descended from great explorers and minds, all of which created our beautiful home and discovered our planet, we now endeavor to become like them once again, open in our minds and hearts to the unlimited potential that rests within every species.”

“You nearly missed it,” her father smiled without taking his eyes off of his wife.

“I know. I’m sorry,” she grumbled, catching her breath. “My alarm didn’t go off, and I was up late in the Archives. Did she notice?”

As if she heard them amidst the clamor, the leader of the law council gave a small smile to her family at the edge of the crowd.

“I told her you were here somewhere,” he grinned conspiratorially before putting his arm around his daughter as she hugged his side. “Come on, let’s go. Just tell her you were preparing our home for our guest.”

“Wait, one is staying with us?” Kara furrowed at the news.

“I thought I told you…” Zor-El wondered to himself. “You’ve been so busy lately, out in the world. I’m sure I told you.”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Right, well. You won’t notice. We have plenty of room and she’ll be working with me, mostly.”

Before Kara could argue the point, she felt her feet carry her toward her mother. It wouldn’t matter anyway. It seemed oddly natural that they would host someone, with her mother spearheading this plan for expanding their network. Kara almost kicked herself for not considering it until that moment.

“Great speech, Mom,” she smiled as Alura hugged her.

“The part you caught, right?”

“Yes, that part especially.” Kara blushed slightly, offering a furtive grin.

“I was just telling our daughter about the new addition to our family,” Zor-El supplied as he kissed his wife’s temple. “It seems I forgot.”

“I know you’re busy,” her mother tried. “And I wouldn’t ask you to take time away from your studies. You won’t--”

“It’s fine, I promise,” Kara cut her off quickly. “I’m excited. This is a huge day for our people and this will be great.”

“Come on then. Let’s go take those last few steps toward progress, shall we?”

“I’m actually late for the Archives. Pal-Kann has assignments for me.”

The parents shared a look until her father nodded. Her mother squeezed her arm and smiled fondly.

“Work well. Learn everything.”

They touched foreheads and Kara smiled broadly before sprinting off.

“Do you ever remember a moment when she walked?” Alura sighed.

“Not at all.”

Never before in the history of words had overwhelmed felt so fitting and encompassing of a feeling. It took two months of travelling to meet the new sister world. It took twelve years of diplomacy to even create the trip and expand each other’s culture. But still, even with the two years spent preparing, Lena Luthor felt largely out of her element and exceedingly dazzled by everything she saw.

How could she not be blown away by the society presented? How could she not be mesmerized and intrigued by the world that stretched higher than she’d ever imagined, and more advanced than humanly possible? It was her own Christmas, but better.

And it was a miracle she even got to make the trip.

Younger by almost twenty years to the other youngest members of the exchange crew, she earned her spot by being the most brilliant mind the collective universities and powers to be could find. While there were physicists and astronomers, and engineers and doctors, she was not just the science, she was the tech wizard, the genius that her father promised and had a heavy hand in getting  seat.

But it was supposed to be her brother, though as Lionel’s favorite, Lena won out over his duty to their family’s company. She saw how much it hurt him, and though she tried to offer it to him, an act that actually hurt, no matter how much she tried to convince herself that selflessness was a virtue, he respected his father’s wishes and let her keep it.

And at the moment, standing in the streets of the capital of an advanced alien planet, Lena wanted to show him so badly while at the same time, already had a thousand questions of her hosts, forgetting her brother entirety.

Slowly, the groups were formed as hosts were introduced to their exchanges. Lena waited for her’s, the noble house of El, an esteemed, ancient family with a knack for diplomacy and technology. She was grateful for the placement, excited to work with Zor-El, the head of a research group, though her father urged her to shadow Alura, the somewhat political leader of the planet.

Lena just wanted to know what fuel they used for the ships.

“Lena of the House of Luthor?”

“Yes, yes, hello,” she snapped back from marvelling at the skyline and every single thing that existed.

She was met with two of the most beautiful, smiling, angelic faces she’d ever seen, both beaming at her kindly, welcoming her. The man, tall, slender faced with a bushy black beard and warm brown eyes waited for her to catch her wits. The blonde, blue eyed woman couldn’t.

“We are so happy to hear of your safe arrival. It is a pleasure to meet you.”

“It is an honor to be here with you,” Lena smiled and nodded, bowing as she was instructed per their liaison. “Zor-El, Alura.”

“Your travels were nice?”

“They were. Your city is…” she looked around again and felt as if her lungs were filled to dangerous capacity. “Its one of the most magnificent things I have ever seen.”

“We have many things to show you, but we thought today we would allow you to adjust,” the husband explained while she continued to look around, eyes wide and searching. “Your things are on the way to our home already. Perhaps a stroll and small tour. I’m sure you will want to stretch your legs after two months in a confined space.”

“I’m not keeping you from your work, am I? “

“No, no,” Alura promised, wrapping her arm around Lena’s as she began to guide her. “We have been planning this for many years. We want you to learn from us as we will learn from you, therefore we are more lenient about time when it comes to those housing guests.”

“If you’re sure.”

“I’ll message our daughter to be home at a good hour,” Zor-El excused himself to the side as he messaged somehow. “And now we can begin. Welcome to Krypton, Lena of House of Luthor.”

There was never a shortage of reading material while she worked on finishing her work in the Archives. Tasked with keeping the history of their world, tasked with helping all of the guilds with their research, tasked with creating the past and helping the future, Kara was constantly behind in reading and learning.

Normally, she didn’t get back until much later. Just something about losing track of time kept her on a weird schedule. But she had obligations, and so she made it back with her arms full of more books, more assignments.

Normally, the house was quiet. From time to time, friends and even her aunt might stop by for a dinner or game night. Sometimes there were associates who visited and who brought their families. But most of the time, the House of El was quiet. Not lonely, not sullen, not scary, but rather just a happy kind of solitude.

But it wasn’t a normal day, and as Kara dropped her books on a table as she walked through their home, she didn’t have to strain her ears much to hear the laughter and talking coming from outside. It was a familiar sound that she hadn’t missed until she heard it again, one that was all memories of long nights and fun parties with good friends and family

The doors were open, the windows all smelled like the flowers out on the edge of their land, the oldest plot of land on their planet, owned by the family since the beginning of time, since the beginning of the history as they all knew it. It was the honor of their house to be known as a home to thinkers and talkers alike. Kara had a pride in their ability to converse and bring together so many unique people in its history. Tonight was no different, and perhaps one of the most important yet.

“So you use finite resources to propel all manner of transportation and infrastructure?”

“Yes.”

“But how will that affect the composition of the planet?”

“Badly.” They laughed as Kara finally snuck out to meet them. “There are large movements to use renewable resources, but convenience is paramount.”

“In all of my studies of humans, I’ve found that pragmatism is often at a loss to the selfish interests of the few,” her father waxed. “How do you combat that? Or can you?”

“I can’t say that my father isn’t one of them. Money and power often interrupt the idea of the future.”

“But you already have a grasp on such advanced theories and problems.”

“I’m trying,” she smiled politely. “Hopefully I can find a balance to make evolution a little less painful.”

“Oh, Kara! Honey, hello,” her mother greeted, the first to spot her lurking and listening. “You made it home early.”

“Wouldn’t want to miss our guest’s first night.”

She kissed her mother’s cheek and earned a smile from her father. That was the last thing she remembered doing, because then she looked at the guest and she was certain all words kind of didn’t make words any longer. Letters existed and she had a few, both her common language and the six she’d picked up throughout her studies all smashed together to create untranslatable feelings.

Her clothes were foreign, her look was… she wasn’t Kryptonian. Her eyes were this deep green, evident even in the light of the evening sky. Kara wasn’t sure she’d ever seen someone who looked like that, nor was she certain that someone made her heart skip in an instant.

“This is Lena Luthor. Just Luthor. No house,” her father explained. “I’ve already learned a lot about their social structure.”

Kara grinned at how excited he was to learn new things. She was certain that he probably bombarded her with questions. She had about a thousand to ask as well, though none came to mind in that instant.

“Kara,” she held out her hand as she’d read was custom. “It’s nice to meet you, Lena.”

“Your parents have told me a lot about you,” she smiled and Kara was a goner.

It wasn’t uncommon to see other people often. She was young, and they had parties and she saw people in a sometimes romantic way. She’d never seen anyone or looked at anyone like how she must have been looking at this alien.

“I’m sorry I’m late.”

“I was just answering a few questions. And asking a few, if I’m being honest.”

“It sounds like you two will grow bored after just a few days.”

“I don’t think I could run out of questions here,” she laughed and watched as Kara sat across from her. “I don’t know if you did this, but kids, back on Earth, they ask so many questions that it’s maddening. Why is the sky blue? Where does the garbage go? Do trees have feelings?”

“Do they?” Kara asked eagerly.

“Some trees have roots that are thousands of feet long and connect each other across large distances. I don’t know if they feel, but they must.”

“Good. I like that.”

“I feel like a child again, now that I’m here,” Lena explained. “I want to know how cars go and why the sky is this color.”

That was it. One minute, and Kara was mesmerized. She was absolutely taken with the stranger and she didn’t even realize how gone she was. But even after she finished talking, Kara stared and waited for more words, until her father cleared his throat.

“Kara is training to take over the Archives. It’s a coveted position,” Alura explained as she motioned for Lena to take a seat once again.

“Though she has the brain for the thinking guild,” her father sighed, one of the great tragedies of his rather perfect life.

For years, his daughter shadowed him, showed a knack for thinking, for science, for theory, for experimentation, and yet, when she was selected for the position, one that any parent would have been amazed to see, he felt a pang of loss. She wasn’t his any longer. Now, she belonged to their city and their past.

“The Archives? What does that mean?”

“They explained the guilds?” Kara asked, sitting back and stealing a bit of food from the plates between them. She watched Lena nod. “My mother is a Mediator, devoted to law. My father is a thinker, devoted to the sciences. I am an Archivist, devoted to all.”

“All of the guilds?” Lena furrowed.

“There are twelve of us. One in each of the cities. It’s… it’s complicated. But I can show you one day. For now, it just means that I study and learn and collect.”

“I’d love that.”

“It appears I'm outnumbered even more,” her father grinned and drank his wine.

From across the porch, Kara smiled at him before making the fatal mistake of looking back at Lena of house Luthor, and she was gone once again. She’d read thousands of books. She’d spent hours observing the clouds and calculating the stars and documenting their stories, and yet she’d never, in all of her time, in all of history, in all of the shared consciousness of her race, noted anything like the feeling she got when she looked at the stranger.

She would consult the Archives in the morning, she decided as she stole another treat though her mother gave her a look for not sharing well enough. She would look in the compiled histories for what it could mean to be intrigued and absolutely mesmerized by someone who hadn’t said twenty words.

By far, the biggest surprise of her arrival to Krypton had not been the technology or the beauty of it, nor was it the kindness of the people or the graciousness to which they enacted to welcome their guests. The biggest surprise was how many times Kara could stumble and stutter and wave her hands while she spoke passionately about things, while everyone else seemed so effortlessly graceful and precise. She somehow managed to find the one Kryptonian that was so very human it was almost endearing.

As the evening set in, as the wine was shared and the delicious treats were passed, as topics were debated and discussed, Lena found herself often looking toward the girl who had a shy grin and an air of almost whimsy about her ideas. She was everything Lena never imagined one person to hold within themselves, and that was just after a few hours. Hair wild, skin of her shoulders on display, the delicate bones of her collar precise and even, eyes deep brown, chin cleft and regal, she was perfection, plain and simple.

“It is getting late,” Zor-El realized as he saw Lena attempt to stifle another yawn. She smiled politely though through it. “We have been rude to keep you up after your trip.”

“I’m sure this is a lot to process,” Alura agreed. “And we have tried to solve the entire galaxy’s problems in one night and two bottles of wine.”

“A noble effort,” Lena chuckled.

“Kara, could you show Lena to her rooms?” the mother asked, earning a little jump. “We’ll clean up.”

“Oh, yes. Yeah, I could do that,” she nodded and stood quickly.

Lena couldn’t help but smile. Something about Kara was just so… good. She felt like sunshine. She reminded her of those little puppies in the pet store window that her father would never let her have despite pleading with him for months leading up to her birthday and Christmas. Kara was the perfect little cocker spaniel with her paws pressed against the window, and the thought made Lena warm.

But she blamed it on the wine and the long day and the inability of her brain to process all that had happened.

“Thank you for having me,” Lena offered to the parents. “I know that this is an act of faith between our worlds, and I am deeply humbled and honored to be here.”

“It’s our pleasure to have you,” the father bowed slightly.

“You are so full of hope,” Alura smiled and held Lena’s shoulders, a move that scared her slightly, though she did not show it. “Go rest. Tomorrow your universe gets much larger.”

With the nods and thanks, Lena waited as the family spoke in their language before she finally followed her guide from the back and into the house that she barely got to see before being whisked outside to be swept off of her feet by the hospitality presented to her.

Though she wanted to take it all in, she didn’t have the brainpower to learn anything else, and she certainly was devoting more than she’d admit to thinking of something to say to the girl who appeared and made her feel at ease.

Instead of words, she just followed dumbly.

A few steps ahead of her, Kara racked her brain for some kind of combination of words that would sound clever and interesting, though she came up with absolutely nothing, and so she gave up in favor of just any words to fill the quiet.

“Our home is the oldest on the planet. It started smaller, but grew and was remodeled after the third war,” she explained as the ascended a staircase. “My parents usually host guests of honor for that reason. And all of our family are welcome here at anytime. Not that you’re not a guest of honor. I mean. You are. Usually meant we have in the past.”

“I get it,” Lena promised. “This place is beautiful.”

“I’ll make sure to give you a proper tour in the daylight. We have you in the second tower. It will have everything you need and the view in the morning is beautiful. You can see the city twinkling as the sun rises.”

“It sounds spectacular.”

“If you do need anything,” she paused. “I’m not far. In fact. This is, uh, my room,” Kara opened the door and remembered the state she left it in after her sprint of the morning. “Nothing interesting in there.”

“Could I look, still?”

“Oh, yeah, um, sure.”

Idiot, Kara berated herself. She wasn’t sure why she agreed, except she did and it was too late.

Kara stood in the door and watched Lena take tentative steps forward before she stopped and simply started to look. The inhabitant couldn’t remember the last time she truly scrutinized her own room, and now it felt oddly embarrassing.

The bed was unmade. The windows were wide open, allowing the chill of the night to creep in through the breeze that seemed perpetual so far from the city. The shelves were full of trinkets while the floor was stacked with books. The large computer desk in the corner glowed only slightly, but still made itself known. Kara watched Lena pick up a book from the ground and trace her hand along the page before picking up another.

“It’s amazing how similar some things are to us.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your room looks like my workshop,” Lena turned and smiled. “Could you tell me why you have paper books and why one of them is a poetry anthology?”

“The Archives houses all knowledge. It is an old artform, but it is our job to guard all knowledge accumulated, even those that have been forgotten,” Kara shrugged, hurriedly grabbing both books. “And I thought it was important to learn of your culture. These are done in a way I’m not familiar. No one knows them and can decipher them. They don’t make sense, but they feel nice.”

“That’s exactly what a poem is.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s a feeling. Metaphor. Symbolism. I don’t read much of them. Barely have time to read research let alone for pleasure,” she smiled and finally looked back at Kara from the books that’d been taken. “I’m sure it’s like your fiction or stories.”

“I will research those tomorrow,” Kara decided, gazing down at the words in her hand as she felt heavy under Lena’s glance. “Perhaps you can help me?”

“I don’t know how good I’d be at it. I’m more of a science person.”

“You have a different guild who could help me?”

“No. Well, kind of. But… Can we try to have this conversation again in the morning?” she chuckled. “I should think of a better way to explain it all.”

“You’re doing fine,” Kara pressed eagerly, wanting more information.

“Sometimes we refer to how people think by their chosen profession. So when I said I might not be good at it, I just meant my brain thinks a certain way that might not be good at poems.”

“Can’t you do both?”

“I suppose I can, we just don’t. Or rather, I don’t.”

“One of my favorite writers of stories here is a Laborer. He does both.”

“Yes, we can do both. I just meant me, personally.”

“You are a science brain?” Kara furrowed. “Perhaps you can just read it in a different way?”

“I’ll try,” Lena promised with a deep breath. “I hope every conversation doesn’t feel this hard. My brain might explode.”

“Oh Rao! Does that happen often?”

“No,” she shook her head and chuckled to herself. “Not often.”

From the door, Kara nodded deeply before tossing the books onto her bed with a renewed interest in one of them. She scratched her neck and shifted her weight awkwardly.

“Should I show you your room?” she tried. “It’s not far. I just wanted you to not feel far.”

“Yes, please.”

“Just around the corner,” Kara promised, leading the way once again. “If you  need anything, please find me. I’ll do whatever I can for you, Lena.”

“Thank you.”

“This is you,” she paused and opened the door down another hall. “I won’t distract you any longer.”

“They weren’t bad distractions.”

“Tomorrow, I make no promises.”

Both grinned at each other and stayed there longer than normal, longer than cordial, until it grew awkward with the realization that so much time had passed.

“Goodnight, Kara. Thank you.”

“Goodnight, Lena.”

For a full minute once the door was closed, Lena stood in the middle of her new home for the next year, and she felt dizzy with the idea that she was going to one day have to leave.

[likeshipsonthesea]

Ooby Dooby (1/?)

[1] [2]

Inspired by this because I just couldn’t not. The title is from the Wiggles, because Fruit Salad is my jam.

*~*~*

As he sits on a park bench at eight forty-two in the morning, sipping horrible coffee and watching as two toddlers systemically undress a Barbie doll in a sandbox while their mothers gossip about some woman named Susan five feet away, Nursey regrets every decision he ever made. Okay, not every decision, but one decision specifically; his decision to take Lardo up on her bet during their game of flip cup last week.

See, the problem is that Drunk Nursey (an entity deserving of its own capitals) is far more confident than Regular Nursey is on a daily basis. Which means, unfortunately for Nursey’s general wellbeing, that when Drunk Nursey is in control, it usually leads to a further drunken Nursey and also horribly overconfident decisions. So Nursey accepted Lardo’s challenge to a game of flip cup (horrible decision number one) and then, after losing twice, accepted the bet Lardo proposed; if he won, she’d make the cover art for his next novel, but if she won, he had to write a children’s book for her to illustrate.

Neither of them were particularly invested in children’s literature, but Lardo had been itching to do something new since her last gallery opening. Sadly all of the stories she came up with were fairly unimaginative, the best of them being a story about a little girl losing a shoe and realizing in the end that it wasn’t the shoe she had gained, but the friends she made along the way. So yeah, she wanted help.

And Nursey, of course, lost terribly and then proceeded to sign a napkin stating that he couldn’t reneg on his offer, which Shitty got notarized through some definitely sketchy means, so now Nursey was at a children’s park at eight in the morning on a Saturday because he hadn’t had experience with a child since he was one, and he’s pretty sure the nineties was a hundred years ago, kid-wise, and he has no idea what kind of book a child would like to read.

He was half-expecting some indignant mother to come up to him and accuse him of being a pedo or something when something big and fast hits him in the head and knocks the living beejesus out of him.

His coffee, which was shit to begin with because apparently no one thought to start up a good coffee shop near where exhausted parents hang out (really poor decision making on Starbucks’ part), goes everywhere, including Nursey’s pants, leaving a giant brownish stain surrounding the crotch, which implies a confusing mix of pissing and shitting himself at the same time.

“Shit,” he hears someone say, and he’s about to wholeheartedly agree when he looks up and sees the most beautiful lumberjack he’s ever seen in his life. The man, who Nursey can only assume is the lovechild of Aphrodite and Hephaestus who got the best of both worlds from his parents’ genes, has a grimace on his face, holding a blue rubber ball in one hand and a child in his other.

Oh sweet lord who thought it was okay to give this man a child? Nursey thinks helplessly, watching as the wind blows at the man’s gorgeous, soft looking orange hair, ruffling it prettily. He’s got on a red flannel, a t-shirt on under that, and a tan leather jacket over the whole thing that looks worn and soft and Nursey wants to live inside this man’s jacket, what the fuck.

“Are you okay?” the man asks, and Nursey wants to tell him no, no I am not, I just realized that actual mythical beings live among us and I need to sit down for a second, but he doesn’t say that because he has been walking around and talking to people for about twenty four years now, and if that’s taught him anything, you cannot disclose your belief in the supernatural during a first meeting. (He takes a moment to mourn that one date back in sophomore year of college where he rambled on about ghosts for forty minutes and then, when he asked the girl out again via text, she’d just sent back the ghost emoji and a thumbs down. Nursey shakes his head; so harsh.)

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Nursey says. Then he realizes that no, hot coffee in your nether regions doesn’t really put you in the Fine column, but chooses not to correct himself. Hot Lumberjack Father already looks so upset, and Nursey thinks he’s probably about to be arrested for violating the Geneva Convention just by putting that frown on Hot Lumberjack Father’s face.

“I can reimburse you for the dry-cleaning,” the man says, which Nursey almost laughs at because he’s wearing jeans, not a three-piece suit.

“It’s fine, man, they’re just jeans.” He shrugs, frowning down at himself a little because the coffee’s getting cold. “I’ll just put them in the wash.”

“Oh, yeah, sorry.” Hot Lumberjack Father rubs at the back of his neck, sheepish, as the adorable child in his arms has taken the ball from him. The child, Nursey realizes, is obviously HLF’s son (he decides then that he needs an initialism or he’s just be saying Hot Lumberjack Father in his head, which is too many syllables and will take time away from staring at HLF’s face and sighing) as he’s got the same color hair, the same nose, and the same adorable smattering of freckles all over his face. The kid, it seems, is also three seconds from crying.

“Hurt?” the kid asks, whimpering a little, and HLF curses again, softly.

“No, no, Parker, it’s fine, you didn’t hurt him.” It’s instant, HLF turns all of his attention to his kid, bouncing a little instinctively and murmuring soft noises, and Nursey already wants to marry this man just so he can watch him soothe children on a daily basis.

“It’s fine, little dude,” Nursey says, grinning at the kid, Parker, in a way he hopes is charming and not going to get him arrested. “I needed a shower anyway.”

Parker blinks slowly and he’s got the same pretty eyes as his dad does (which Nursey means in a non-creepy, totally factual way) and his lip wobbles. “Weally?” he asks, and fuck it, both HLF and his son have stolen Nursey’s heart, mind, and soul, he is done, he can lie down on the ground and die now because this is everything he will ever need to see.

“Of course,” Nursey says, brightly despite his inner utter collapse of everything he ever thought he knew. “Look at these jeans, they’ve got holes in them.” Nursey adopts a solemn expression. “You’ve done me a big favor, really. Now I can go buy new ones.”

Parker looks hesitant for a moment before smiling shyly, which makes his father sigh in relief, and Nursey is inordinately proud of himself for causing it. “Shopping good,” he says after a moment. “Spidaman.”

HLF waves his free hand haphazardly. “We went shopping the other day,” he explains, “and he got Spiderman pajamas. I think he loves them more than me.” The man rolls his eyes (and Nursey is like three seconds away from telling HLF that Nursey can love him enough for the whole world which is way too much) and adjusts Parker on his hip.

“I hear that. I got a Captain America t-shirt a few months back and it’s the best thing I’ve ever bought.” Nursey is delighted when Parker, and therefore his father, lights up at the mention of Captain America. Which is how he ends up in a half-hour conversation with a two year old about Civil War, which is mostly the both of them agreeing and raving about Sam Wilson, so that’s awesome.

Eventually, as toddlers are wont to do, Parker gets distracted and toddles off towards the sandbox, leaving Nursey alone with HLF (who introduced himself as Dex when there was a break in the conversation. “Hockey nickname,” he’d explained, and Nursey wondered where he could get an engagement ring close by.)

“He doesn’t usually like strangers,” Dex says, watching his son with a practiced ease while still kind of looking at Nursey. He smiles, though, and looks at Nursey fully for a full moment. “You must be special.”

“I like kids,” Nursey manages to get out between internally combusting and thanking Drunk Nursey for getting him into this situation. He doesn’t give Drunk Nursey nearly enough credit sometimes.

Dex’s eyebrows go up just slightly. “You have any?” he asks, and Nursey realizes that sitting on a park bench on a Saturday morning, watching children play, is so exceedingly creepy when you don’t actually have a kid of your own. And he can’t just explain that he’s only here because his drunk self makes horrible decisions, not if he doesn’t want Dex to pick up his son and run away horrified, and Nursey is just about to panic when his mouth somehow gains control without his knowing and answers for him.

“Yeah, he’s about Parker’s age.” What the fuck.

“Oh.” Dex smiles and looks towards the playground. “Which one is yours?”

“He’s not here,” Nursey gets out quickly before his mouth can fuck him over again and point to any random kid out here to claim as his own. He doesn’t care how gorgeous Dex is, he isn’t going to go pick up a random child and risk getting his name on some list just to earn Dex’s affection. “He’s with his mom,” he says, thanking the Lord that he is a writer and can make up fairly good bullshit on the spot. “It’s her weekend.” As an afterthought, he adds, “I missed the noise.”

Dex’s expression goes soft and understanding, and holy fuck Nursey is taking advantage of a young father almost exclusively because he can actually see Dex’s arm definition through three layers of fabric. He is going to hell. “Yeah, I get that.” He looks over at Parker, who is now smiling happily at a handful of sand. “Whenever he stays with my parents I go out of my mind missing him.”

“His mom doesn’t keep you company?” Nursey thought he was hella smooth, inquiring after Dex’s singleness like that, but then Dex’s expression kind of crumbles and Nursey hisses idiot silently to himself.

“Parker’s mom doesn’t really want anything to do with us,” he says, his eyes darkening.

Nursey panics, trying to think of a way to salvage this (which, he’s already fucked, he made up a fictitious child, he isn’t going to save this unless can impregnate a woman like two years ago and/or steal a child, which, nah) and he says, “Her loss, then,” with as much earnest emphasis as he can manage.

Dex looks back at him, his expression turning lighter, considering, as he looks at Nursey. Nursey hopes he’s thinking something along the lines of “You’re really cute and good with my son and I’ll totally forgive you for making up the existence of a human being because I can tell you give good head” but is probably actually “This guy is weird and I should probably get Parker out of here before we end up on the news”.

Dex surprises him, however, because he says, “We have to get going- I have a shift I can’t miss and I need to drop him off at my sister’s beforehand- but we should meet up sometime. Maybe have a playdate?” Dex looks so beautiful, so carefully hopeful like he knows Nursey is going to turn him down, and, look. Really, Nursey is about to turn him down, something about being too busy or how his kid is allergic to the sun (he doesn’t fucking know) but then Dex says, “Parker doesn’t really have any friends his age and it’d be nice if- well, it’d be nice.” And then he smiles, soft and kind and all gorgeous and shit, and come on, you can’t expect Nursey to have that much self control (see: how he got in this situation in the first place).

So he says yes. He gives Dex his number and Dex texts him and then Dex is in his phone, beautifully, godlike, lumberjack, hockey-playing Dex, and Nursey only just manages to keep himself from caressing the screen in front of Dex. Dex calls Parker back over and picks him up again, and they both wave bye with the best matching grins on their faces, and Nursey watches them leave, sighing, because he hadn’t even been thinking about his future beyond this stupid children’s book an hour ago but now he knows, knows, that Dex and Parker are all he wants in his life.

When father and son are finally out of his sight, Nursey makes a group chat on his phone with everyone his knows and trusts (so, like, Shitty, Lardo, and Ransom and Holster, and then he adds Jack for good measure). He sends one message

Nursey to All

anyone know where I can get a toddler?

#nurseydex #dexnursey #derek nurse #nursey #check please #william poindexter #dex #kid fic #ficlet #my writing #i love that tweet okay #and i guess i'm in a writing mood lately #it's better than homework at least

[redheadwriterboy-blog]

Message to Hank Gilbert2020

Retyping this as I was told the microsoft email system wasn't working, hopefully I will have far less spelling mistakes and far better tact in wording myself

Hank, first off let me say how happy I am that someone is running against Louis and no matter what, you will have my vote, I am a 25 year old leftist who has voted democrat since I was able to vote.

There are things however that I do wish to talk about. In 1964, LBJ declared war on poverty, he envisioned a nation where the government used its power given by the people to give back and help the people, the Great Society. A president from our state was able to do all that he did. I bring that up because from what I've read, you describe yourself as a conservative democrat like LBJ. Building a great society is not fiscally conservative, nor is it morally conservative. It is progressive,and that is how I believe you will win the election.

Prior to Bill Clinton's presidency, countless Democratic presidents spoke in favor of single payer healthcare, beliefs from FDR to JFK to LBJ. Proud history and proud tradition of that. You do not state the type of medical reform you want, but I believe you want a public option. My question is, what about when the public option isn't fully funded as it should be, what about when private insurance companies kick off or don't cover the ill or disabled. That matters because when the risk pool is spread far and covering everyone,the healthy and the sick, costs can be kept down, like with auto insurance everyone is required to have it, even if you've never been in an accident (I can say I never have in my 11 years of driving). We could see a public option that is flooded and unable to hold itself up, and people will use that as a means to tear the public option that you want away. Another issue with a public option is it doesn't give the government enough power to negotiate costs. We pay the highest for medicine, because the government is unable to negotiate with the businesses on how much they can charge.When the government is the only negotiator for the people, then will things be able to get fixed. Otherwise we will have similar issues to what we are facing today. Another thing is that we Americans love choice. We love being able to go to Walmart and pick from the 500 different types of mac&cheese brands our favorites, under the current system we have for medical insurance, we have few choices. Certain doctors don't take certain insurances, certain hospitals are in network or out, one has to navigate that confusing web, one hospital might be in network but a doctor might not be in network, some places take the current Medicare, some don't. Will that not be any different under a public option system? With a single payer system, one that allows private doctors and hospitals to operate while the government is the only one providing insurance, people can go to any place they like to! It would also reduce the overhead costs hospitals have to have with negotiating pricing with hundreds of different insurances and having billers who have to use a million different codes for the same procedure depending on the countless factors each individual person presents. I know this from experience not only from being personal friends with administrative workers at the hospital I'm employed at, but also from training when I had a brief want to work at an insurance company. We simply must turn healthcare from a system that only cares about business, to a system that cares about improving peoples lives, especially in a nation that has been ranking horribly in terms of service and outcome. Even if you don't want a federal single payer system, then let each state have its own single payer system, look at the UK, the English healthcare system is horrible because its been gutted and underfunded by politicians who treated it as a business,but Scotland's healthcare system outperforms the English because they didn't gut it,they were able to protect theirs. (think of Scotland and England as two states in the same country cos that's basically what they are). Still want to keep private insurance? Then let them only offer small insurance for things the single payer system wont cover, like botox or nose jobs. We pay so much in taxes to Medicare and Medicaid already, on top of having to pay premiums,copays, out of pocket, in network, out of network, and then the next year comes and its all reset. We pay so much in terms of medical costs,which are basically private taxes, but would pay less on average in terms of all costs with a single payer system.

My second thing is higher education costs. Why. We have free education until 12th grade, but we're so wrapped in this notion of paying anything for university. Even if costs were reduced and programs changed to pay for it, there would still be a tuitional cost to students. None of that makes sense to me, especially in this modern age when higher education is something needed for all the advanced jobs appearing left and right,we're seeing other nations that do have free university pass us in every way. Why does it have to stay the way it is.

In the plan to reduce student debt, you say you want to go further than other democrats in congress, but you do not go far enough and should understand why that is said. Look at who we have in the white house, this man didn't get there by magic, he saw what people felt and used it, he was a fake populist, he made himself seem like an outsider (which he isn't), people saw how a decade of a centrist president(Obama), an oil oligarch, and another centrist before that were moving towards the right, moving away from democracy and away from giving the money to the people and towards pocketing it for themselves or giving it to big businesses that almost collapsed the national economy, he promised them the ability to eat. Hank you don't win by going half way when people are having huge issues, you put on your gloves and go all the way on being a democrat, on being progressive. Democrats win when they appeal not only to other democrats, but to the working class poor republicans who eat up everything some big wig sells them even if it is against their better interests. Because look who was running against trump in 2016, a centrist democrat who was more of the same,who didn't jump onto the narrative of people suffering. Look,fox news and republicans and the like are going to demonize you no matter what, if you make enough noise and a big enough splash in this race, they'll go after you even for the proposals you have that you view as conservative. You win by taking their base from under them and get them to see that you care about them and how proposals will push past the same old same old,you lay it out and explain why and how it will. Everyone is a mashup of needs and wants, you find what it is and use it, republicans do that and help themselves only, democrats need to see it and help the people. And yes, I know these "Free" programs aren't free, someone will pay for them. But, why don't we say the same thing when the US goes into illegal and offensive wars? When we spend an insane sum of money bombing and drone striking and destabilizing other nations, only then having to spend more money on terrorist fundamentalist groups the US creates from its invasions. Why don't we ask the same question on how will things be paid for when we give financial aid to governments who commit human rights violations? Why don't we ask the same questions when we bail out businesses that dug us into a recession, or when we allow the rich to hoard an ungodly amount of wealth. Hank, this battle is no longer the right vs left, big government vs small government. The republicans speak of wanting a small government and we really know they mean they want a giant government that works for the big businesses, money isn't created out of no where nor is its worth and the items sold defined out of no where, they rely on a big government to define what is capital, they rely on the big government's laws to enforce their ownership of the resources the big businesses use, they rely on a big government to disrupt other nations who's interest go against their bottom line. No, the real battle on the left vs right boils down to democracy and feudalism. We revolted against the British when they wouldn't give us a say or benefits from the government we were being taxed into, why should we democrats sit politically and allow the same thing to happen from republicans in congress? We have enough resources to do these great works, that isn't the issue, the issue is how they are used, to quote Charlie Chaplin

"this world has room for everyone, and the good Earth is rich can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed."

this last paragraph is less policy and more on why I think what I do, so it wont be as worded well and structured as above. These issues are very important to me, when I was attending college, I had to drop out. I was working 60 hours a week, and going to college full time, I just turned 18, I tried to stay in as long as I could, I couldn't. I just stopped going to university because I needed to focus on affording to keep a roof over my head, I'm from Dallas I should add, where the housing and cost of living is insane compared to Tyler. I have always believed in hard work, I never ask anyone for anything I can get on my own, I'm stubborn enough that when I didn't have a my own car (when my family had to share one car and if someone else was at work when I needed to get home, oh well) I would walk over four miles to work, and four miles to get home from work. My paternal grandma worked her entire life as a nurse, a single mother because my grandpa died when my dad was 6 years old, she worked her entire life to take care of her kids, and never asked for help, but gave nonstop to the less fortunate,any stranger who needed food or money or a ride,anything, because she believed that as people we are here to help each other. She passed away in 2009, November 27th. She had health insurance from working as a nurse her whole life, she also received help because the cancer that got her was caused by chemicals her dad used (asbestos) when serving in the navy in ww2,she also had help from the government because her husband that died was in the air force. All of that taught me 1) how important believing in hard work is and 2) how important the government is to be ruled by the will of the people, to provide for the people, to invest in the lives and care of the people it serves. So I said how I was from Dallas, but I was born in small east TX two hours away from Dallas,we moved to Dallas when I was 2, and would go back to there every summer to be with family. I learned southern values that involve being there for each other, providing for each other, helping each other, caring for each other, pooling what you have together for each other. Those same values are what need to be reflected in a single payer healthcare system. These values of hard work and doing things by the want of the community and running the big greedy banker and the corrupt politician lining their own pockets out of town. The republicans think they have a monopoly on southern values, but they don't, southern values line up with what progressive democratic values should be. No matter someone's race or religion or orientation or history, Y'all really does mean all.

[enddaysengine]

Exploring the Manifest Zone - Dragonmarked Houses (Eberron)

Let’s keep playing catchup! Here we have Manifest Zone Episode 3 - The Dragonmarked Houses. This is commentary on a podcast, so I strongly suggest your listen to the podcast first:

https://manifest.zone/03-dragonmarks-and-dragonmarked-houses/

The Draconic Prophecy is one of my favourite parts of Eberron since it neatly solves the typical issue of prophecy in RPGs by being dynamic and ever changing. The way that the Dragonmarks play into that is fascinating, both from a world design and a GMing perspective. The latter is easy to explain, if you have more than one PC with a Dragonmark, anyway in which they interact with each other has the potential to be prophetic. Now you have an excuse to have any number of creatures from dragons to fiends to the Undying Court try and influence the party in a variety of ways. The world building is elegant though. If the dragonmarks are prophetic indicators, what does that mean when the upper ranks of the house gather to discuss business? What about the institution of the Twelve, which serves as a meeting ground and communal R&D for all the Houses? Or what about the matchmaking games that the houses use to try and mix strong bloodlines? Even with their extreme lifespans, I'm certain some dragons will devote their lives to understanding just a fraction of what dragonmarks foretell.

As a teacher of both history and science, I commonly tell my students that math is straightforward, so its difficulty is linear. Math gets harder over time, but if you know enough math it is predictable and has fairly simple rules. Science, the application of math, adds another layer of interaction, some of which are non-intuitive, so the function of the difficulty of science is exponential. Still predictable, but much harder to accurately extrapolate. Humanities, despite its reputation, is the most difficult of the lot. The challenges of the humanities are quadratic, only predictable if you know the equation of the function, or if you have spent your life studying them. People are complex, not always rational or predictable, and vary widely, so there is a lot you need to account for when considering other people.

(As an aside, the only reason humanities have a reputation for being easy is that they are more relatable, so people find them easier to focus on. Genuine insight into human nature or history is not easy and is chronically undervalued as a skill.)

All of this is to say that the dragons had it (relatively) easy studying the Prophecy before the appearance of dragonmarks. There is a reason the dragons freaked out when they showed up. To understand and influence these new signs, they needed to understand the history, cultures, psychology, economics, arts and sciences of multiple races. That is a daunting prospect, but it ensures the dragons will never be bored. It's a solid bet that they pour a good deal of gold into scholarly research so that they don't have to spend time on it, they can just read the results.

Also, a density of dragonmarks is now totally a thing.

I would kill for a 90-page detailed book on each house, at least two pages dedicated each of the bloodlines within that house. It is super easy to forget that for all that these houses are related, it isn’t just one family that controls them. Hence the competitive matchmaking that goes on within them.

A solid idea for manifesting a Dragonmark would be to have someone take the Test of Siberys as they were getting close to levelling up to the point of getting the dragonmark feat. They pass the test, but still have trouble controlling the mark… until they level up. Alternatively, you could also take the feat but “bank” it, not using the spell-like ability until you get a chance to role-play the test or another suitably dramatic event occurs. If you get into a life-or-death battle or desperately need to send a message via whispering wind, wouldn’t that justify using the feat for the first time?

Dragonmark archetypes and sorcerer bloodlines are a thing I want to create. That would be one way to develop them beyond their spell-like abilities.

Dragonmark focus items and the technology/engineering aspect to them massively underestimated. The Houses have vast potential to revolutionise their respective fields and fling the Thronehold Nations into the future. Even just access to that type of technological innovation is, much less a practical monopoly on it, is economically priceless.

Speaking of access, I have been trying to work on a version of occult rituals to mimic the way Keith uses rituals in 4e. It is a solid idea, and again, it makes the mark more than just the spell that you get to use. It is also the potential to use rituals that no one else can. If the Arcane Congress is trying to reverse engineer them, that just increases the theme of magic acting like technology.

I've always looked at the Twelve as being the House's answer to the Arcane Congress, and I think that still fits, but a United Nations for the Houses is a stellar idea. Lots of good story ideas to be had there. You could probably get a sense for what some plotlines would look like by looking at how the UN deals with nukes and other weapons today.

So here's a question that I asked a lot when Eberron was young: does capitalism still work there with these giant corporations controlling everything? Turns out that I never really needed out that. Why? My biggest takeaway from this podcast was that the Dragonmarked Houses hold regulatory powers over their industries that we usually associate with governments. Competition doesn't take place between the Houses and extra-house companies. It occurs between the licensed businesses underneath the Houses. It doesn't matter which of these enterprises lose, the House still wins.

This also is a clear demonstration of how considerably the balance of power has shifted between the nobles and the dragonmarked in the wake of the Last War. In Galifer, it didn't matter if Cannith controls all of the manufacturing standards. The Empire was powerful enough to beat down the House if they get unruly and in the meanwhile, why not effectively co-opt Cannith to be an extension of the imperial apparatus. Instead of having an administration compete with Cannith to ensure quality goods are sold across your nation, employ Cannith and make their expertise work for you. That works great until your empire breaks up during a civil war. Now all of the nations are dependent on Cannith to regulate the quality of the goods they produce, and none of them has the strength to keep Cannith in check. That explains a lot about the current state of the Five Nations.

It's also interesting (at least to this high school teacher) to think about how the Houses act as educational monopolies, at least regarding trades education. If everyone learns how to do things in the same way, they are vulnerable to systemic errors and deficiencies. One has to wonder if Tharashk and Lyrandar haven't been taking advantage of Deneith and Orien's blind spots.

I seriously want a book just exploring the Korth Edicts. That's probably my history degree speaking for me, but I would find it fascinating to have the major provisions in the Edicts laid out in one place, talk about how that impacted the Houses at the time of the Empire, then discuss all of the ways they've been violated since. Super compelling stuff. Seriously! A million plots are waiting to launch there.

By Sovereigns and Flame, I want the text of that chapter from Sharn that got cut for space! House Tarkanan and the Aberrant Dragonmarks are one of my favourite aspects of the setting. The history of the aberrant marks and the counterculture they represent in contrast to the Dragonmarked Houses is fascinating. As are their origins.

I enjoy using House Tarkanan, both as an antagonist and a group that PCs may belong to. In some campaigns, I've expanded House Tarkanan's presence and history significantly. Why? To set up the return of House Vol, who was hiding within the ranks of Tarkanan. It's not a plot that I'd use in every campaign, but I love it as an idea, especially if it forces the other Houses to recognize Tarkanan now that they have allies within the elven Vol lines.

The War of the Mark is another topic I'd like to see a book dedicated to, both for historical play and modern plot hooks.

Haven't read the Son of Khyber yet, but it's on my hit list. Maybe when I get off my Star Wars kick (thanks Starfinder).

Aberrant focus items (and artifacts) would be very cool to add into a campaign and could be an excellent potential disruptor. I imagine that each would be unique to the person wielding them since aberrant marks are so unique and unpredictable.

Girl Genius is a great comic for Eberron inspiration in general, but if you want an example of intra-House conflict and intrigue, it is excellent. There are multiple factions of families who have the same end goals, but none of them wants the other to come out on top. The "family plan" is only a success if they are the ones who pull it off and get the glory. I won't say more because of early spoilers, but check it out.

Back in the day, there was a thread on the WotC forums about using video games in Eberron. I don't recall if we ever got around to Resident Evil, but a joint Vadalis-Jorasco regeneration project gone awry is an excellent plot hook!

I want to take some time to stat up my version of the Mark of Death, along with some supporting materials. The Repose domain is probably the place to start, and I think there are some good spells in Occult Adventures (and possibly Horror Adventures). Apex marks would be cool to have some support as well, but I feel like those should be custom built for each campaign. They're like the artifact equivalent of player options, unique and disruptive of the status quo.

Speaking of disruption the status quo, here's one of the ideas I've used for the Apex Mark of Death. In this campaign, it wasn't necessarily the immense power of the Apex Mark the dragons were worried about, but rather its impact on the Prophecy. Specifically, the Apex Mark of Death either made it much easier for the Gatekeeper, one of the Overlords related to death, to escape or one of its powers was bypassing the Prophecy altogether and freeing the Overlord. Hence the "kill first, ask questions later" approach the dragons took.

Okay, I will cop up to being one of the people who was pissed when 4e allowed anyone to have any mark. An excellent point is made here that this could be okay… as long as this represents a major shift of the setting with far reaching consequences. I think the analogy that is appropriate here is Faction War from Planescape (and that’s not just because I haven’t done anything Planescape related this month! I’m on it). Faction War completely changes the fundamental basis of Planescape by kicking the Factions out of Sigil. That's fine, it's a good adventure and an absolutely serviceable plothook. The key is that it works best with a group that is already familiar with the setting and has taken advantage of the many hooks that are already baked into Planescape. Same thing here. I wouldn’t allow a dwarf with the Mark of Healing in a campaign of newbies to Eberron. They won’t have the context for the setting, and there are tons of perfectly functional plothooks with the Dragonmarked Houses without that spanner in the works. After playing a couple of campaigns though, then I would be willing to use off-race marks as a plot hook.

I am definitely going to run a campaign where the Daelkyr created Dragonmarks. Preferably when none of my players see it coming. Possibly in conjunction with giving everyone a dragonmark as a bonus feat. It would be highly amusing.

Non-marked members of the Houses probably deserve more attention than they get. Freedom from the house could drive all sorts of potential conflict, especially resentment from peers. Of course, should a mark develop later in life, the character has to decide if it is a blessing or a chain tying them down…

I see Vadalis and Sivis working together to verify bloodlines for the other Dragonmarked Houses. Vadalis works the biology angle, Sivis works the genealogy/history angle. It's not exactly a DNA test, but that would take half the fun out of it. Plus, the Vadalis/Sivis combo is not one you’d often see, so it makes a nice unique touch to the setting.

Augury works well too though.

Not getting caught up in minutia is good, solid advice. Don’t overwork yourself as GM, keep things simple. I will fess up to having intentionally tried to work every organization from the ECS into campaigns before, albeit with most of them in minor/cameo roles.

Next up - Religion!