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yenqa · 3 months

Text

ADVANTAGES

in which…

on jay’s live, fans point out a stuffed animal on his bed, one that seems to be the other piece to your notorious missing pair. as imaginary pieces start to connect for fans, the viewers beg for some kind of interaction. and though you and jay have never met before, why not use this situation to your advantage?

warnings : crying, panic attacks, depression is depicted but isnt really said, lots of bad self talk, food/eating, having no appetite, just lots of bad mental health talk and depictions, hurt/comfort, god this chapter is PACKED

wc: 1829

i’m sorry that i couldnt be your teenage dream.

not proofread!

☆

It had been a week and a half since you had seen anyone.

Well other than the cashiers at the local grocery store but that made you look even more pathetic.

You haven’t been well, at all.

It was a horrible sight, honestly you couldn’t even look at yourself in the mirror without cringy. You had no productivity and had planned to do nothing for as long as possible.

You were surprised your body hasn't exploded yet, since all you had ate was instant ramen or the three meals you could cook total.

Today was one of the worse-r days. Three hours into the new day but your mind couldn’t seem to sleep one bit.

You had zero appetite, your room was a mess, it was worse that you couldn’t even sleep away the days even though you were so tired. Your eyes were glued shut at night but your body couldn’t stop fighting the feeling of sleep.

So here you were, eye bags almost able to give the color purple a run for its money, and so puffy it felt like a balloon was stuck in there. But your eyes hadn’t shed any tears, instead you felt like nothing. Like you were just floating around with no purpose or any feeling at all.

The empty feeling in your head made you unable to do anything but scroll on your phone, letting hours after hours pass by rewatching your favorite show at least a billion times. It seemed like the world had gone gray, like the world was ending and you were the only one feeling it.

A part of you screamed at yourself to get a grip, to stop being so dramatic and realize there are still good things in life.

You tried to get better, you really did. You had researched on how to get over this drought but you never could. So every night you would lay in your bed, trying to figure out what was wrong with you.

Mornings have always been your least favorite part of the day. But it seemed to get worse with every second that passed.

Realizing you still had a whole day ahead of you seemed utterly impossible to finish, but still you would reach your hand out to the finish line, only to miss every time.

You had six hours until it was the appropriate time to wake up. You couldn’t call anyone for help, you couldn’t text anyone in the middle of the night. It was your burden, so you had to keep it to yourself and hope and pray it washes away over time.

Your phone has been your only sense of livelihood during your dull days. If you had been wasting hours after hours at least you had been doing something.

Before you could think of the consequences, you had thought of searching yourself on the internet, just for fun. You clicked on the first source, hoping that someone would see your side of the story.

No it was not fun–you wish you could warn yourself because the title of the article read; “All you need to know about Y/niora and why she’s trending”

We’ve all seen the names “Y/n” or “Y/niora” trending on X, who is she? Some might wonder. In this article I’ll be going over everything she’s done wrong, and why fans hate her for it.

Y/n is a popular streamer on twitch, known for her funny commentary and her boyfriend Jay, but recently she’s shown a darker side to her.

Her boyfriend, Jay, is also a twitch streamer, a much more popular one at that. He’s known for his good looks and his random reactions that have us crying with laughter, but why would he date a nobody like her?

If you’ve seen Y/niora’s X account, you can see that she posts provocative photos of herself, things that only lead to temptations of male fans. Fans speculate this is the reason they met, saying that she seduced him and used him for money, fame, and views.

If you know anything about streaming, you know BlueJay and his friends. Who stole the internet's hearts with their looks and cute personalities. But things start picking up between Jay and Y/n when she posts their matching stuffed animals, officially presenting their relationship to the world.

This seems to be a bad move on Y/n’s part, as her facade starts slipping through and we get to see her for the calloused person she is.

She continuously shows her disinterest in anything he’s saying. Making him repeat everything he’s said to her. This strikes up the question, does she really care about him or her fans?

Arguments of this exact topic have been trending among fans, some saying

You closed your phone before you could read anything else. Flipping your body over you could feel tears start to form in your eyes, your vision goes blurry and your breath starts hiccuping.

Wiping your wet cheeks, you start to panic when you feel like your throat is closing up, placing your hand on your chest to try to calm yourself down.

That clearly doesn’t work. As you swear you can feel the walls closing in beside you. In a last effort to stop your ugly sobs, you open your phone once more, your breath quickens when you open the phone app, calling the person that you need the most right now.

The ringing on your phone shakes you more, “Please answer, please answer, please answer.” You croak out desperately, glancing at your window to realize it’s the middle of the night, and he’s probably getting the nice sleep he deserves.

Unlike you who only makes things worse, and can’t even get a wink of sleep at night.

You sob harder after the fifth ring, realizing that he’s not going to answer. And you have to do this on your own–

“Y/n? Are you okay?” His voice brings relief to your ears, that’s until you realize the state you’re in.

“Jay I’m so–so so sorry for calling you this late.” You rasp out, “I just don’t know what’s wrong with me, I can’t stop shaking and crying, I just–fuck” Bringing your hand up, you grab a fist of your hair, not knowing what to do or say.

“Are you at home?”

“Yeah, I am.” You choke through, words barely coherent.

“I’m coming. Stay there, okay?”

“Okay.”

His tone is so soft it scares you. How could he be talking to you so sweetly knowing the mess you made? How could he be talking to you so sweetly knowing that you are burdening him at such a late hour?

Your throat tries its best to keep your hammering heart inside your chest, but it closes up, your breath is so uneven you're not even sure you’re breathing at all.

That is until you let out a soft apology into your phone, but it’s covered by your staggered breathing, and the sound of you stuffing up your snot back into your nose.

The silence coming from him is apparently meant to drive you insane. Because the nausea of it all starts to get to you, your condition is crippling so you can’t even move from your curled up position on your bed.

You can hear your door slam open, eliciting a strong flinch from you.

Your heart seems to be racing too fast for your liking, almost like it’s fighting to get out of your chest. “Jay?” You mutter, as you can see his dark silhouette standing through the doorway.

Before you can actually decipher if the man is actually Jay or just some random burglar who found your spare key, you feel his arms wrap around your body, tucking your head into the space between his neck and shoulder.

You conclude that it’s Jay’s warmth you’re feeling right now.

For a second you feel safe, for a second you feel like he’s just hugging you, not because you are literally having a panic attack.

That snaps you back into reality. God were you really having a panic attack over an article? That you chose to read?

Feeling your chest tighten and your eyes water up, you tuck your head impossibly deeper, letting your tears and snot get all over his shirt.

It’s grossing you out how you can physically feel his shirt dampen with your tears, but you’re too focused on figuring out how to breathe rather than the mess you made on his shirt.

“You can let it out, or you can just cry, I don’t mind.”

You sob even harder than you were before.

He’s so warm. He’s so warm. And you have no idea why it’s the perfect descriptor for him.

“Jay,” You mutter, being muffled by his shoulder, “I’ve ruined everything.”

His arm rubs your back gently, “You haven’t ruined anything, pretty.” He whispers, talking like if he speaks any louder you’ll crack into hundreds of pieces (you actually might but that’s not the point).

“I have! You can’t even deny it without lying,” You hiccup, “I mean—I’m trying so hard, but I can’t do anything right.” You pull your head back to look up at him.

He stays silent, letting his hand cup your face, wiping away any tears that fall down.

“And I’m so tired. I’m so tired of doing everything I can but still being hated for not doing enough. I mean who wouldn’t? I can’t even cook a proper meal, it just goes to show how hopeless I am.”

“Y/n you can’t possibly think about yourself.”

“I can because it’s the truth.”

He tucks your head back into his shoulder, “Y/n, not being able to cook a proper meal is okay. Some people never learn how to cook an egg.”

Your breathing calms down slightly, you let out a small chuckle, trying to stay forever in his warmth.

“I’m sorry for calling you here so late, I know you’re tired from streaming or something.”

“I could never stay away from you for too long, even if it’s in the middle of the night.”

Letting out a breathy smile, you look back at his face, a small smile spreads through his face looking at you.

Your eyes were tired, for the first time in a week your body was tired. “I’m going to go to sleep. Thank you, Jay, seriously.”

He gets up from your position, you feel the absence of his warmth even though he just got up, he’s about to walk out the door when you build up the courage to ask, “Can you stay? Just for tonight?”

Looking back, there's a smile on his face as he replies “Always.”

Walking back to you, he lays himself under your blanket, tucking you in before wrapping his arm around you, he pulls you into his chest.

And for the first time in what felt like forever. You fall asleep, in Jay’s arms.

☆

back masterlist next

yenqa > um title is reference to teenage dream by olivia rodrigo! umm hope u enjoyed while i ripped my heart out and put it in my writing… thanks!

taglist (CLOSED): @yeokii @hanniluvi @euncsace @jongsiemain @mrchweeee @fakeuwus @ashy1um @rikisly @filmofhybe @nwjws @yizhoutv @soov @tocupid @tzke1ta @yannew @manooffline @mars101 @haechansbbg @enhaz1 @teddywonss @en-happiness @kim2005bomi @be0mlvr @luvswonyoung @flwoie @lilriswife4life @nicholasluvbot @ikeusol @lylovw @alwayswook @astrae4 @choi-beomgyulvr @aishigrey @infpistj @jiawji @planethyuka @mari-oclock @222brainrot @jakevascaino @rory-cant-sleep @hyehae @vixensss @hearts4hanni @kgneptun @tongtongie @www-jungwon @lovejunz @fluerz @jiyeons-closet @nyuzip @leehanist @heerinnie @eneiyri

yenqa © please do not copy, steal or translate.

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rigelmejo · 3 years

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7/16/2021 - other stuff:

I started translating the simplified print version of Guardian that has additional scenes! I am not sharing it yet, but may in the future at some point. (Notes for future reference: taking a picture in good light with the page flat, depending on if needed upping contrast so its darker/lighter in photos, then opening in OCR in Pleco works pretty well at converting the text to digital so I can make notes and edit and look up words more easily. Also so far 1 page takes 1 hour to translate roughly so keep that in mind ToT).

I am yet again tempted to to a full on Listening Reading Method ‘test run.’ By that I mean: picking a novel, (step 1) reading in english, (step 2) reading in chinese with chinese audio (repeating as needed), (step 3) reading in english with chinese audio (repeating as needed), (step 4) listening to audio only. Yes I’m still debating if I’d do step 3, then step 2 - since I tend to flip which I do first depending on the day. Also debating if I ‘prep’ first by listening only (I could call it step 0). Also still debating if I’d do instead: step 0 listen only, step 1, step 2, step 3, ~step 2 again~, step 4 listen only. Basically I did tiny tests with The Little Prince, and I’ve done 20 chapters of Guardian so far (which did help) but Guardian is so long I end up varying how I do it each day into whatever way gets me TO do it and Guardian is so long it will be months until I know what ‘completing a book’ is like for the process. The original forum creator of L-R Method would do like 3-6 hour books or like 10 hour books. Guardian is... much longer. Also, if I pick a book both harder than The Little Prince (so there’s more vocab to learn) and easier than Guardian (so I can get to a natural listening stage faster) I wonder how much progress I’d make. Right now books I am considering for a ‘test method’ run are: Harry Potter 1 (simply because someone made parallel text with audiobook videos already so it is super convenient to do L-R Method, also the book has 2600 unique characters and 7700 unique words so I would likely reinforce my hanzi knowledge and learn maybe a couple hundred more, and likely increase my vocabulary by several hundred to a couple thousand depending on how much I focus, I’m fairly sure I can blow through it quickly the only limiting factor is like The Little Prince I am not sure if the reading level is low enough that I may not pick up significant amounts of new words compared to how many I pick up from Guardian - https://youtu.be/NLu0JW6VtGM). Sherlock Holmes - The Hound of Baskervilles (the book is 7.5 hours so not nearly as long as Guardian, I could probably L-R Method it in 2 weeks, the novel is written for adults and a mystery genre so genre-words I may find more useful to me while also probably having a bigger vocabulary than The Little Prince, P74 巴斯克维尔的猎犬 01 audiobook - https://youtu.be/hDKfUjienKA, full playlist of the sherlock audiobooks - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1QFMgv0n_Y&list=PLVyDH2ns1F757P-m8MHckuIFqWapl6y-1, and bilinguis.com has a parallel text which I am checking if it matches the audiobook - http://bilinguis.com/book/baskerville/zh/en/c1/). Bonus, just one day I’d love to test it with Alice in Wonderland in French since bilinguis.com has an audiobook and parallel text - http://bilinguis.com/book/alice/fr/en/c3/. Or Le Francais Par Le Methode Nature, since that also now has audio and text and one day I’d like to finish reading it - https://youtu.be/0uS5WSeH8iM.

Fun fact: I am listening to P74 巴斯克维尔的猎犬 01 (by 知识改变命运 ) in the background right now and the first thing I hear is “qinai watson” my dear watson ok. ok sherlock i see you. ToT. Aside from that I just keep hearing random words I know. If you plan to listen to a chinese sherlock audiobook though - I do recommend this playlist. I’ve found a few sherlock audiobooks and for some the audio is very rough like it was recorded from the radio, whereas this one is fairly clear and the reader speaks very clearly, and has a rhythm to sentences (which for me personally helps me listen easier and parse out words). So if you know some words they are much easier to hear, and if you are looking at the parallel text I linked on bilinguis it is quite easy to follow along.

I really want to get into the habit of some extensive reading with audiobooks (as in reading while listening) just because it speeds up my reading, and I pick up some words in reading while practicing listening. Its also somewhat doable, whereas just listening I may often get lost unless I know the material well. Last night I read chapter 1 of MoDu while playing the audiobook and following along - obviously I did not read as in depth as if I’d have done L-R Method and looked up all unknown words with pop-up english. But combined listening comprehension and reading comprehension I understood ENOUGH to follow the plot and keep reading, at a faster pace than if I only was extensively reading and at a much better comprehension than if I only listen. (My listening comprehension is a bit better if I’ve read the text beforehand, but that’s sort of artificial since i prepped by reading the text beforehand). Yes, I learn new hanzi better with slower extended reading where I have time to really slow down and look at the new hanzi a lot. But I’d like to aim for quantity of materials read for a while? I’d if simply reading more will help, but a lot of the general advice seems to be the more extensive reading you do where you can follow the main points the more you will improve. And hey, maybe that applies to simply ‘listening a lot more’ too?

A lot of articles I’ve found recently emphasize repeated listening, and I want to try to include that more in how I study. While I might not do it as intensively as some articles suggest, I can definitely continue to do it in Clozemaster and continue playing audiobooks of chapters I’ve read already (so I can follow the audio ok) in my downtime. A LOT of my chinese study lately has not been active, its been mostly just ‘playing audio in the background.’ So since I’m not studying actively much, I might as well try to get in more listening.

I checked out the cdrama Forward Forever recently and opinions: if you understand basic chinese JUST watch it in chinese because wow are the english subs a hot mess ToT. I tried watching with subs and there were so many clear ‘wrong’ portions I just had to turn them off, they were made from google translate though so I’m not super surprised (but Xin Xiao Shi Yi Lang has much more decent auto-generated subs so ToT). I’m not sure if I’ll watch more or not, but I can definitely tell it was adapted from a BL source material with the way the main two guys are immediately set up as characters and then meet. I also want to check out Secret of the Three Kingdoms but I’ve seen like 3 minutes and I already am pretty aware I’ll probably like the show so much that I’ll want to put the english subs on for clarity. Secret of the Three Kingdoms feels Very well made.

If I was gonna try to summarize what my study plan has been this month: - Listen-Reading Method Guardian (its going fine), with some experiments on the structure of the activity - translate some of Guardian (not really study as I’m pretty familiar w the chapters so just rereading things, mainly its translating practice) - Doing a few random things in japanese: read Guardian in japanese, play japanese video games a little bit, watch japanese-teaching video game example vids a bit (basically more tiny bits of japanese I’d add up to idk under 6 hours? just me glancing at things) - Reading this japanese grammar guide (I’m 1/3 through) - https://sakubi.neocities.org/ - Listen to various chinese audiobooks, with and without text. - Read various chinese chapters, with and without audio. - Listen/Read a bit of French, in Gigafrench (i truly mean a bit like a couple hours), Dracula (just listening) - some Clozemaster japanese, and a tiny bit of Clozemaster chinese (mainly to pick up stuff in japanese, and practice shadowing in both) So - some random chinese stuff reading/listening/L-R Method, some japanese exposure/grammar guide/clozemaster, a tiny bit of French (mainly listening practice).

#july #july progress #we'll see if i actually do any 'test method' things lol #but i do like this sherlock audiobook the audio is very easy to listen to #i love mo du but it drives me !!! that the audiobook just randomly skips sentences and paragraphs and idk why #mainly i am just continuing L-R Method as my 'heavy study' because its working quite well tbh #i dont do it as fast as the creator of it suggested. but i do it. and it allows me to read Guardian which is something i enjoy #also as u can tell i've been trying to include more audio into my study - the more i include it the more i realize how much at least persona #lly my brain seems to remember things better with audio. particularly i've been testing it with Closemaster-japanese #and WOW does doing a listening focus improve my memory of words/comprehension of them #it helps too that my reading-guess abilities in japanese are relatively useful. so listening-focus when i study helps build up #the weaker areas i have in japanese - since i can vaguely follow writing but cannot understand pronunciations #chinese is. really peculiar to me from a learning perspective? i am picking up hanzi and words-sound wise but not necessarily at the same ti #time. like i'll remember one but then it takes a while for the other. depending on the word.#i do remember hanzi quite well though - their pronunciation takes a while. but their 'vague overall meaning' i remember after just a few #times of seeing them. i think its a combo of i learn well from context and compound words and radicals make a lot of sense to me #so like. reading in chinese i pick up faster overall in at least a vaguely-understood way. but listening wise its a bit different. again tho #for me hanzi are a ton easier than kanji. for me once i learn a hanzi i jave a pretty solid 'sound' it makes in my head #(so the only issue is temporarily before i fully associate its 'real' pronunciation. my mind has an approximate-guessed pronunciation #which is a temporary issue). but anyway so once i mostly-learned a hanzi. if i see it i can hear it in my head #(in fact i NEED to hear words in my head or its harder to learn them. idk why. my mind will make UP a pronunciation if i dont know one lol)#so like. kanji are SO much harder because i will see them and immediately either hear: the chinese pronunciation. or one of the few japanese #readings for that kanji i know (which may not be correct). and it results in a lot of wrongly-connected sounds to japanese kanji for a while #which is a bigger concern for me in japanese. (whereas in chinese i know its a matter of quickly looking up the hanzi #pronunciation and then i can correct the mistake ANY time i see the hanzi again #and my 'guess' pronunciation sometimes was close already since i have radicals to help guess)#whereas with japanese kanji. one guess may have very little to do with a new words pronunciation. so it leads to me accidentally connecting #wrong-pronunciations to a lot of words i can read but cant hear. and then mistakenly keep reinforcing the wrong-pronunciation in my head for #much longer...

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didanawisgi · 3 years

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Medicine’s Fundamentalists

The randomized control trial controversy: Why one size doesn’t fit all and why we need observational studies, case histories, and even anecdotes if we are to have personalized medicine

BY NORMAN DOIDGE

AUGUST 14, 2020

If the study was not randomized, we would suggest that you stop reading it and go on to the next article. —Quote from Evidence-Based Medicine: How to Practice and Teach EBM

Why is it we increasingly hear that we can only know that a new treatment is useful if we have a large randomized control trial, or “RCT,” that has positive results? Why is it so commonly said that individual case histories are “mere anecdotes” and count for nothing, even if a patient, who has had a chronic disease, suddenly gets better with a new treatment after all others failed for years—an assertion that seems, to many people, to run counter to common sense?

Indeed, some version of the statement, “only randomized control trials are useful” has become boilerplate during the COVID-19 crisis. It is uttered as though it is self-evidently the mainstream medical position. When other kinds of studies come out, we are told they are “flawed,” or “fatally flawed,” if not RCTs (especially if the commentator doesn’t like the result; if they like the result, not so often). The implication is that the RCT is the sole reliable methodological machine that can uncover truths in medicine, or expose untruths. But if this is so self-evident, why then, do major medical journals continue to publish other study designs, and often praise them as good studies, and why do medical schools teach other methods?

They do because, as extraordinary an invention as the RCT is, RCTs are not superior in all situations, and are inferior in many. The assertion that “only the RCTs matter” is not the mainstream position in practice, and if it ever was, it is fading fast, because, increasingly, the limits of RCTs are being more clearly understood. Here is Thomas R. Frieden, M.D., former head of the CDC, writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, in 2017, in an article on the kind of thinking about evidence that normally goes into public health policy now:

Although randomized, controlled trials (RCTs) have long been presumed to be the ideal source for data on the effects of treatment, other methods of obtaining evidence for decisive action are receiving increased interest, prompting new approaches to leverage the strengths and overcome the limitations of different data sources. In this article, I describe the use of RCTs and alternative (and sometimes superior) data sources from the vantage point of public health, illustrate key limitations of RCTs, and suggest ways to improve the use of multiple data sources for health decision making. … Despite their strengths, RCTs have substantial limitations.

That, in fact, is the “mainstream” position now, and it is a case where the mainstream position makes very good sense. The head of the CDC is about as “mainstream” as it gets.

The idea that “only RCTs can decide,” is still the defining attitude, though, of what I shall describe as the RCT fundamentalist. By fundamentalist I here mean someone evincing an unwavering attachment to a set of beliefs and a kind of literal mindedness that lacks nuance—and that, in this case, sees the RCT as the sole source of objective truth in medicine (as fundamentalists often see their own core belief). Like many a fundamentalist, this often involves posing as a purveyor of the authoritative position, but in fact their position may not be. As well, the core belief is repeated, like a catechism, at times ad nauseum, and contrasting beliefs are treated like heresies. What the RCT fundamentalist is peddling is not a scientific attitude, but rather forcing a tool, the RCT, which was designed for a particular kind of problem to become the only tool we use. In this case, RCT is best understood as standing not for Randomized Control Trials, but rather “Rigidly Constrained Thinking” (a phrase coined by the statistician David Streiner in the 1990s).

Studies ask questions. Understanding the question, and its context, is always essential in determining what kind of study, or tool, to use to answer those questions. In the “RCT controversy,” to coin a phrase, neither side is dismissive of the virtues of the RCT; but one side, the fundamentalists, are dismissive of the virtues of other studies, for reasons to be explained. The RCT fundamentalist is the classic case of the person who has a hammer, and thinks that everything must therefore be a nail. The nonfundamentalist position is that RCTs are a precious addition to the researcher’s toolkit, but just because you have a wonderful new hammer doesn’t mean you should throw out your electric drill, screwdriver, or saw.

So let’s begin with a quick review of the rationale for the “randomized” control trial, and their very real strengths, as originally understood. It’s best illustrated by what happens without randomization.

Say you want to assess the impact of a drug or other treatment on an illness. Before the invention of RCTs, scientists might take a group of people with the illness, and give them the drug, and then find another group of people, with the same illness, say, at another hospital, who didn’t get the drug, and then compare the outcome, and observe which group did better. These are called “observational studies,” and they come in different versions.

But scientists soon realized that these results would only be meaningful if those two groups were well matched in terms of illness severity and on a number of other factors that affect the unfolding of the illness.

If the two groups were different, it would be impossible to tell if the group that did better did so because of the medication, or perhaps because of something about that group that gave it an advantage and better outcome. For instance, we know that age is a huge risk factor for COVID-19 death, probably because the immune system declines as we age, and the elderly often already have other illnesses to contend with, even before COVID-19 afflicts them. Say one group was, on average, 60 years old, and all the members got the drug, and the other group was on average 75 years old, and they were the ones that didn’t get the drug. Say that when results were analyzed and compared, they showed the younger group had a higher survival rate.

A naive researcher might think that he or she was measuring “the power of the medication to protect patients from COVID-19 death” but may actually have also been measuring the relative role of youth, in protecting the patients. Scientists soon concluded there was a flaw in that design, because we do not know, with any reasonable degree of confidence, whether the better outcomes were due to age or the medication.

Age, here, is considered a “confounding factor.” It is called a confounding factor, because it causes confusion, because age can also influence the outcome of the study in the group as a whole. Other confounding factors we know about in COVID-19 now include how advanced the illness is at the time of the study, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and probably the person’s vitamin D levels. But there could easily be, and probably are, many other confounding factors we don’t know, as of yet. There are even potential confounding factors that we suspect play a role, but are not quite certain about: the person’s general physical fitness, the ventilation in their home, and so on.

This is where randomization is helpful. In a randomized control trial, one takes a sufficiently large group of patients and randomly assigns them to either the treatment group, or the nontreatment (“placebo” or sugar pill) control group, for instance. Efforts are made to make sure that apart from the treatment, everything else remains the same in the lives of the two groups. It is hoped that by randomly assigning this large number of patients to either the treatment or nontreatment condition, that each of the confounding factors will have an equal chance of appearing in both groups—the factors we know, such as age, but also mysterious ones we don’t yet understand. While observational studies can, with some effort, match at least some confounding factors we do understand in a “group matched design” (and, for instance, make sure both groups are the same age, or disease severity), what they can’t do is match confounding factors we don’t understand. It is here, that RCTs are generally thought to have an advantage.

With such a good technique as RCTs, one might wonder, why do we ever bother with observational studies?

There are a number of situations in medicine in which observational studies are obviously superior to randomized control trials (RCTs), such as when we want to identify the risk factors for an illness. If we suspected that using crack cocaine was bad for the developing brains of children, it would not be acceptable to do an RCT (which would take a large group of kids, and randomly prescribe half of them crack cocaine and the other half a placebo and then see which group did better on tests of brain function). We would instead follow kids who had previously taken crack, and those who never had, in an observational study, and see which group did better. All studies ask questions, and exist in a context, and the moral context is relevant to the choice of the tool you use to answer the question. That is Hippocrates 101: Do no harm.

Now, you might say that a study of risk factors is very different from the study of a treatment. But it is not that different. There can be very similar moral and even methodological issues.

In the 1980s, quite suddenly, clinicians became aware that infants were dying, in large numbers, in their cribs, for reasons that couldn’t be explained, and a new disorder was discovered, sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, or “crib death.” Some people wondered if parents were murdering their children, or if it was infectious, and many theories abounded. A large observational study was done in New Zealand that observed and compared factors in the lives of the infants who died and those who didn’t. The study showed that the infants who died were frequently put to sleep on their tummies. It was “just” an observation. But on that basis alone, it was suggested that having infants sleep on their backs might be helpful, and that parents should avoid putting their infants on their fronts in their cribs. Lo and behold, the rates of infant death radically diminished—not completely, but radically. No sane caring person said: “We should really do an RCT, rule out confounding factors, and settle this with greater certainty, once and for all: All we have to do is randomly assign half the kids to be put to bed on their tummies and the other half on their backs.” That would have been unconscionable. The evidence provided by the observational study was good enough.

Again, all studies have a context and are a means to answering questions. The pressing question with SIDS was not: How can we have absolute certainty about all the causes of SIDS? It was: How can we save infant lives, as soon as possible? In this case, the observational study answered it well.

The SIDS story is a case where we can see how close, in moral terms, a study of risk factors and a study of a new treatment can be in a case where the treatment might be lifesaving. Putting children on their tummies is a risk factorfor SIDS. Putting them on their backs is a treatment for it. The moral issue of not harming research subjects by subjecting them to a likely risk is clear.

Similarly, withholding the most promising treatment we have for a lethal illness is also a moral matter. That is precisely the position taken by the French researchers who thought that hydroxychloroquine plus azithromycin was the most promising treatment known for seriously ill COVID-19 patients, and who argued that doing an RCT (which meant withholding the drug from half the patients) was unconscionable. RCT fundamentalists called their study “flawed” and “sloppy,” implying it had a weak methodology. The French researchers responded, in effect saying, we are physicians first; these people are coming to us to help them survive a lethal illness, not to be research subjects. We can’t randomize them and say to half, sorry, this isn’t your lucky day today, you are in the nontreatment group.

There are other advantages to observational studies in assessing new treatments. They are generally lower in cost than RCTs, and can often be started more quickly, and published more rapidly, which helps when information is needed urgently, as in a novel pandemic when little is understood about the illness. (RCTs, in part because of the moral issues, take longer to get ethics approval.) Observational studies are also easier to conduct at a time when patients are dying in high numbers, and hospital staff is overwhelmed, trying to keep people alive. They can involve looking back in time, to make use of observations in the medical chart. In such cases, it is crucial that the initial observations about how patients responded to the medications and treatments that the staff had on hand is documented, in as systematic as way as is possible, because there might be clues and nuggets as to what worked.

Exclusion Criteria: Do RCTs Study Real-World Patients?

But there are also problems at the conceptual heart of the RCT. Often the RCT design sees “confounding factors” not simply as something that has to be balanced between the treatment and no-treatment groups by randomization, but eliminated at the outset. For a variety of reasons, includinga wish to make interpretation of final results more certain, they aggressively eliminate known confounding factors before the study starts, by not letting patients with certain confounding factors get into the study in the first place. They do this by often having a lot of what are called “exclusion criteria,” i.e., reasons to exclude or disqualify people from entering the study.

Thus, RCTs for depression typically study patients who only have depression and no other mental disorders, which might be confounding factors. So, they usually study people who are depressed but who are not also alcoholic, not on illicit drugs, and who don’t have personality disorders. They also tend to exclude people who are actively suicidal (because if they are, they might not complete the expensive study, and some people think it is unethical to give a placebo to a person in acute risk of killing themselves). There are many other reasons given for different exclusions, such as a known allergy to a medication in the study.

But here’s the problem. These exclusions often add up until many, maybe even most, real-world depressives get excluded from such a study. So, the study sample is not representative of real-world patients. Yet this undermines the whole purpose of a research study “sample” in the first place, which is to test a small number of people (which is economical to do), and then extrapolate from them on to the rest of the population. As well, many studies of depression and drugs end up looking at people who are about as depressed as a college student who just got a B+ and not an A on a term paper. This is why many medications (or short-term therapies) end up doing well in short-term studies, but the patients relapse.

If you are a drug company (which pay for most of these studies) and you’re testing your new drug, exclusion criteria can be made to work in favor of making your drug appear more powerful than it really is, if sicker patients are eliminated. (This is a good trick, especially if your goal of making money from the drug is your first priority.)

This isn’t a matter of conjecture. This question of whether RCTs, in general, are made up of representative samples has been studied. An important review of RCTs found that 71.2% were not representative of what patients are actually like in real-world clinical practice, and many of the patients studied were less sick than real-world patients. That, combined with the fact that many of the so-called finest RCTs, in the most respected and cited journals, can’t be replicated 35% of the time when their raw data is turned over to another group that is asked to reconfirm the findings, shows that in practice they are far from perfect. That finding—that something as simple as the reanalysis of the numbers and measurements in the study can’t be replicated—doesn’t even begin to deal with other potential problems in the studies: Did the author ask the right questions, collect appropriate data, have reliable tests, diagnose patients properly, use the proper medication dose, for long enough, and were their enough patients in it? And did they, as do so many RCTs, exclude the most typical and the sickest patients?

Note, other study designs also have exclusion criteria, but they often are less problematic than in RCTs for reasons to be explained below.

The Gold Standard and the Hierarchy of Evidence

So, why is it we also hear that “RCTs are the gold standard,” and the highest form of evidence in the “hierarchy of evidence,” with observational studies beneath them, and case histories, at the bottom, and anecdotes beneath contempt?

There are several main reasons.

The first you just learned. It had been believed that RCTs were a completely reliable way to study a treatment given to a small sample of people in a population, see how they did, and then one could extrapolate those findings to the larger population. But that was just an assumption, and now that we have learned the patients studied are too often atypical, we have to be very careful about generalizing from an RCT. This embarrassment is a fairly recent finding that has yet to be taken fully into account by those who say RCTs are the gold standard.

The second reason has to do with the fundamentalists relying on outdated science, which argued that RCTs are more reliable in their quantitative estimates of how effective treatments are because they randomize and rule out confounding factors.

But a scientist who wanted to know if RCTs, as a group, were universally better and more reliable than observational studies at truth-finding would actually study the question scientifically, and not just assert it. And, in the 1980s, Chalmers and others did just that, examining studies from the 1960s and 1970s. They found that in the cases where both RCTs and observational studies had been done on the same treatment, the observational studies yielded positive results 56% of the time, whereas blinded RCTs did so only 30% of the time. It thus seemed that observational studies probably exaggerated how effective new treatments were.

Three other reviews of comparisons of observational and RCT study outcomes showed this same difference, and so researchers concluded that RCTs really were likely better at detecting an investigator’s bias for the treatment being studied, and hence more reliable. Since many scientific studies of drugs were paid for by drug companies that manufactured those drugs, it was not a surprise that the studies would have biases. These reviews formed much of the basis for RCT fundamentalism.

Just because an RCT is performed and published is no reason to assume it doesn’t exaggerate efficacy.

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But here’s the problem: These were reviews of studies that were done in the 1960s and 1970s. Once the observational study researchers became aware of the problem, they upped their game, and improved safeguards.

In 2000, new reviews comparing the results from hundreds of RCTs and observational studies in medicine that had been conducted in the 1990s were conducted by scientists from Yale and Iowa College of Medicine. They found that the tendency of observational studies to suggest better results in treatments had now disappeared. They now got similar results to RCTs. This was an important finding, but it has not been sufficiently integrated into the medical curriculum.

There is another reason we hear about RCTs. As RCTs became the type of study favored by regulatory bodies to test new drugs, they rose to prominence, and drug companies upped their game and learned many ingenious ways to make RCTs exaggerate the effectiveness of the drugs they are testing.

Entire books have been written on this subject, an excellent one being Ben Goldacre’s Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients.Since, to bring a drug to market requires only two RCTs showing the drug works, these techniques include doing many studies but not publishing the ones that don’t show good results. But there are sneakier techniques than making whole studies with negative outcomes go missing. There are ways to publish studies but hide embarrassing data; publish the good data in well-known journals and the negative findings in obscure journals; not study short-term side effects; almost never study, or ask about, long-term side effects; or play with measuring scales, so that patients appear to achieve statistically meaningful benefits which make no clinical difference. If you do a study that gives you a bad outcome on your key measure, don’t report that, just find some small outcome that was in your favor and retroactively change the goal of the study, to report that benefit and that alone. Make researchers and subjects sign gag clauses and nondisclosures. Have the drug companies ghostwrite the papers, make up the tables, and get academics, who never see the raw data sign them. This is routine.

The list goes on, and those tricks have often been used, successfully, to gain approval for drugs. Becoming very familiar with these ruses can save lives, because in a pandemic, new drugs will earn Big Pharma billions because the illness is so widespread, and they have a large playbook to draw from. Once two RCTs are selected from the many done to take the drug forward, the propaganda campaign begins, and as Goldacre shows, drug companies spend twice as much on marketing as they do on research. So, to repeat, just because an RCT is performed and published is no reason to assume it doesn’t exaggerate efficacy.

One group of studies, though, that don’t often play by these corrupt rules are RCTs done on already generic drugs, because they are off-patent, and there is really very little money to be made in them. In these cases, when a drug company has a generic rival to what might be a big money maker, there are ways of making that generic look bad. If the generic takes four weeks to work, test your drug against it, in a three-week study (the placebo effect for your drug won’t have worn off yet). If a vitamin is threatening your drug, test your drug against it, but use the cheapest version, in a dose that is too low. It’s an RCT, that’s all that matters.

Despite all this, advocates of RCTs still teach that, all else being equal, RCTs are always more reliable, and teach this by cherry-picking well-known cases where RCTs were superior to observational studies, and ignore cases where observational studies have been superior, or at least the better tool for the situation. They take the blunt position that “RCTs are better than observational studies,” and not, the more reasonable, accurate, and moderate, “All else being equal, in many, but not all situations, RCTs are better than observational studies.”

The phrase, “all else being equal,” is crucial, because so often all else is not equal. Simply repeating “RCTs are the gold standard of evidence-based medicine” implies to the naive listener that if it is an RCT then it must be a good study, and reliable, and replicable. It leaves out that most studies have many steps in them, and even if they have a randomization component, they can be badly designed in a step or two, and then lead to misinformation. Then there is the very uncomfortable fact that, so often, RCTs can’t even be replicated, and so often contradict each other, as anyone who has followed RCTs done on their own medical condition often sadly finds out. A lot of this turns out to be because they have many steps, and because Big Pharma is so adept now at gaming the system. Like gold, they turn out to be valuable but also malleable. A lot of the problem is that patients differ far more than these studies concede, and these complexities are not well addressed in the study design.

The Hierarchy-of-Evidence Notion Does Harm, Even to RCTs

One of the peculiar things about current evidence-based medicine’s love affair with its “hierarchy of evidence” is that it is still proceeding along, ignoring the implications of the scientifically documented replication crisis. True, the fact there is a replication crisis is now widely taught, and known about, but to the fundamentalists, it is as though that “crisis” doesn’t require that they reexamine basic assumptions. The replication crisis is compartmentalized off from business as usual and replaced with RCT hubris.

The irony is that the beauty of the RCT is that it’s a technique designed to neutralize the effects of confounding factors that we don’t understand on a study’s outcome, and thus it begins in epistemological humility. The RCT, as a discovery, is one of humanity’s wonderful epistemological achievements, a kind of statistical Socrates, which finds that wisdom begins with the idea, “whatever I do not know, I do not even suppose I know” (Apology, 21d).

But that beautiful idea, captured by a fundamentalist movement, has been turned on its head. The way the RCT fundamentalist demeans other study designs is to judge all those designs by the very real strengths of RCTs. This exaggeration is implicit in the tiresome language they use to discuss them: The RCTs are the “gold standard,” i.e., against which all else is measured, and the true source of value. Can these other designs equal the RCT in eliminating confounders? No. So, they are inferior. This works, as long as one pretends there are no epistemological limitations on RCTs. The problem with that attitude is, it virtually guarantees that the RCT design will not be improved, alas, because improved RCTs would benefit everyone. In fact, RCTs would be most quickly improved if the fundamentalists thought more carefully about the benefits of other studies, and tried to incorporate them, or work alongside them in a more sophisticated way. That is another way of saying we need the “all available evidence” approach.

The Case History and Anecdotes

Also disturbing, and, odd, actually, is the belittling of the case history as a mode of making discoveries, or what it has to offer science as a form of evidence. In neurology, for instance, it was the individual cases, such as the case of Phineas Gage, that taught us about the frontal lobes, and the case of H.M., that taught us about the role of memory, two of the most important discoveries ever made in brain science.

Here’s how the belittlement goes. “Case histories are anecdotes, and the plural of anecdote is not data, it is just lots of anecdotes.”

First of all, case histories are not anecdotes. An anecdote, in a medical text, is usually several sentences, at most a paragraph, stripped of many essential details, usually to make a single point, such as “a 50-year-old woman presented with X disease, and was treated with Y medication, for 10 days, and Figure 7 shows her before and after X-rays, and the dramatic improvement.” In that sense, an anecdote is actually the opposite of a case history, which depends on a multiplicity of concrete, vivid details.

A case history (particularly in classic neurology or psychiatry) can run for many pages. It is so elaborated because it understands, as the Canadian physician William Osler pointed out: “The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.” And who that patient is—their strengths, weaknesses, their other illnesses, other medications, emotional supports, diet, exercise habits, bad habits, genetics, previous treatment histories, all factor into the result. To practice good medicine, you must take it all into account, understanding that the patient is not any one of these details, but a whole who is more than the sum of the parts. Thus, true patient-centered medicine necessarily aspires toward a holistic approach. So, a case history is a concrete portrait of a real person, not an anecdote; and it is vivid, and the furthest thing possible from an abstract data set.

A typical RCT describes several data points about hundreds of patients. A typical case history describes perhaps hundreds of data points about a single patient. It’s not inferior, it’s different. The case history is, in fact, a technology, albeit an old one, set in language (another invention, we forget) and its structure (what is included in the case history, such as descriptions of the patient’s symptoms, objective signs, their subjective experiences, detailed life history, what makes the illness better, what worse, etc.) was developed over centuries.

Even anecdotes have their place. We often hear methodologists say, when a physician claims he or she gave a patient a particular medication, or supplement, or treatments, and they got better, “that that proves nothing. It is just an anecdote.” The problem is in the word “just.” Something doesn’t become meaningless, or a nonevent because a scientist adds the word “just” before it. That word really says nothing about the anecdote and a lot about the speaker’s preference for large number sets.

But anecdotes are very meaningful, too, and not just when lives are changed by a new treatment for the first time. This dismissive indifference to anecdotes turns out to be very convenient, for instance, for drug companies. If you are a physician, and you give a patient who had perfectly good balance an antibiotic, like gentamicin, and she suddenly loses all sense of balance because it injured her balance apparatus, the drug maker can say that is “just” an anecdote. It doesn’t count. And in fact, it is a fairly rare event. But it is by just such anecdotes that we learn of side effects, in part because (as I said above) most RCTs for new drugs don’t ask about those kinds of things, because they don’t want to hear the answer.

If we are to be honest, evidence-based medicine is, in large part, still aspirational. It is an ideal.

That’s why the approach I take—and I think most trained physicians with any amount of experience and investment in their patients’ well-being also take—might be called the all-available-evidence approach. This means, one has to get to know each of the study designs, their strengths, and their weaknesses, and then put it all together with what one is seeing, with one’s own eyes, and hearing from the particular patient who is seeking your care. There are no shortcuts.

One of the implications of this approach in the current COVID-19 situation is that we cannot simply, as so many are insisting, rely only on the long-awaited RCTs to decide how to treat COVID-19. That is because physicians in the end don’t treat illnesses, they treat patients with illnesses, and these patients differ.

The RCTs that are on the way may recommend, in the end, one medication as “best” for COVID-19. What does that mean? That it is best for everyone? No, just that in a large group, it helped more people than other approaches.

That information—which medication is best for most people, is very useful if you are in charge of public health for a poor country and can only afford one medication. Then you want the one that will help most people.

But if you are ordering for a community that has sufficient funds for a variety of medications, you are interested in a different question: What do I need on hand to cover as many sick people as possible, and not just those who benefit from medication X which helps most, but not all people? Even if a medication helps, say, only 10% of people, those will be lives saved, and it should be on hand. A medication that helped so few might not even have been studied, but if the others failed, it should be tried.

A physician on the frontline wants, and needs, access to those medications. He or she asks, “What if my patient is allergic to the medication that helps most people? Then, what others might I try?” Or, “What if the recommended medication is one that interacts negatively with a medication that my patient needs to stay alive for their non-COVID-19 condition?”

There are so many different combinations and permutations of such problems—and hardly any of them are ever studied—that only the physician who knows the patient has even a chance of making an informed decision. They are the kinds of things that arise on physician chat lines, that ask questions to 1,000 online peers like, “I have a patient with heart disease, on A, B, and C meds, and kidney disease on D, who was allergic to the COVID-19 med E. Has anyone tried med F, and if so, given their kidney function, should I halve the dose?”

Evidence-based medicine hasn’t studied some of the most basic treatments with RCTs or observational studies, never mind these kinds of individual complexities. So, the most prudent option is to allow the professional who knows the patient to have as much flexibility as possible and access to as many medications as possible. If we are to be honest, evidence-based medicine is, in large part, still aspirational. It is an ideal. Clinicians need latitude, and patients assume they have it. But now the RCT fundamentalists are using the absence of RCTs for some drugs to restrict access to them. They have gone too far. This is epistemological hubris, at the expense of lives, and brings to mind the old adage, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” As long as we’ve not got the best studies for all conceivable permutations, medicine will remain both an art and a science.

So, does conceding as much and giving the clinician latitude mean I don’t believe in science?

“Believe,” you say?

That is not a scientific word. Science is a tool. I don’t worship tools. Rather, I try to find the right one for the job. Or, for a complex task, which is usually the case in medicine—especially since we are all different, and all complex—the right ones, plural.

#medicine #fav #print this off later #family medicine #internal medicine #philosophy #science #covid-19 #sars-cov-2 #covid-19 vaccine

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pleasureactivism · 4 years

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An Annotated Playlist to Accompany Your Reading of Pleasure Activism

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2eoQwDJipqb2BpIZqCIscQ?si=bRg4s4uhSqOXw02Ai2Pc2Q

In Section Three: A Circle of Sex, there is an essay, a compilation of interviews, titled “The Highs, Lows, and Blows of Casual Sex.” Upon reading this title, I immediately thought of one of my favorite songs at the moment, “High Highs to Low Lows” by Lolo Zouaï. I put this song on while I read this essay, and while not directly about sex, the concept of peaks and valleys really resonated with the text. “High Highs and Low Lows” set the mood for me to engage with “The Highs, Lows, and Blows of Casual Sex,” not just because of the lyrics but also the multidimensional sound and authenticity and vulnerability of Zouaï’s voice. Singing in both English and French, she covers so many deeply human feelings, from sexy to vulnerable, cocky to depressed, sensual to silly. Intentionally pairing this song with this reading (instead of just putting a random playlist on shuffle) gave me the idea of creating a playlist- this book needs a soundtrack, which I have attempted to create below.

A compilation of R&B, hip hop, pop, Latinx music and some 1970s Black feminist icons (namely, Nina Simone and Diana Ross), most of these songs are performed by people that identify as women of color, partly because that is in line with Pleasure Acitivism which “center[s] the experiences of Black women” and partly because that is what I often find myself listening to. However, as was true for adrienne maree brown and her book, this soundtrack “includes a few voices that are not Black or women-identified but that I trust in the human experience of finding pleasure beyond oppression” (brown 5). This playlist was inspired by and accompanied much of my reading of much of Pleasure Activism, shifting and growing as I read, enhancing the experience and adding meaning to both the text and the music. The songs in the soundtrack can be listened to while reading any section of the book, but there are some that deal directly with themes of the book, and for those I have identified a “pairing,” or specific essay or section that I recommend pairing with that song. The songs on the soundtrack are in the order of the recommended paired sections. It should be noted that given the time frame of this project and the fact that I am simultaneously finishing up my undergraduate senior thesis, I was only able to annotate a select few of the songs on the playlist, but in no way are the songs that are not described any less important, relevant, or magical.

Oh My God by Sevdaliza

Pairing: “The Legacy of ‘Uses of the Erotic,’ A Conversation with Cara Page” OR the Introduction to Section One, “Who Taught You to Feel Good?”

I originally added this song to the playlist because of its sound, described in one article as “a blend of trip-hop, avant pop, and electronica,” and its lyrics about self-discovery, realization, hope and dreams (Ingvaldsen 2020). Savdalize asks “Who should I be?” and notes that “I view myself from above/Roamin’ in the fields of hope/Will it make or break me/As my dreams are heavy, they outweigh me.” These comments about her exploration of self and the intensity of her dreams initially led to its inclusion on the playlist. However, after finding an interview with Sevdaliza, I realized just how crucial this song is for Pleasure Activism’s soundtrack. She is Iranian Dutch and a refugee who, according to the interview, “acnkowledg[es] the oppressive regimes and institutions of the world in an effort to reflect peace and solidarity through her aural artform” (Ingvaldsen 2020). In the interview, Sevdaliza says she “believe[s] in collective energy,” a concept not only explored in Pleasure Activism but also in our course throughout the semester. Additionally, she says that “heritage stands for a gift of profound insight, wisdom, and love. My heritage to me is like an inner-oracle. The one who knows. It is a mesmerizing voice, that becomes more clear as I am close to my authentic self. My heritage also connects me with deep feminine instincts; the wise woman within” (Ingvaldsen 2020). This connection to her heritage and ancestors reminded me of brown’s exploration of her own “personal pleasure lineage” and encouragement that her readers do the same (brown 21). Sevdaliza says, “our voices are meant to be heard, our stories meant to be shared,” a concept embodid by brown in Pleasure Activism.

Feeling Good by Nina Simone

Pairing: “The Sweetness of Salt, by Alexis Pauline Gumbs”

Video by India.Arie

Pairing: “Pussy Power, by Favianna Rodriguez”

Formation by Beyoncé

Pairing: “Wherein I Write about Sex” OR “The Pleasure of Living at the Same Time as Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter”

“High Highs to Low Lows” by Lolo Zouaï

Pairing: “The Highs, Lows, and Blows of Casual Sex”

How Deep Is Your Love (feat. Yebba) by PJ Morton

Pairing: “Feelmore, A Conversation with Nenna Joiner”

Girls Need Love (with Drake)- Remix by Summer Walker

Pairing: “Liberating Your Fantasies” or “The Highs, Lows, and Blows of Casual Sex”

Girls Need Love is a seductive, passionate, and honest piece in which Walker creates a personal narrative about her desires for sex and love while also grappling with the double standard that “girls” can’t be sexually liberated. She pushes back against the societal norms that “girls can’t never say they want it/girls can’t never say how/girls can’t never say they need it/girls can’t even say now.” She also stresses that her desire for casual sex is okay, a topic which brown analyzes in Highs, Lows, and Blows of Casual Sex” (“I don’t need a reason baby/Please don’t get in your feelings”). Another soulful R&B track, this song has a simple production with a main focus on the vocals.

BROWN SKIN GIRL (feat Blue Ivy Carter) by Beyoncé, Saint Jhn, Wizkid

Pairing: “The Pleasure of Living at the Same Time as Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter” OR “Wherein I Write about Sex” OR “Black Woman Wildness by Junauda Petrus”

Q.U.E.E.N. (feat. Erykah Badu) by Janelle Monáe

Pairing: “Fly as Hell, A Conversation with Sonya Renee Taylor”

Multi-Love by Unknown Mortal Orchestra

Pairing: “On Nonmonogamy”

Multi-Love is a song about polyamory, full of intimacy, vulnerability, and even discomfort and torment. Despite these intense feelings that are on display in Ruban Nielson’s (the lead singer’s) voice and in the lyrics, the instrumental aspect of the song is lighter and catchy, consisting of an upbeat keyboard tune and light, quick drum beats. These components come together to create a non-pretentious, spiritual, futuristic song that touches on many of the same topics as Pleasure Activism. For example, he talks about god, asking, “who is your god? Where is she?” Similarly, adrienne maree brown said that she “think[s] a lot about what god is, how god is, and where we are relating to and running from and surrendering to god” (brown 7). He sings about transitioning between single-love and multi-love (“We were one, then become three”), which reminded me of brown’s comments that “nonmonogamy tends to suit [her] best, even if [she is] occasionally focused on one lover” and her further analysis of multi-love in the subsection “On Nonmonogamy” (brown 8, 409). And finally, he talks about alludes to the non-binaryness of gender: “she doesn't want to be a man or a woman” (though the use of the pronoun “she” is somewhat troubling in this case). All in all, this song that is somehow at once crystal clear and mysteriously muffled belongs on the soundtrack because of its soulful, groovy nature, relevant lyricism and personal discovery about love, spirituality, vulnerability, and meaning. As a side note, I also felt like it fits well because Ruban Nielson’s delivery has been compared to that of Prince’s, who brown dedicates the book to.

The Other Woman by Nina Simone

Pairing: “Being Second”

Golden by Jill Scott

I’m Coming Out by Diana Ross

Universe by Ambar Lucid

La Negra Tiene Tumbao by Celia Cruz

Pairing: “On Fear, Shame, Death, and Humor, A Conversation between the Rocca Family and Zizi” OR “On the Pleasures of Wardrobe, A Conversation with Maori Karmael Holmes”

Beyond being an absolute Afro-Cuban and Latin music icon, and the Queen of Salsa, Celia Cruz is known for her fashion style; she always had on colorful wigs, sequins, crazy high heels, and incredible makeup (for this reason her song is paired with “On the Pleasures of Wardrobe”). This song was chosen because of its multifaceted nature; it spans the genres of jazz, salsa, reggae, and hip hop. She talks about the style, attitude, swag and sexiness of a black woman (in Spanish). Igniting the spark of pride in Latinx and Black identities for many, “La Negra Tiene Tumbao” is a timeless anthem about being proud of who you are, embracing blackness, and never moving out of the way for anybody.

Pelo Suelto by Gloria Trevi

The Pleasure Principle by Janet Jackson

February 3rd by Jorja Smith

Satisfaction Guaranteed by Junglepussy

This song is lush and deep as it envelopes you into its mesmerizing tune. Junglepussy’s slow, intense words of confidence and encouragement to feel fully, both spiritually and physically, wash over the listener like a wave (“Yeah, I’m the brown hottie with the body, looking like Rum Spice… Relax, as the aura ease you/In the flesh, let the physical please you”).

Soul Liberator by Kraak and Smaak feat. Sanguita

Feeling Myself by Nicki Minaj feat. Beyoncé

Cranes in the Sky by Solange

Hurry by Teyana Taylor feat. Kanye

Mujer Latina by Thalía

A Quién Le Importa by Thalía

I’m Every Woman by Whitney Houston

Works Cited

Ingvaldsen, Torsten. “Sevdaliza Returns With New Protest Song ‘Oh My God.’” HYPEBEAST, HYPEBEAST, 30 Jan. 2020, hypebeast.com/2020/1/sevdaliza-oh-my-god-single-stream-premiere.

#pleasureactivism #playlist

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goindanswingin · 5 years

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Les Amis Webshows - Reviews!

So! There’s been a whole two new Amis webshows premiering this January! However, I’ve noticed not that many people are actually talking about them! New content, and we’re not yelling??

So, I’ve decided to give short reviews on their debut pilot episodes, as well as the first episodes of some other Les Amis webshows (I probably missed so many, feel free to add more if you know of them!) in order to maybe spread the word about some cool creators online as well as give y’all a lil more content to consume that isn’t just grim BBC Les Mis discourse atm

(I’ve reviewed them in the order they premiered)

1. Stories From Les Amies

This is a vlog story of the les amis with all the genders purposefully changed! Now this one has an awful lot of content to make up its plot, having premiered in 2013 and wrapped up with an HOUR LENGTH FILM at the end of 2014, so there’s a hell of a lot to digest here! The Enjolras behind this is actually also the author of TextingEnjolras/EnjolrasRising so the plot does bear some resemblance to that also! (Another piece of content I’d highly recommend if you’ve not read yet).

But, to keep it fair, I’m going to stick with just the pilot episode! It’s set up like a big group skype call with our amis introducing themselves, where we are first introduced to their personalities, mostly led by Enjolras although Combeferre acts a beautifully sarcastic arbiter. The video quality isn’t excellent, but surprisingly, the audio quality is pretty great (for every character except Marius), with almost no background noise or fuzz.

Enjolras: All of us make up a society that we call the Friends of the ABC

Enjolras: *awkwardly nods and grins*

Enjolras: Which is actually a pun, because... ABC pronounced together sounds like the word abaissés, which means “lowly” or “abased...

Enjolras: So... it’s... it’s a pun.

I know I’m only reviewing pilot episodes to keep it fair, but I will say yes, the quality of the series absolutely does improve over time, and I would highly recommend giving it a go if you’ve never seen it before! You can find the whole series here.

2. Official Les Amis Vlog

Premiering at almost exactly the same time as number 2 on this list, the Les Amis Vlog is similar in terms of quality but different in style. This is as it says - a vlog channel, with divided playlists for each character in the Amis. Every character uploaded vlogs between 2013 and 2015 introducing themselves, answering questions, and making content on certain themes.

This one took me by surprise - I was very much underwhelmed by the camera quality and lack of plot, but once I started watching, I realised why the Les Amis vlog doesn’t have plot - it’s because instead of making up political issues and action, they actually discuss real politics - in the pilot episode, Enjolras actually talks about a real news article from Reuters and then goes on into an impassioned rant on public surveillance - it’s kind of amazing.

Enjolras: I mean, you wanna hide your face for whatever reason? Well, congratulations! You’re now a potential t*rror*st for having stood in the way of the observational machine!

Obviously this one is much more about the characters than it is any sort of plot like we’ll see in some of our later series, but... these characters are by far some of the most convincing Les Amis I’ve seen! Particularly Enjolars - wow. So if that sounds like your kinda thing, check it out here!

3. Vines de l'ABC

A multimedia webseries that ran from 2016-2018, but mostly confined to Vines, this one in essence is similar to the Les Amis Vlog in that it is more character driven than plot driven - the different characters were all cast and then separately uploaded Vines (and occasionally YouTube videos) as well as answering questions to the main blog.

The first “episode” is, as common for these webseries, a video of our Enjolras introducing Les Amis and his character, then being interrupted by a phone call. The quality is webcam quality, the sound pretty fuzzy, but I do think Dorian here makes a great Enjolras... more on that shortly! Overall, the quality of this first episode isn’t super relevant to the rest of the series though, because as is obvious by the name, it’s mostly comprised of amusing little vines.

*Tik Tok by Ke$ha plays*

Enjolras: Hello? Did you change my ring tone again? ...Again? Well, I mean, I'm trying to do the video... No, I mean, I'm actually in the middle of doing the video right now, you're on camera... No, no I don't know how to edit it out... I mean, does he have a concussion, or..? *sighs* ...How did I know he had a concussion.

Obviously vine is dead, but everything is available here - if this sounds like your kind of thing, definitely go check it out! There is TONS of content for your consumption here.

4. Barricade Boys

Next up is a comedy/parody show from NyxRising, an already established group of YouTube cosplayers who’ve made lots of similar shows previously. This means, for a start, that the production quality here is some of the best you’ll see - great audio and video quality, basic but good set design, great costumes.

Now, let’s make it clear: if you’re looking for a brick accurate show, this is not the one for you. It’s a pretty ludicrous parody, with an unbelievably arsehole Enjolras with no notion of personal space, a Grantaire with weird sideburns and a crush so obvious it’s hilarious, a Marius so dumb he thinks he’s joining a “lonely hearts club” and a Courfeyrac so OOC that I don’t even know where to begin.

But god damn, did this make me laugh out loud a good few times.

Enjolras: You do you, Grantaire. Nobody else will.

This one has a couple episodes out already, and I’d highly recommend if you want some laughs! You can find it here.

5. The Downtrodden

Aaaand... onto our January debuts! I’m super excited to give a review of the pilot episode of Shadow of the Tor’s “The Downtrodden”!

One thing that stuck out to me immediately is that this might be the most diverse cast yet - we have multiple POC, and also a trans Enjolras - in both cases, there’s no self-congratulatory back-patting, but it’s made very clear and very casual, and it’s wonderful. Another point worth mentioning is that our Enjolras is the same Enjolras seen in Vines de l’ABC - and as I mentioned, I think Dorian is great at the role.

The Downtrodden seems to be going for an enjoyable line between plotty and humorous, and so far I’m super excited to see where they take it. The audio and video quality is outstanding, though the cafe background noises could do with being toned down just a tiny bit (as there are occasionally character lines in the background that are a little drowned out), but overall it’s by far the most professional looking alongside Barricade Boys (which had to contend with far less characters!). One comment I will make, though nitpicky, is that unlike Barricade Boys, which moves extremely swiftly through its jokes, The Downtrodden is edited just a pace too slow in one or two scenes, meaning the comic timing falls a little off and the jokes don’t quite get the reaction they really deserve.

Grantaire: You get free coffee refills here if you’re part of a student group. I gotta make that loan last.

Cosette: Do you consider yourself a politically motivated person?

R: I barely even consider myself a person.

C: Oh. Are you alright?

R: Is anyone?

Surprisingly, one of my favourite characters in the pilot episode was Marius! I often find he’s overplayed to death, but in this he appears a little dim but genuinely charming, and he got some of the best laughs out of me. I’d be interested to know how well all the jokes landed with someone who isn’t a Brit, however, since I’m super sold on all these characters being British uni students (student poverty aesthetic and Oxfam shopping bags, goddamn!), and also love Courfeyrac for the same reason - he seems like your typical friendly but laddish uni type, which works perfectly for his character. Also, I own that mug he has.

One of the strongest points, and a very common issue I have with Les Amis webshows (and the 2012 movie NOT GONNA LIE), is losing track of who is supposed to be who - I had no such problem with The Downtrodden - everyone is introduced naturally, gets at LEAST a line or two, and is beautifully acted - go check out the pilot here!

6. The Les Amis Webshow

The last one on our list - the Les Amis Webshow premiered on the last day of January!

First impressions of this webshow are: the most enticing hook yet straight from the beginning, and some of the worst sound quality.

After the introduction - structured as Marius speaking to us from the future - the pilot episode actually centers around a random film student coming up to Marius and asking if they can film him. Is this Cosette? Will we ever find out? Who knows, but for some reason Marius just takes it in his stride and lets this person follow him around, in what I can’t decide is a very weird move, or a very Marius move.

Jehan: Are you wearing your lanyard?

Marius: Yeah. Why? That’s what it’s for.

Jehan: (laughing) You simple little freshman!

Marius: *long pause*

Also Marius: We’re gonna get along great!

The editing is actually fun and a few shots seem to be going for something quite adventurous - I just wish the audio quality were better.

I like Enjolras so far - he seems very confident in himself and a little bit of a rich boy, and I’m really interested to see what they do with Marius, since this is the only webshow so far where Marius has been front and center instead of Enjolras - in that snippet at the start, he seems very anxious and weary - it’s very Empty Chairs at Empty Tables! Overall, this has the most “plot-y” vibe to its initial episode so far, and reminds me a lot of Stories from Les Amies, honestly. I’m very excited to see what they do with it, and am also euphoric at a REGULAR UPLOAD SCHEDULE unlike the other two which are currently running - Barricade Boys and The Downtrodden. Keep up with it every Thursday here!

Thank you so much to @starberry-cupcake for helping me compile this list!

highlight reel: @/SFLA who the fuck makes a feature length movie oh my god, the sheer levels of gay in BB, Marius’ super poshboy accent in TD (sorry if thats just how u speak Ethan), and best of all the German flag taking centre stage in tLAW - the european cynic in me is desperate to know why its there and hopes that you didn’t just mix up French and German flags lmao

#les mis #les miz #les miserables #les amis #exr #bonus points for the first person to make a compilation #of all the pronounciations #of enjolras #of combeferre #and of courfeyrac #every fucking show gets at least one wrong

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xtruss · 3 years

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America Makes Aircraft Carriers, China Makes Money

— Fred Reed | Anti-Empire | May 20, 2021

First, America increasingly relies on strong-arm tactics instead of competence. For example, in the de facto 5G competition, Washington cannot offer Europe a better product at a better price, so it forbids European countries to buy from China. The US cannot compete with China in manufacturing, so it resorts to a trade war. The US cannot make the crucial EUV lithography equipment to make advanced semiconductors, as neither can China, but it can forbid ASML, the Dutch company, from selling to China. Similarly, the US cannot compete with Russia in the price of natural gas to Europe, so by means of sanctions it seeks to keep Europe from buying from Russia. This is not reassuring.

Second, the Chinese are a commercial people, agile, fast to market, cutthroat, known for this throughout Asia. America is a bureaucratized military empire, torpid by comparison. America has legacy control over a few important technologies, most notably the crucial semiconductor field and the international financial system. Washington is using these to try to cripple China’s advance.

A consequence has been a realization by the Chinese that America is not a competitor but an enemy, and a subsequent explosion of investment and R&D aimed at reducing dependence on American technology. There is the well-known 1.4 trillion-dollar five-year plan to this end. One now encounters a flood of stories about advances in tech “to which China has intellectual-property rights” or similar wording.

They seem deadly serious about this. Given that Biden couldn’t tell a transistor from an ox cart, I wonder whether he realizes that every time the US pushes China to become independent in x, American firms lose the Chinese market for X, and later get to compete with Chinese X in the international market. Anyway, give Trump his due. He lit this fuse.

A few snippets

Prototype of China’s 385 mph maglev train

The above beast, developed entirely in China, is the first to use high-temperature superconducting magnets to keep the train floating just above the rails. HTSC magnets are a Big Deal because they can achieve superconductivity using liquid nitrogen as coolant instead of liquid helium for classic superconductivity, this costing, say the Chinese, a fiftieth of the price of using helium. The use of HTSC is very, very slick. The train will extensively use carbon-fiber materials to keep weight down, suggesting that the Chinese cannot distinguish between a train and an airplane.

Asia Times “China’s Hydrogen Dream is taking Shape in Shandong”

“A detailed pilot plan being worked out to transform Shandong, a regional industrial powerhouse, into a “hydrogen society” holds out much hope of delivering on the green promise.”

The article, hard to summarize in a sentence, is worth reading. As so often, the Chinese do things, try things, while the US talks, riots, imposes sanctions, sucks its thumb, and spends grimly on intercontinental nuclear bombers.

“Huawei is Developing Smart Roads Instead of Smart Cars”

“Multiple sensors, cameras, and radars embedded in the road, traffic lights, and street signs help the bus to drive safely, while it in turn transmits information back to this network-“

“Quantum Cryptography Network Spans 4,600 Km in China”

Quantum Key Distribution, QKD, allows unhackable communications. China read Ed Snowden’s book on NSA’s snooping, realized it had a problem, and set out to correct it. If this spreads to other countries—see below—much of the world could go black to American intel agencies.

The Chinese may have thought of this.

“…colleagues will further expand the network by working with partners in Austria, Italy, Russia and Canada. The team is also developing low-cost satellites and ground stations for QKD.”

The last sentence is interesting. If China begins selling genuinely secure commo gear abroad, it is going to make a lot of intel agencies very unhappy. Did I mention that the Chinese are a commercial people?

Further:

“Chinese scientists achieve quantum information masking, paving way for encrypted communication application.”

My knowledge of this might rise to the level of blank ignorance after a good night’s sleep and three cups of coffee. However, the achievement made the American technical press, and suggests Chinese seriousness about gaining privacy.

The video below shows how China constructs high-speed rail lines as if painting a stripe on a highway. Since they can’t innovate, they have to get by with inventing things.

China to Europe rail freight: “Over 10,000 trains and 927,000 containers were forwarded via the China-EU-China route in 2020, China Railways has announced. The current volume of traffic has grown by 98.3% year-to-year, covering 21 countries and 92 cities in Europe.”

America makes aircraft carriers. China sells stuff.

NikkeiAsia: “What China’s Rapidly Expanding Nuclear Industry Means for the West”

One Chinese reactor in Pakistan just went live, with another expected in a few months. Says Nikkei, “The Karachi reactor is just the latest of these to come onstream, with the World Nuclear Organization listing a dozen different projects at the development or planning stage across a dozen countries from Argentina to Egypt in its recent survey. Many more are under discussion.”

In addition, says Nikkei, China intends to have the whole industry from technology to materials indigenous to China and outside of American sanctions. See above, about driving China to make things.

First China-Built DRAM Chip Reaches Market DRAM, dynamic random-access memory, appears in almost everything electronic and is a juicy market. Chang Xin Memory, which makes it, redesigned it slightly to remove American technology. If Chang Sin can ramp up volume, which has yet to be established, guess what foreign companies won’t sell much of in China any more.

Pingtang Bridge, recently opened. Well over a thousand feet high

Even in my short two weeks recently in China, I saw that the Chinese do not believe in vertical motion. An American, encountering a mountain, would, sensibly enough, go up and over. This is not the Chinese way. They go through. Similarly, on finding a valley, they do not go down and up. They go across. There may be some genetic abnormality behind this, or maybe interbreeding with space aliens. But it results in hellacious bridges.

“Is China Emerging as the World Leader in AI?”

“Summary. China is quickly closing the once formidable lead the U.S. maintained on AI research. Chinese researchers now publish more papers on AI and secure more patents than U.S. researchers do. The country seems poised to become a leader in AI-empowered…”

Some argue that Chinese patents are of low quality. Maybe so. But don’t bet the college funds.

“China begins construction of world’s longest superconducting cable project”

“China’s first 35 kV high-temperature superconducting cable demonstration project has started construction by State Grid in Shanghai and it is expected to be completed by the end of the year. This is the world’s largest transmission capacity, the longest distance, 2000A current the highest commercial 35 kV superconducting cable project.”

Regarding the 5G War Trump could have bought 5G from Huawei, gotten a sweetheart deal, great prices, factories in America, and so on. Instead he banned Huawei from the US and then twisted arms of the vassal states of Europe. Thus neither America or Europe has the service, but China is rolling it out fast. Brilliant, Don. This gives China a running start on smart factories, smart cities, autonomous vehicles, and the like.

“An almost entirely automated port in China, during unload of a container ship.“

America talks about 5G, China uses it.

NikkeiAsia: “The port is an example of how operator China Merchants Group has been working to automate and mechanize more operations using ultrafast fifth-generation wireless technology. By developing innovative ways to run the port as efficiently as possible, the company aims to accelerate overseas expansion.”

Aviation Week “Face It: The J-20 is a Fifth Generation Fighter”

Says AvWeek: “Clearly, Chengdu’s engineers understand the foundation of fifth-generation design: the ability to attain situational awareness through advanced fused sensors while denying situational awareness to the adversary through stealth and electronic warfare. The J-20 features an ambitious integrated avionics suite consisting of multispectral sensors that provide 360-deg. coverage. This includes a large active, electronically scanned array radar designed by the 14th Research Institute, electro-optical distributed aperture system, electro-optical targeting system, electronic support measures system and possibly side-array radars.

“In a 2017 CNTV interview, J-20 pilot Zhang Hao said: “Thanks to the multiple sensors onboard the aircraft and the very advanced data fusion, the level of automation of J-20 is very high. . . . The battlefield has become more and more transparent for us.”

Most of the story is visible only if you have a subscription to AvWeek.

Asia Times: Tesla loses lead to local upstart in China’s EV market .

The headline is kidding. The car that is outselling Tesla is a $4,200 el cheapo for short-haul shopping and picking up the kids in the city.

Sexy as a truss ad, but…useful. I’m telling you, put the college funds in this company, not truss ads. Made by an SAIC-GM partnership, majority owned by China, where it was designed and made. Will be sold internationally.

“Unlike Tesla, which requires purpose-built charging stations, the Mini can be plugged into a home power system to charge, which takes about nine hours. It has a range of about 120 kilometers and a top speed of 100 kilometers per hour, according to the carmaker’s promotional materials.” Designed and put into production in one year. (Did I mention that the Chinese are a commercial people?)

China’s Y-20 strategic transport aircraft gets key indigenous engine: reports Chinese design. How close it is to being ready for prime time is not clear, but it is flying. An inability to make high-end engines has been a problem for China.

The WS’20 is a high-bypass turbofan of Chinese design.

Finally, Global Times”, Beijing’s news site: “China’s trade volume increases 37% y-o-y in April, marking 11 consecutive months of positive growth”

Nuff said.

— Source: The Unz Review

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minijenn · 6 years

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Universe Falls Chapter 49

AN-So its abuot time I fucking post this chapter on here, huh? What can I say, I’ve had a busy day :P But anyway, I gotta say I’m still quite proud of this one. It was a struggle for sure (and ridiculously LONG) But the parts of it that shine just shine so much! So if you haven’t already read it yet, enjoy!

Previous: http://minijenn.tumblr.com/post/170522545399/universe-falls-chapter-48-part-2

Chapter 49: Northwest Mansion Nightmare

N PLWKERY TSTVVAESF VNB JBSARUX N FZGNERY URZC HY CLGLGZP OPKPWGPS R KVIEFVR HYXF PLGNTVK MOAC'V GRJVK ZAI EBTVK LVIIVTL GFHU FYKM PCDX AK FW

Northwest Manor was bustling with activity as its various staff and servants bustled about, preparing for the immaculate celebration held within its lavish gates. The aptly named Northwest Fest was by and large a legendary party, one that carried a very high reputation that extended far beyond the boarders of Gravity Falls alone. And like all the parties prior to it, this year’s formal event was rumored to be every bit as posh and elegant, if not then some, and those were exactly the kind of rumors that both Preston and Priscilla Northwest wanted circulating as they oversaw the preparations for the event.

“Preston, I must say, the guest list for this year’s party has so much diversity!” Priscilla remarked to her husband as she overlooked said list.

“Yes, a nice mix of millionaires and billionaires,” Preston nodded proudly as one of his many servants handed him the day’s newspaper. His calm manner abruptly shifted, however, upon noticing another servant incorrectly setting the nearby table nearby with fine china and pure silverware, which the billionaire was quick to correct with an admonishing swat with his newspaper. “Put the oyster fork at an angle! We’re not animals, man!”

“E-excuse me, Mr. Northwest?” another servant anxiously interjected, two other staff members hauling in a large covered glass case behind him. “T-those rare, uncut gemstones you ordered have arrived.”

“Ah, yes, good,” Preston said rather dismissively. “Let me see them.”

“Oh, uh, w-well, sir…” the servant continued, wringing his hands nervously as the other staff removed the cover from the case. “They… they’re not exactly what you ordered…”

“I’ll say they’re not!” the billionaire exclaimed hotly upon taking a look at the collection of precious stones before him. Instead of the smooth, radiant gems he had been expecting, these stones were clustered and clumped together with no real order or organization at all, giving each set a haphazard, almost even ugly appearance. “What on earth all these… hideous things!? I specifically ordered the finest raw gemstones available, not these grotesque chunks of rock!”

“Ugh, just look at them!” Priscilla interjected, quite mortified herself. “What will our guests think if they see those gaudy excuses for gemstones?!”

“They won’t be thinking anything because they’re not going to see them,” Preston staunchly concluded as he addressed the servant. “Take those back to the jeweler immediately and have them send us some real stones to put on display.”

“W-well, normally I would, sir, b-but… these were the last gems the jeweler had…” the servant gulped fretfully. “T-they said they found them buried not too far away from a canyon a few hours out from town and that they’re actually quite rare, but-”

“But nothing!” the billionaire huffed, quite displeased. “I suppose that since its far too short notice to get replacements, we’ll just have to put last year’s gemstones out on display like we’re a bunch of simple peasants! And as for those… unsightly hunks of rock… just put the entire case in some hallway that no one’s likely to wander down during the party. We’ll figure out what to do with those disappointments later.”

“Speaking of which, where the devil is-” Priscilla cut herself off upon spotting her daughter finally making a rather tardy appearance. All the same, Pacifica smiled brightly as she strode into the room, already clad in the sophisticated light green ball gown she planned on wearing to the party the following evening. Her mother, however, was far from pleased. “Pacifica! What did I tell you about that dress?! The theme for the party is sea foam green, not lake foam green! Go change!”

“B-but… I kind of like it…” the heiress frowned, having already anticipated this scolding. Still, she had hoped her mother wouldn’t have noticed when she had put the dress on, but clearly, Priscilla’s sharp eye for fashion beat her own tastes in this case.

“Mind your mother, Pacifica,” Preston gave his daughter a critical glance. Still, given the fact that this was a rather minor detail, Pacifica hoped that she could somehow win out in this debate, even if she knew her chances were rather slim.

“B-but I-” Her soft protests were succinctly cut off by the sharp, high ring of a small bell, courtesy of her father. A bell that she was all too familiar with and knew well to obey. “Y-yes, father…” she muttered meekly, glancing down in embarrassment for even trying.

However, before Pacifica could even head out to follow her parent’s rigid orders, the entire dining room began to shake as if it was being rattled by a major earthquake. And yet, this was no natural occurrence as the dining ware on the table began to clatter violently, a bizarre, undeterminable gale striking up solely inside of the room as everyone present gasped in terror over the alarming sight surrounding them.

“Oh no!” Preston exclaimed fearfully, well aware of exactly what was going on. “It’s… happening.” The billionaire didn’t have much more of a chance to react to this newfound catastrophe before the opulent objects filling the room, plates, forks, knives, spoons, trays, chairs, and more, all suddenly lifted up into the air, flying around at random as they seemed to launch themselves on their own accord. Many of the servants fled altogether as this dangerous cascade of inanimate items swirled around the room, but even so, Preston did his best to fend the attacking objects off, though to little avail. “You are my possessions! Obey me!” he ordered, only for several plates to go zooming towards him in particular. The billionaire let out a frightened cry as he joined his wife and daughter in hiding under the table in the hopes that it would shield them from this chaotic onslaught.

“This is a disaster!” Priscilla cried, aptly panicked as the silverware continued flying just overhead. “The party’s in just 24 hours! What are we going to do?!”

“Surely there’s someone who can handle this sort of nonsense!” Preston lamented, only for his cry to receive a timely answer as a copy of the newspaper flopped down onto the ground right in front of him. Its headlining article featured a giant bat attacking Sherriff Blubbs and Deputy Durland atop the town’s bell tower. Though what stood out most was the young boy, roughly about Pacifica’s age, whom he had seen around town a handful of times this summer, fearlessly fending the bat off while the officers behind him cowered in fear. Clearly, from his brazen, undaunted expression, he seemed to be right at home warding away such supernatural danger, which was something that gave Preston a much-needed idea for how to handle the current plight the upcoming party was facing. “And I think I know just the person…”

Things had been rather uneventful around the Mystery Shack as of late, a welcome change of pace, particularly for Dipper as he used this relatively peaceful rainy morning as a rare chance to relax. He had already set up shop in the den, surrounded by a plentiful abundance of snacks and sodas to keep him company as he sat comfily in front of the TV.

“You asked for it, you got it!” the TV blared excitedly. “An entire 48-hour marathon of Ghost Harassers, on the Used To Be About History Channel!”

“Be strong, bladder. We’re not gonna move until sunset,” Dipper remarked, more than content to do just that. Until, of course, his plans quickly fell through.

“We interrupt this program to bring you breaking news!” the local town news commandeered the broadcast, deviating away from the ghost hunting marathon, much to Dipper’s immediate disappointment.

“Aw, what?” he frowned crossly, only for Mabel to suddenly run in, Candy and Grenda trailing blithely behind her.

“It’s starting!” she quipped, hopping onto the chair beside her brother and forcing him to move aside.

“Turn it up!” Candy exclaimed, squeezing onto the other side of the chair as her and Mabel essentially sandwiched the already rather perturbed Dipper between them.

“Make room for Grenda!” Grenda shouted boisterously, leaping on top of them all and recklessly knocking over a lamp in the process. The girls were just in time to see the beginning of the news story, featuring Toby Determined reporting on the scene outside of Northwest Manor, standing amongst an already very large, very eager crowd of townsfolk. “Well, tonight’s the night, but I’ve been out here for days!” the reporter exclaimed, his clothes tattered and muddy from doing so. “The Northwest family’s annual high-society-shindig-ball-soiree is here! And even though common folk aren’t let in, that doesn’t stop us from camping out right outside the gates for a peek at the fanciness!”

“Ooooooh!” all three of the girls mused, stars of amazement in their eyes as they stared at the screen, enthralled. Dipper, on the other hand, couldn’t have been any less interested in this rather soft, largely unimportant news.

“Ok, can someone please explain to me why people actually care about this?” he asked dryly, rolling his eyes at the brief snippets of poor-quality clips of past Northwest parties on screen.

“Northwest Fest is pretty much the best party of all time!” Grenda informed in her usual loud way. “Rich food, richer boys!”

“They say each gift basket has a live quail inside!” Mabel added just as enthusiastically.

“Give me your life, Pacifica…” Candy sighed wistfully as a clip of the heiress played during the newscast.

“You guys have got to be kidding,” Dipper deadpanned. “In case you’ve already forgotten, Pacifica Northwest has been a complete jerk to us all summer. She’s almost as bad as Gideon, minus the whole trying to kill us thing.”

“Oh, come on, bro-bro, you’re overexaggerating,” Mabel huffed. “Pacifica’s nowhere near as crazy or evil as Gideon is.”

“Maybe not, but she’s still the worst.” Dipper was suddenly interupted by a random knock on the door, but even so, his sour attitude towards the heiress didn’t change as he got up to answer it. “And that’s not just jealousy talking; I’d say that to her face.”

Ironically enough, however, the face he was met with upon opening the door was none other than Pacifica’s herself. “I need your help,” she said, saving the pleasantries and getting right to the point.

A very brief beat of rather awkward silence passed between the two of them before Dipper quickly acted upon what he had previously said. “You’re the worst,” he quickly told the heiress before abruptly slamming the door on her without bothering to hear her out whatsoever.

The trio of girls inside gasped in horror at response to Dipper’s careless rudeness towards Pacifica, especially given the fact that her family was hosting the most incredible party in town. Still, he hardly seemed to care as he turned towards them, arms crossed and caustic expression set. “See?”

Unfortunately for him, Pacifica wasn’t willing to give up that easily as she knocked on the door once again, this time much more insistently. And despite really not wanting to, Dipper knew that she likely wouldn’t go away until he at the very least heard her out. “Alright, what do you want?” he asked coldly as he opened the door again, sending her a quite transparent glare.

“Look, you think its easy for me to come here?” Pacifica asked, dressed in clothing that would largely obscure her identity, including a scarf over her hair and sunglasses over her eyes. “I don’t want to be seen in this hovel. But my dad made me come all the way out here because there’s something haunting Northwest Manor.” At this, the heiress removed her sunglasses, a hint of desperation in her otherwise haughty manner as she continued. “If you don’t help me, the party could be ruined!”

“And you really think that matters to me, like, at all?” Dipper raised an eyebrow as he leaned against the doorframe. “Honestly, I don’t know why I should even trust you. All you’ve ever done is try to humiliate me, Mabel, Steven, and Connie.”

“Hey, its not my fault you four are easy targets,” Pacifica scowled, every bit as bitter over this exchange as Dipper was. “Just name your price, ok? My dad will freak out if go back without any help, so I’ll give you anything!”

“Hi, Pacifica!” Mabel quickly interjected, rushing to the door before her brother could get a single word out. “Excuse us!” At this, she was quick to pull Dipper back into the shack despite his confused protest. “Dipper! Don’t you see what this means?!” she asked him in a fervent whisper. “If you help Pacifica, you could get us into the greatest party of all time!”

“What?” Dipper asked incredulously. “Mabel, this is Pacifica we’re talking about here. Helping her out will just end up turning into a huge disaster, I know it.”

“But it’s Candy and Grenda’s dream!” Mabel pleaded, nodding back to the starry eyed duo behind her. “And you know… it’s kinda mine too and you’d totally be the world’s number one best brother ever if you got me and my friends into this party and I’d totally owe you and shower you with the biggest, happiest hugs I can give and-”

“Ugh, alright already!” Dipper interjected, quite tired of his sister’s enthusiastic rambling on the matter as be begrudgingly turned to address Pacifica again. “I’ll bust your ghost. But in exchange, I’ll need three tickets to the party.”

The heiress let out a disgruntled growl at this, but nonetheless she conceded, reaching into her purse and retrieving the aforementioned tickets. “You’re just lucky I’m desperate.”

“Woo!” all three of the girls chanted in absolute elation in the living room, completely overwhelmed with excitement about the immaculate party that lay ahead of them. “Desperate! Desperate! Desperate!”

“Grenda, get the glue gun!” Mabel commanded with a huge, zealous grin. “We’re making dresses!”

“Ugh, I can’t believe I agreed to this…” Pacifica muttered, face palming as she prepared to leave.

“I can’t believe I agreed to this either…” Dipper remarked just as crossly, almost completely certain that he’d come to regret this choice some way or another.

Warm, plentiful laughter rung out between Steven and Connie as they emerged from the house, Lion trailing not too far behind them. The pair had spent most of the morning hanging out around the temple, with Connie practicing her sword skills on her own while Steven readily cheered her on. Still, soon enough the rousing rounds of swings and swipes soon came to an end as they decided to head down to the shack for a bit to see what Dipper and Mabel were up to.

“Well, time to assume my secret identity,” Connie joked, putting her glassless glasses back on. “Thanks again for letting me practice at your place, Steven. It’s a shame I can’t practice at home…”

“Well, why can’t you?” Steven asked, curious as he continued to hold the umbrella up for both of them, shielding them from the rain as they walked down the hill.

“Because my mom would totally flip if she caught me with a sword,” Connie remarked with a small chuckle, even though she was being serious. “And besides, Pearl hasn’t given me a ‘take home’ sword yet like she has for Dipper. Probably because I haven’t really gone on a lot of missions with you guys since we’ve started training, which I understand.”

Steven took pause upon hearing this, seeing that while Connie was apparently complacent with this fact, there was still a hint of longing in her expression all the same. Longing that he couldn’t help but feel compelled to fulfill. “Hey, wait a sec,” the young Gem stopped, prompting both Connie and Lion to do the same. “May I?” he asked, turning to the pink beast, who obediently lowered his head to allow his owner to reach inside his magical mane. Connie watched in apt curiosity as Steven felt around inside the pocket dimension for a moment, before finding what he was looking for and pulling it cleanly out of Lion’s forehead: Rose Quartz’s legendary sword.

“Here-eth,” Steven began, playfully yet dutifully bowing before the rather surprised Connie. “You can borrow-ethhhh my mother’s sword-ethhhhh.”

“S-Steven! That… that’s so nice!” Connie exclaimed with a small, albeit taken aback smile. “If grammatically incorrect. But…” At this point she was quick to switch into the same medieval tone Steven had been using. “Thou canst just giveth me thine mother’s sword!”

“Why not… -ethhhh?” the young Gem asked with a confused frown.

“Because its really important-ethhh!” Connie argued as they finally made it to the shack.

“That’s exactly why you should have-ethhhh it! You can have it to practice-ethhh with-ethhhh.”

Connie hesitated as Steven presented the sword to her once more, its large, pink form suddenly seeming quite intimidating as she looked upon it. This was by far a special blade, one that held more history that she could likely ever even hope to understand. Even with her skills progressing at the rate they were, she still felt largely unworthy by merit alone to wield such an impressively powerful sword. And yet, as she looked back to the young Gem who was so kindly offering it to her with such a hopeful smile, she found it was becoming increasingly difficult to turn that offer down. “Are you sure-ethhh?”

“Positive-ethhh,” Steven nodded with a confident, steady grin. One that was finally enough to convince Connie to take the illustrious, surprisingly light sword into her own hands.

“Thhhhhhank you!” she exclaimed with a laugh, finally capping off the pair’s playful barrage of medieval speech.

“You’re welcome,” Steven said, his smile finally falling a bit as his tone became serious. “It’s just… I was thinking… We gotta be ready if we need to fight Malachite or Peridot o-or Bill or… or those creepy Gem fusion experiments. And seeing as how you’ve already got the skills, all you really needed was a sword. Which means we’re bound to be ready for whatever comes our way next.”

“Well, there’s no real way of knowing that for sure,” Connie mused thoughtfully as they prepared to head inside the shack. “But still, I’ll take good care of it.”

The pair exchanged another warm smile as they opened the door, only to find a scene of colorful chaos unfurling before them. Mabel, Candy, and Grenda were congregated in the den, mutually awash in frantic excitement as they scrambled to put their home-made evening gowns together in time for the party. As Candy and Grenda collaborated on pouring copious amounts of glitter onto a swath of already very shiny fabric, Mabel rushed towards the stairs, energized as ever.

“Hi, Steven! Hi, Connie!” she greeted the confused pair quickly as she ran past them. “No time to talk! Our pom-pom supply is running dangerously low and I gotta replenish it ASAP!”

“Uh… what’s going on?” Connie asked as Mabel rushed off.

“They’re getting ready for tonight,” Dipper said as he came over to join the pair.

“Tonight? What’s tonight?” Steven asked curiously.

“There’s some stupid party happening at Northwest Manor,” Dipper explained, still rather vexed over the matter. “And I somehow got roped by Pacifica into getting rid of a ghost that’s apparently haunting the place in exchange for getting those three tickets for it.”

“Oh my gosh, the party!” Connie exclaimed with a recollective gasp. “I can’t believe I forgot about it! Ugh, my mom got invited for being one of the ‘top tier medical professionals’ in Gravity Falls, which means I have to go too, as much as I’d rather do literally anything else.”

“Same here,” Dipper staunchly agreed. “The last thing I want to do is spend an evening with Pacifica, of all people.”

“Tell me about it,” Connie crossed her arms with equal distain. “It’s kind of hard to believe Pacifica would ask you for help, Dipper, seeing as how she’s made it really clear she hates all four of us. Not that the feeling isn’t completely mutual, seeing as how she’s just about the worst.”

“That’s what I said!” Dipper exclaimed, exasperated. “But unfortunately, I couldn’t really turn her down; Mabel would have never let me live it down if I didn’t get those tickets for her.”

“Aw, I don’t know what you two are so upset about,” Steven interjected with a small smile. “This party sounds like a lot of fun! You know, aside from that whole ghost thing you mentioned, Dipper.”

“Yeah, it’ll be ‘fun’ alright,” Dipper deadpanned, rolling his eyes. “About as fun as getting a root canal.”

“Or getting hit by a bus,” Connie added before they both broke out into a bout of rather cynical laughter. Steven didn’t really join in on it as someone knocked on the door, but even so, as he went to answer it he offered the pair some more encouragement over the evening they were both so clearly dreading.

“Well, even if you guys don’t think so, I still think you’ll both have a great time at the party,” the young Gem said warmly. “I sure wish I could go. But I wasn’t invited, so I guess I’ll just have to-” Steven cut himself off as he opened the door to see a rather impatient doctor standing outside. “D-Dr. Maheswaran!”

“Yes, yes, hello, Steven,” Priyanka greeted dully as she stepped inside. “Hello, Dipper.”

“Uh, hi, Dr. Maheswaran,” Dipper replied, glancing over at Connie in confusion as she hurriedly hid Rose’s sword behind her back before her mother could see it.

“M-Mom!” she exclaimed, eyes wide with alarm at this unexpected intrusion. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to pick you up so we can go get ready for the party this evening, remember?” Priyanka remarked in a huff. “It’s only a few hours away and we have much to do before then, to the point that I even had to leave work early. But it’ll all be worth it if I can land the Northwests as the sponsors for the purposed new wing at the hospital. Which means I expect you to be on your best behavior tonight, young lady.”

“Yes, mother…” Connie grumbled, far from keen on the idea of sucking up to Pacifica’s family like her mother seemed to be.

“Now say goodbye to your friends,” the doctor ordered, reaching out to grab her daughter’s hand without any warning. “We’ll have to hurry if we want to-” Priyanka stopped short upon hearing the noisy clatter that came as a result of Connie loosing her grip on the sword she had been concealing as it fell to the floor.

“Oh no…” Connie groaned, face palming as she realized she had no time to reclaim it before her mother turned to see it lying in plain sight on the ground beside her.

“Is that… a sword?!” Priyanka gasped, picking the sheathed blade up in complete appalment. “Connie, where did you get this?!”

“I-it’s-” Steven nervously began to explain before Connie quickly interupted him.

“I-I found it! It was just… lying outside and I wanted to show it to Steven and Dipper.”

“Wait, but isn’t that Rose’s-” Dipper was immediately cut off by Connie as she slapped a silencing hand over his mouth while her mother seethed with fury all the while.

“How could you possibly think this is ok?!” the doctor exclaimed, completely livid as she paced back and forth the foyer with the sword still in her grip. “Do you know how many children I see coming into the hospital every day who’ve cut their faces off playing with swords?”

“Uh…”

“None!” Priyanka snapped hotly. “Because they have parents who love them and don’t let them play around with deadly weapons like some kind of gang member!”

“B-but-” Connie tried to protest, but her mother immediately shot her down.

“No buts! I don’t even know why I have to tell you this! You should know better! No playing with swords! Under any circumstances! Now, come along, we still have to get ready for the party. I’ll have a talk with your father after he gets off work tonight to calculate just how grounded you are. And we’re using the abacus!”

And with that, Priyanka abruptly turned on her heel and walked out, taking Rose’s sword along with her, much to Connie’s dismay. “I hate that abacus…” she remarked sourly before her tone turned fretful. “Steven, I’m so sorry! She took your mother’s sword!”

“Maybe we could get her to change her mind?” Steven suggested with a reassuring smile.

“She never, ever changes her mind,” Connie huffed, rubbing her temples. “We’ve got to get that sword back ourselves.”

“How are you going to do that?” Dipper asked with a frown. “There probably isn’t a great chance that Dr. Maheswaran will let the sword out of her sight considering how upset she was about it.”

“Oh, you’re right…” Connie mused worriedly for a moment before excitedly snapping her fingers. “Wait! I know! The party! We can wait until she’s distracted tonight and then, Steven, you and me can sneak off with it without her even knowing!”

“That’s a great idea, Connie!” Steven chimed brightly. “There’s just one problem though… I’m not invited to the party.”

“Connie!” Priyanka shouted quite impatiently from outside. “We need to leave, now!”

“W-well, you’ll just have to figure out a way to get in!” Connie urged as she began to hurry out. “I’ll see you tonight!”

“Hopefully…” Steven said, halfheartedly waving her off as she rushed to join her mother. “Wait a second! Dipper, didn’t you say that you convinced Pacifica to give you some tickets to the party? Do you think maybe you could get just one more from her so I could get in too?”

“Steven, it was basically a miracle that she even agreed to give me tickets for Mabel, Candy, and Grenda,” Dipper said with an apologetic frown. “I highly doubt she’s gonna be willing to fork over another one, even with me taking care of her ghost problem for her.”

“You’re probably right…” Steven sighed in disappointment. “But what am I gonna do? I gotta find a way to get into that party somehow!”

“Did somebody say party!?” Both boys were quite started as, out of nowhere, Amethyst suddenly dropped down from the ceiling, grinning wryly as she landed in between them.

“Amethyst? What are you doing here?” Dipper asked in apt confusion.

“Oh, ya know, just napping up in the rafters, just like I do all the time,” the purple Gem remarked, stretching herself out as she fully woke up. “The ones here at the shack are way more comfy than the ones up at the temple, believe it or not. But it’s been kinda hard to get any rest around here with everyone being so loud for some reason. Seriously what’s up with all that?”

“Oh well uh…” Steven began rather anxiously, not wanting to admit to any of the Gems that he had lost track of his mother’s sword. “E-everyone’s just… really excited about the Northwests’ party tonight and-”

“Ugh, that yearly snooze-fest?” Amethyst stuck her tongue out in disdain. “I don’t know why anyone would get excited over that. It’s barely even a party! Just a bunch of rich stiffs standing around yapping about how much money they have. The only good thing about it is that the grub is all you can eat, which is an offer I always took them up on whenever we went to it back in the day.”

“Wait, so you guys have been to this party before?” Dipper asked curiously.

“Yeah, a few times,” the purple Gem shrugged. “But only because we kinda sometimes filled in as bodyguards for those Northwest losers way back when before we learned that they’re a bunch of crooked jerks. Crazy thing about it is that we still actually get invites for their party every year, even though he haven’t gone since Rose was still around. Guess they never bothered to take us off the guest list, not that we’d go anyway seeing as how those prudes didn’t keep their-”

“A-Amethyst!” Steven suddenly interjected, eyes wide with newfound hope upon hearing that his guardians had invitations to the exclusive party. Which meant that there was a chance he could help Connie out after all. “Did we get invited this year too?!”

“Uh… yeah? Pretty sure Pearl has the invites up at the temple. Why?”

“B-because I wanna go this year!” Steven urged, his manner still rather tight as Amethyst looked to him in confusion.

“What? Why?” she asked caustically. “Did you hear what I just said? That party’s lame, Steven. You’d get bored in the first 5 seconds, just like I always used to.”

“W-well… maybe its not as boring as it used to be anymore!” the young Gem argued earnestly. “And besides, Connie’s going! And so are Dipper and Mabel!”

“That’s right,” Dipper nodded, supporting the young Gem in his effort to try and win the purple Gem over on the matter. “Amethyst, would it really be fair if the three of us got to go to some huge fancy party while Steven just spends the night home, bored and alone?”

“Like a poor little sadsack?” Steven added, pouting pleadingly.

Amethyst didn’t answer right away as she looked between the pair, arms crossed and expression dry. Still, her manner didn’t stay that way for long upon watching the young Gem’s lower lip start to quiver as a sign of his genuine desperation. Which was something that none of the Gems, not even Amethyst, was able to resist. “Ugh, ok fine!” she groaned in exasperation. “I’ll help you convince Garnet and Pearl into going with us to that dumb party. But only because their food is really good. And also ‘cause I’m in the mood for busting up some of the Northwests’ expensive fancy property.”

“Yes!” Steven cheered, quite relieved as he gave Dipper a thankful high five. “Thanks so much Amethyst!”

“Yeah, yeah,” the purple Gem remarked with a casual wave of her hand as she took her leave to inform her teammates of their plan. “Just don’t come cryin’ to me when you end up clonking out on that ballroom floor from how boring it all is. Which will happen. Trust me, I know, I’ve done before.”

Sure enough, with Northwest Fest set to start in roughly an hour, a massive crowd of spectators had congregated around at least a mile radius from the mansion’s securely locked gates, ones that were meant to keep the common folk out while the exclusively wealthy guests enjoyed the finery inside. Of course, this year’s party did carry some exceptions to these upscale standards, namely the group Pacifica unceremoniously escorted in through the mansion’s stately front doors.

“Welcome to Northwest Manor, dorks,” she announced dryly as Dipper, Mabel, Candy, and Grenda all got their first glimpses of the immaculate ballroom. “Try not to touch anything.”

The girls hardly heeded the heiresses as they rushed past her, clad in their flashy home-made dresses as they rushed to take in every lavish sight surrounding them. The mansion’s grand hall was quite a splendor, with high vaulted ceilings, expertly crafted woodwork and spotless marble floors. With most guests having yet to arrive, the only ones milling about at the moment were maids and servants as they put together the finishing touches for the festivities, including the massive apple cider fountain and lengthy buffet of hors d’oeurves. Overall, the setting of the party alone lived up to the stories of its splendor, splendor that the girls were more than happy to explore as they cheerfully ran about.

“Everything’s so fancy!” Mabel quipped, stars in her eyes as she spun around in her fluffy pink gown. “Fancy floor, fancy plants, fancy man!” she finished as she zealously patted the face of a nearby butler.

“Mm, yes, very good, miss,” the butler conceded dutifully before walking away.

“The rumors were true!” Candy proclaimed, running by with a quail-filled gift bag in hand before Grenda and Mabel hurried after her, chuckling cheerfully all the while.

At the same time, Preston and Priscilla entered the room, calm and composed over their nearly-complete party preparations, even despite the previous night’s setback. “Ah, if it isn’t the man of the hour!” Preston addressed Dipper cordially as the couple approached him. “I trust you can help us with out little… situation before the guests arrive in an hour.”

“I’ll do my best,” Dipper assured rather confidently. And really, he had every reason to show confidence for the task ahead as equipped as he was with the journal, ghost tracking equipment, and even his sword as an extra precaution. On top of all that was the general level of experience in fending off supernatural danger he had gained over the course of the summer alone, which made him feel more than equipped to deal with a simple, run of the mill ghostly haunting.

“Splendid! Pacifica, take our guest to the ‘problem room’,” the billionaire said to his daughter before dropping his voice down to a mutter while Dipper was distracted. “And uh… he’s not wearing that is he?” he asked, rather unimpressed with the boy’s common, almost sloppy attire and overall manner.

“I’m on it,” Pacifica nodded, wasting no time in dragging Dipper off to the mansion’s quite extensive guest dressing room. And, despite his extensive protests, she eventually managed to get him fitted in an appropriately formal suit, something that Dipper found to be incredibly uncomfortable and restricting even from the moment he first put it on.

“Ugh, it’s like this collar is strangling me,” he grumbled, pulling at the offending, quite aggravating collar. “Who do you guys think you’re impressing with this stuff anyway?”

“Uh, everyone?” Pacifica retorted just as sharply as she quickly adjusted Dipper’s tie. “You wouldn’t understand. High standards are what make the Northwest family great. And part of those high standards is that we always look our best.” To prove her point, the heiress motioned down to her own fashionable lavender ball gown, one that she knew and was quite proud of the fact that it was the best that money could buy.

“Oh really?” Dipper remarked with a wry, knowing smirk. “That’s funny seeing as how you guys didn’t look all that great when we exposed you for lying about founding the town.”

“Ugh, whatever,” Pacifica scoffed, rolling her eyes. “We’re still way better than pretty much anyone else in this town, even if we didn’t found it some stupidly long time ago. And in case you haven’t noticed, everybody still loves us, so its not like you guys ‘revealing the truth’ even changed anything.”

“Has it ever occurred to you that maybe the only reason why people supposedly ‘love’ your family is because you guys are ridiculously rich?” Dipper asked rather crossly.

“No, its because we’re respected,” the heiress corrected pointedly. “There’s a difference.”

“Oh yeah, sure, ‘respected’,” Dipper deadpanned. “For pretty much nothing but being rich.”

“Oh, just shut up already and come on!” Pacifica snapped, quite frustrated especially as Dipper kept up his smug, triumphant grin. Still, both of them were rather eager to get this ghost hunting mission over with, if for nothing more than to cut the begrudging, yet momentarily necessary tie between them. Which was why they continued on to investigate in a state of cross, bitter silence, one that neither of them felt compelled to break, lest even more biting, hostile words spark between them. Words that, ironically, were the exact opposite of the kind of sentiments that would spark up between them soon enough.

Though it had taken some doing, Steven and Amethyst had managed to convince Garnet and Pearl into going to the Northwests’ party. Still, despite their agreement to show up, none of the Gems were very excited to be there as they arrived early, just as they always used to do when they used to attend the party in the past. They had almost ended up arriving in their usual attire, but upon Steven’s insistence, they had begrudgingly shifted into more elegant wear for the evening. Garnet had taken on a smooth, sleeveless, sleek magenta gown, one that filled out wide past her knees and had a large slit revealing her shapely left leg. Pearl’s dress was more modest; a graceful, pale blue, silky ensemble, with straps and an additional skirt from behind. Though Amethyst usually abhorred getting dolled up, she had made an exception for Steven, putting on a shorter purple dress with loose skirts and low straps on top of tying her hair up into a messy, yet still presentable (thanks to Pearl) bun. As for Steven, he was clad in a rental tux that Greg had managed to score for him at the last second, but even still, he was quite ready for the party himself, even despite his apprehension for even having to be there in the first place.

“I still can’t believe we agreed to come to this shallow parade of overindulgence and excess,” Pearl huffed disdainfully as the group approached the mansion’s entrance. “I thought our days of attending these despicable Northwest parties were long over.”

“We all agreed to make an exception this year for Steven, Pearl,” Garnet reminded, even though it was clear she was none too pleased to be there either. “So we’ll just have to suck it up for a few hours.”

“Yes, I know, but still…” the white Gem dropped her voice down to a whisper as she clutched the Gem leader’s arm. “All of this shameless touting of refinement, power, and position over others? You can’t deny that it’s a little like-”

“Homeworld, I know,” Garnet’s expression darkened somewhat. “That’s one of the many reasons we stopped going to these.”

Despite their quiet conversing, Steven still picked up on what his guardians were talking about and he couldn’t help but feel somewhat guilty for stirring up bad memories of their former planet by essentially using them as his ticket into this party. Part of him wanted to tell them his true reasoning for wanting to come, namely to help Connie reclaim Rose’s sword, but he couldn’t very well admit that to them out of shame that he had lost something so precious and important, especially since it was his responsibility to keep it safe in the first place. So instead of telling the truth, the young Gem decided to do one of the things he did best: cheer them up.

“I-I know you guys aren’t looking forward to this, but I still think we could end up having fun!” he quipped with a warm smile. “I mean, we’re all here together, and Connie, Dipper, and Mabel are coming too so maybe the party won’t be as bad as it used to be when you guys used to go to it.”

“Oh yeah, speakin’ of which,” Amethyst interjected curiously as they all presented their invitations at the door before being let inside. “How did those three get invites to this ritzy blowout anyway? I always remember this thing being super exclusive, to the point that they only let rich, snobby jerks in. And last time I checked, Connie, Dipper, and Mabel aren’t rich, snobby jerks.”

“Oh, uh, well-”

“Steven!” the young Gem was interupted almost as soon as him and the Gems stepped into the ballroom by Mabel, who had managed to spot them from the other side of the hall. She didn’t hesitate to excitedly run over towards him, though she did slow her pace somewhat, her cheeks flushing red upon noticing the rather dashing suit he was in. “W-wow…” she said as she came to a stop, trying her best not to come across as flustered and doing anything but. “Steven, you… y-you look, uh… you… um… G-great to see you!”

“Uh, its great to see you too, Mabel, even though I did just see you a few hours ago.” Steven chuckled, fortunately not paying her stumbling much mind.

“Heh, yeah… Oh my gosh!” Mabel quickly changed topics, averting her gaze from the young Gem lest she turn incoherent again as she addressed the Gems instead. “You guys all look so pretty! I love, love, love your dresses!”

“Well, thank you, Mabel,” Pearl smiled kindly. “Your dress for the evening is very… creative as well!”

“Aw, thanks so much! I made it myself!” Mabel cheerily gushed, pulling off a playful curtsy. “Still, this is so crazy awesome! I wasn’t expecting to see any of you guys here! Isn’t this party the fanciest thing you’ve ever seen?!”

“Mm… we’ve seen fancier,” Garnet noted rather dryly, eliciting confused frowns from both Mabel and Steven.

“Mabel! You gotta get over here!” Grenda suddenly called, her deep voice echoing from across the ballroom.

“Oh! Hold that thought!” Mabel exclaimed as she started to run off, though not before bidding Steven and the Gems a quick farewell as they waved her off. “I’ll catch up with you guys later! I hope you have fun!”

“Ha, like that’ll ever happen at this lamo snob party,” Amethyst grumbled, crossing her arms petulantly.

“What’s up?” Mabel asked Candy and Grenda as she joined them before a large, stately book resting on a stand.

“Look what we found! It’s the guest list!” Grenda grinned, eagerly flipping through it before stopping a few pages in. “Whoa! Check out this hottie!”

“Marius von Fundshauser!” Candy read, already completely enthralled with the wealthy young man from his picture alone. “He’s a baron from Austria!”

“Forget the quail, I’m putting him in my gift basket!” Mabel quipped, more than ready to indulge herself with another summer crush. Especially if it helped her get her mind off her ever-growing feelings for a certain young Gem.

“Hold up, ladies,” Grenda interjected, her tone surprisingly serious. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think this boy might be out of our league.”

“Grenda is right,” Candy nodded just as rationally. “He is a white whale. Hunting him will destroy us.”

“Well, there are plenty of other cute boys coming to this party,” Mabel vouched with a conceding smile. “So let’s make a sister’s truce not to waste our time on Marius. Deal?”

“Deal!” Candy and Grenda both agreed as they all put their hands together in mutual agreement on this plan. Still, all three of them laughed somewhat nervously as they broke their hands apart, none of them entirely sure if this was a deal they intended on keeping.

As her father had instructed, Pacifica led Dipper to the so-called “problem room”, which, even upon an initial glance, was exactly what he had been expecting. It appeared to be some kind of lounge, just as stately as the rest of Northwest Manor was with hand-crafted hardwood furniture, walls lined with paintings hailing the family’s allegedly proud history, and mounted animal heads, and a large roaring fireplace that cast the entire room in a shadowy, almost blood red glow.

“This is the main room where it’s been happening,” Pacifica informed as they stepped inside, her usual confident manner somewhat diminished in place of fledgling fear.

“Yeah, this looks like the kind of room that would be haunted alright,” Dipper concluded as he pulled the journal out and turned to the fortunately extensive section on ghosts. “I wouldn’t worry about it though. Ghosts fall on a ten-category scale. Floating plates sounds like a category 1, which is pretty far from being anywhere close to dangerous.”

“So what?” Pacifica asked with a teasing smirk. “Are you gonna bore him back into the afterlife by reading from that book? Or are you going to pretend to stab him with that cute little toy sword of yours?” she asked, nodding to the Ancient Sea Blade he had securely strapped to his back.

“First of all, it’s not a toy, its real,” Dipper corrected, half tempted to draw it and show her. “And secondly, I only brought it with me as a precaution. If it really is a category 1, then the most I gotta do is splash that sucker with some anointed water,” he said, holding said small bottle of holy water up. “And he should be out of your probably-fake blonde hair.”

“What was that about my hair?” Pacifica scoffed, glaring at him disapprovingly.

“Shh!” Dipper quickly interupted her as he pulled a small, ghost-tracking device out of his backpack, one that was already beeping in response to the apparent supernatural activity in the room. “I’m picking something up.”

The heiress simply sighed in aggravation but all the same she hung back, allowing him to investigate further as he followed the readings the device was giving off. Dipper stopped short in front of the fireplace as he briefly glanced up to the large painting of who appeared to be an 1880s lumberjack until the device’s signal suddenly went dead. “Ugh, come on, stupid thing,” he muttered in annoyance, beating the side of it until it began beeping once more. “There we go. Huh?” He was met with immediate confusion as he glanced up again, only to find that somehow, the lumberjack in the painting had suddenly disappeared from the frame in what couldn’t have been more than a few seconds at best. Something that Dipper already knew well from experience, was far from normal. “Uh… Pacifica?”

The heiress didn’t even heed him as she instead let out a frightened scream on the other side of the room, one that was quite warranted given the pool of blood she had just spotted near her feet, one that was being fueled from above. Both her and Dipper let out shared gasps of shock as they glanced up to see blood, thick, dark, and real, swelling from the seemingly dead mouths and eyes of every single one of the taxidermized animal heads on the walls. A steady, unnatural gale-force wind started to swirl around the room as bright, sinister flames began bursting out from the confines of the fireplace, almost as if they were trying to latch onto Dipper and Pacifica as they rushed to meet each other near the center of the room. The danger seemed to escalate more and more with each passing second as the animal heads, still dripping with unexplainable blood and blank, unseeing eyes glowing a sharp, warning red, began to raise their voices in a deep, unearthly, ominous chant.

“ANCIENT SINS! ANCIENT SINS! ANCIENT SINS!”

On and on this mysterious mantra continued as the objects in the room began to take flight, books, furniture, and antiques all rising into the air before they haphazardly glided around the appropriately terrified pair. “Dipper, what is this?!” Pacifica cried about the incredible din surrounding them, her trembling hands held close to her as her long hair whipped about in the hurricane winds.

“I-it’s a category 10…” Dipper replied, absolutely shaken. After all, the last time he had witnessed a supernatural disaster this dire or intense was when he had watched his own body be taken over by a vicious dream demon while he floated outside of it, distraught and helpless. And while this haunting was nowhere near as immediately catastrophic as that had been, it was still every bit as deadly, a fact he was starkly reminded of as his only real option for taking care of it, the vial of anointed water, abruptly shattered right in his hand.

“ANCIENT BLOOD AND BLACKENED SKIES,” the animal heads changed their chant into something new, but every bit as dark and sinister. “THE FOREST DARK SHALL ONCE MORE RISE!”

“What do we do?! What do we do?!” Pacifica practically screamed as she grabbed Dipper by the suit jacket and shook him desperately.

“I-I… I don’t know!” Dipper answered truthfully, realizing that he was actually quite unprepared for something of this caliber.

“What do you mean you don’t know?!” Pacifica shot back in disbelief. “Aren’t you supposed to be some kind of supernatural expert or something?!”

“Who on earth told you that?!”

“Uh, the town newspaper did!”

“Whoa, really?” Dipper paused, rather pleasantly surprised to hear this. “That’s… actually pretty awesome.”

“Focus!” Pacifica snapped harshly. “We’re about to be killed by creepy dead animal heads and flying furniture, remember?!”

“Don’t worry,” Dipper assured as evenly as he could, given the circumstances. “It can’t possibly get any worse than this!”

Of course, he was immediately proven wrong as the fire violently sparked up again, forcing the pair to dive under the nearby table to avoid getting burned. And they did so just in time as, out of nowhere, a powerful black skeletal arm emerged from the flames, still completely consumed in them as it smashed down onto the ground. The rest of the charred skeleton subsequently pulled itself out of the fire, something akin to skin and clothes forming around the bones as they formed the visage of a large, burly man, the lumberjack from the painting himself, who was clearly deceased based on his rotting, grisly form. A sharp, deadly axe had cleaved his head, the obvious cause of his death that still remained in his undead form. And his manner was every bit as outraged and heated as the burning inferno he had emerged from as he belted out his first proclamation in a deep, rumbling voice.

“I smell… a NORTHWEST!” the ghost growled, blue flames igniting in place of where hair and a beard would normally be as his one remaining eye shot open. Dipper and Pacifica made sure to remain hidden out of the ghost’s view under the table as he began to storm around the room, another axe materializing in his hand as he dragged it threateningly across the floor with each torturously slow step. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

“Hurry!” Pacifica whispered to Dipper sharply as he frantically flipped through the journal for answers. “Read through your dumb book already and figure out a way to get rid of that… thing!”

“I’m looking!” Dipper retorted just as harshly as he pulled out his blacklight. “And its not dumb, ok? This book is gonna save our lives! Alright, here we go; Advice:” Hoping that the category 10 ghost page would hold the key to ousting this great, newfound threat, he held the blacklight over the page, only to get the lone, disconcerting message of “Pray for mercy!” instead of anything tangibly useful. “Aw, seriously?!”

Matters were only made worse as the table, their only real cover from the ghost and his deadly axe, suddenly hovered away, leaving them directly in the menacing specter’s line of sight, much to their shared horror. “You should not have come here!” he shouted, not even hesitating to swipe at the pair with his weapon, which they only barely dodged.

“This way! Hurry!” Pacifica exclaimed, grabbing Dipper by the arm and quickly pulling him up before they rushed out of the room. The ghost was in hot pursuit, his fiery manner sparkly with murderous intent as he relentlessly chased them down the mansion’s maze-like halls, ready to strike.

Northwest Manor’s massive doors finally opened to the illustrious group of invited party guests as Preston proudly stood by to greet them all, his wide, cordial grin completely hiding any implications that ghostly danger was currently lurking through the mansion’s halls. “Welcome, dukes, duchesses, sultans and sportsmen! And—ugh… Mayor Dewey…”

“Preston!” Dewey exclaimed brightly, rushing forward as he threw an arm over the billionaire’s shoulder. “We’re so honored to be here, isn’t that right, Buck?”

“Not really,” Buck dryly stated, his arms crossed and his shades still on despite his formal attire.

“Ha! Isn’t my son just hilarious?!” Dewey chuckled with an incredibly forced laugh as he snapped a finger at one of his aids, not noticing Preston’s quickly growing aggravation with him. “Now, smile for the campaign promotion!” The mayor did so brightly, even if the billionaire made his annoyance quite clear before finally acting upon it as soon as the aid snapped a photo.

“Alright, Dewey, that’s enough of your ‘campaigning’ for one evening,” Preston scowled scornfully, pushing the mayor back into the crowd. “Now then,” the billionaire continued, quickly regaining his composure as he addressed the rest of his guests. “Tonight we will enjoy only the finest of tastes and only the snootiest of laugher.” Someone in the crowd let out an incredibly haughty chortle in response to this remark as Preston nodded in approval. “That’s the ticket!” he exclaimed, motioning for the guests to finally step inside.

Despite the party’s exclusivity, there were still quite a few attendees who filed in, most of them quite prominent in some regard, be it wealth or reputation. Within this group were some of the town’s most esteemed medical professionals, and among them was Dr. Maheswaran, with Connie almost sullenly following in after her. After since her mother had confiscated Rose’s sword, she had been trying her best not to fall even further out of Priyanka’s good graces than she already had. Hence why she had been obedient, almost rigidly so, all the way leading up to their arrival at the party itself, in the hopes that her mother would loosen up her newly tightened reigns for the evening. And fortunately enough, her vigilance paid off, as that’s exactly what Priyanka did.

“I have to go meet with the other doctors before we propose the hospital sponsorship to the Northwests,” the doctor said to her daughter, her tone as serious as ever. “I trust that you can mind yourself like a proper young lady without getting into any more trouble for an hour or two, right?”

“Y-yes, ma’am,” Connie nodded apprehensively, keeping her poise and manner as polite and compliant as possible as to not give away her intention of going against her rules.

“Good,” Priyanka nodded in staunch satisfaction as she began to walk off. “And remember what we talked about on the way here!”

“Don’t worry, Mom,” Connie assured with a rather fake smile. “I-I don’t think you’ll need to worry about me stumbling across any swords around here!” Her smile immediately fell into partial guilt as soon as her mother fully turned away, since she knew she would soon be seeking out the very sword that had gotten her into all this trouble on her own accord. Still, she didn’t let herself linger on that guilt for too long as Steven managed to spot her amidst the crowd and didn’t hesitate to come running over.

“Connie!” he called with an elated smile as he caught her off guard with a sudden hug.

“S-Steven!” Connie chuckled as the broke apart. “You actually made it!”

“Yeah, it turns out the Gems actually get invited to this party every year,” Steven’s smile quickly turned to wonder as he got a better view of Connie’s attire for the evening: a floor length turquoise dress with short sleeves and a dark sash, one that complimented her neatly-done updo quite nicely. “W-wow… Connie, you look great!”

“Thanks…” Connie blushed, her reddened cheeks matching the young Gem’s own. “You look really nice too. B-but there’s no time to talk about that now! We gotta get your mother’s sword back while my mom is distracted!”

“Right,” Steven nodded, resolved. “So where is it?”

“She left it outside in the car,” Connie reported with a worried frown. “Which means that we can’t just go out through the front door to get it, everybody will notice. There has to be another way out of the mansion…”

“Then I guess we’ll just have to find it!” the young Gem grinned encouragingly. “Come on!” And with that, Steven grabbed Connie’s hand, reigniting the warmth in her cheeks as they slipped through the party’s growing crowds towards the back of the ballroom, where the beginning of the hallways leading to the inner sanctums of the mansion awaited. Neither of them had the faintest clue about the manor’s layout, which was why they had to settle on picking a random hallway and seeing where it led. They managed to do so without Priyanka, or really anyone else for that matter noticing them, mostly since everyone was already so distracted with the fancy offerings of the party itself. And as soon as they were out of the party proper, they both noticed that the mansion’s lofty halls were much more spacious, quiet, and even eerie than either of them would have thought they would be.

“Whoa, this place is even bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside,” Steven remarked as they made their steady way down the corridor they had chosen. “And that’s saying something seeing as how it looks huge on the outside.”

“What do the Northwests even need such a huge mansion for anyway?” Connie asked, making her disdain for the wealthy family as apparent as ever. “They probably don’t even use half the rooms in here and if they do, then they’re probably just filled with stuff they never look at or use.”

“You’re sounding like the Gems did earlier,” Steven remarked with a small, bemused smile. “They… really aren’t that happy to be here.”

“Well, who can blame them?” Connie huffed. “I’d rather be anywhere else but here either, but at least this party his good for one thing: helping us get that sword back.”

“True,” Steven nodded. “Though I don’t really know what we’re gonna do with the sword once we get it back… Lion didn’t come with us to the party, so I guess we’ll just have to sneak it back inside and hope your mom doesn’t see-” The young Gem stopped short as a display case resting against the nearby wall caught his attention as they were passing it. A case that was filled with what seemed to be rather clusters of conjoined gemstones.

“Steven?” Connie frowned as she also paused, noticing his apparent surprise. “Is something wrong?”

“Oh, uh, nothing,” Steven glanced away from the case briefly. “Its just… these rocks look an awful lot like the ones those Gem experiments in the Kindergarten had…”

“Really?” Connie asked, concerned. “You don’t think…?”

“…No, they couldn’t be,” the young Gem shook his head. “We bubbled all of them up. A-and even if there were any left that we didn’t find, how would they have ended up here?”

“You got me,” Connie said with a small, reassuring smile. “Now come on, we gotta hurry and get that sword!”

Steven nodded in firm agreement, only taking a very short final glance back at the gemstone display case before he hurried after her. Still, as they continued their way down the narrow mansion hall, neither one of them noticed as one of the odd, strangely familiar-looking gem clusters slowly began to glow, its kin all steadily starting to do the same.

Given their tarnished history with the Northwest family in general, the Gems had decided early on to make their contempt towards their party very apparent. They refused to engage themselves in interacting with any of the transparently pompous guests as they instead hung back together near the other end of the ballroom, their disdainful, disapproving scowls clear as they refused to show any signs of willingly indulging in this wasteful finery.

Well, that is, save for Amethyst.

The purple Gem had essentially overtaken an entire buffet table, scarfing down all of the expensive entrees she could get her hands on, much to Pearl’s ever increasing aggravation.

“Amethyst, could you please try to control yourself for a change!?” the white Gem asked, her arms crossed as she continued standing alongside Garnet nearby.

“No can do, P,” Amethyst said as she essentially poured an entire punch bowl on herself. “These Northwests may throw some lame parties, but at least the snacks never disappoint. I gotta admit, I almost kinda missed this.”

“Well, I certainly haven’t,” Pearl concluded, turning her nose upward coldly. “Now get down from there, you’re making a mess!”

“Good,” Garnet spoke up, undermining the white Gem with a nod of approval, much to her teammates’ confusion.

“Huh?”

“Go ahead and make a mess,” the Gem leader clarified staunchly. “It’s not like the Northwests don’t deserve it after everything they’ve done over the years.”

While Pearl was still rather lost by this bizarre order, Amethyst was more than happy to follow it through. “What, you mean like… this?” she grinned as she dropped a very expensive china tray onto the ground, shattering it upon contact.

“That works,” Garnet nodded in approval as she discreetly summoned her gauntlet. “So does this.” With a simple flick of her fingers at the window behind her, a large crack rippled across its otherwise pristine surface as the Gem leader simply smiled in smug satisfaction.

“G-Garnet!” Pearl gasped, appalled by such destructive behavior.

“Aw, c’mon, Pearl, don’t be such a stick in the mud!” Amethyst goaded, tossing another plate to the ground. “After all, you were the one who painted that awesome tag on their wall a few weeks ago. How is this any worse than that?”

The white Gem hesitated briefly, but in the end, her usual desire for order was quickly overruled by her longstanding contempt for the Northwests and all those like them. “Well…” she began by summoning her spear. “I suppose a tiny little scratch wouldn’t hurt too much…” With this, she placed the tip of her weapon against the smooth marble floor before she began to slowly drag it, leaving a long, marring scratch across the pristine surface. “Oops. Did I do that?” she grinned, already exhilarated by this act of rebellion.

“Yeah, that’s the spirit!” Amethyst cheered, continuing her own form of vandalism as Garnet and Pearl both took to theirs, all three of them reveling in taking their age-old scorn towards the Northwests out, even if it was in a rather simple way.

It stood to reason that a party as fancy and upscale as Northwest Fest would have food and appetizers that were every bit as fancy and upscale to match. And though Amethyst had partaken of the many buffet tables around the ballroom, fortunately she hadn’t gotten to the fondue fountains yet, which was where Candy had been firmly planted for at least the past ten minutes.

“Cheese, chocolate,” she said to herself, essentially entranced as she moved her stick between the two melted substances. “Cheese, chocolate-”

“Candy, listen to me carefully,” Mabel finally interjected as she stepped over to her, halting her constant switching. “You’re caught in a sweet-savory loop. You need to stop now, before you’re lost to the chocolatey cheesiness forever! So put the fondue fork down.”

“I want to… but I can’t…” Candy mused, still completely transfixed on her fondue stick. That is, until most of the ballroom’s attention was garnished by a butler near the front doors.

“Announcing Baron Marius von Fundhauser!” he proclaimed, stepping out of the way to reveal the young baron. Upon a very first glance at him, Mabel, Candy, and Grenda were all instantly enamored, all three of them awestruck by his stately, royal attire and long, silky auburn hair. Clearly, he carried the air of a majestic baron in both title and manner as he strode into the ballroom confidently, the girls’ watching him in utter captivation all the while.

“Guten tag!” Marius greeted the trio with a friendly smile as he passed by them, apparently not noticing their jaws unanimously hanging agape in amazement.

“Guten take me now!” Mabel exclaimed, lovestruck as she started hurrying after him, only for Grenda and Candy to quickly stop her.

“Mabel, we had a truce!” Grenda frowned, still clearly serious about keeping said truce.

“Yes, yes, a truce,” Candy nodded, somewhat less so as she forced a complacent smile. “Uh, Grenda? Can you go fetch us some fancy napkins?”

“Wow, ok!” Grenda blithely agreed, innocently heading off to do so.

“Listen, Mabel,” Candy began, dropping her voice down to a whisper as soon as Grenda was out of earshot. “I don’t know if I can follow this truce. He is too adorable!”

“Ugh, I know, right?!” Mabel gushed tightly, almost relieved for Marius’ welcome arrival and Steven’s subsequent, unexplained disappearance from the party. “But what do we do? He’s unattainable! I mean did you see his hair!? It’s like he was straight out of a shampoo commercial!”

“What if we flirt with him as a team?” Candy suggested. “With our cuteness combined, one of us might have a chance!”

“It’s the perfect plan! But… what about Grenda?”

“I love Grenda, Mabel, but these boys are fancy! Her aggressive flirting style might scare them away!”

The pair glanced over at the larger girl, who was in the midst of “fliting” with another boy, though in her own unique, incredibly forward way. “What’s on your shirt?” she asked, pointing to his chest until he glanced down, at which point she proceeded to bring her finger up and flick him hard in the nose. “Ha! Gullible! Loser!”

Upon seeing this display, both Mabel and Candy nodded, both of them immediately on board for their plan to win Marius over between just the two of them. Really, the figured that it would be better for everyone if they left Grenda out of this loop, as much as they didn’t want to hurt her feelings. After all, the baron was exactly that, a baron. They couldn’t risk the chance of Grenda scaring someone as prestigious and esteemed as Marius off, or worse yet, offending him or hurting him at her own expense. And if, in the process of keeping their attempts at courting Marius between just the two of them, either Mabel or Candy ended up catching his eye and his affections, then, they supposed, that would just be an added benefit.

With the party in full swing as it was, few guests bothered to wander anywhere in the mansion past the main ballroom where all the festivities were being held. And yet, if any guest happened to start wandering the manor’s halls, then they would have likely caught sight of a fiery lumberjack ghost relentlessly chasing a pair of fearfully fleeing kids with nothing less than the absolute intent to kill.

Fortunately though, Pacifica knew the winding corridors and lengthy halls of her mansion home well as she navigated herself and Dipper through them while the ghost sped after them, chuckling threateningly all the while. Despite their efforts to shake the spirit off their trail, he kept on them tightly, his exact motivation for wanting their ends rather unclear, though that was hardly what either of them were concerned with as much as staying alive.

“What are we gonna do?!” Pacifica shouted amidst her growing breathlessness as they continued fleeing. “We can’t keep running from that thing forever!”

“I’m looking!” Dipper shouted back, the journal in one hand and his sword in the other. Of course, it was of little use against the incorporeal ghost, but at the very least it was good for fending off the stray pieces of furniture and dinnerware the specter sent flying their way.

“Well look faster!” the heiress snapped impatiently, worriedly glancing over her shoulder as they rushed through one of the mansion’s several inner gardens. The ground was still muddy from the earlier rain showers, which made their trek through it somewhat haphazard, but all the same, they managed to make it to the other end with the ghost still only a few dangerously short feet behind them.

“Come on, come on…” Dipper muttered, frantically flipping through the journal as much as he could until he finally found what he was looking for. “Aha! I got it! Haunted paintings can only be trapped in a silver mirror. And look!” he pointed ahead to the pristinely white parlor they were running straight towards, or more particularly, the large mirror conveniently hanging from its wall. “There’s a silver mirror right there!”

“Wait!” Pacifica exclaimed, grabbing Dipper’s arm before he could so much as even step foot into the room. “Don’t go in there! This room has my parent’s favorite carpet pattern! They’ll lose it if we track mud in there!”

“What? Are you serious?” Dipper scoffed, unable to believe that the heiress was even remotely concerned with something so unimportant. “Pacifica, we don’t have time for this!”

“W-well we need to make time!” Pacifica retorted, her eyes wide with fear that seemed to go beyond the threat the ghost posed. “We’ll find another way!”

“Why do we need to find another way if there’s a perfectly fine way right in front of us!?” Dipper argued crossly, trying to press his way past her into the room.

“Because my parents will kill me if I don’t listen to them and mess up their rug!”

“Why are you so afraid of your parents?!”

“You wouldn’t understand!”

By now, the argument between the pair had escalated quite a bit in intensity as they roughly grappled with each other, Dipper desperately trying to get into the room while Pacifica desperately tried keeping him out. They could both hear the ghost steadily approaching by his deep, ominous laughter alone, but he had largely been forgotten as Pacifica unexpectedly grabbed the journal, hoping that prying it away from Dipper would be enough to convince him to move on. And fortunately for her, this plan worked as she pulled it away from him, surprising him quite a bit as their eyes met in a very short beat of awkward tension before the heiress took off running down the adjacent hallway with the journal in hand.

“Hey!” Dipper shouted, adamantly running after her. “Pacifica, give that back!”

“Oh what?” Pacifica smirked back over her shoulder, triumphant and relieved that her impromptu plan had succeeded. “You want your dumb nerd book? Then come and get it, Pines!”

Dipper couldn’t help but let out a small growl of frustration at her teasing, still rather taken aback by the heiress’ stubbornness and boldness as he ran after her nonetheless. And of course, all the while, the lumberjack ghost continued its haunting chase after them both, more than ready to rain his fiery fury down the moment he inevitably caught up with them.

After traversing and admittedly getting lost amidst the mansion’s many hallways, Steven and Connie had eventually stumbled upon a back door that led to the large parking area roped off for guests behind the manor. And, though it took some doing to find Dr. Maheswaran’s vehicle amidst the myriad of limos and sports cars, they eventually reached it, only to find a setback they admittedly hadn’t anticipated.

“It’s locked…” Connie frowned in disappointment as she tried pulling the trunk open. “Ugh, we should have seen this coming. There’s no way my mom would leave something like a sword in her car without keeping it locked up tight. What are we supposed to do now?”

“Hm… I think I have an idea…” Steven said, looking to the lock thoughtfully. “Do you have a hair pin or something like that?”

“Um, yeah?” Connie complied in confusion, pulling a non-essential pin out of her updo.

“Thanks!” the young Gem grinned as he started wedging the pin into the lock.

“Where did you learn how to pick locks from?” Connie asked, her brow furrowed as she watched Steven work.

“Amethyst and Mr. Pines taught me after I walked in on them trying to open a safe they found somewhere,” Steven explained with an innocent smile. “So they taught me how to pick locks in exchange for not ‘spilling it’ to anyone else about the safe. Tough I’m still not sure why they wouldn’t want anyone else knowing about something like that…”

“Uh, probably because they stole that safe instead of finding it, Steven…” Connie pointed out.

“…Oh. Well, at least I learned something useful,” Steven shrugged as he successfully unlocked the trunk. Sure enough, Rose’s sword lay within, and despite a moment of initial trepidation for breaking her mother’s strict orders, Connie took the blade nonetheless, strapping it over her shoulder before shutting the trunk behind her.

“Ok, we got it,” she said, letting out the deep breath she felt as though she had been holding in since this entire situation began. “Now we just have to sneak it out of the party without my mom seeing…”

“And without the Gems seeing either,” Steven noted as they began making their way back up the hill to the mansion. “I sorta didn’t tell them about this whole sword thing, and I feel like they probably wouldn’t be too happy if they found out its pretty much the reason why I begged them to come to this party in the first place…”

“I guess we’re gonna be on double duty when it comes to being stealthy for the rest of the night then,” Connie said with resolve as they reentered the manor the same way they had left it. However, the pair stopped short as soon as they stepped inside upon seeing what lay before them. The highly decorated hallway was in shambles, wall tapestries torn and decorative displays laying in shattered remains on the ground without any rhyme or reason at all. “Whoa…” Connie mused, her voice dropping down to an apprehensive whisper. “What could have done all this?”

“D-didn’t Dipper say something about Pacifica asking him to help out with a ghost haunting the mansion?” Steven asked nervously, drawing a bit closer to Connie out of fear.

“Yeah but… a ghost wouldn’t have been able to do this much damage… would it?”

“I… I don’t know, maybe,” Steven shook his head fretfully, remembering well just how much destruction the convenience store ghosts had cause at the start of the summer. “We should go find Dipper and ask him if he’s seen-”

The young Gem was cut off as a low, rather inhuman moan echoed from the end of the hall in front of them. The pair froze, their hands unceremoniously intertwining tightly as a large, looming shadow draped itself over the wall, its source unknown as it grew in size and intimidation. Neither Steven or Connie dared to even breathe as the unearthly groans raised in volume, the shadow coming to a stop as a massive arm slammed down into the open before the rest of its twisted body emerged from around the corner. Simply put, it was a mass of multiple mismatched limbs, all strewn together into a hulking, massive, discolored body, if it could even be called that at all. And, resting at the center of where its face would have been if it had one, was a very familiar cluster of conjoined gemstones.

“C-Connie?” Steven whispered, gripping her hand tighter as this monster began lumbering its way towards them through the mess it had made earlier. “I-I think that’s one of the Gem mutants I was telling you about…”

“What? Are you sure?” Connie asked, her voice just as quiet, even though they had clearly already attracted the mutant’s attention.

“Preeeeetty sure at this point,” the young Gem nodded stiffly, knowing this creature looked quite close to the ones they had encountered at the Kindergarten the other week.

“Well then, we got this sword back at just the right time,” Connie scowled towards the mutant as she swiftly drew Rose’s sword, wielding the massive blade with both hands as she took up an offensive stance. Steven watched in amazement as she rushed forwards, seemingly undeterred as she pulled the mighty sword back before delivering a clean swipe straight through the mutant’s weighty midsection before it could even try to attack. With a pained whine, the forced fusion imploded, its shard-composed gemstone tumbling to the floor before Steven ran forward to bubble it and send it away.

“Looks like you were right,” Connie said, still gripping Rose’s sword tightly as she looked around for any more. “Those rocks really were Gem mutants after all.”

“Yeah, but why would they be-” Steven was cut off as a loud crash sounded out from the other end of the hall. This was immediately and unsurprisingly followed by the emergence of even more gem mutants, both big and small, rounding the corner en masse as they walked, crawled, sidled, anything they could to inch their way towards the aptly frightened pair. “Uh, C-Connie? I think now would be a good time to run!” Steven warned, grabbing her by the arm as he tried to pull her down the other way.

“No, Steven, I can take them!” Connie protested, already positioning her sword to strike.

“I-I know, but still!” Steven pleaded, fearful for her safety more than his own really. After all, the last thing he wanted was to see her get hurt as a result of overconfidence in her newly acquired blade, even as powerful as it was. “We gotta get the Gems! They can help us take care of these things before they can make it into the ballroom and end up hurting someone!”

“…You’re right,” Connie begrudgingly relented, sheathing her blade. “So come on, then! We have to hurry!”

“Right!” Steven readily agreed, leading the way out of the hallway that had already been claimed and decimated by the marauding gem mutants.

As Steven and Connie began their hasty flight through the mansion’s lofty halls, Dipper and Pacifica continued theirs, with the former still chasing after the latter in the hopes of reclaiming the journal before the ghost could catch up to them.

“Pacifica!” Dipper shouted after the heiress, quite surprised at how fast she was. “I’m serious! Give me back the journal, now!”

“Why should I?” Pacifica countered just as harshly. “So you can go running back to that room, get mud all over the floors, and get me in trouble with my parents? Because last time I checked, that’s not what you’re here for!”

“You’re right, I’m here to get rid of that ghost!” Dipper reiterated, severely annoyed. “But I can’t do that if you won’t let me just because your scared of setting off your parents for some weird reason!”

“I already told you!” the heiress shot back, gripping the journal in her arms tightly as she continued running. “You don’t understand!”

“Then help me understand!” Dipper urged, both out of frustration and genuine curiosity as to why she seemed so adamant about all this. Interestingly enough though, this was what finally got Pacifica to stop in her tracks, her expression startled and strangely soft as she turned to face him.

“W-what?” she asked rather quietly, taken aback that anyone would even inquire about the matter at all, especially him. However, before Dipper could even reply, a brand new threat made itself apparent as it slammed down into the space directly behind Pacifica from the high ceiling above. It was a tall, lanky creature, with six disproportionate arms and no face to speak of as it balanced on a pair of long, mismatched legs amidst towering over the frightened heiress, letting out a low, threatening groan all the while. Pacifica let out a horrified scream at this grotesque creature as it started to advance on her, her long dress tripping her up as she clumsily fell to the ground, shielding herself with her arm as the creature raised one of its many arms with the intent to strike. And yet… it was a strike she never felt.

Hesitantly, Pacifica opened her tightly shut eyes and took a glance back towards the monster, only to see something that shocked her just as much as its sudden appearance had. For standing squarely in between her and the multi-limbed creature was none other than Dipper, his sword raised as he firmly, fearlessly pressed back against the many hands pressed against it. Yet all the same he held his ground, his footing steady and his expression fierce as he warded off the mutant, eventually managing to push it back enough to give himself enough space to properly fight it. All the while, Pacifica remained practically frozen to her spot on the ground, her eyes wide and her jaw dropped as she watched in absolute awe as Dipper rushed towards the monster with a courageous shout, lashing out with his blade as he maneuvered with skill and ease. The creature was unable to keep up with him as he dodged its slow, sloppy movements, and in what seemed like no time at all, the tip of his sword had punctured the monster squarely in its back, resulting in its hideous form poofing into nothing more than a mismatched cluster of gem shards.

“A Gem mutant?” Dipper frowned in confusion as he carefully picked the compiled stone. “How’d this get in here? Pacifica, do you know anything about this thing?”

Strangely, he received no answer from the heiress as he glanced back to look at her, only to find that she was staring up at him, seemingly captivated, though for what reason, he had no idea. Still, try as she might, Pacifica couldn’t convince her body or her mind to respond properly as her thoughts raced randomly and her cheeks began flushing warm and pink as she kept her eyes on the boy who had effectively just saved her life. She couldn’t deny that, with both his suit and hair as mildly yet endearingly disheveled as they were, resolve and adrenaline still sparking in his eyes, and the sword still held confidently in his hand, he did look the slightest bit dashing, almost heroic even, though she’d never dare to admit that out loud.

“Uh… Pacifica? Are you ok?” Dipper asked, making the heiress realize that she had gone far too long without taking her eyes off him.

“W-wha—oh, uh, y-yeah!” she exclaimed, clearly flustered as she rejected the hand he had offered to help her stand in favor of doing so on her own. “I-I don’t know why you think I wouldn’t be. That weird arm thing wasn’t even that scary.”

“Oh sure it wasn’t,” Dipper remarked with a wry, rather playful smirk. “That’s why you screamed in terror as soon as you saw it, right?”

Pacifica shot him a disapproving glare at this, though it wasn’t as harsh as it admittedly could have been as she shoved the journal back into his arms. “Here, take you lame nerd book back,” she huffed, still trying to suppress her ongoing blush. “So… uh… where’d you learn how to do that?”

“Do what?”

“You know…” she held her hands behind her back as she nodded to his sword casually enough. “That.”

“Oh, sword fighting?” Dipper clarified, glancing to his blade before sheathing it. “Me and Connie have been taking lessons from Pearl for the past few weeks. It tends to come in handy when you deal with stuff like this a lot, which… yeah, I kinda do.”

“And… your family’s just… ok with you running around with a dangerous sword all the time?” Pacifica asked, slightly baffled by such apparent freedom.

“Uh… yeah?” Dipper shrugged, unsure of what she meant by this question. “Why wouldn’t they be?”

The heiress didn’t answer as she glanced down somewhat, her brow furrowing in both confusion and what almost felt like envy, though that couldn’t possibly be right. After all, how in the world could someone as well off and highly esteemed as her be jealous of someone as common and unrefined as him?

While it was quite likely that the ghost had lost track of them in the chaos that had just ensued, Dipper didn’t want to take any chances, which was why he took the lead in moving on. However, they barely even rounded the corner before they were held up again, though this time by it fortunately wasn’t by the ghost or any Gem mutants, but rather by Steven and Connie as they all accidentally happened to run smack into each other.

“Wha—Steven? Connie?” Dipper frowned in confusion upon seeing the pair at such a random juncture. “What are you guys doing here? Why aren’t you back at the party?”

“W-well, we got my mom’s sword back,” Steven began anxiously. “But then we ran into a ton of Gem mutants, just like the ones we fought at the Kindergarten!”

“Wait, you mean there are even more of those things running around here?” Dipper asked incredulously as he handed the remains of the mutant he had defeated over to Steven so it could be bubbled. “We were just attacked by one. How’d they even get into the mansion in the first place?”

“I don’t know…” Connie mused, her tone and expression growing quite suspicious as she glanced over at the nearby heiress. “That’s a really good question, isn’t it, Pacifica?”

“Oh what? You think I have something to do with this?” Pacifica asked harshly.

“Well, seeing as how all these Gem clusters were in a display case in your mansion, so it only makes sense that you’d know something about how they ended up here.”

“Well, I don’t,” the heiress huffed, her hands on her hips. “My parents probably bought them for the party and didn’t know they were actually gross, grabby, nightmarish freakshows.”

“Actually, they’re shattered Gems who were forced to fuse with each other,” Steven said with a sympathetic frown for the mutants’ plight.

“…I literally have no idea what any of that means,” Pacifica said, clearly out of the context loop. “Still, I don’t know anything about how those things wound up here.”

“Oh yeah? And how do we know you’re actually telling the truth?” Connie asked, still rather distrustful. And really, she believed she had every reason to be, given just how dangerous these Gem mutants were and just how not coincidental their presence in the mansion seemed to be. “After all, your family has a known history of lying when it comes to their dirty little secrets, so it wouldn’t be surprising at all if you inherited that bad habit right alongside all the money you don’t deserve.”

Pacifica let out an appalled gasp at this, outraged and offended by such an accusation as she took a bold, almost threatening step forward. “Ok, you know what, Maheswaran, I’m gonna-”

“Whoa, ok, hold it!” Dipper quickly interjected before any sort of scuffle could break out, both him and Steven rushing in to stand between the two incensed girls. “Connie, I know you’re uh, not really a fan of Pacifica, but as much as I hate to admit it, I don’t think she’s lying about this.”

“Seriously, Dipper?” Connie scoffed. “You know how she is, we all do! Heck, for all you know, she could be lying to you about this whole ’ghost’ thing too!”

Dipper was actually quite prepared to correct Connie on this, not noticing Pacifica flinch slightly behind him as she realized this accusation was at least partially true. However, he really didn’t have to as the lumberjack ghost’s laughter began booming through the nearby corridor once again as he started to catch up with his victims.

“Its time to stop running, Northwest, and face you DOOM!” he shouted, finally appearing at the end of the hall with blue flames sparking all over his frightening form. All four of the kids let out a shared scream of terror as the spirit soared towards them at a breakneck speed, and all of the discourse concerning mutants and lies was quickly left behind as they unintentionally split up. Steven and Connie took off in the hallway they had just ran down, wanting to get back to the ballroom and find the Gems now more than ever with the appearance of this new ghostly threat. Still, the spirit paid them no mind as he continued pursuing his original targets, who were both desperately searching for any way they could find to subdue the ghost as they fled from him. In their frantic rush, they haphazardly turned a corner, only for Pacifica to end up tripping over her dress once more. She happened to grab Dipper by the sleeve in a last ditch attempt at steadying herself, only for them both to end up falling towards the nearby wall. Or rather, right through it. The ghost didn’t see this fortunately, as he glided straight on by while the pair tumbled into an apparently hidden storage room inconspicuously hidden behind a large tapestry.

“Huh? What’s this place?” Dipper asked as both him and Pacifica picked themselves up, glancing around the apparent collection of the Northwest’s various treasures and portraits.

“I… don’t know…” Pacifica admitted in apt confusion. “That’s weird. I don’t even know where this room is…”

“Hopefully the ghost and those Gem mutants don’t either…” Dipper remarked, taking a cursory peek back into the hallway.

“Yeah, maybe we’re safe,” the heiress let out a somewhat relieved breath, not noticing as the large sheet covering a painting behind her began to swell forward on its own accord. Dipper fortunately caught sight of this just in time as the sheet began to take on the clear, massive shape, one that reached out over Pacifica slowly and threateningly.

“Pacifica! Watch out!” he warned, drawing his sword as he rushed forward to defend her. Pacifica let out a frightened gasp as the ghost tossed the sheet away, laughing menacingly as he towered over her.

“Your fate is sealed!” the specter proclaimed, his blue flames rising as he prepared to strike the terrified heiress down once and for all. Dipper had just about reached her, unsure of what he was really going to do against the ghost with his sword alone, but he stopped short immediately upon noticing a discarded antique lying on the floor nearby, none other than a small, pure silver mirror.

“Prepare to die, Northwest!” the ghost shouted, his axe raised to deliver the final blow. Pacifica quickly braced herself for what would likely be a very painful end, only for Dipper to end up saving her from it at the last second. However, instead of doing so with his sword, this time he did so with the mirror, and the moment the ghost’s weapon made contact with it, everything seemed to happen at once. The entire room was engulfed in a blinding flash as Dipper was knocked back into Pacifica, who herself was pushed back towards the room’s small, low to the ground window. The pair was still completely in the dark about what was happening as they were practically launched out of the window, entangling themselves in its curtains as they rolled down a short hill, finally landing together at the bottom of it, breathless and rattled, but largely unharmed.

“W-what happened?” Pacifica asked her and Dipper both pulled themselves up. “Did you get him?”

At this, they both looked to the mirror, only to find an incredibly relieving sight: the ghost was trapped securely inside of it, demanding his freedom in an absolute fit of rage as he pounded against the other side of the glass to no avail. “Ha! Yes!” Dipper cheered, satisfied that at the very least one threat had been neutralized.

“We did it!” Pacifica exclaimed just as triumphantly, throwing her arms around Dipper without really thinking about it. Needless to say he was complete caught off guard by this unexpected hug, especially given the fact that it was coming from the heiress of all people. Still, what baffled him even more was the sudden rush of warmth he felt in his cheeks, coupled with the odd, yet strangely wistful feeling of not wanting it to end. It did, however, as Pacifica realized exactly what she was doing, her blush even brighter than Dipper’s as she quickly pulled away, averting his gaze as she awkwardly cleared her throat, wishing she could calm her racing heart and confused, flustered thoughts down already as she pulled out a dollar. “Uh… c-can I pay you to pretend that never happened?”

Despite being held up by the occasional minor Gem mutant, Steven and Connie eventually managed to navigate their way back to the main ballroom, only to stop short in surprise upon realizing that no one at the party was even remotely aware of the dangers lurking the halls just behind them. The pair ran into the midst of the celebrating crowd, more than ready to warn them all to flee the premises before it was too late. However, before they could even get a single person’s attention, they happened to accidently bump into the last person Connie had wanted to encounter at the moment.

“M-Mom!” she exclaimed in surprise upon running right into her mother’s torso. The doctor paused, looking away from the conversation she had been engaged in to her daughter instead, only to freeze with shock and motherly fury upon noticing the large pink sword strapped to her back.

“Connie!” Priyanka gasped, appalled. “How did you even—what are you doing with that?! I made a rule, no swords under any circumstances!”

“But mom-” Connie tried to argue, knowing that she needed to be armed in the dire circumstances they were facing.

“No,” the doctor interupted rigidly. “I told you once, and I can’t believe I have to tell you again! But its clear to me now that I can’t even trust you to so much as listen to me even after I put my foot down! So you leave me with no choice; you’re grounded until further notice. Hand that sword over, now.”

“But Mom, you don’t understand, I-”

“I said now!”

Connie flinched, clearly startled by her mother’s incredibly harsh tone as she let out a defeated sigh. With no other choice, she took the sword off her back and relinquished it, largely feeling as though she was handing over a piece of herself in the process. And as Steven caught sight of her utterly dejected expression, he found he could no longer stand by in silence.

“Er, Dr. Maheswaran, wait! You can’t take that sword away from Connie! She needs it—we need it to-”

“That’s quite enough,” Priyanka cut him off, sending him a fierce warning glare. “I’m not going to argue over this sword nonsense any longer. It’s done.”

“Mom, please-” Connie pleaded desperately only to be shot down one final time as her mother began to walk off, sword in hand.

“Done!” she reiterated, glaring back at her daughter with what was nothing less than absolute disappointment. Disappointment that left Connie feeling crushed even more than losing her sword had.

“So… what now?” Steven asked gently, placing a hand on her shoulder.

“I guess we just go find the Gems and let them save the day, as usual…” Connie sighed, wrapping her arms around herself as she morosely headed off to do just that. Of course, what neither of the pair was aware of was that the Gems had actually taken their ongoing vandalizing spree up onto the roof, where they were currently in the process of spelling out the word “snobs” in huge letters using paint Amethyst had “happened to find”, much to the enjoyment of the still large crowd gathered outside the gates below. But even still, Steven and Connie began duly, almost solemnly even pressing their way through the party, knowing that with the horde of Gem mutants drawing ever closer and Rose’s sword no longer a viable option, they were the only hope they had left.

With the ghost finally subdued and captured, Dipper and Pacifica blithely went to go report their shared success to the heiress’ parents. And while the Northwests weren’t as openly elated or excited as the young pair, they were still quite relieved to know that their haunting had been taken care of and their immaculate party saved.

“Well, Pacifica, you really found the right man for the job,” Preston remarked, snapping his fingers to signal to the nearby butler to shake Dipper’s hand in his place.

“We can’t thank you enough,” Priscilla said before a brief pause that ended with her nodding to the butler. “That’s enough.”

“Hey, just holding up my end of the deal,” Dipper grinned as he took the mirror the ghost was in and prepared to head out.

“Wait, leaving already?” Pacifica asked in slight disappointment. “You’re at the world’s best party, dummy. Are you sure you wanna go so soon?”

“Well I’d love to stay,” Dipper said with a smile just as playful as the heiress’. “But I’ve got a category 10 ghost to dispose of and then I should really go help Steven and Connie out with the rest of those Gem mutants.”

“Oh that’s right, I almost forgot just how adventurous your life is,” Pacifica rolled her eyes with a lightly teasing smirk.

“Heh, yeah,” Dipper chuckled, not paying too much attention to where he was going as he kept his sights on the heiress behind him. Which was how he ended up walking straight into one of the garden’s pillars. Pacifica was unable to contain her laughter at this, something that flustered Dipper quite a bit as he backed up and tried to play his clumsiness off as intentional. “O-oh, uh, l-like you said: a-adventurous.”

“Oh yeah, running into a pillar,” Pacifica quipped, still chuckling. “That’s totally an epic quest right there.”

Despite still being somewhat embarrassed, Dipper couldn’t help but finally join in on the heiress’ ongoing amused laughter, something that only died down between them as he sent her a small wave of farewell, one that she returned with a warm, genuine smile. He held up a similar smile as he departed, unable to deny that this misadventure, despite all of its harrowing moments, had ended on a much better note than he had could have ever expected anything pertaining to Pacifica Northwest to. For instead of being just as closed off and callously coldhearted as she had always come across to him before, it seemed as though there was another side to her: a playful, daring, capable side that came across as so much more authentic than the haughty front she usually seemed to put up. And even more unexpected than that was the fact that he had found himself taking a genuine liking of that side of the heiress, one that he hoped to see again in any of their future encounters. “Call me crazy, but… maybe she’s not so bad after all…” Dipper remarked to himself once he was out of the heiress’ earshot, surprised that he was even admitting something like that, but pleasantly surprised nonetheless.

His satisfaction was soon cut short, however, as a mocking, knowing laugh sounded from within the mirror in his hand. “What are you laughing about, man?” Dipper asked, glancing down at the trapped ghost in apt confusion. “I defeated you.”

“You’ve been had, boy,” the ghost said with another bitter laugh. “The Northwests lied to you, just as they did to me and my kin one hundred and fifty years ago.”

“…What do you mean?” Dipper ventured, genuinely curious as the ghost began to recount his tale of woe.

“One hundred and fifty years ago this day, the Northwests asked us lumber-folk to build them a mansion atop the hill. We were told it would be a service to the town, that once a year they would throw a grand party that would be open to the people of Gravity Falls, and all would share in the bounty of their wealth! It took years of backbreaking labor and sacrifice, but the promise of such a luxorious feast kept all of us going as we worked towards the manor’s completion, aided by a group of strong, magical, yet kindly women the Northwests had contracted to help the project along.”

“Wait, magical women?” Dipper interrupted, intrigued by this point in particular. “You mean the Crystal Gems?”

“Yes,” the ghost nodded disdainfully. “The Crystal Gems were invaluable in helping us raise these stately halls, but on the night we needed them most, they were nowhere to be found to stop the injustice committed against us lumberjacks. For when it was time for the grand party the Northwests promised the common folk of the town, they coldly refused to let us in. And with the trees we had cut to build the mansion gone, the mudslides began. While they partied and laughed, I was swept away by the storm and met my end to the very axe I had used to build their undeserved empire. And so I said with final breath: ‘One-fifty years I’ll return from death, and if the gate’s still closed to the town, wealthy blood will stain the ground!’ A curse passed down across every generation of Northwests, even to this day.”

“So… wait a minute,” Dipper said once the ghost was finished, quickly putting the pieces together of how everything he had just heard related back to the present. Which, in turn created a picture he was far from happy with. “The Northwests knew this haunting was coming, and they tricked me into helping them to avoid ghostly justice? …I’ll be right back…”

With the state of the party as seemingly secured as it was, Pacifica had returned to her expected spot by her parents’ side as they mingled with their wealthy guests. Yet her thoughts were hardly in the fancy festivities going on around her as they usually were during Northwest Fest and instead they were focused on the boy she had spent the earlier half of her evening with. She found it so incredibly strange that just a few hours ago, she had barely even spared a second thought towards Dipper, viewing him as just as common and ordinary as anyone else. Yet now, after the past few hours of narrowly surviving a deadly haunting with him, she couldn’t deny that he somehow fascinated her in ways that confused yet excited her all at once. And as she thought about his brazen swordsmanship, his clever readiness for almost any situation, his awkward yet almost frustratingly endearing laughter, Pacifica couldn’t help but sail through the evening with a distant, almost dreamy smile on her face, one that was filled with an unknown yet brimming longing to see him again.

A longing that was incidentally fulfilled sooner than she thought it would; though in the last way she could have wanted it to.

The Northwests were in the midst of entertaining dignitaries in the foyer when the mansion’s front doors suddenly burst open, revealed an incredibly indignant Dipper behind them. “Northwests!” he exclaimed angrily as he marched in, mirror still in hand. “You have some explaining to do!”

“Dipper! You came back!” Pacifica instantly perked up, a bright smile on her face as she began to rush over to him. Though it was quick to disappear as he shot her a particularly harsh, glare, one that was a very far cry from the warm smile he had left her with.

“You lied to me!” he accused furiously before addressing the entire family. “All of you did! All you had to do was let the townsfolk into the party and you could have broken the curse! But you just made me do your dirty work instead!”

Pacifica took in a sharp breath at this, knowing that he had discovered the one wrench in all of this that she had hoped he wouldn’t find out, especially as the newfound camaraderie began forming between them. But before she could even try to explain anything, her father was quick to only make things worse.

“Look at who you’re talking to, boy,” Preston began coldly, essentially ignoring the incredibly hostile scowl Dipper was sending up at him. “I’m hosting a party for the most powerful people in the world. Do you really think they’d come here if they had to rub elbows with your kind?”

“My kind?” Dipper repeated with an appalled scoff, not even bothering to contest the billionaire any further. After all, he had expected as much from the head of the Northwest household, but he had foolishly come to believe that their daughter was different, that she wasn’t just another pompous, heartless sob, that she had at least some redeeming shred of actual humanity in her. But as he had just discovered, none of that was true at all. “Looks like I was right about you all along,” he said to Pacifica bitterly, not even caring about her genuinely distraught expression. “You’re just as bad as your parents. Another link in the world’s worst chain!”

“N-no! Dipper, you don’t understand!” Pacifica protested earnestly, determined to set the record straight. “I’m sorry, they made me lie to you! I should have told you everything from the start, but-” The heiress was abruptly cut off by the sharp, sudden peal of the bell in her father’s hand, one that instantly silenced her back into submission as she glanced down submissively, ashamed by her own inability to resist it, ashamed by the fact that she had even agreed to this deceptive charade in the first placed, ashamed by everything really, but mostly, she was ashamed of herself.

“Enjoy the party,” Preston remarked mockingly as Dipper turned to head out, not even bothering to send Pacifica a second glance in his palpable fury, something that made her heart ache even more than just about anything else. “It’s the last time you and your kind will ever come.”

As vehemently outraged with the Northwests as he was, Dipper knew there wasn’t much he could do get back at them for their despicable actions. So instead of frustrating himself further, he sullenly took the mirror outside, following the journal’s instructions to create the proper setup needed to oust the ghost from the mortal plane. “Stupid Northwests, making me do their exorcism for them,” he grumbled to himself after placing the mirror at the center of the circle of candles. With everything in place, he began to read the journal’s spell to get rid of ghosts, though given the circumstances, he was hardly invested in the matter whatsoever “‘Exodus demonous, spookus scarus, aintafraidus noghostus’-”

“Dipper… Dipper!” the ghost called from within the mirror. “Please let me have my revenge on the Northwests. You hate them just as much as I!”

“Hey, I feel for you, I really do,” Dipper conceded and it was true, for more reasons than one. Even aside from the fact that they had both been made fools of by the Northwests, this ghost wasn’t exactly the first being trapped inside a mirror he had taken pity on. “It’s just… my sister and my friends are in there and you seem just a little unstable…”

“Very well, boy,” the ghost hung his head in apparent acceptance of his fate. “But… before you banish my soul, may these tired lumber eyes gaze upon the trees one final time?”

“Uh, I guess,” Dipper said, somewhat confused by this odd request though he obliged nonetheless, picking the mirror up and holding it towards the nearby forest. “Go nuts, man.”

Upon getting even just a glimpse at the trees, the ghost laughed wildly as the sight of the forest empowered him enough to ignite his flames brighter and hotter, to the point that their heat rapidly spread to his mirror prison itself. Dipper didn’t even have time to be confused about what was happening before the mirror’s handle suddenly turned red hot, burning his hand to the point that he was forced to let go of it. The glass shattered the instant it made contact with the ground and with it the ghost exploded from its ruined shards, paying no mind to the startled boy who had accidentally released him as he set his sights on the mansion once more.

“Yes! Vengeance!” he proclaimed with a triumphant laugh, speeding towards the manor with the intent of finally fulfilling his bloodthirsty vendetta.

“Oh no!” Dipper exclaimed, aptly alarmed as he remembered who else was still in the mansion. “Mabel! Steven! Connie!” Despite his lasting anger at the Northwests, he knew well that he couldn’t let the ghost accomplish his violent ends so long as innocent people were in danger. Which was why, after making sure his blade was strapped securely to his back, he rushed back up towards the mansion, unsure of what he was going to do to stop this disaster but determined to try rather than do nothing, as he assumed the Northwests were very likely to do.

With their freeform destruction on the roof complete, the Gems returned to the party proper, mischievous grins on their faces as they continued their own form of “revenge” by turning over tables, piercing through expensive paintings, and breaking priceless antiques. Of course, they were always discreet enough in doing so that no one really noticed, but still, they couldn’t deny that they were all three having genuine fun in their righteous form of destruction against the wealthy family. When it came right down to it, it almost felt nostalgic, at least to Garnet and Pearl as they recalled helping break apart the similar upper-crust regime of Homeworld centuries ago. And though this was indeed on a much smaller scale than that, they still couldn’t deny that it felt incredibly cathartic all the same.

Not too far away from the tapestry the Gems were currently tearing apart, Mabel and Candy were carrying out their strategic plan to flirt with Marius, with the former boldly taking the lead as she approached the baron with a wide, cheerful smile. “Hi, I’m Mabel!” she greeted loudly, catching Marius somewhat off guard. “So, Australia, huh? Do you guys eat kangaroo meat over there, or, uh… a-are they strictly pets?”

“I am from Austria,” Marius corrected with a confused frown.

“Haha! Yeah!” Mabel let out a forced, awkward laugh, panicking as she tapped Candy’s shoulder. “Tag! Tag!”

“I am Candy!” the other girl said to the baron as she took over just as brightly. “I love the tiny hats you wear on your shoulders!”

“Hi again!” Mabel cut back in, roughly pushing Candy aside in light of this. “If you were a boat, do you know what kind you’d be? A dream boat, that’s what kind.”

“You are tagged out!” Candy protested in a harsh whisper as she elbowed Mabel.

“I tagged back in,” Mabel pushed her back crossly.

“You can’t do that!”

“I can tag myself! Its allowed!”

“No, its not!”

“Yeah, it is!”

As the girls continued to bicker amongst themselves, the very confused Marius nervously retreated, unsure of how to react to them so clearly arguing over him. They also failed to notice that someone else had watched this entire embarrassing display, and she was far from pleased with what she had just seen. “Ahem!” Grenda interjected, hands on her hips as she cut through Mabel and Candy’s argument. “What exactly was all that?! You were flirting with Marius without me!”

At this, the pair exchanged a tense glance, knowing that there was really no playing any of this off as they had been caught red-handed. “W-we are sorry, Grenda,” Candy began, genuinely apologetic. “It’s just…”

“Your flirting style can come across as a bit… intense…” Mabel continued rather hesitantly.

“Oh, I see!” Grenda scoffed, thoroughly offended by this opinion. “You think I shouldn’t be myself just because I’m at this stupid mansion! I thought you liked my style!”

“We do!” Candy affirmed. “But these boys might not!”

“Oh, then I guess they wouldn’t like this either! Hey, Marius!”

“Yah?” the baron asked curiously as he wandered back over to the group.

Grenda paused briefly, looking to her friends with a critical glare as they both shook their heads with silent pleas for her to stop before it was too late. But of course, as angry as she was, she refused to comply with them and ‘flirted’ with Marius anyway. “You’ve got something… on your shit!” Of course, the baron glanced down, only for Grenda to launch her finger upward to hit his nose rather unforgivingly. Mabel and Candy gasped in shock at Grenda’s apparent audacity, and, with all three of them equally frustrated with each other, they all stormed away from each other in a huff without sparing another word. Still, none of them paid much mind to the rather stunned baron they had left behind, who looked off in the direction of the girl who had so aggressively “flirted” with him with amazed stars of newfound infatuation in his eyes.

After what felt like ages of searching in vain for the Gems, Steven and Connie eventually gave up, opting to rethink their options when it came to dealing with the infestation of Gem mutants. An infestation that was more than likely to make it into the ballroom itself sooner rather than later.

“We’re running out of time,” Connie noted, peaking down the nearby hallway for any signs of approaching mutants. “If we don’t hurry, then those mutants could end up hurting someone!”

“Yeah, but what can we do?” Steven asked fretfully. “We can’t find the Gems and your mom took my mom’s sword… Huh, that’s… actually kinda ironic now that I think about it…”

“I’ll tell you what we’re going to do,” Connie said with firm resolve, ignoring her issues with her mother for the moment for the sake of the greater good. “We’re going to handle this problem ourselves, sword or no sword, whether my mother likes it or not!”

“Excuse me?”

Both kids let out a startled gasp as they spun around to find none other that Priyanka herself standing right behind them, having sifted her way through the crowd in search of her daughter only to find her at the exact wrong moment. The doctor still had Rose’s sword tucked under her arm, her expression completely shocked and outraged over what she had just heard, but even so, Connie had no intention of retracting what she had said.

“M-Mom, I… You have to listen to me listen to me,” she began somewhat unsteadily, though her confidence started to grow as she reached for the sword. “I really, really, really need that sword! If you don’t give it to me, then a lot of innocent people could be in huge danger!”

“What? Connie, no!” Priyanka staunchly refused, holding the blade up as her daughter continued trying to grab it. “What has gotten into you? You know I never go back on a rule, young lady.”

“But there has to be some exceptions!” Connie argued fiercely. “I’m not some… rule-driven robot!”

As soon as she had said this, a brutal crash sounded from the end of the nearby hallway, one that was immediately followed by the appearance of a very large Gem mutant, one that didn’t hesitate to lunge forward towards the group near the ballroom. “W-what on earth is that thing?!” Priyanka asked, protectively gripping her daughter’s shoulder tightly.

“It’s a Gem mutant!” Steven exclaimed, determined to help Connie fend it off as his shield formed over his arm. “It’s why you have to let Connie have that sword back, Dr. Maheswaran! So she can beat it and protect everyone here!”

“Wha—b-but-” the doctor’s protests were cut off as the mutant pounced, one of its many hands reaching out and grabbing the closest thing to it, which just so happened to be Connie. “Connie!”

“M-Mom!” Connie called back as the mutant began dragging her towards it, its grip on her strong, despite her attempts to break free from it.

“I’ll save you!” Steven exclaimed, rushing forward before slamming his shield into the mutant’s side, forcing it to relinquish its hold. “Keep away from my Connie!”

The mutant let out a threatening groan as it shoved the young Gem back roughly, still towering over the group as more creatures began filling in behind it, pressing the trio back towards the ballroom. “T-these things are beyond reason!” Priyanka shook her head, unable to believe what she was witnessing.

“Mom, if you would go back on your rule this one time!” Connie pleaded, feeling largely useless against this threat without a sword in her hand. “I just need to help Steven get us out of here!”

“No! Mother knows best!” Priyanka reiterated harshly, still keeping the sword away from her daughter, even despite the growing danger.

“W-we can’t let these things into the ballroom!” Steven cried, struggling to maintain his stance as the largest mutant continued pressing against his shield. The smaller mutants were starting to maneuver their way around the group, crawling up the walls and ceiling as they essentially surrounded them, though they still didn’t work their way into the ballroom just yet. Upon seeing this, the young Gem gasped but reacted accordingly, abandoning his shield for a bubble instead, though the mutants continued pounding against it just as viciously.

“W-we’re trapped!” the doctor exclaimed, quite alarmed by this turn of events.

“We don’t have to be!” Connie proclaimed, her expression adamant as she turned to face her mother, refusing to give up in these dire straits. “Really, Mom. I know how to do this!”

“No, you don’t!” Priyanka argued, just as resilient on her side of the matter as her daughter was.

“Ugh, yes, she does!” Steven cut in quite impatiently, knowing they were wasting very precious time fighting like this. “She’s been training! She hasn’t just been playing around with that sword! She’s been taking classes learning how to use it right! Even though she’s always studying, or practicing tennis, or playing violin, she still works really hard to be a good sword fighter and she is!”

“No,” the doctor quickly denied, refusing to believe anything of the sort. “No, no, no, no, no. I know my daughter! I know what she’s doing every second of the day. All her activities, all her internets, everything. I know she’s definitely not some sword fighting hooligan!”

By this point, Connie had gotten to the point where enough was enough. For as long as she could remember, she had always rigidly stuck to whatever her parents had told her, complying perfectly for the sake of winning their approval and pride more than anything else. It was tedious, laborious, even difficult at some points giving their very high standards for her. But now, such standards could no longer apply. Because not only were they in a life or death situation, but things had changed. She had changed. It was a shift that everyone who knew her, everyone who came in contact with her had been able to see, especially herself. Everyone but her own mother, it seemed. “You don’t know me at all!” Connie finally exploded, beyond frustrated with her mother’s stubbornness by now. “You still haven’t even noticed my glasses!”

“W-what about your glasses?”

“They don’t have lenses anymore!” Connie huffed, taking her frames off and sticking her finger straight through them. “I haven’t needed actual glasses for almost the entire summer!”

“What?!” Priyanka asked, completely baffled. “Your eyesight just… magically got better?”

“Yes!” Connie shouted adamantly as Steven shrugged in slight embarrassment, given his involvement in all this. “I’ve been dealing with magic and monsters and things like these,” she pointed to one of the mutants beating against the side of the bubble. “Ever since I met Steven! That’s why I need you to just trust me and believe that I know what to do here!”

The doctor paused, her expression softening somewhat as she looked to her daughter with genuine conflict before looking back to the pressing danger that was so clearly surrounding them all. “B-but… you-”

Before Priyanka could get another word out, the entire mansion itself seemed to shake, accompanied by what sounded like a massive explosion coming from the ballroom itself. All of the party guests let out a collective gasp as the room’s large fireplace swelled dramatically, and from its sparking embers, the lumberjack ghost emerged, laughing manically as he prepared to rain righteous devastation down upon the entire party.

“Generations locked away, my revenge shall have its day!” he shouted boisterously, blasts of blue light bursting from his palms. As this apparent magic struck several of the party guests, the effects were immediate, their bodies starting to freeze before slowly turning into hollow, immovable, non-sentient wood.

And from that moment, the entire ballroom erupted into complete and utter chaos.

Aside from the petrifying blasts the ghost continued firing off at random, his power also brought the mansion’s many taxidermized displays to life, with the dead animals terrorizing every guest who had been lucky enough to escape being transformed into wooden statues. Nature itself soon started to overtake the hall, with vines and tree limbs bursting through the floor and entrapping more unfortunate attendees for the ghost to cast his horrific spell upon them. Almost as soon as this disaster had begun, the Northwests had been quick to tuck themselves out of sight, unable to do anything else but watch as their elegant party and their mansion itself began to crumble right before their eyes.

“Preston, what are we going to do!?” Priscilla cried mournfully, though her husband remained stoic in his cowardly plan.

“Prepare the panic room,” he remarked coldly, punching a taxidermized squirrel off of his shoulder.

While the Northwests had no intention of doing anything to stop this violent onslaught, the Gems were quick to notice it, forcing them to quickly put their ongoing vandalism aside as they leapt into action. “Whoa, isn’t that guy one of those lumberjacks from way back when?” Amethyst asked, summoning her whip as she beat back a mounted deer head. “Pretty sure that dude should be dead by now, shouldn’t he?”

“He is” Garnet confirmed, gauntlets at the ready. “That’s a ghost.”

“Well, he’ll be even less than a ghost once we’re through with him!” Pearl exclaimed boldly, finally calling the specter’s attention. “You! We demand that you put a stop to this senseless destruction and release these innocent humans at once!”

The ghost did take pause at this, though only to turn to the Gems with an expectant, almost smug grin as he glided towards them. “Ah, the Crystal Gems, what ages have past since we last met?” he asked almost calmly before a certain bitterness started to enter his tone. “I suppose its only fitting that you would stand to defend those treacherous Northwest scum even all these years later. After all, you did the very same thing one hundred and fifty years ago by not rising to the occasion to ensure my brethren and I the justice we deserved!”

“We’re not defending the Northwests,” Garnet countered, her gauntlets in tight fists. “We never would. Especially after we found out what happened that night.”

“So you DO know!” the ghost exclaimed, his flames rising in fury upon hearing this. “And yet you still did NOTHING to stop it!”

“If we had been there, we certainly would have!” Pearl protested firmly. “But we were away on a mission that night; we only found out about the Northwests breaking their promise from the other lumberjacks the next day! And believe us, we’ve condemned them for their horrible actions against you all ever since!”

“Oh you have?” the ghost scoffed, clearly not believing this claim. “Then answer me this: why are the mansion gates still closed, one-fifty years on!? Why have you not forced the Northwests to right the wrongs of their sinister past? Why have you failed to do what you promised: to protect this town and its people from the evil lying right within its own borders?!”

The Gems exchanged a rather surprised glance at this, none of them quite sure of what to say at such a strong accusation of their apparent failure. But really, when it came down to it, there had been nothing they could have really done to correct this unfair situation. They couldn’t force the Northwests to open their gates to the common folk, they hadn’t been able to keep that initial rejection from happening in the first place and they couldn’t keep it from happening now. It was a delicate situation, a very human situation that the Crystal Gems had found themselves ill-equipped to deal with and still did. And, based on their lack of an answer, that was a conclusion the lumberjack ghost had already angrily reached.

“You three are no better than the very Northwests you claim to condemn,” he remarked hatefully and dismissively. “And for that, you deserve nothing more than to share their DOOMED fate!”

The Gems only had time to let out a shared gasp before the ghost struck them with his power, which, alarmingly enough, effected them in the exact same way it would any human. In mere seconds, all three of the Crystal Gems were nothing more than wooden statues, stuck frozen in offensive poses against a foe they were powerless to defeat.

“Oh no!” Steven gasped, completely distraught as he happened to watch this entire display from the edge of the hallway him, Connie, and Priyanka were still in. “The Gems!”

“Steven, no!” Connie stopped him before he could rush out, still mindful of the Gem mutants as well as the ghost. Unfortunately, it seemed as though these threats were starting to combine as mutants began pouring out of the other hallways, sulking into the ballroom and openly attacking the dwindling number of non-wooden guests right alongside the ghost himself.

It was this absolute state of pandemonium that Dipper returned to as he burst back into the mansion, breathless and soaking wet from the ongoing thunderstorm outside. He stopped immediately within the doorframe however upon taking in the disaster before him, with undead animals and marauding mutants running amok amidst the myriad of already petrified party guests. Dipper didn’t get much of a chance to analyze the situation however before a nearby Gem mutant lunged at him, prompting him to act on instinct in drawing his sword and stabbing it cleanly through right before it could reach him. However, there was little his blade could do to help the poor soul who was inching across the floor, his body already half wooden as he desperately tried to escape his fate. “P-please, help me!” the guest cried before the inevitable happened, entrapping him in an immovable, unaware wooden form.

“Whoa! That is messed up!” Dipper exclaimed in apt shock upon witnessing something so horrific, though the ghost was quick to divert his attention as he let out a rather fitting proclamation.

“Just one way to change your fate!” the specter shouted amidst turning even more terrified guests into wood. “A Northwest must open the party gates!”

“A Northwest?” Dipper gasped, realizing that this situation wasn’t as hopeless as it seemed. “Pacifica!” Knowing that there really wasn’t any other viable option for quelling the ghost’s intense, deadly fury, Dipper took off, cutting through any Gem mutant in his path as he went in search of the heiress, hoping that despite her earlier deceptiveness and dishonesty, she could still turn the tide in this mess once and for all.

At the same time, Steven, Connie, and Priyanka hung back a bit from the ballroom, mostly to avoid being detected by the ghost more than anything else as most of the Gem mutants had already pressed their way past them. Still, all three of them were quite shaken by the chaos playing out before them, especially the doctor as she shook her head in frightened disbelief.

“And now there’s a ghost too?” she asked, dumbfounded. “You mean to tell me that you kids deal with deadly threats like these on a daily basis?!”

“Um… yeah, kinda,” Steven shrugged with an awkward smile, hoping the truth wouldn’t set the doctor off even more.

“But like I said, we know how to handle it!” Connie argued brazenly. “We have experience, we can stop all this and save everyone, I know we can! I just need you to let us do that!”

Priyanka didn’t answer, instead peaking out into the tumultuous ballroom and then back to her daughter, clearly unable to make a choice about what to do or what to say. “C-Connie, I… I don’t…” she trailed off, true concern and fear in her eyes as she met her daughter’s still quite adamant expression. And while Connie was somewhat surprised by her mother’s near-allowance, she knew that she couldn’t afford to wait for it any longer.

“Ugh, there’s no time for this!” she groaned, finally doing what she had wanted to do from the very beginning. In a move to quick for Priyanka to stop her, Connie pulled Rose’s sword out of its sheath in her arms, gripping it tightly as Steven pushed the bubble forward into the ballroom proper, anticipating the fight that was about to commence.

“Ready?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder at Connie, who had already taken up an offensive pose as Gem mutants started crowding around them.

“Drop the bubble,” Connie nodded readily as Steven did just that.

With their only line of defense gone, Steven and Connie both leapt into action, the latter lashing out first to the mutant that tried to jump at Priyanka, only for her blade to end up slicing cleanly through it. At the same time, the young Gem beat a handful of smaller mutants back, but as he nodded to Connie once more, they both prepared for a maneuver that they had only ever practiced before, but finally felt ready to put to use in a real fight. With deft precision, Connie leapt to Steven, using his shield as a boost to gain the proper height to land a brutal finishing blow on a taller mutant, poofing it instant. Priyanka could only stand by and watch in dumbfounded awe as her daughter, usually so intellectually minded and well-mannered, sliced her way through these savage creatures with a kind of skill that was far beyond anything she had been expecting. Still, with the majority of mutants having taken to the ballroom, Steven and Connie knew they had no time to rest on their laurels as the danger running rampant throughout the party was still quite high.

“Steven, let’s split up to take care of the rest,” Connie ordered, stilling gripping Rose’s sword tightly. “Then maybe we can try to figure out some way to get rid of that ghost and free all those people.”

“Right!” Steven nodded affirmatively, his shield still positioned on his arm as he prepared to follow Connie out into the fray.

“Mom, stay here and don’t let that ghost see you,” Connie continued, her tone just as authoritative as she turned to her mother. “Steven and I have this covered.”

“C-Connie, wait!” Priyanka exclaimed, stopping her daughter by grabbing her shoulder. Connie shot her a rather upset glance at this, fully expecting her mother to try and restrain her and hold her back, just like she always did. But instead, she did something entirely different. “Be careful,” she urged, pulling her daughter into a loose, caring, but rather solemn embrace.

“…I will be,” Connie promised, letting out a small, somewhat remorseful sigh before the hug broke apart. “Now come on, Steven. We have a party to save.”

Seeing as how Pacifica had been nowhere to be found amidst the unfurling chaos of the ballroom itself, Dipper had no choice but to rush through the mansion’s halls in search of her, knowing that he had not a moment to waste. Fortunately, his search didn’t have to go on for too long as he happened to take a quick peek in the hidden room they had first captured the ghost in, only to find the heiress sitting there alone in the dark, knees pulled to her chest and her head bowed low in apparent shame.

“Pacifica!” Dipper exclaimed, rushing over to her, even despite that fact that she seemed to pay his entrance no mind whatsoever, even as he leaned down right next to her. “I’m so glad I found you! The ghost is back and he’s turning everyone to wood and he just started rhyming for some reason? B-but anyway, I need your help!” he urged, grabbing her wrist in an attempt to pull her up but she was quick to bitterly pull it away. “Pacifica?”

“You wanna know why this room was locked up?” Pacifica began, still averting his gaze as she coldly nodded up to the set of paintings sitting a few feet away from them. Paintings which depicted Northwests of the past taking part in deceptive, duplicitous, downright dastardly acts across history. “This is what I found in here. A painted record of every horrible thing my family’s ever done. Lying, cheating… and then there’s me. I lied to you just because I’m too scared to talk back to my stupid parents!” In a fit of apt rage, the heiress took off her expensive earrings, tossing them disdainfully towards another painting of her own parents before letting out a sigh of defeat. “You were right about me… I really am just another link in the world’s worst chain…”

Dipper took pause at this, unsure of really how to respond to the heiress’s palpable, genuine guilt. Immediately, he couldn’t help but regret his former harshness towards her, especially now that he knew she had only been following her parents’ rigid orders in tricking him. And yet, instead of offering an apology right away, he ended up going with a different tangent instead. “Well… you don’t have to be...”

“Huh?” Pacifica finally glanced over at him, confused.

“Just because you’re your parent’s daughter, doesn’t mean you have to be like them,” Dipper clarified, offering her a small, encouraging smile. “You don’t have to keep this terrible chain going; you can choose to break it, you can choose to be better than them!”

“Heh, you make it sound so easy…” Pacifica said with a bitter laugh. “And for someone like you, I guess it probably would be. You don’t have your parents standing over you almost every second of the day with some stupid bell, drilling it into your head that you have to be perfect, that you have to uphold the family reputation, that you have to be just like them otherwise you won’t ever be worth anything to anyone!”

By now, the heiress’ usual composure had completely crumbled as she let out a tight sob, with tears that she quickly tried to wipe away only for more to end up following it. If she was perfectly honest with herself, she felt doomed, doomed to repeat the treachery of her ancestors, doomed to keep this cycle of corruption going, doomed to be just another lying, cheating, heartless Northwest. It was a line of thinking that she had once been proud of, a legacy that she had willingly wanted to uphold. But now, it felt suffocating, agonizing even, as though it was pulling her down into a darkness she wanted no parts in, but would inevitably end up drowning in, no matter how hard she tried to resist it.

And yet… maybe she wouldn’t.

For as she felt herself slipping deeper into the darkness of this despair and awful repetition, an unexpected hand suddenly took hers, somehow steadying her and pulling her up out of that darkness by its mere contact alone. Pacifica drew in a small, tearful breath as she glanced up at Dipper, his expression sincere and sympathetic as he kept his firm, yet gentle grip on her hand all the while.

“Pacifica…” he began, his tone solemn yet steady. “You don’t actually believe any of that, do you?”

“I-I… I don’t know…” she shook her head truthfully, knowing that it was all she had ever been taught by her parents. Then again, it could have all just as easily been yet another lie, another fabrication to add on to the countless others her family was so infamous for. “I… I don’t… want to, I just… I guess… I just want to feel… free for a change…” Like you, she wanted to add, knowing that Dipper was perhaps one of the most unfettered people she had ever met. He could do what he wanted, say what he wanted, all without the fear or worry of anyone telling him that he couldn’t, that he had to conform to some strictly set standard that stood against everything he believed in. It was a bold, foreign concept to Pacifica, one that fascinated her to no end and made her wonder what it would be like if she was granted that much open, endless, liberating freedom herself. Freedom that she had only ever gotten close to as a result of being close to him.

“Well… then that’s up to you,” Dipper said, still smiling kindly to her. “Like I said, you don’t have to be what your parents say, especially if they’re trying to train you to be just as horrible as they are, no offense.”

“Believe me, none taken,” Pacifica remarked, unable to hold back a brief, sardonic laugh at this.

“But still,” Dipper continued, letting go of her hand, though he still kept his other one positioned on her shoulder, something that she couldn’t help but smile about. After all, it was probably among the most genuine physical affection she had gotten from anyone really, including her own parents. “You can way more than they want you to be. Heck, as far as I’m concerned, you’ve already proved that by just realizing that what your family’s doing is wrong. I’m sorry about what I said earlier, but… I do mean it when I say I think you can be someone better. It’s not too late.”

“It’s too late!” the ghost’s triumphant shout could be heard all the way from the ballroom, startling the pair out of their tender moment as they hurried out to see what was going on. The alarming sight before them elicited a horrified gasp from them both as the entire ballroom had been overtaken, either by unruly, encroaching plants or still meandering Gem mutants, all spread out around the multitude of now wooden, immovable party guests with no single survivor seeming to remain. “You’re all wood!” the ghost proclaimed with a victorious laugh from his spot at the top of the stairs overlooking the ballroom, which is vengeance had completely claimed.

For a moment, all Dipper and Pacifica could do was look over this horrific scene in apt terror as they tried to spot anyone still living and free amidst the apparent forest of wooden statues. But there seemed to be no one left, for Steven and Connie were nowhere to be found, and the Gems, Candy, Grenda, even Mabel had all fallen victim to the lumberjack’s petrifying curse. Which, of course, was something that Dipper refused to let stand as he swiftly drew his sword, determined to finally put this violent specter in his place once and for all.

“Dipper, wait!” Pacifica shouted, failing to hold him back as he rushed out brazenly, taking up a stance of opposition not too far away from the ghost itself, much to the heiress’ apt alarm.

“Alright, ghost,” Dipper began boldly, grabbing a discarded silver platter with the hopes of trapping the ghost inside of it. “Prepare to get-” He was abruptly cut off as the ghost blasted both the platter and his sword out of his hands, showing that the spirit had no patience to even trade barbs with the boy who had trapped him in the first place. “No, wait!” Dipper exclaimed in sudden fear as the ghost remorselessly hit him with his inescapable curse. The effect was immediate, working from the ground up as it all too quickly turned his flesh into hallow, unfeeling wood, much to his apt panic. “N-no! No, stop! Someone, help!” he cried desperately, crippled by a hauntingly familiar sensation of rapidly losing all his senses entirely as his chest became nothing more than frozen bark before it spread up his arms and finally to his face. “Help, please!” His final, agonized plea hung onto the air as an echo as he finally froze, completely turned to wood and stuff in an eternal pose of stricken terror as he reached for help that would likely never come.

All Pacifica could do as she witnessed all this was let out a sharp gasp of both shock and anguish, unexplainable tears welling up in her eyes as she watched Dipper succumb to the threat that her family was solely responsible for. One of the few people who had managed to inspire her, to encourage her to move beyond her family’s harsh standards, who showed her genuine warmth and kindness that hadn’t been bought but rather earned, was now nothing more than a wooden husk and she knew it was all thanks to her. Which was why she had to do something. She couldn’t just walk away and leave Dipper, and really every other innocent person in the mansion, to such a grisly fate. She had to stand up, to right the wrongs of her family’s past, to truly be someone better than any of her predecessors had been, including her own parents.

She had to open the gates.

And yet… she couldn’t. As much as she wanted to, she knew well what would happen if she even tried. Her parents would never forgive her, in all honesty, they’d probably punish her more than she could possibly imagine. They didn’t take disobedience kindly, especially when it came to massive matters like this. Seeing as how she couldn’t find them amidst the crowd of statufied guests, she knew that they’d find out about her blatant defiance somehow, they just would. And then, any shred of empirical freedom she thought she had would disappear completely; any hope she might have had to become a better person, to improve herself and rise above her family name, would vanish entirely. She’d be trapped, just like she always was, in that cycle of lies and greed and selfishness that had poisoned the Northwest name for decades.

And the possibility of that happening was something she desperately didn’t want to risk.

So instead, Pacifica let fear take over as she took a step back into the shadows, out of the ghost’s range, away from the disaster she could so easily solve with just the pull of a lever. However, she failed to see one of the few other survivors rushing along the edges of the hall, trying to take out the remaining Gem mutants while remaining out of the ghost’s sight, until they happened to haphazardly crash right into each other.

“Ugh, Pacifica!” Connie snapped, pulling away from the heiress with a cold scowl. “Get out of my way! I have to—wait a second,” she stopped short, lowering her sword somewhat as concern filled her expression. “W-where’s Dipper? Wasn’t he with you earlier?”

“H-he was…” Pacifica glanced down guiltily, trying her best to hold back her returning tears. “But… but he… t-the ghost… I wasn’t able to-”

Connie cut her off with a sharp, startled gasp as she glanced out into the ballroom, instantly spotting Dipper’s now wooden form near the center of the hall. “Dipper!” she exclaimed, aptly distraught as she turned back to Pacifica, clearly livid. “What happened?!”

“H-he just… ran out there! I wanted to stop him, but I-”

“Oh yeah, sure you did,” Connie deadpanned harshly. “Like I’m gonna stand here and believe that you actually even thought about sticking your neck out for someone else. Heck, I bet the only reason you’re so torn up about what happened to Dipper is because you lost your only ghost hunter, right?”

“Augh, you don’t know anything do you?!” Pacifica retorted just as fiercely, her gloved hands clenched in tight fists at her sides. “You think the only person I care about is myself, but you’re wrong! Believe me, I’d love to just run out there and open the gates so that ghost would set everyone free, but I can’t! Because if I did, then my parents would… t-they’d…”

“They’d… what?” Connie asked, her glare softening somewhat as she noticed just how visibly anxious Pacifica seemed to be.

“Forget it,” the heiress said dismissively, wrapping her arms around herself as she glanced out towards the ballroom sadly. “You wouldn’t understand…”

“…Somehow, I think I would…” Connie admitted with a hesitant sigh, looking to the hallway she knew her mother was still hiding in. “My mom is… pretty strict. She didn’t even know about my sword fighting training until tonight and when she found out about it, she refused to let me fight, even against all these Gem mutants running around. But… I knew a still had to fight, that I was one of the only ones with any hope of stopping all this, and so I am.”

“E-even though your mom said no?” Pacifica asked, rather amazed by such a concept as blatantly going against parental orders with no apparent regret.

“Even though my mom said no,” Connie confirmed with a nod, pausing for a moment as she looked to the rather conflicted heiress with newfound pity. Perhaps, despite what she had been led to believe, Pacifica wasn’t really spoiled or cruel from her own choosing; maybe that was just how her parents had raised her, had forced her to be. And as someone who knew all too well just how heavy a burden trying to live up to parental standards was, maybe, Connie realized, the two of them weren’t so different after all. “I think I realized that… sometimes my parents aren’t always right. And when they’re not, that’s when I have to just… figure things out for my own, you know? And maybe… maybe that’s something you need to try for yourself, Pacifica.”

The heiress said nothing in response to this, her brow furrowed as she kept her sights on Dipper afar in the distance more than anything else. Connie raised an eyebrow upon seeing this, surprising something of an incredulous smile as she realized what was going on here, though she said nothing about it at the moment. “I gotta go find Steven,” she said, repositioning her grip on Rose’s sword as she hurried off. “Try to make the right choice, ok?”

Pacifica took in a deep breath, steadying herself as she slowly nodded, even after Connie had left. “Ok,” she whispered, resolve to do this, determined to save them all, to save him.

Whether her parents liked it or not.

“A forest of death,” the ghost concluded grimly, still presiding in his spot above the ballroom. “A lesson learned, and now the Northwest Manor will BURN!” The specter erupted into vengeful laughter as flames rose up from him, igniting the large portrait of the Northwest family hanging from the nearby wall first, though it quickly began to spread, more than ready to burn everything, and everyone, in the mansion to ashes in minutes.

Or at least it would have.

“Hey, ugly! Over here!” Pacifica shouted as she emerged from hiding, figuring now was as good a time as any to put an end to all this. She stood before the ghost boldly, unfettered by the powerful, hateful spirit as she stepped towards the lever that would open the mansion’s outer gates. “You want me to let in the townsfolk? Cause I’ll do it! Just change everyone back!”

“You wish to prove yourself?” the ghost asked challengingly. “Then pull that lever and open the grand gate to the town! Fulfill your ancestors’ promise and right this wrong once and for all!”

Pacifica was prepared to do just that, her expression hardened as she began reaching for the nearby lever. However, her hand froze right before she could grab it as an underground hatch leading down to the panic room opened up a few feet away, her father, mother, and one of their countless butlers anxiously peeking out of it. “Pacifica Elise Northwest! Stop this instant!” Preston exclaimed in a harsh, incredibly disapproving whisper. “We can’t let the town see us like this! We have a reputation to uphold!”

“A reputation?” Pacifica looked to him, appalled. “Our entire mansion’s about to go up in flames and a bunch of innocent people right along with it and you’re worried about our reputation?!”

“Well, of course I am!” Preston scowled adamantly. “And you should be too, young lady! Our family is built off of power and position, we can’t have common nobodies off the street running rampant in our mansion! Now come into the panic room. There’s enough mini-sandwiches and oxygen to last you, me, and a butler a full week.” At this, he quickly dropped his voice down to a whisper so the nearby servant couldn’t hear him. “We’ll eat the butler.”

“You’re wrong!” the heiress snapped, her former fear of standing against her parents quickly fading as she realized just how many self-serving lies she had been fed her entire life. Lies that she refused to eagerly buy into any longer. “The only things our family was built off of are cheating and dishonesty! I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to learn that, but I have! And its about time everyone else did too!”

“You dare disobey us?” Preston scoffed in disbelief. “Where did this shamefully disrespectful attitude of yours come fro—oh wait, I know…” The billionaire’s tone turned disdainful as he shot a glance towards the center of the ballroom, where Dipper’s wooden remains stood. “It was that foolish Pines boy, wasn’t it? He was the one who inspired you to start thinking like a no-account vagrant instead of the elite young lady of status that you truly are! Well, worry not,” he said, pulling the bell that Pacifica had come to dread and loathe so much out of his suit pocket. “I know of the perfect to fix that…”

Pacifica flinched, pulling her hand away from the lever on instinct upon hearing the bell’s clarion ring, a ring that seemed to echo throughout her entire childhood and always carried one, singular order: behave. A ring that had groomed her into what her parents wanted her to be: submissive, unquestioning, accepting of all the atrocities the Northwests were responsible for in the past and were still committing even now. A ring that she hated, with every fiber of her being, but she knew better than to resist it.

Until now.

Because now, that ring wasn’t her master any longer. It couldn’t be. She remembered the advice both Dipper and Connie had given her, advice that mixed together inside her mind that she could be more, that she could do the right thing even when her own family never had, that she could change.

That she could be free.

And no matter what the cost might be, that freedom was something she was finally ready to take.

“Dingly, dingly!” Preston growled, ringing the bell harder as he noticed Pacifica was paying it no mind and reaching for the lever once more. “Is this bell broken?”

“Our family name is broken!” Pacifica proclaimed, slamming her foot down as she finally grabbed the lever. “And I’m gonna fix it!”

Putting every last ounce of reservation and fear behind her, the heiress pulled the lever down hard, at long last finally opening the gates up to the common townsfolk outside. The people of Gravity Falls gasped in amazement at this unexpected turn of events, but of course, none of them hesitated to rush forward, delighted to be allotted inside the legendary Northwest Fest for the very first time ever.

“Yes! Yes, its happening!” the ghost happily cried as the townsfolk excitedly ran up the hill to get to the mansion itself. “My heart, once as hard as oak, now grows soft, like more of a… birch or something.”

As a result of the ghost’s satisfaction, his curse upon the mansion quickly faded away, the taxidermized animals becoming still and unmoving as the wild plants disappeared back into the ground they had emerged from. At the same time, all of the petrified party guests seamlessly and painlessly were returned to normal, from the wealthy dignitaries, to the Gems, and to Dipper, who let out a sharp gasp as he returned to normal, rather startled by this shift as he happened to glance across the hall over at Pacifica. The heiress remained where she was by the lever, but even so, the huge smile of warm relief she sent him was undeniable, knowing that to see him alive and well again made all of her struggling against her parents more than worth it.

“Pacifica,” the ghost addressed her, briefly diverting her gaze away from Dipper right as he returned her smile. “You are not like other Northwests and for that, you should be proud. I feel… lumber justice…” And with these final words of contentment relayed, the specter finally disappeared from the mortal plane, leaving only his axe behind as it slammed into the ground, the only remaining physical sign of the devastation he had wrought.

Of course, almost as soon as the ghost had vanished, the multitude of townsfolk reached the manor, flooding in through the front doors in a flurry of chaos and excitement. They had no mind for manners whatsoever as they ran about, indulging on buffet tables, leaping into cider fountains, and laying their hands on whatever expensive knick-knacks they could find. Still, their arrival had added an undeniable and much-needed element of reckless fun and freedom to the party, one that absolutely appalled Preston and Priscilla as they stood by, helpless to stop what their daughter had so brazenly done.

“Good lord, the riffraff! Its everywhere!” the billionaire cried, aghast at the state of his once pristine party as he ran about, trying and completely failing to reclaim some sense of class and order.

At the same time, the Gems, upon recovering from their formerly petrified states, were quick to see the wild debauchery going on all around them, something that aptly confused them, given how they knew Northwest parties to usually be.

“What’s going on here?” Pearl asked, her spear dissipating as she watched Manly Dan toss a keg of cider across the hall.

“I dunno, but this is my kinda party!” Amethyst cheered, laughing as a few of the town’s teens rode an empty platter down the nearby stairs.

“Looks like everyone else has followed our lead,” Garnet remarked with a wry smirk, placing hands on both of her teammates’ shoulders. “You know what that means.”

“Woo! Time to bust it up!” the purple Gem rowdily whooped, rushing forward unrestrained.

“N-now Amethyst, let’s try not to bust things up too much!” Pearl warned as she began to run after her, though she quickly stopped with an incredulous scoff. “Wait, what am I saying? This is the Northwests’ mansion we’re talking about here! Let’s bust it up to our hearts’ content!”

“Now you got it,” Garnet nodded in amused approval, joining her teammates as they gladly leapt into the ongoing chaos and fun all around them.

Meanwhile, Mabel, Candy, and Grenda were all in the midst of recovering from their own bouts as wooden statues, though none of them knew much about what had really occurred. Still, as soon as they had properly gathered their bearings, Grenda was quick to turn on the pair, sending them a disapproving scowl as she addressed them.

“Ahem,” she began somewhat coldly. “Don’t you two have something you’d like to say?”

“…Grenda, we are so sorry,” Candy relented remorsefully.

“Yeah, we shouldn’t have left you behind,” Mabel added just as empathetically.

“It’s ok,” Grenda conceded, her bitter manner quickly dropping upon noticing their sincerity. “Maybe I do need to work on my flirting. But for now, come on. Let’s go dip our heads in some cheese and chocolate. Friends?”

“Friends,” the other two girls happily agreed as they all joined together in a group hug. This moment of reconciliation soon came to an end however, for before they could make their way over to the fondue fountains, they were abruptly halted by a certain baron.

“Wait! Don’t go!” Marius called after them, approaching Grenda in particular with a fond, longing smile. “Grenda, was it? I must speak with you. There is something about you, I-I can’t get you out of my head! You’re so bold and confident! I know you are probably out of my league, but… might I give you mien phone number?”

“I don’t have a phone!” Grenda brightly exclaimed, elated by this offer. “Write it on my face!”

The baron proceeded to do so as Mabel and Candy watched on, neither of them having to pretend to be happy for their friend’s successful romantic catch. “Whoa-oh! Go Grenda!” Mabel exclaimed with a surprised grin.

“I guess we shouldn’t have sold her short,” Candy concluded. “I call bridesmaid!”

“What? I call co-bridesmaid!” Mabel countered before both of them shared a warm laugh. Despite their earlier scuffle, their friendship had been easily repaired, with all three of them knowing that no boy, no matter how cute or fancy, was worth damaging something so valuable to them all.

“Is that the last of them?” Connie asked Steven as he finished bubbling away what seemed to be the last of the Gem mutants. They had finished proofing and capturing them all around the same time the ghost had disappeared, which meant that now the party and its guests could truly be safe to enjoy the remainder of their evening.

“Yeah, I think so,” Steven nodded, offering her a small, congratulatory smile. Connie didn’t get much of a chance to return it, however, before her mother approached, her manner strangely anxious as she met her daughter’s somewhat unreadable gaze.

“C-Connie,” Priyanka began gently, looking between her daughter and the sword in her hand. “I… is this… really what you’ve been doing all summer? Training to fight these… things?”

“Yeah…” Connie nodded, glancing down guiltily. “Mom… I’m really sorry about lying to you. It started off as a tiny secret, and then it felt like I didn’t hide it, you wouldn’t let me see Steven or Dipper or Mabel ever again…”

“Is… is that how you feel?” Priyanka asked, her tone genuinely upset at the thought of unintentionally causing her daughter such worry and fear. “Are we too controlling?”

“…Maybe…” Connie admitted with a small shrug, deciding to be completely honest with her mother on this.

“I just… wanted to be a good mother,” the doctor said remorsefully, almost sadly even. “I-I just wanted to protect you.”

“But I can protect myself now!” Connie urged firmly. “You saw that I can! You just… need to start trusting that I can handle some things on my own.”

Priyanka sighed, a bittersweet smile crossing her face as she knelt down and placed a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “You are growing up awfully fast, aren’t you?” she said, a hint of pride filling her tone. “Okay. We’ll pull back on the rules. And I’ll try to keep an open mind about this,” she nodded to the sword in Connie’s hand. “And that,” she looked towards the bubbled Gem Steven was sending off to the temple. “And… him…” She finished rather tightly, nodding to the somewhat confused young Gem himself.

“That’s… all I really want,” Connie said, finally smiling herself.

“I know, its just… it scares me that you can’t talk to me about all this!” Priyanka pressed with apt concern. “I need to know what’s happening in your life. I need to be able to step in when you’re in over your head. Would you just promise me that you’ll stop all the lying?”

“That’s a rule,” Connie nodded, resolved to meet her mother halfway in doing just that.

“I love you, honey,” Priyanka smiled as she pulled her daughter into a warm, protective embrace.

“I love you too, Mom,” Connie retorted just as contentedly, more than happy to let her mother intervene if the need ever arose.

Steven wore a soft smile himself as he stood by, watching this heartwarming display. However, his grin did fade somewhat as he happened to glance down at Rose’s sword in his arms, particularly at his mother’s iconic symbol on its scabbard. He couldn’t help but wonder, as he watched Connie and her mother share such a tender, genuine moment, if he would have ever known a similar relationship with his own mother if she was still around. But as it stood, this was a gap he’d never truly have filled, a kind of protective, motherly love he’d never fully get to know. Or at least he thought.

For the young Gem was soon drawn out of his solemn thoughts as a familiar hand landed on his shoulder. Steven glanced up to meet Garnet’s gentle grin, followed by Pearl’s and Amethyst as they filled in beside her.

“Y-you guys!” he exclaimed in apt relief to see them unharmed. “You’re ok!”

“Of course we are!” Amethyst quipped, playfully elbowing him. “What, you really think we’re gonna let some undead lumber loser beat us down? Please, you know us better than that!”

“Are you enjoying the party, Steven?” Pearl asked, flustered changing the subject though she was still smiling down at her young ward nonetheless.

Steven paused, looking down at his mother’s sword one last time before smiling back up at his guardians. “You know what? Yeah. Yeah, I am.”

With the ghost gone and the heiress’ parents preoccupied, Dipper and Pacifica had found it rather easy to reunite and debrief from their harrowing experiences, both of them more than happy to watch the unfurling freedom of the newly-opened party all around them. “Man, if your family hates this, then they’re idiots,” Dipper remarked with a small laugh as several townsfolk ran by noisily but happily. “This is great!”

“Enjoy it while it lasts,” Pacifica huffed, crossing her arms. “Next year, I’m sure they’re just gonna lock everyone out again.”

Dipper paused, briefly noticing that the heiress still seemed rather remiss after everything had happened. Fortunately though, he quickly thought of a sure-fire way to change her sour tune. “Hey, guess what we’re standing on.”

Pacifica glanced down, her face lighting up with a vindictive grin as she noticed their muddy shoes were planted firmly on a repeat of her parents’ favorite white rug. From that point, neither of them were really able to hold their laughter in as they freely tarnished the carpet, spilling food and punch onto it without any care in the world, all in a sign of defiance to the billionaire’s rigid, self-righteous rules.

“Hey, so, uh…” Pacifica began somewhat awkwardly as their laughter began to die down. “I just wanted to say… um… thanks, I guess, for what you said back there. In a way, I guess it kinda inspired me to finally stop listening to my parents’ self-entitled garbage and start listening to myself for a change. And I gotta admit, it… feels kind of… nice.”

“If anyone’s thanking anyone around here, I should be thanking you,” Dipper said just as warmly. “If it wasn’t for you, then I’d still be a boring old hunk of wood right now.”

“Yeah, that totally would have sucked,” Pacifica remarked with something of a flirtatious grin. “I couldn’t imagine you, of all people, being so stiff and boarding.”

Dipper couldn’t really hold in a burst of heavy laughter at this, something that only served to fluster the heiress even more than she already was. “What, did you come up with that one yourself?”

“Hey, at least I tried. It’s not like puns are really my strong suit.”

“Yeah, I can tell.”

“Oh shut up,” Pacifica smirked, pushing him playfully as he continued laughing. “But seriously though, I should probably go and find someone to clean this mess up. I’ll be right back!”

Dipper waved her off with a fond smile that he was unable to chase away, even if he had wanted to. As catastrophic as this night had turned out to be, at the end of it all, it had all been worth it to form a true, genuine bond with Pacifica, who, as far as he was concerned, was so, so much kinder, braver, and better than he had ever thought her to be.

His contented musings on the heiress didn’t last too long, however, before a certain old hillbilly ran up, seemingly just as zany and excitable as ever. “Woo! Scoobity-doo!” McGucket exclaimed, hopping up and down in his usual wild way. “Hornswaggle m’goat knees!”

“Whoa, hey, McGucket!” Dipper greeted with a bright smile, happy to see the hillbilly out and about in the aftermath of recovering his memories. “How have you been? Are you—whoa!” he was succinctly cut off as McGucket suddenly pulled him aside, his kooky act falling to the wayside for a much more serious one as soon as they were out of everyone else’s earshot.

“Dipper! I’ve been lookin’ for ya!” the hillbilly began intently, his expression and tone both dire as he put his glasses on and pulled out the old laptop, which looked nowhere as bad off as it had been before. “I fixed the laptop and-”

“You fixed it?! Dipper interupted, his eyes wide with surprise at this news. He paused, however, forcing himself not to be too overwhelmed by it as he remembered exactly why he had strived so hard to unlock said laptop in the first place. “Y-you… you didn’t happen to find anything on there about how split Gem fusions up… did you?”

“Er, uh… no?” McGucket frowned, confused by such an odd question before he returned to the matter at hand. “B-but anyway, I’ve been doin’ calculations, and I think somethin’ terrible is comin’! The apocalypse! The end times!”

Dipper simply let out a disappointed sigh at this as he glanced to the laptop somewhat bitterly, knowing he had wasted and lost so much for something that wouldn’t have even been able to help Lapis in the first place. But given that his spirits were relatively high from the party, he didn’t particularly feel like lowering them at the moment to look into the hillbilly’s frantic warnings, which in and of themselves, might not really hold any weight at all. “You know what, McGucket? How about we talk about this stuff tomorrow?”

“But-” McGucket fretfully tried to protest, only for Dipper’s already waning attention to quickly be diverted.

“Dipper!” Pacifica called from the party proper, smiling brightly as she beckoned for him to join her.

“Be there in a second!” he called back to her before turning to the distraught hillbilly once more with a small smile and a shrug. “It’s a party. Let’s have some fun for once, huh?”

“N-no! Wait!” McGucket exclaimed, though his pleas were in vain as Dipper left, dangerously unaware of what he had just uncovered. The hillbilly quickly opened the laptop up, its screen blaring the words “Imminent threat” in bright, glaring red as a countdown steadily blinked upon it, showing that only less than 24 hours remained. “Oh, this is bad!” he shook his head nervously. “Something’s coming! Somethin’ big!”

The hillbilly continued to look over his worrisome findings, completely unaware of the tapestry behind him, one that seemed to almost foretell of the very danger he feared was soon to come: a burning landscape with suffering humans upon it, and a long triangular shape presiding over the chaos, its singular eye watching all.

“Hey,” Dipper greeted Pacifica blithely as he rejoined her near the makeshift ‘dance floor’ the townsfolk had set up at the center of the ballroom. “What’s up?”

“Uh… well…” the heiress blushed, anxiously averting his gaze. “I was just, um… Well… Oh, how do I put this…? I was thinking maybe… y-you and I could… you know…” Unable to spit it out, she instead nodded to the several pairs freely moving about the dance floor, biting her lip as she noted his initial confusion, followed by his dawning realization.

“What, you mean, dance?” he asked, looking back to her rather surprised.

“Y-Yeah, I mean, i-if you wanna…” she crossed her arms, feigning stoicism over the matter. “W-we don’t have to. I just thought it would be like, fun or something.”

“Oh, well, uh… I-I’m not really that much of a dancer,” he admitted, starting to become rather flustered himself in light of this offer.

“So? Neither are any of them,” she nodded back to the dance floor again, where the couples upon it were basically just spinning around in tandem without any rhyme or reason at all. All the same, he hesitated, his eyes wide and his cheeks just as red as hers as he met her awkward, apprehensive expression. “W-what? Are you embarrassed or something?”

“N-no!” he shook his head quickly. “Are you?”

“No!”

“W-well then, I guess we should…”

“Yeah…” she took in a deep breath, slowly taking the hand he shakily offered out to her, In truth, neither of them were exactly sure why there were so nervous, even as they emerged onto the open floor together. After all, they really had no reason to be; this was just going to be a loose, friendly, freeform dance. Nothing less, and nothing more.

And though it took a moment or two of mental preparation, they soon started to fall into this mindset themselves as they began to spin, hands intertwined as they rotated in wide, dizzying, almost chaotic circles. It didn’t take long for them to start laughing, their faces still somewhat red but this time it was a welcome warmth as they “danced” about, the ballroom around them and the multiple pairs of eyes curiously watching them soon forgotten just as much as their initial inhibitions were. As wild and unkempt as it was, there was no denying they were both having fun, enjoying each other’s company, something neither of them thought could never happen before this fateful night. Yet here they were, a highly-esteemed heiress with a tarnished family history and a middle-class boy only really known for his knowledge of the supernatural. An unusual pair, for sure, but that hardly mattered to either of them at that moment for as far as they were concerned, they were the same. Just two kids, spinning around an elegant ballroom, hands intertwined as they laughed together with freedom in their minds and happiness in their hearts.

Happiness that would someday become something that nothing, not the past, the present, or the future, would ever be able to destroy.

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topicprinter · 6 years

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So - a day ago I saw a ton of posts about Instagram here and on marketing subreddit. I found a lot of them to be 'incorrect' in some manner and a lot of them to be 'brilliant'.I started sharing my knowledge on Instagram - I wrote up a post on it. A couple of people seemed to enjoy it and even sent me requests via PM to make more posts shedding light on Engagement Pods and like injection method to reach Top Post and Explore Page.Lets Get StartedEverything YOU need to know about Engagement PodsDISCLAIMER - I do own and run an engagement pod on Telegram. I am NOT going to give its link unless 10+ people request for it. Don't want to get down voted into oblivion in the name of self promotion EVEN THOUGH I have like 7 messages in my inbox asking for just that.Engagement Pod - In a NutshellA group of people that come together on a chat platform to give each other comments and likes.Imagine you making a WhatsApp group and adding 10 friends to it. You make a rule that whenever any of you guys post on Instagram you'll drop link to that post in the WhatsApp group and everyone in that group (9 other friends) will like and comment on it (or just like / comment)Thats as simple as I can explain engagement pods.How did they come into picture?They came into picture when Instagram launched advertisement on its platform and basically FCKED its own community by making it REALLY difficult for people to get noticed and essentially FORCING them to pay to get noticed. (Facebook did just that) Before any platform opens its gates for advertisement - they run a massive purge (Instagram/FB/YT - they all did - removed millions of bot accounts) - they then make it difficult for people to make it just in the name of good content - hence FORCING people to pay to go big.Where did the first 'pods' get formed?For those that would get paranoid and go like 'its risky' and shit. Guess what? Instagram engagement pods started out on Facebook (as FB groups). I mean OBVIOUSLY right? Haha.FB still has 100s of these pods. You think IG has problem with it? You've got to be kidding me.With massive growth in these pods on FB groups - most moved out to chat apps like Slack and Telegram to make it easier for people to engage.Are they safe?Why not? Unless you are in a pod that requires you to like 1000 photos in an hour then its not safe. But think of it like this. You have 30 friends. You make a post and ask them to like and comment on it. Is that 'wrong'? If you think so - then please don't read further.Where are these engagement pod?They started out on Facebook - then they went into Intsagram DM groups - then they came into WhatsApp and finally they came to Telegram.Right now - engagement pods / groups are on Telegram. (I'm talking about the major ones)Before you say otherwise - here me out.Telegram is easy to use with endless possibilities (like using bots instead of moderators to catch leechers / block spam accounts and so forth)I know this engagement pod industry REALLY WELL. On Telegram there are at the moment 50,000+ Instagrammers actively participating in engagement pods.How do engagement pods work?Engagement pods are of 2 classes. Class 1 - Rounded Cycle Class 2 - Continuous CycleRounded - 500-1500 people participate in a 'round' of engagement. Meaning at set times in a day (3-4 times a day) - all the Instagrammers come and drop their posts and give each other likes at set times. Depending on which group you are in - you may have to like from 500 to 1500 posts in one shot in under 2 hours.PLEASE DO NOT TRY THIS. Its good for scammers / CPA / bitcoin / spam accounts. Those promoting a money 'link' in their bio. Not for those of us who want to build a genuine blog on Intagram.Continous Cycle - These are pods that do not have a set time and work on continuous cycle. They work on DX format. Dx = Done x (into) Groups can be DX5 or DX10 or DX20 meaning you would have to do X 5 links before you share yours. I hope that makes sense.So if I'm in a group which is of DX5 cycle - I'd have to like or comment or both (depending on group rules) on 5 recent most posts in that group and THEN share my link. The next 5 people will then do the same for me.Hope that is clear.What groups do you suggest?Again - I cannot. I own the largest pod out there. 15,000+ members. I'd look like I'm self promoting. Just look around on Google , Reddit and within Telegram app itself. I'll give link to my group if I get 10+ (hopefully 20 requests) for it.Other than that - in general - stay away from 'round' groups. They'll get you shadow banned. Look for groups that run on continuous cycle.NEXT - SUPER IMPORTANTONLY ONLY ONLY join groups that are moderated by automated bots. Meaning bots control and keep a check on leechers. 80% of groups of continuous cycle are manually moderated. Meaning, admins sit and check links and try to warn and ban leechers. Leechers = those who drop links without giving engagement first.IF groups are moderated by humans = OBVIOUSLY a lot of leeching. No one wants to give 10 comments and get 3 back. Right? Haha.ONLY join groups that have bot that check engagement IN REAL TIME. Leech = auto warn. Leech again? = auto ban.Thats all that you should keep in mind.What group do I run?Sorry - cannot disclose and promote my shit.Let this article be just to give you guys info on engagement pods.What are benefits of these pods?Pods are of various categories. Depending on network that you're in. Networks = people who run multiple pods. Pods can be of DX5 comments, DX10 likes or D24 (24 hours of likes) and N number of that combination. Pods can further be classified by minimum follower requirement (10K+ only profiles ..... upto 100k+ only profiles) Pods can be of niche nature (beauty, travel, quotes ....)As you can see this can be REALLY helpful.What kind of people are usually in these pods?A HIGH QUALITY POD will have 90%+ actual blogging accounts. Meaning, Instagram profiles that have actual people / stories on them. Unlike an account that just posts photos of quotes and random stuff.Quality pods = quality Instagrammers (real people / real faces) (Not saying that quotes / memes accounts are low quality - its just so much more fun to connect with real Instagrammers)Demographics = To my knowledge mostly USA, Canada, Australia (70%+) and another 20% from Europe and remaining from rest of world. Over 70% females.Most pods require you to have minimum 10-15 posts on your Instagram account so that you don' look fake. (Actually that is a rule in my pod - don't know if others have started doing that yet)Most pods require you give GENUINE and HQ comments (this is a rule in almost all pods that I have seen) You can give copy paste comments. Again - if group is moderated by human - you will get a lot of spammy comments as human mods can't sit and check 1000s of links per hour. If you're in a group that has advanced bots then you'll get HQ / Relevant comments ONLY.Will it help me grow?If you're new to IG it will really help you get noticed. Getting likes and comments from REAL people (instead of bots) and having a chance to communicate with them is AMAZING. Nothing in this involves bots. Its just so pure. (Unless you get into round bots for which you will need FL, MP = shadowban FOR SURE)If you're already established then you can go viral by leveraging these pods. Getting 100s of likes and comments from authority accounts (10k+) *within the first 60 minutes of you posting on Instagram will help you rank higher and hopefully push your post to top post page and explore page = more genuine followers and likes.This is VERY mathematical.I have shared Instagram algo on another post of mine. You can read in there about it. https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/7erlr3/hushhush_secrets_to_instagram_no_one_would_share/So mix and match all that is there and all that I discussed here about engagement pods.Good luck to all!I seriously hope that all those who messaged me and commented asking for info on Engagement Pods have found some use from this post.I'll do my best to stay active on this post for next 24 hours to help anyone having any doubts!Cheers guys!

#/r/entrepreneur #reddit

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furederiko · 7 years

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September 1st!!! And it's the first (of hopefully more) Random-News-Digest of the month...

Quick update before I start! Nope, my situation hasn't really improved since last time. Things are still going haywire and uncertain on my part. Which means I'm still not too sure if I will be able to post more frequently this month as well. But this is a NEW month, and I always want to start anything with a fresh and optimistic mind. So at the very least, I'm going to TRY to post more. Here's hoping... Also, expect this R-N-D to be more... 'Digest' than usual. After all, I actually decided to do this on a whimsy when I woke up this morning. You can expect things to be more shorter and compact this time around. So without further ado, let's start!!!

DC Films

The news in this category has been quite a shocker lately. Martin Scorsese wants to make a stand-alone "Joker" origin story without Jared Leto? And then there's that Leto and Margot Robbie's "Joker and Harley Quinn" movie, that is being fast-tracked to come following "Suicide Squad 2"? It's a new title that was first rumored to replace David Ayer's "Gotham City Sirens", though recent report suggests that all-female movie is STILL in development as well. To complicate matters, "Suicide Squad 2" already lost a potential director, and with Will Smith's busy schedule, it won't start production until late next year. Ouch!

Oh yeah, eventhough the movie won't arrive until April 5th, 2019, director David F. Sandberg teased that the most lighthearted DC Film movie "Shazam" will start production very soon. Yet we don't even know who's going to play Billy Batson, nor his grown-up version. While Matt Reeves is going back and forth his version of "The Batman", saying it's not part of the DCEU, and then it IS. Please make up your mind! Jon Spaihts was rumored to be re-writing "Justice League Dark", though said rumor has been cleared out by The Wrap. The irony in that, is because he was among the writer of "Doctor Strange" for Marvel Studios!!! First Joss Whedon took over Zack Snyder for "Justice League", and has officially been given a writer credit (his involvement is 33% of the movie!!!). And don't forget how Patty Jenkins used to be attached to the first Thor sequel. So Spaihts's name being thrown into the rumor zone didn't feel as 'strange'. What I'm trying to say is, I won't be surprised if more people related to Marvel Studios will end up doing DC movies for Warner Bros in the future.

Clearly, this proves that WB STILL doesn't have a plan nor idea of what they are going to do with their DC Films. A concerning truth, but is definitely far from being a surprise nowadays. I guess since the current DCEU doesn't really have a clear future (despite the success of "Wonder Woman"), WB is already thinking about creating another Universe to complement it. Perhaps, if this one works better, then they can simply erase the one that Snyder started. That's the point of "Flashpoint", right? We'll see. Yes, we'll see...

X-Men Universe

Can't believe it took this long for some people to realize that... as long as Simon Kinberg is still in charge (in ANY capacity), fans probably won't be getting the 'true' X-Men movie they have always wanted. People seems to forget that he was the writer of the disappointing "X-Men: The Last Stand", and supervised the dreaded "Fant4stic Four". Now his upcoming directorial debut, "X-Men: Dark Phoenix", which he also wrote... is already put into a giant question mark, thanks to Kinberg's recent comment.

I admit, I've grown to DESPISE the term 'grounded' in recent years, because it is (ab)used as an excuse to make shitty underwhelming products. But seriously, what good will a "Dark Phoenix" storyline get by making it... grounded? That arc is meant to be a galactic interstellar adventure, involving alien entities and otherworldly stuffs. "X3" was already its grounded version, and it did NOT work. So why bother going the same route? Is this movie 'doomed to fail' then? It's unclear. But I certainly won't be surprised if that turns out to be the case. Just remember how that grounded take on "X-Men: Apocalypse" performed...

Marvel Studios

Marvel is celebrating the late Jack Kirby's 100th birthday this week. Studio's president Kevin Feige revealed on Twitter that the upcoming "Thor: Ragnarok" is produced as a love-letter to Kirby's work. Not unlike last year's "Doctor Strange", that served as a clear tribute to Steve Ditko. Actress Evangeline Lilly also celebrated the occassion, by sharing the first official image of her character Hope van Dyne, wearing the updated Wasp suit from "Ant-Man and the Wasp".

About that last one... I totally DIG her hair-style, because Lilly always looks much better with a long hairdo instead of the one she had in the first "Ant-Man". The suit on the other hand? I'm a bit mixed. I don't know why. Perhaps because I was expecting more... yellow/gold in the color scheme? Then again, Peyton Reed and Marvel Studios might be going with Wasp's red-black scheme once again, because it's the one designed by Kirby. Especially with Janet van Dyne being in the movie (played by Michelle Pfeiffer), and the report that Michael Douglas' Hank Pym will be suiting up himself in the classic white-red costume.

The writers of "Spider-Man: Homecoming" are set to be back for the sequel! Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers are also involved in "Ant-Man and the Wasp", so there's a possibility they might end up becoming the next Markus-McFeely of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Assuming all the stars are aligned, they will reunite with director Jon Watts (who was already in talks to return) to work on the first Marvel Studios after "Avengers 4" ends the current Phase 3. Here's hoping this team will keep deliver something better, without losing that irresistible youthful and innocent charm that the first movie exuded.

Marvel TV

When this post goes up, Marvel's "The Inhumans" should be arriving in IMAX theatres everywhere. Not sure if it will be available in my country, but it's surely a definite for the US region, because ABC will begin broadcasting the series on Friday, September 29th, 2017.

According to recent report, the response to its premiere was... much positive. In fact, it's a far cry to the supposed 'disaster' that occured at the Television Critics Association Panel. Is this surprising? Well... not quite. I mean, one man's trash can end up becoming another's treasure, right? So I predict that the overall review, when it officially hits, will be mixed at best. Remember, this is still Jeph Loeb's and Scott Buck's work. Each or both have ruined a show (or two, if we count that much-anticipated crossover that came out last month... or more if we put into account their past forays) before, so there's no assurance that they won't strike again. But I'm honestly glad to hear some people actually enjoying it. Hey, there's one for everyone, right?

As for me, as I said before, I personally won't be seeing this on the theatres. Based on the lackluster trailers and underwhelming clips released so far, I'll have to give it a hard pass. Beside, considering my current financial issue, wasting money for uncertain things can be considered 'suicide' anyway. I'll probably going to hold back on watching the series as well, until the reviews for all episodes are out. Thanks to my doozy experience with the recent Netflix 'crossover mini-series', I'm going to be extra cautious with Marvel TV now. Because really, spending 8 hours for a boring and/or disappointing show felt like a tremendous waste of time. Doing so isn't going to do me any good.

QUICK UPDATE: Embargo for the full reviews hasn't been lifted when I wrote and upped this essay into queue. Those reviews have been made available NOW on various sites, and well... turns out it's as BAD as many initially said. Since I'm too lazy to modify the entire category (although it's only 3 short paragraphs LOL), this note will do just fine as a follow up. My original writing sounded more 'positive' anyways. LOL.

Meanwhile, things are looking A LOT better for Marvel's "Runaways". It seems response for the first episodes was more than great. It is currently being praised as very faithful to the source material, despite its various 'tweaks' (for example, one character was a mutant in the comic, but the copyrights prevent that to exist in live action adaptation). Not that it should be a surprise anyway. When the writer of the comic is directly in charge as consultant, we know that at least things are going to be close to the comics. Might this be the Marvel show to wait for this year? Probably, but I digress. I'm still going to be approaching this one with extra caution. If recent Marvel TV shows are any indications, then we can't really expect it to be... evenly balanced. Some of them had okay to good run in the first half, only to falter into a massive dud in the later half. Yes, even "LEGION", and the 4th season of Marvel's "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.". They started out strong, but ended rather... disappointingly. Considering the same people behind them are also supervising this, said similar treatment can also apply to "Runaways"...

Netflix

It's already September, and I haven't finished Marvel's "The Defenders" yet. How come? The mini-series surprisingly BORED the hell out of me! A full review for it was meant to go up as my first post of September (yes, this R-N-D is its last minute replacement). That's the initial plan anyway, because I still haven't seen the last two episodes. Seriously though, when you've already lost any single urge to do it, there's nothing else you can do right?

Thanks to that, the internet had already spoiled me about what's going to happen to Simone Missick's Misty Knight. I don't even need to READ the whole article to figure out what will become of her... right hand. Yes, the headline already gave it away, and my minor knowledge of the character in the comics was more than enough to lead me to said conclusion. And then the image spreading on social media solidified it. Mind you, I still don't know how or what caused her to lose that body part. My quick and easy guess? Likely by Bakuto, considering up to episode 6, Misty had only spoken with one particular supporting character from the other series: Jessica Henwick's Colleen Wing. And it's also about her... KATANA, as if it's not obvious enough. Expect Misty to be armed with a prosthetic arm in the 3rd Season Marvel's "Luke Cage".

Yep, if you're like me, hoping for a "Heroes for Hire" show that includes the Daughters of Dragon... then we might as well swallow that wishful thinking. Why? It probably won't happen until the 2nd Season of Marvel's "Iron Fist" is out. Going by math alone, that means we have to wait another 26 episodes, and at least another two years. New season for "Luke Cage" will likely arrive in 2018, while the one for "Iron Fist" might probably land in 2019. Yeah, two years indeed. This is why you can't really expect much when it comes to Marvel TV... *sigh*

"Stranger Things" released a set of character posters for its 2nd Season. They cover the returning cast, as well as the new additions. What's interesting about these posters, is the strong nod to Steven Spielberg! And being a series set in the 80s, that folded-magazine style is also pretty neat. I hope this 2nd season will be as great as the 1st, and unlike most other Netflix shows.

One more thing! It's a rather old news, but worth bringing up. Netflix is currently collaborating with TOEI Animation, to remake the popular shounen-series "Saint Seiya". Titled "Knights of the Zodiac: Saint Seiya", the new series will be created in full CG style. If you're curious on how that might look, think of it like several parts of TOEI's "Precure Dream Star!" movie that was done completely in CG, or their recent "Sekaisuru KADO" series. The latter in particular, already has a character design that's looking VERY Saint Seiya-ish (could it be intended as the warm-up to this one, then? probably). First season will be 12 episodes of 30 minutes, and will cover the "Galaxy War" to the "Silver Saint" Arcs. Yoshiharu Ashino is directing the new series, Eugene Son is the story editor and head writer, Terumi Nishii will be handling the character design, while Takashi Okazaki is doing the armors.

This news is intriguing, because it can end up heading towards into two different territory: actually good, or downright Bad. The latest "Sailor Moon" reboot that immediately divide old and new fans, is a great example of said situation. "Saint Seiya" is among the beloved titles to those growing up in the late 80s, so you can imagine their negative reactions if this remake doesn't suit their taste. The series doesn't have a fixed release date for now, but I believe we can expect it to arrive on Spring 2018. My only hope is that it retains Shingo Araki's anime style compared to Masami Kurumada's manga ones, because it has been pretty much the 'signature' of the series for the fans.

Disney XD Series

I saw the one-hour premiere of the "DuckTales" reboot not long after it aired, and great goodness... I'm LOVING it. I used to have a minor issue with the voices of the nephews before, but that concern quickly faded away when the story started rolling. It's just so engaging and fun to watch! My only complaint, is that it takes too long for the next episodes to start airing. But we're now in September, so September 23rd is just around 20 days away. Shall we start counting down for more Scrooge McDuck's adventure, then? I wonder if Disney XD will debut the first episode of "Big Hero 6 the Series" in advance too? Hmmm....

Pocket Monsters

"Pokemon GO" has been greeted by Legendary Birds Articuno, Moltres, Zapdos, and Lugia last month. Starting yesterday, August 31st, 2017, Niantic has continued the streak with the Legendary Dogs Entei, Raikou, and Suicine. Unlike the Birds, these ones are going to show up as region-based for a particular duration. Entei will be in the Europe and Africa region, Raikou in the America, and Suicine in Asia-Pacific. They will then switch places on September 30th, 2017.

This is great news, right? NOT exactly. While I DID feel overjoyed when the Legendaries were first announced, what came next was nothing more than disappointments. The fact that Niantic is focusing too much on Raid Battles to debut these special Pokemon, had caused inconveniences to some (if not MANY) of its players. Sad to say, yours truly is included in this cluster.

Here's the deal. In order to capture ONE Legendary, it first needs to be defeated in a Raid Battle. Unlike normal Raids, it's a group effort that requires around 15-20 players to be on the spot at the same time, working together to take one down. So what happens when you're a player... living in an area, that does NOT have the privilege of having at least the minimum number of players? You can only bite your nails while grunting and sighing with disappointments, because there's really NOTHING you can do. I've lost count how many 'futile attempts' I've done, singlehandedly (seriously, because there's NOBODY around) trying to defeat one. I've now arrived to the point where I simply couldn't care less about any of them anymore. Which is sad, because I was sort of hoping "Pokemon GO" would be there to help me go through my current situation. I mean, when that role has been surprisingly taken over by a repetitive, kid-oriented game called "Magikarp, Jump!"... That's saying much, right?

Of course, this shouldn't be an issue if "Pokemon GO" is still enjoyable as a single-player experience. Players who can't capture a Legendary, could still focus on doing anything else. Problem is, there's NOTHING much to do beside that. Niantic is too focused on the multiplayer 'Team Gameplay' aspect of this game, that it neglects those who play individually (whether by choice, or who are simply forced by circumstances... like yours truly). The new 'Gym System' was nice, but lately I've noticed a concerning trend: the turnaround has gradually becoming very slow. Many Gyms in my area, have Pokemon with ZERO motivations. Worse, they are stranded there for days (I can personally attest to this, because mine are among them!). That means many players no longer visit the Gyms. To put it simply, this game is just not... FUN anymore for everyone. Only for the 'privileged'.

Niantic can actually fix this, by start releasing Generation III as soon as possible. Adding a horde of new Pokemon, even if not all of them (honestly, releasing 10 new species per month would be a fun options), will give these 'unfortunate players' a renewed 'purpose' to go out and play the game. Otherwise, it's really a dry boring-ish land. IMHO, Niantic could and should've tried another method with the Legendary Dogs by... I don't know... letting them in the wild, like what happened in the core "Pokemon Gold, Silver & Crystal" games. Then again, it's probably too much to ask for. I mean, Niantic doesn't even allow something as simple as having these Legendaries added as silhouettes to the Pokedex after encountering them. And that's the only thing I've been hoping for... *sigh*. For now, unless Niantic shakes things up big time, my days with the App is numbered. And I'm going to be just another entry to the long list of players who have already walked out due to disappointments...

One more thing for "Pokemon". A quick detour to the TV side! Kanto Gym Leaders and Satoshi's former travel companions Kasumi and Takeshi (or Misty and Brock in the US version)... are coming to Alola this month!!! Many fans are obviously pleased to hear this! After they have been unceremoniously snubbed in the 20th Anniversary movie "Eiga Pocket Monster, Kimi ni Kimeta!", they are set to show up in the series instead. Takeshi in particular, is the character I've been waiting for. After all, his VA Yuuji Ueda is still a crucial part in the series as the voice of Sonansu/Wobbuffet, so he could actually show up a lot more! This pair will be making their Alolan guest appearances on the September 14th and 21st episodes. Which got me thinking: How awesome will it be if Satoshi's other travel friends show up at the same time too, right?

Street Fighter

"Street Fighter V" has welcomed its 5th DLC character for Season 2. As speculated and rumored before, it's indeed Menat, the Eyes of the Future. She is also confirmed to be the apprentice of Rose, by the way. This makes her the first completely NEW character to the franchise, because Kolin, Ed, and Abigail have all showed up before in other games. Judging from her quick and... arguably pointless appearance in Ed's Story Mode, Menat has a fantastic Egyptian-themed design. The mummy queen alternate costume however? Yeeesh. You can check out her reveal trailer online, or you can just get her right away because she's already available since early this week.

Menat's arrival after Abigail, pretty much confirms the identity of the 6th and final DLC character: Guy's teacher, Zeku. His name was already leaked before by Event Hubs' Flowtron, and his report has been proven to be on point until now. So I guess all we need to wait is CAPCOM's official announcement, right? Seeing the release pattern (Ed on May 30th, Abigail on July 25th, Menat on August 29th), we can probably expect this last Season 2 character to arrive later this month, if not late October. So tell me, are you excited about Zeku?

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howterrifying · 7 years

Note

Hi! I don't know if you're taking any prompts right now but if you are, here's one: Sherlock been away for a case and then he called his family and when his baby daughter (or son) spoke over the phone, cue the cute convo. His daughter told him all sort of random stuff, she still didn't speak very well, and then she told him she missed him and wanted him to come home soon. Basically parentlock fluff :"> Thank you.

I know I wrote to you when you’d sent me the prompt that I was going to take a while to get round to writing it as I was in the middle of The Admirer at the time. I am so, so sorry it took this long. Literally, years. I can only hope I did your prompt justice! Thank you for sending it in the first place and for entrusting me with such a sweet bit of parent!lock fluff!

Virtue ( also on FF.net and AO3 )As it stood, if a case presented itself as less than a seven, there was no needfor Sherlock to leave 221B Baker Street. This (self-created) rule had remainedunchanged for a very long time, surviving past his false suicide, past thewedding of his best friend to Mary Morstan, and even after his own wedding toMolly Hooper.

When his daughter, Stella Holmes, was born, it remained the same. Only if acase was urgent or mysterious enough did it warrant the detective to leave hisflat, or in some instances, London. This was not to say that Sherlock Holmesdid not worry about his baby daughter. However, he was—if he had believed in agod other than himself—blessed with the good fortune of a brilliantly capableand resourceful wife, and the unusual fortune of the British Secret Service foran older brother. It was a case that had taken him to the South of Devon which removed whateverblessing Sherlock knew he had and replaced it with paranoia - the paranoia thatif he were to be separate from his daughter, even for one moment, anythingcould happen and if it did, he would never forgive himself. When Sherlock sawthe distraught face of the innkeeper, whose lost teenage son had beenSherlock’s mystery to solve, have to identify the grotesquely bloated corpse ofhis drowned son, the detective was never the same again. “Sherlock, there’s no such thing as an in-house case,” Molly said oneevening. “You just happen to be genius enough to solve most of them withouthaving to step foot out of the door. But not all the cases are like that. You cannotsave lives cooping yourself up in Baker Street forever.”“I won’t leave for anything less than a ten. And frankly, there just aren’t anytens anymore,” he replied stubbornly, whilst his four-year old daughter sleptsoundly against his chest.“Oh, Sherlock,” Molly said with a sigh as she sank next to him on the sofa andleaned against his arm. He turned to kiss Molly on her temple and leaned his head against hers.Sherlock knew it was selfish - to put aside the saving of other lives in orderto preserve one. It seemed terribly extreme, but such was the love he had forhis daughter, for this small unit of a family that he and Molly had built. “I just can’t bear the thought of—”“Sherlock, what happened in Devon didn’t happen to you,” reminded Mollyfirmly. “But what if it does?” he asked, turning to look at his wife with unusuallyanxious eyes. “You can be above this, Sherlock,” said Molly placing a gentle hand onher husband’s face, “The man I love, the detective I know would not let hisfears hold him back from doing good.”“Maybe I’m not that man anymore…” he murmured, staring down wistfully at hissleeping daughter’s face. “It’s who you are, Sherlock,” whispered Molly assuredly, “It’s just beingoverwhelmed at the moment.”“Perhaps,” he said quietly. Their days continued to consist of Sherlock not wanting to be away from hisdaughter, ignoring cases on his phone and only taking the ones from clients whowere willing come to Baker Street. Molly resigned herself to letting time bethe one to gradually allay her husband’s fears. It seemed nothing she said ordid could reassure him that life had to go on. It was another warm evening and after dinner, Molly had gone to take a showerwhilst Sherlock went to sit at his desk with Stella on his lap. He brieflyscanned through the day’s news with Stella following the movement of his cursoron the screen. His daughter, the bright spark that she was, was a keen observerof her own surroundings. Sherlock and Molly always made it a point to occupyher with a diversity of education and knowledge - from the symbols in aperiodic table to the varying viscosities of honey. As Sherlock scrolled through various news articles and as his inbox constantlychimed with new case requests, Stella sat quietly with her eyes wide open,waiting to see what her father was possibly about to teach her. However, when aphoto of a crying child appeared on his screen, it was Stella who spoke first. “Daddy,” she said, pointing to the laptop. “What happened?”“Let’s see, shall we?” said Sherlock, scrolling to find its caption.A five-year old girl was left stranded on a busy intersection after a groupof masked assailants allegedly snatched her father away right in front of her.Police investigations are under way. “Oh.”“What Daddy, what?” asked the wide-eyed toddler. Sherlock swallowed hard and realised he had been presented with a dilemma. Forthe past weeks, all he could see in his mind was the traumatised face of amourning father. Now, he was faced with the distressed, crying face of adaughter who had lost her father. What was more, it seemed to be affecting hisown daughter as well. “She’s crying, Daddy,” said Stella softly, pointing a chubby finger at thephotograph. “Why? What happened?”“She—” he could not believe it but he was choking on his words, “She can’t findher daddy, Stella.”To his surprise and utter heartbreak, a large tear rolled down the soft, rosycheek of his four-year old. He heard the soft but sharp inhale of a first soband felt the slightest tremble in her chest. “Oh no,” whispered Stella, “Where is her daddy? Where did he go?”“We don’t know, darling,” he whispered back, “Some bad people took him.”“You must find him, Daddy,” said Stella, turning to stare at her father withglistening eyes, “Because she will cry. And I will cry.”Stella did not realise that her words also made her father want to cry - and henever cried. She continued staring at the photograph, not being able toread the lengthy article or its wordy headline. To his amazement, however, shepointed at a word on the screen and began to spell it out.“F-A-T-H-E-R,” she began. “Father.”“Yes, well done, Stella,” said Sherlock, kissing the top of her head. “Daddy is my father,” she said, leaning into his chest. “I most certainly am,” he answered, smiling. “But who took her father?” asked Stella, staring back up at Sherlock. “Nobody knows, Stella.”“Maybe you know, Daddy,” said the little girl.“Hmm?” Sherlock raised a puzzled eyebrow. “Mummy says you’re clever, you know where to find things,” Stella remarked,smiling proudly at Sherlock, “You find it first because you’re the fastest.”A small laugh escaped the detective as he wrapped his arms tightly around hisprecious daughter and kissed the side of her face. Her words struck him likelittle ice-picks to an armour of ice that had surrounded his ribcage. Slowly,the face of the crying girl in the news began to take over that of the mourningfather’s. What was more, Sherlock had begun to imagine if the crying girl hadbeen his own, and the pain from that was the final strike to the ice thatfortified his heart. “Should I go find him then?” he asked his daughter softly. At his words, Stella turned excitedly to him, beaming with a smile that meltedhis heart. “Yes! You will find him, and she won’t cry anymore,” Stella exclaimed happily. “All right, but Daddy will have to be away for a while,” he said, brushing awayher wispy fringe from her eyes, “Is that okay?”“It’s okay, Daddy,” said Stella, settling against his chest again, “If I missyou, I will use Mummy’s phone.”Just then, Mummy herself appeared as Molly, freshly showered, stepped into theliving room, smiling at the sight of her daughter sitting cosily in herhusband’s lap. “You seem excited, Stella,” she said, beckoning for Stella to come to her.Molly knelt down by the sofa as their daughter leapt off her father’s lap torun into her arms. “Daddy has to go out, Mummy,” Stella exclaimed excitedly.“Oh? He does?” said Molly, looking up at Sherlock and raising a curiouseyebrow. “Yes, to help the crying girl.”“What crying girl?” asked Molly, picking her little girl up so they could siton the sofa together. The detective got up from his desk and took his laptop with him, joining motherand daughter on the sofa. “Her father was snatched off the streets when he was out with her just thisafternoon. She saw the assailants and the vehicle they’d driven him off in. Whydid they just leave her like that? And all of this happened in such a busy partof Manchester too. Curious, isn’t it?” he said, reaching for his phone as hebegan texting the extension of his homeless network located where the crime hadtaken place. Molly smiled as she saw the life come back into Sherlock’s eyes. Those anxiouseyes that had been filled with nothing but paranoia were no longer there andinstead, were alight with the gleam of newfound mission. This was who hewas, and he had finally returned. Things moved swiftly into gear as Sherlock launched himself into solving themystery of the kidnapped father. He had phoned DI Lestrade to get him onboardwith all the current investigations happening. Before dawn, Sherlock wasalready out of the flat and on a train to Manchester. Molly, together withStella, had waved proudly at Sherlock as he set off to save lives - that of themissing father and his crying daughter. With Sherlock onboard, the cases never took more than a week to be solved. Inthe case of the kidnapped father, he had taken only three days, leading thepolice first to the brawn that had executed the crime and finally to the brainsthat had had the motive for kidnapping the innocent man. The case had made the newsof course, and while Sherlock had been busy and unable to call home, his homehad been following the case as closely as they could. Molly and Stella wereglued to the laptop or the television, seeing if any progress had been made.When the breaking news arrived that Sherlock had cracked the case, mother anddaughter squealed with delight and waltzed around their Baker Street livingroom in celebration.“Can Daddy come home now?” asked Stella, as she lay on the carpeted floor withher mother, exhausted from their victory dance. “Yes, darling. He’ll be home soon,” Molly replied, staring up at their ceiling.“Can we phone him, Mummy?” asked Stella, getting up from the floor. “What a good idea, love,” said Molly, getting up as well. “Let’s go get Mummy’sphone.”It was almost midnight and after a round of press conferences at the policestation in Manchester, Sherlock was being driven back to London as a thank-youfrom DI Lestrade. He took a moment to relish the calm after the whirlwind ofevents that had taken place. Shutting his eyes, he leaned his head back againstthe leather seat, only to be startled by the sound of his phone ringing. It wasa ringtone that signified a call he was more than happy to receive. “Hello?” said Sherlock, unable to resist a smile. “Hey,” came Molly’s voice. “You okay?”“Yes. Just glad to be on the way home,” he answered, “And you?”“We just did a victory dance for you,” said Molly with a chuckle.“Did you?” said Sherlock, amused. “We’ll do it again for you when you get back.”“Please do. I’d love to see it,” he remarked with a warm laugh.“Someone’s desperate to hear your voice though.”“The desperation is mutual.”“All right, hold on.”Sherlock waited patiently as he heard the muffled sounds of Molly passing hermobile phone to his daughter’s tiny hands. There were more strange sounds whichSherlock deduced was Molly trying to put the phone on speaker mode. Eventually,they were connected and the voice he had been waiting for came through. “Daddy!”“Stella, hello darling,” he exclaimed, overjoyed at hearing her sweet voice. “I saw you on the telly!”“I was on the telly, yes,” replied Sherlock with a laugh, “Did you alsosee the girl and her father?”“Yes! She stopped crying and I am so happy now, Daddy,” Stella exclaimedjoyfully. “It makes me happy that you’re happy, Stella,” said Sherlock. “Are you coming home now?” asked the little girl.“Yes, I am in a car, coming home as quickly as I can to see you and Mummy.”“Okay good because I miss you,” said Stella. “I’ve missed you too,” Sherlock replied.“Daddy?” “Yes, Stella?”“You’re so good,” said Stella earnestly. “What do you mean, darling?” asked Sherlock with a laugh. “People stop crying ‘cause of you, Daddy,” his daughter explained, “So you are good.”Again, words caught in his throat and he found himself having to blink tearsaway. Molly must have sensed this over the phone and quickly cut in so hissilence would not worry their daughter. “Stella, Daddy needs to take a nap in the car now,” said Molly, “When he comeshome he’ll talk to you again all right?”“Okay, Daddy, goodnight!” said the little girl, blowing a kiss at her fathereven though he could not see her. From the footsteps he could hear in the background, Stella had probablytrundled off back to her nursery. Molly turned the phone off speaker mode andbrought it to her ear. “Are you crying, Sherlock Holmes?” she asked, smiling. “I’ll leave you to your deductions…” he answered, clearing his throat. “She’s right though,” Molly continued. “Hmm?”“You’re good, Sherlock. You’re good at what you do and you’re a goodman for doing what you do.”The detective went silent again as Molly’s words resonated with that of hisdaughter’s. Perhaps it was time to believe in a god other than himselfbecause had he been in charge, he would have been given none of this.What had he done to deserve the love of Molly and the love their daughter? Itbaffled him constantly and especially so this night. “Are you short-circuiting?” asked Molly, grinning, “I can actually seeyour incredulous face, you know…”“Well, I can’t wait to see yours,” said Sherlock softly.  “What, myincredulous face?”“Just your face,” he said, smiling, “It is rather beautiful.”“Are you flirting now, Sherlock Holmes?” Molly said with a laugh, “Careful. Atthe rate you’re going, we just might end up with another baby.”Sherlock chuckled softly at her words and sank into his seat, so much morerelaxed now that he had gotten in touch with the only ones that mattered tohim. “Well, we make good babies, don’t we?” said Sherlock, smiling to himself as hestared out of the car window. “That’s because you’re a good man.”“And that’s because you made me one.”“It’s who you are, Sherlock,” Molly remarked gently. “And I love you for that.”Her words made him shake his head in disbelief again. He would never not short-circuitwhen she said things like that. “Molly.”“Yes, Sherlock?”“I’m going to make a deduction.”“Yes?”Sherlock paused, biting down a grin that threatened to spread across his face.“At the rate you’re going,” Sherlock remarked, amused, “We’re most certainlygoing to have another baby.”

END

#Sherlolly #i am so sorry this took such an embarrassingly long time #sigh :(((#i can only hope it was okay!#Sherlolly shots #Sherlolly prompts #one shot by terrified

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kevinames · 6 years

Text

The Tympani LED light from Luxli is the deep bass kettledrum of portable AC or battery powered lighting. This multi-talented instrument brings much more to the photographic game than does its one-note per drum percussive namesake. This is a deep dive review of the features of this multi-featured although at first glance, a somewhat pricey light. As a matter of full disclosure, I was given a pair of Tympani lights and batteries a few months ago in exchange for writing this review. In the interim, I have put them through their paces. What follows is not only a discussion of features. It is also a first-hand account of my putting these lights to work in real-world situations and what I learned about them. I am under no obligation to Luxli to say nice things.

Overview

The Tympani is a 1-foot square LED light that features adjustable Kelvin temperature, high CRI rating, 150 Lee gel filter options and 10 pre-programmed adjustable special effects. Tympani’s effects reproduce the light created by a gently burning campfire to a police visibar or even fireworks. Its 672 LEDs are rated at 50,000 hours of operation. The output is significant. At 100% it emits 3,430 lux at 3.28 feet (1 meter) which is an exposure triangle equivalent of f/4.0 at 1/80 seconds and ISO 100. This is perfect for still portraits with nice background bokeh. Turn the Tympani power to 25% and the aperture drops to f/2.0. This light is great for video too. The weight of the Tympani with yoke is short of 7.5 pounds (3.37 kg) This photo shows the LEDs through the supplied diffusion screen.

Looking at the front, two red knobs at the top of the mounting yoke control the instrument’s tilt. The pair of inner black knobs allows the light to be positioned within the yoke. At the bottom of the yoke is a standard 5/8″ baby stud receptacle with tightening knob also in red. There are slots on the bottom and sides for barn doors or a Chimera Universal 1′ by 1′ Tech Bank softbox. The clip at the top secures either of these accessories.

On the back

The flip side of the Tympani has power inputs, dimmer, color temp, effects, as well as professional DMX input/output and a lot more. Here is a closer look starting at the top.

Dual power: AC & battery

A 4-pin XLR socket receives AC power from a supplied power supply.

A V-mount battery slot allows attaching a battery. Power goes into the light with the XLR cable attached to the V-mount.

A battery life indicator appears on the LCD screen (not shown) when the Tympani runs on battery power

Gold mount batteries with a P-tap socket may be used with an adaptor cable. More on that later.

Light and color temperature controls

The dimmer works from 0% to 100% brightness.

The adjustment dial controls the color temperature from 2800ºK to 10,000ºK in CCT (Correlated Color Temperature) mode.

The color is accurate with a 95 CRI (Color Rendering Index) and a 97 TLCI (Television Lighting Consistency Index)

Press the second function button to set the green/magenta balance to match existing fluorescent lights

Color filters & color hue

150 Lee-equivalent filters at the touch of a dial

Any color without changing the brightness of the light

Works with any color temperature

Set any hue on the color wheel from 0º to 360º

Select filter or hue using the mode selector

Effects modes

CCT Chase — 2 color temperatures with green added or subtracted in a loop with control of the loop’s length.

Color Chase — Continous loop of 2 pre-selected colors. Choices include color and saturation of start/stop colors and loop length.

Explosion — The flash from an explosion or gunfire. Explosions per minute and duration of each are options.

Fire — Simulation of firelight from a candle, campfire or big bonfire, without or with wind from a breeze to windy to a storm.

Fireworks — A random color burst adjustable for the number of fireworks per minute and the duration.

Lightning — This simulation has an adjustable color temperature of flashes and the pause in between strikes.

Paparazzi — The look of the random firing of multiple on-camera flashes. The number of flashes per second, duration and color temperature of each are selectable.

Pulse — A steady fade in/out of any color and saturation and the number of them per minute

Siren — This setting is emergency lights with choices to simulate different visibars. Settings control how many times each color flashes per cycle, number of repeats and for how long.

Strobe — Just what it says. Strobe light without pulses. Color and saturation are adjustable as is flashes per minute and the duration of each.

Bluetooth & DMX

The Tympani has Bluetooth 4.2 LE to pair with a tablet or smartphone. Both Android and iOS are supported. Additionally, the Tympani is equipped with DMX protocols that allow addressing up to five programmable presets. It works with a DMX controller, the app or from the Tympani itself.

The Conductor app

Controlling the Tympani is easy from the back panel. Controlling more than one that way is a pain. The free Conductor app handles this simply. Once installed on an Android or iOS device, multiple Tympani lights can be controlled from the camera or anywhere else on set for that matter. The app also controls special effects, instrument output from 0% to 100%, color filter choice, hue, and saturation, color temperature, too. Best of all, it controls all of the Luxli orchestra of LED lights — Cello, Viola and, of course, Tympani.

White balance

Hue and saturation

Lee equivalent color filters

Strobe effect

Siren effect

Rainbow effect

Tympani in use

I put these lights to use right away. The first set of photos was of the Tympani itself, lit with the other Tympani. I want to say from the start that I am a lifelong, as far as my photography career goes, electronic flash user. I like fast shutter speeds, tiny apertures for loads of depth of field in the case of products and using the lowest ISO. Making the transition to working with continuous light was a bit of a thinking reframe for me.

I set up the shot, used my Illuminati meter to read the exposure and went to work. Before you ask, yes, I turned off the overhead lights which, when using flash, are not bright enough to be recorded by the camera. The first thing I discovered was that LED lights are nowhere as bright as flash. I understood this conceptually. When the reading for a good exposure was f/8.0, 1/8 seconds at ISO 125 appeared on my iPhone, I was, well, in new territory, exposure wise. I have always used a tripod so shutter speed was not an issue. I did find that I had to be much more careful with focus. Otherwise, light is light. The Tympani worked perfectly. As a matter of fact, all of the photos in this article were lit with it except the screenshots of the Conductor app.

In the studio

Ok. I am in love with using my phone to dial in the brightness of the light. I know there are electronic flash systems that offer remote controls (way too pricey). Controlling background by sliding my finger across the iPhone’s screen was easy and addictive. The yoke allowed positioning the Tympani to be quick and efficient. For background color, I used a Cello, also from Luxli, that I received for review as well. The app made changing color fun. Instead of having to put a gel on the light as I would do with flash, compensate for the light absorption of the gel exposure wise then make a test photo to check that the exposure was what I wanted, I moved my finger on the color grid on the app. No matter what color I chose, the exposure remained the same. NICE!

On location — an interior

Interior photographs are made with the light in the room. The architect or designer (or both) put the lights where they would paint the room in the best, well, light. The exposure is based on those lights. The hallway shown below is how it presents in everyday life. The barrel ceiling and kitchen through the rail door are well represented. There is beautiful detail in the wooden floor and the burgundy runner as well. On the right side of the image is a wooden chest that is so dark it pulls the eye from the rest of the room. It is a dark shape with no detail.

The chest is really dark. It needs some warm light to open things up.

The solution was super simple. I set up a Tympani with the color temperature set at 3200ºK — warm light, tungsten light. I increased the power until it balanced perfectly. And I did it from my iPhone! Look at the difference a bit of warm light makes…

The Tympani at 3200ºK lowered the contrast of the chest. The warm light makes its wood glow. An added bonus was the additional light on the portrait.

On location — video

Video interviews are becoming more and more important for social media, corporate and public relations. As good as DSLR video cameras are, without light, the result is ho-hum at best. I worked on a three camera shoot interviewing a local horticulturalist for the venue he maintains. I did my homework. I went to the place to scout out a good place for the video. I found it and it was in shade with broken, dappled sunlight. These shadows would not look good on the show. The answer was to light both the interviewer and the subject.

The Tympani lights were perfect for the job. Their job was to balance the shadows to the sunlight. The first thing I did was to use the color measuring function of the Illuminati meter. It showed 5200ºK. I dialed that in on both Tympani lights.

5200ºK and 100% brightness did the job for both subjects in the interview. Note the gold mount battery doing double duty as a counterweight on the boom.

The interviewer and subject took their places and we were ready to roll.

Batteries on location

The batteries that came with the Tympani were not powerful enough to run the light for more than six minutes. These lights want serious power. Cine-style 14.4 volt Lithium Ion units like the Watson VM-99-HCS-R batteries and dual charger with at least 90 watt/hours are required to run a Tympani. Understand that these LiPo batteries cannot be shipped by air freight. If you are ordering them be sure you have time to receive them by ground transportation. The reason I mention this is that the correct batteries would not make it in time for the interview.

Fortunately, Luxli understands the needs of versatile power. I went to a local production rental house here in Atlanta and rented three gold mount batteries, a couple of adaptor plates, and a pair of P-Tap to 4-pin XLR plugs. The shoot came off without a hitch because, in large part, the Tympani lights are so well designed that alternatives, in this case, power was built in. Another advantage of using the other batteries is I could use them as counterweights for the boom holding one of the Tympani instruments.

V-mount batteries

The Watson battery slips right into the slot in the back of the Tympani. All I had to do was connect the power cable. All of the functions available with AC power are there when it runs on a battery. A power meter appears showing battery life. It’s located above the light output percentage reading.

A 14.4 volt 98 w/h battery in the Tympani’s V-mount plugged in & powering the light.

Closing thoughts

The Luxli Tympani is incredible. It’s fully featured and then some. Most lights this size offer daylight and tungsten color temperatures while the Tympani has all color temps, 150 Lee filters plus the color wheel built in. It’s solidly built. A pair of them are easy to carry in a single case. For a photographer who is doing location portraits, small products in a home studio or video projects this is the light to own. The Tympani with AC power supply, diffusion panel and mounting yoke lists at $999.99.

In-depth: Luxli’s Tympani LED ultra versatile luminaire The Tympani LED light from Luxli is the deep bass kettledrum of portable AC or battery powered lighting.

#Cello #Conductor app #LED #LiPo #Luxli #Tympani

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douchebagbrainwaves · 7 years

Text

FOUNDERS IS AN EXPERT IN BUSINESS

The study also deals explictly with a point that would now seem unAmerican. Exceptional programmers have an aptitude for and interest in programming that is not the hope of gain, but the people. The stronger your will, the less likely this seems. You can only avoid competition by avoiding good ideas. It's easy to convince. False positives yielded by statistical filters turn out to be a case of the Milanese Leonardo? By 38 you can't take so many risks—especially if you only have one Web browser, you can't tell a book by its cover. Whereas if you're doing it, not a side project—an application to run on a remote user's machine on top of this new trend.

He was a precise sort of guy, so he'd measured their productivity before and after. Founders and investors have different attitudes to risk. Almost everyone's initial plan is broken. That's the opposite of clumsy. And yet in the general case, if n is the fraction of the smart people work as toolmakers. Trade shows didn't pay as a way to play games with them, and c the groups of applicants you're comparing have roughly equal distribution of ability. The good languages have been those that were designed for other people in the middle. Now how are you doing compared to the VCs who don't adapt will be investing later, their returns from winners may be smaller.

Stay upwind. As you might expect, it winds all over the articles, as you might expect, it winds all over the place. Plenty of companies seem as good a case for it as they can. There are times in most of the things that get used for pornography, or file-sharing, or the chronic ache of consulting. So the fact that your competitors don't understand. It's just something we weren't getting. Far more important is to explain, as concisely as possible, the same way.

As a result it became massively successful. Similarly for Microsoft: Basic for the Altair. No, there will be more room for what would now be considered slow languages, meaning languages that don't yield very efficient code. But I suppose that's bound to yield an alarming book. I think, because they don't have layers of bureaucracy to slow them down. At this point there is nothing new our startup can teach us about hacking? Everyone knows that it's not that important to know a lot of catalog companies, because their subconscious filters them out. For example, open source software. There's a third factor in achievement: how much would I pay for this. I first heard about it. They're the limiting reagents in the reaction that produces startups, because students don't feel they're failing if they don't work hard because the coach yells at them, or the English.

There are still a lot of the newest companies in Silicon Valley it seems normal. Why don't more people use it in all his paintings, wouldn't he? The two most important things YC looks for in founders, not just within their firms, but within each individual project, one person has to do is give the right sort of hunches. And if you don't, a low burn rate gives you more options to choose from? I called business stuff. If you get cold-emailed by an associate at a VC firm, you shouldn't meet even if you are the expectations of your family and friends. Apple's next products should be considered experiments, and those that do don't teach you much more about alliances. As Ricky Ricardo used to say, my imitations didn't say anything either.

A new medium appears, and people answering it often aren't clear in their own mind how much runway they have—how long they persisted. When I realized this was kind of a battle of the byte codes at the moment. And if it doesn't consider the possibility that he is modelled upon. 0. It's exacerbated by the fact that they control Google, which affects practically everyone. A lot of the applicants probably read her as some kind of preamble. This might be true. This leads to the phenomenon known in the Valley.

And not just for evaluating new ideas but also for having them. It is by no means obvious that this was how things would play out? In America, companies, like Google early on, because she was a woman, rather than the dumb side, but intelligence counted far less than, say, the ages of eleven and seventeen. When you assemble ideas at random like this, it's unlikely that a project that seems interesting at first will bore you after a month. Hackers can learn to program by looking at good programs—not even Google. For the young especially, much of the other faculty. That's like having the Rolling Stones play at a bar mitzvah. I'm surprised by how much better it feels to think about the upper limit on what you love assumes a certain length of time. Only a few countries by no coincidence, the richest ones have reached this stage. The problem is not simply that you can't change the question.

So the best you could do that now. Everyday words are inherently imprecise. We funded it because we were always up against this. Within large organizations, it can make you start to become known as reliable, useful investor, people will pay for their skills, the answer is a central list of domains advertised in spams. Thanks to Sam Altman, Trevor Blackwell, Robert Morris, Peter Norvig, Lisa Randall, Emmett Shear, Sergei Tsarev, and Stephen Wolfram for reading drafts of this. If you want to start your own startup. Which means that even if we're generous to ourselves and assume that YC can on average triple a startup's expected value, and accept offers greedily, because the schlep filter. I'm not going to have to do is avoid it. You want to fund more Airbnbs we have to take less salary for a while in Florence. I'll be rich.

Notes

Naive founders think Wow, a valuation from an angel. At any given person might have 20 affinities by this, but historical abuses are easier for us!

Starting a company growing at 5% a week before. At this point for me to address this generally misapplied phrase. Interestingly, the median tag is just like a loser they usually decide in way less than 1. Most of the other by adjusting the boundaries of what investment means; like any investor, the effort that would help Web-based applications, and their flakiness is indistinguishable from those of dynamic variables were merely optimization advice, and more tentative.

In principle you might see something like the difference between surgeons and internists fleas: I wouldn't want the valuation at the leading scholars in the services, companies building lightweight clients have usually tried to explain it would be great for VCs if the quality of production. It seems more accurate or at least some of these limits could be made.

Users had been a waste of time. If the rich.

And they are at some of those sentences.

These were the richest buyers are, which you want to start startups. Hypothesis: A company will either be a distraction. The idea is the following scenario.

Stiglitz, Joseph. But it isn't critical to. Frankfurt, Harry, On Bullshit, Princeton University Press, 1965. Companies didn't start to finance themselves with retained earnings till the top schools are, and since you can use this technique, you'll be well on your cap table, and jobs encourage cooperation, not because Delicious users are not more startups in this way would be great for VCs.

Design ability is so plausible, the 2005 summer founders, if the similarity extended to returns.

But it's easy to imagine cases where VCs don't invest, regardless of how you wish they were taken back in a time. Instead of earning the right thing to do sales yourself initially.

Confucius and Socrates resemble their actual opinions.

William R. We don't call it ambient thought. Y Combinator in particular, because for times over a certain field, it's because of that. But it is genuine.

You could feel like you're flying through clouds you can't tell if it were better to embrace the fact that you're being asked to come up with much food. It's hard to do it all yourself.

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c7thetumbler · 7 years

Text

Life Update Notes: January 7th 2017

Look at that banner! MMM. Get it? It’s like, Update notes. For like a video game. But it’s built into that heartbeat thing I like that I keep using.

So it like, a LIFE UPDATE NOTES. GET IT?!?!

You get it. You’re smart.

And while I do like to hide little easter eggs in some of my banners, the “notes” don’t directly translate to like Morse or Binary or anything like that so don’t bother trying to decode it.

So yeah, I gave up on the State of the Epic posts halfway through 2016 because of.... reasons, but given our politics recently I figured I’d take that concept out of any sort of presidential context and kinda tie it in with the themes I’ve been using for a couple years now; the sort of minimalist programmer art with green/blue accents-

Wait, you didn’t notice I’ve been using this theme for over a year? ... Have you not seen my Twitter or my Twitch or some other banners I’ve been- forget it, it’s fine.You’re fine.

Let’s get started.

Projects

This section’s gone.

“But C!” you begin to inquire with your stunned expression, having nearly averted fainting from reading some random guy’s blogpost, “This was the most important part of your posts! And didn’t you just say in that other post you did almost exactly a week ago you were gonna do a project a month? HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME! I TRUSTED YOU!”

Fear not, person whose behavior is indicative of someone who almost certainly exists, I am holding myself to that. But these projects are going to be so important that I am in fact putting them in their own post. After each week of the month, I will create a post about my project up until the day after the month ends, where I will be posting my thoughts on it and, hopefully, begin the next project, or continue expanding on the current one if it all works out. So that will be coming tomorrow!

What will instead take this place will be a rant or my opinion or outlook on something or other, keeping the in-formalities to this while the more interesting stuff to its own deal.

Let’s rant about facts and skepticism

So let’s kick off this whole deal with something very important to me. Facts. This past year was rife with headlines, news, and opinions that were spouted in the face of actual provable facts and data, and because of how modern society has streamlined everything, everyone just ate that shit up.

Now my outlook on these sorts of things, and almost everything is a healthy skepticism. That is, question claims that seem bizarre, unusual, outlandish, or contrary to things you previously looked into, but do you really have to question every mundane thing? Of course not; no one has the time for that. Now, that’s not to say don’t question the things you believe in; quite the contrary! The things you believe in should always be on your mind, and therefore be the most subject to criticism. But do you really need to start an argument with family members over how they got that flat tire? Nah. Not the point. It’s said and gone.

So basically, scrutinize things people claim. This is the rant. Right here.

You remember all those fucking lessons about making a bibliography, referencing which books and page numbers you used, and making sure you got the quotation exactly right during your 12+ years of education? There’s a reason for that; it’s how you call out bullshit. Any news site worth their salt should be citing a source that undeniably proves that what their reporting on actually happened, and then make it clear to you what parts are their opinions, if any. When a news site doesn’t do this, or even worse, cites another news article that leads to an infinite regress of bullshit sources or is an opinion piece, you can safely throw it out, because it’s not journalism, and nor is it important.

This is incredibly important to me; I’ve seen so many claims recently that have no backing in reality, and it’s really starting to unnerve me. What benefit is there to come up with conspiracy theories that fail a shave with Occam's Razor? Why would you chose to be ignorant of the truth and ignore evidence; wouldn’t you rather be right and have your thoughts form around things that are real over being wrong about everything?

And this source citing is especially important, not just in news headlines but other things as well. You know how many times anonymous game leaks have been believed and then completely falsified? How many time I’ve looked up rules or things with games and seen an answer that claims to be an authority, but has no backing (D&D rulings are especially guilty of this in places like reddit)? So here’s what I propose; it’s of course not that important to quote sources on everything you can think of. But at least think of how you know it. Where was the source? Have you checked it? If you’re having a discussion and need to bring out a fact the other person hadn’t heard of, where’s the harm in trying to find a source for it?

And don’t be afraid to say you’re unsure or that you don’t know; this is fine! It’s better to say you don’t know something and be open to information rather than make up something and then be closed to it.

... But mainly if you try and have a discussion in, say, the comments section on common ruling in /r/dndnext, make a point to say what page or book the rule your referencing is on.

Games I played this week

Normally the weeks after the Holidays are filled with me joyously going through all the neat games I got, but unfortunately the Holidays were a bit.... Different, this year, and that wasn’t the case. I ended up splurging and getting a few games anyway, and here’s what I played this week.

Paper Mario: Color Splash

I already covered this in my big WiiU retrospective, but I’m going to go a bit further. This game is a mechanical mess. Sure, the writing’s good, but it makes so many design choices that just don’t work, and it’s worth looking into.

The card combat system was clearly the biggest issue, and the designers knew that. They added in several aspects to make it less stressful and more tactical; A solid number of max cards, with no “big cards,” paint in order to power up cards, and a battle wheel to ensure you don’t completely run out, turning the focus from making moves that preserve your attacks to making moves that make the most effective use of your turns. Basically, you never *really* run out of options.

However, this MASSIVELY misses the point. What is the purpose of having a limited attack selection if you’re going to supply the player with the means to attack regularly anyway, and have cards pop out of EVERYTHING? Why not just go to a normal RPG battle system again; it accomplishes the same thing with turning into an item management simulator. They also didn’t fix the core problem I had with Sticker Star, which is that you’re actively encouraged not to engage in battle, as it would waste resources for at best the cards you lost and some “paint hammer badges” (become pointless halfway through the game even without actively fighting). You should never, ever, ever, encourage your players not to use or to actively avoid a core mechanic.

Additionally, the real worlds objects, or Things, return, which would be fine if every boss fight but the final wasn’t reliant on you finding and guessing what you needed before the fight and using it at exactly the right moment. How should I have known I’d need the balloons to pull a submarine out of the water, when I didn’t even know there would be a submarine? Well... They knew this issue as well: you ask the toad who tells you what you need before you enter the next level. It’s a cheap solution, and a waste of time to continually need to run back to the “hub” to check to make sure you have the right thing- sorry, Thing. It’s not exactly clear organically either. You find an ice pick. What do you use it on? Ice of course! Not really though; you melt ice with a hair dryer. Using the ice pick actually has its own text saying it doesn’t work. It’s an artificial wall that just serves as a waste of time.

What I will say, however, is they did a good job with having optional side-content. There are loads of things I know I didn’t find; alternate exits, Luigi’s, a couple Things, and there’s an achievement banner system as well. So there’s a lot of work to be done, but it’s not all bad. I still can’t recommend it though.

Mario Party Star Rush

.... This is really good. Like, the best Mario Party I’ve played since Gamecube days good; maybe even better. The main game mode actually feels like a board game, but makes clever use of the fact that each player has their own system. Sure, there’s still that crazy MP luck thrown in, but it feels fun. I feel like me playing well actually has an effect on the game, without feeling like all hope is lost if I’m losing or getting too comfortable with my lead. There’s loads of fun minigames, and even though it’s got the normal Mario environments and look, it’s made them feel fresh and fun.

I can’t recommend this enough. It’s really good game design with the traditional feel of a Mario Party game with fresh new game modes, rather than MP9/IT/10′s destruction of the formula in favor of random chance.

DOOM

Man this game!... Runs at 17 fps on my computer on low settings =(

Pony Island

Pretty fun sort of Anti-game so far. It’s got me interested, and its mix of actual gameplay with a creepy possessed 90′s computer and messing with the way code runs. It makes you think out of the box a lot, and I like that, though I probably should’ve suspected when the... “antagonist”? Asked if I wanted to leave to take a break so it can work on making more content that saying yes would close the whole game

Touché, Pony Island.

No judgement yet, but so far it’s positive so far

What I’m looking forward to next week

Awesome Games Done Quick Starts tomorrow!

Keewy’s attending that, and I’m excited for him! It’s always fun to tune into every once in a while, and it’s an awesome way to raise money for charity as well as show off some cool games and speedruns. I’m specifically looking forward to Miles’ MP2 run (always a fun watch), The Mario Sunshine Race, Ori and the Blind Forest, Mighty Number 9 (just out of curiosity), The Sonic block is almost always a fun time, And of course the TAS block. But honestly, I’ll tune in randomly, because I always find one or two really good runs and commentators on games I never previously had any interest int. Check it out!

The Nintendo Switch Direct is on the 12th, 8:00 PST

Everyone got their bingo cards? I’m personally excited to see what the launch lineup is, as well as how well it runs docked and undocked, which will be easy to see since they’re doing a treehouse stream I believe immediately after it, so that’s going to clear up a lot of things.

... And that’s it! I’ll get to the project post tomorrow

#life update #Game impressions #Rant #Facts

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