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espinosaurusrexex · 1 year

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Just an idea :) for Sherlock, what if Enola is always trying to get him to date cuz either he's lonely or always focused on work. But he always turns down the idea. Then one day she lures him to her favorite bookshop (or cafe, etc) and casually introduces him to her favorite employee. And the pickup line just comes out of no where, even he is surprised lolz. Feel free to not use this at all if you get better ideas😂

Thank you so much for this idea! For writing purposes, this will take place in modern times (*writing purposes meaning me being too lazy to write period specific)

Cheesy Pick-up Line (Bingo Game)

!BINGO ASKS CLOSED!

College!Henry!SherlockHolmes x Female!Reader

word count: 1.3k

warnings: a little bickering, awkward Sherlock, fluffy and cute

Enola giggled excitedly as she pushed past the glass double doors of her favorite library. Her brother was following behind closely, a disinterested look on his face as they entered the small building. For Enola, it was the perfect place to be, but Sherlock just asked himself what he was doing here instead of studying for his criminal justice exam next week.

What he had not concluded yet, was that Enola Holmes had an agenda far different from the story she had told her brother about just an hour ago. He didn’t know his sister had spent weeks finding a way to finally get him to leave his stuffy, foot-smelling boy room. She had mashed her brain about it as she roamed the shelves of her favorite place and when she checked out the other day, she was embarrassed to have thought of it so late. It was blatantly obvious. Her brother needed a girlfriend. Someone that would encourage him to live outside of his schoolwork every once in a while. And you were the perfect candidate for the job. Smiley and charming, intelligent and pretty, and on top of that, someone Enola liked very much. She had established a first-name basis with you over the hours she spent in the little library you worked at. Today, she would try to accomplish the same for Sherlock.

Sherlock stood between the rows of shelves, waiting for his sister to finish collecting the mountain of books he was sure she wasn’t even allowed to check out at once. She had recruited him to ‘help her carry them’ as if she weren’t very capable of it herself. And besides, Enola was the one always underlining her independence and that women could do just as much as men. Something wasn’t adding up.

Enola placed another book in his arms. One she had mindlessly pulled from the shelve to keep her story alive. It was a small sacrifice for the gratification she would get would her brother finally fall in love this evening. She was sure of it. No more feigned disinterest in the stories their family told about cousins and other relatives having their first partners. No more annoying dismissal of their mother’s subtle hints towards his isolating himself. No more bad moods because of the uncalled-for comments Mycroft threw at him when he visited with his fiancé. It was about to change today.

“Relativity Theory?” He lifted an eyebrow before Enola could disappear behind another shelf. “Hamlet? What kind of homework is this supposed to be?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” Enola quipped before placing an autobiography in his arms.

“They’ll think you’re robbing this place.” He readjusted the books because even though he was fairly strong, they slipped in his grasp. “How are you planning on checking those all out?”

“Jokes on you, my check-out limit has been upgraded because I’m a regular.”

“To 17? That’s too many. Too many books in general. Even for your ADHD brain.”

She glared at him. “Well, that’s where you come into play. With your card, we can check out 15. And for the other two, I’ll just have to sweet talk my way through.”

“You’re impossible, Enola.” Sherlock rolled his eyes as he followed his younger sibling to the counter.

“Shut up, It’s hard carrying enough character for Mycroft and you. You should thank me, really.”

“Unbelievable,” he muttered under his breath and then he placed the books down with a thud.

Enola Smiled as she saw you approach the counter from the back office. Once you were here, the hot phase of her plan would be set in motion. And she couldn’t wait.

“Good evening, Enola. I see you brought someone new with you today?” You asked kindly with a bright smile on your face. Most people that came into the library didn’t talk much, but ever since Enola came around, she made the day a whole lot better. She grew to be a friend to you, which was why you also already knew who the handsome ‘stranger’ next to her was. But you wouldn’t reveal it just yet, that would be creepy.

“This is my Brother, Sherlock.” Enola just smiled as she placed her pile of books on the counter as well.

“Nice to meet you,” the tall brunette smiled behind his glasses, soft curls falling into his face when he nodded toward you.

“Nice to meet you, too. I would ask if you found everything you were looking for, but I guess it’s even more than that...” You counted the books, sending Enola a warning look. You had gone through the trouble of sweet-talking Old Mrs. Thomson if Enola could be an exception to the ‘only six books for home’ rule once again. Trying one more would get you on dusting duty for at least three weeks.

Your eyes locked with Sherlocks. “Do you have a library card?” And then your attention was back to the register, typing away on the little blue display.

Sherlock couldn’t see what you were doing, but he knew he wanted your eyes back on him. He didn’t know why, there was something about you that made him all excited. “Why? Because you want to check me out?” Uh oh.

Your fingers stopped hacking away at the outdated machine and your eyes wandered back to him. A deep blush tinted his cheeks and ears pink as you tried to hold back the laugh pushing at your throat.

Sherlock wanted the earth to swallow him whole. Why had he just said that? What was wrong with him?

And while her brother desperately attempted to hide his shocked face, Enola just stood beside him, equally stunned. She hadn’t known it had gotten this bad. His constant isolation must have messed with his social competence somehow. Because whatever she was just witnessing, was beyond secondhand embarrassment. He made her job harder to bring the two of you together, and honestly, right now, Enola did not see a chance for her brother.

“Yes, yes he has. Here!” Enola ripped the card from her brother's pocket and handed it to you. You, who bit your lips to hide the smile creeping on your features and shook your head.

Sherlock didn’t say another word after that. Too embarrassed to ever talk again, really, he waited out the time until you were finished scanning all the books and his and Enola’s cards. Relief washed over him when you said your goodbyes.

“I'm making an exception this time, Enola. Mrs. Thomson must not know about this and you better bring all of these books back without a single mark,” you warned.

But Enola countered weakly, matted by her idiot brother destroying the best plan ever made. “When did I ever not?” Still, she tried a sneaky smile on her lips.

When the doors fell close behind them and the siblings walked along the sidewalk home, Enola shoved her brother harshly.

“Great job, you idiot. You just ruined your only chance at not becoming a weird and bitter old man.”

But Sherlock didn’t answer. He was well aware of the embarrassment he had just presented himself as in that library and in front of you. With his head hung low, he opened the top book in his arms to retrieve his library card, but when he moved the piece of plastic and revealed the check-out receipt, all of his sister’s bickering moved to the background.

There, beneath the date and time of his visit, was your number, scribbled in blue ink with a small heart by your name. He smiled to himself as he traced the number with his finger. And just then, Enola glanced over his shoulder to find out why he hadn't told her to shut up yet.

Who would have thought that you would be hooked after a line like that?

Tags: @circe143 @valkyrie418 @mirikusashes @noideawhyimdoingthislol @nikkitc0703 @lethallyprotected @erynnnn @misshale21 @wattpaduser200 @mi-amoree1111 @xxinvisiblexx @lastwandastan @when-you-cant-think-of-anything @pevensiemadness @mrsgweasley

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megabuild · 1 month

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so you like transfem etho right? how do you think she figured it out?

did pause call her a girl once and etho decided she liked it or was there more thought involved

i don't think she ever "figured it out" in the way most people would but that's mainly because i see etho as having a very weird upbringing. she was very lonely as a child and didn't really start meeting people from wider society who treated her like a human but also would inflict gender roles on her until mindcrack when she was like... mid 20s. and yeah there definitely was a bit of teasing there but i don't think it really awakened anything in her more just confused her. if you pushed him about a bit and called him a girl insultingly he'd be like ? No I'm not. Because he has lived so far detached from society he can't even conceptualise the idea of feminity being a "weakness" yet #feminist but also he was raised to play very particular roles and wear very particular masks and girl is not and never has been one of them, he is a Guy, theres no questioning that.

But then yeah of course there is because she leaves mindcrack on pretty bad terms and spends some short time alone before she gets pulled onto hermitcraft and while she's sitting alone she does eventually realise oh, people can do that, people can change. And that fucking terrifies her, so much, because she already has horrible identity issues and doesn't really fully understand it so to her it's an all or nothing 100% change of self, and that's sort of awesome in a way but also really scary because that means rejecting literally everything about herself both past and present and she goes AHHHH FUCK and puts that back in the box and then xisuma recruits her like at the end of iron man when they were setting up the avengers movie. And she goes to hermitcraft and doesn't think about any of that for a really long time despite the never ending horrors happening all the time.

In my head he sort of. Doesn't Get Over It but he comes to terms with all the weird shit that happened to him when he was younger re: 404 and the LP between HC 5 and 7 like he was away on a soul searching mission. And then HC7 has its own fresh nightmares as he comes to terms with HC5 because that was a can of worms itself but this time the difference is that he has friends around him who gets it and can help him. And this is roundabout the time she starts to think about it more because she gets quite close to grian post-mycelium resistance and grian is a trans girl who takes estrogen and everything which is like, everything etho was terrified of, and they have some very clumsy and candid conversations where grian is definitely Not the best person to talk to because she's like well you're fucking stupid. But after talking to her and maybe cleo a bit too though idk if they would have been close enough at that point and bdubs too because while he doesn't know anything about this he knows a lot about etho, she eventually realises wow this doesn't have to be a new mask or a massive upheaval this is just something i can try out on the side if i like it. And so she does! Originally just with her absolute closest friends using she/her sometimes (she ends up using he/she alternately, because she doesn't really have any problem with he/him) and while she never formally Comes Out because that's not her style it spreads until most people use it.

Etho is very much a character of certainty imo, he likes rigid ideas when it comes to himself so he knows what to live up to, so i think not making her label her gender (or sexuality except that's. A different can of worms albeit a slightly less complicated one) is a bit of a character growth thing as much as it is a personal decision. Learning he can not constantly stress over the finer details or try to live up to what others decide he should be whether that's a man or a woman or something else entirely and just accepting that she's herself, and that's her own choice, is a Big Thing for her. though i don't know if she recognises that .

#anon #asks #sorry for the ramble i think about her sooo much so hard #i have no idea if she would take e i think surgery is off the table she has too much bad experience but also isn't that bothered #she might take it for a short while and then stop.. im not sure. its a fantasy world also so .

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ulanxxxs · 2 months

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Finally finished...🫠 This art isn't directly related, but today, I'd like to share a piece of my long-held headcanon and an AU story about Lucienetta👩🏼🍎

┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈

The year is 3E 427, six years before the onset of the Oblivion Crisis. One day, Speaker Lucien Lachance receives a dire prophecy from the Brotherhood's seer, directly foretelling his death.

“In the year 3E 433, as shadows converge and chaos wraps its arms around Tamriel, the fates whisper. To the Dark Brotherhood, an inescapable catastrophic overturn has been decreed. Caught in the web of conspiracy, your death is unavoidable...”

Lucien realizes that his death is inevitable, for this seer had accurately predicted the death of someone dear to him before—a previous Speaker of the Cheydinhal Sanctuary, a woman whom a younger Lucien had served as a Silencer and with whom he shared a mutual love...

🔽 ( For the rest of the story )🔽

Lucien was filled with panic, as he found himself without a successor, a direct result of continuously losing Silencers. This loss had been causing significant disruptions to his duties. Particularly, the search for a certain recruit had hit a significant snag. Despite the mission being assigned by the Listener more than two years ago, the individual remained unfound.

The girl's name is Antoinetta Marie. She killed her aunt, escaped from the Imperial Prison, and continued to survive through murder as a street dweller. Her record of killings and harsh life, even by Lucien's standards, was remarkable. Above all, the fact that a Speaker of the Black Hand had yet to find her spoke volumes of her extraordinary potential as an assassin.

“At all costs, this ‘formidable girl’ must be found…"

With this resolve, Lucien was determined to bring her back to the Cheydinhal Sanctuary and nurture her as one of his Silencer candidates.

┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈

Here's the prologue—or rather, the premise that sets the stage for our story. The actual narrative kicks off in the year 3E 428, where Antoinetta, having been rescued by Lucien, dedicates herself to rest and preparation at the sanctuary, gearing up for her debut as an assassin.

Most of the story focuses on Antoinetta's Silencer training, during which she and Lucien live together in secret. Unaware of Lucien's real plans, she is thrilled by the new life with the person she admires.

Ultimately, Lucien steps down from his position as Speaker to become a Silencer, paving the way for Antoinetta Marie to rise as the new Speaker. Lucien will now serve her, just as he did for the one he loved in his youth...✨ The story is intended to conclude at this juncture.

Ideally, I'd love to make everything into a comic, but that's not a practical option for me. Instead, by adopting a picture book-like format, I plan to gradually create just the scenes I want to, one at a time🙂💭

#lucien lachance #antoinetta marie #lucienetta #dark brotherhood #oblivion #the elder scrolls #tes 4 oblivion #my headcanons #rare pair #tw blood #cw blood #tw kissing #cw kissing

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xenoblade-chronicles-brackets · 1 month

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Alright, so I'm prepping the Veteran Party Member Countdown Poll, and the main criteria for this list is that a character should be someone who joins the party as an established veteran in comparison to the main character(s), and preferably someone whose experience allows them to guide the main character, be it in life, battle, the world, whatever.

The obvious candidates are Dunban and Riki from 1. Nagi from X (having still not played the game, I'm basically just taking your word on this one), Vandham, Mòrag and Zeke from 2 and Monica from 3, but that only fills seven out of the twelve potential slots, so I am considering if they can be filled further.

The original ask proposed Addam, but I'm not sure if he can be considered a veteran compared to the main character Lora (granted, the original ask did say Heroes, so if it's Heroes/Veterans, he could get in on that, then again his hero status was more something he gained during Torna than something he was renowned as going into it).

Shulk and Rex were proposed since they're definitely veterans compared to Matthew, but at the same time, they're very early joins in FR, as opposed to Dunban in 1, so that puts them on shaky grounds.

Any of the Kevesi and Agnians are also on Shaky grounds for veteran status, since one of the two main characters (Mio) is older than... all of them, and I don't think Mwamba and Hackt are the material we're looking for here. A case can be made for Ethel and Cammuravi, but Ethel only joins very temporarily as *the* Ethel, and the one you get lategame is a different reincarnation who is actually a first termer in a tenth termer's body. Cammuravi also has that problem without even boasting of a temporary join. Teach could potentially be up for consideration, definitely seeming to have more experience than five of the six Ouroboros members, but still younger than Mio.

Melia and Nia are also candidates, but since you can only recruit them in post game, their status as party members is probably non-canon.

Mostly just throwing this out here to hear what you guys think on the matter. Currently I'm most strongly leaning towards throwing in Shrex and making it a 9 entry poll.

#not bracket #xenoblade chronicles #xenoblade

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ebdaydreamer · 1 year

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WIP Wednesday

tagged by the lovely @buddiearemydads

im so close to being done with the hook up fic, I've just been so busy recently. interact with this post the be tagged when I finally post it

So, when he bounded into work one day, having just got the results of his latest DXA scan, he was practically floating.

“Oh, yeah? They measure the fat in your head?” Chimney teased.

But not even that could bring him down. “Ah, see, that would be funny, but we’re about a week away from submissions being due for the Hot Days, Smouldering Nights: Men of the LAFD wall calendar, and I’m already at my goal weight, so it seems like my head is clearly working perfectly.”

Predictably, Hen rolled her eyes.

The four of them bickered about the calendar, and Buck couldn’t help but tease Bobby and Chim a little. Younger sibling habits never die.

“I mean, sure, let’s be real. They are only picking one candidate from each station.”

Chim pointed behind him. “Ok, that is a beautiful man.”

Hen followed Chim’s finger and saw her eyes widen. “Where’s the lie? And I like girls.”

Buck turned slowly, wondering who the hell they could be talking about. Stevenson, from the B shift? Was he working today? He was fairly handsome.

Then he saw who was shirtless in the locker room, and he couldn’t help but agree. He was perhaps the most beautiful man Buck had ever seen in his life. And he knew what the others didn’t. He remembered the feeling of those abs under his tongue. He remembered his mouth pressed to his skin, a mark still adorning his collarbone. He remembered the taste of his come in the back of his throat.

Eddie. Eddie was in the locker room, putting on a LAFD uniform.

“Who the hell is that?” Why the hell is he here?

“It’s Eddie Diaz, new recruit.”

Hold on. A probie? Bobby had hired a new probie?

“Graduated top of his class just this week. Guys over at Station Six were dying to have him, but I convinced him to join us.”

“What do we need him for? Um…” Buck tried to bite down his panic and was met with laughter.

“He served multiple tours in Afghanistan as an Army medic. Guy’s got a Silver Star. It’s not like he’s wet behind the ears,” Bobby told them.

Army. That must be where he got those scars.

“Come on, I’ll introduce you. He likes to be called Eight Pack.” Bobby is definitely teasing him, but Buck’s ears are ringing.

Eddie was here to replace him. He had to be. With a guy that competent on the team, what use would Bobby have for him?

Buck grimaced as Chim patted him on the stomach. He locked up that amazing night far back in his brain. Eddie might be the hottest man Buck has ever seen in his life, might have had sex with him that put him on cloud 9, but none of that mattered. He meant it when he told Bobby this job was all he had even more so as Abby drifted further and further away. But it wasn’t just the job, it was this team. Chimney, who cracked jokes and teased him like there was no tomorrow. Hen who rolled her eyes and gave great hugs. Bobby, who gave him advice and taught him how to cook and was already more of a father to him in the past year than his own father had been his whole life. He couldn’t lose it, no matter what. He’d fight and cling like his life depended on it.

He followed the group into the locker room and saw Eddie’s eyes flicker in recognition.

The team could not find out about them sleeping together. For one, they’d all think that he had returned to his Buck 1.0 days, and then all the respect he fought for would disappear. Respect that they just seemed to be throwing at the new guy. So he stuck out his hand. “Evan Buckley.”

Eddie gave a slight nod of understanding. He shook his hand firmly, and Buck briefly remembered that strong hand around his cock. “Eddie Diaz, nice to meet you.”

Buck snatched back his hand and tried his best to not storm off.

He’s pretty sure he failed.

tagging: @elvensorceress @spaceprincessem @911onabc @gayedmundodiaz @wh0re-behavi0r @heartbeatdiaz @alyxmastershipper @gentoodiaz @honestlydarkprincess @bigfootsmom @buck-coded @wildlife4life @shortsighted-owl @monsterrae1

#the hook up fic #ellie writes #ellie talks #wip wednesday #911 #buddie #evan buckley #eddie diaz #911 on abc #911 abc #tage games

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collapsedsquid · 1 year

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In 2021, the website Angi, which helps homeowners find services, surveyed 2,400 contractors across different trades. Half reported that they couldn’t fill open positions, and 68 percent said it was a struggle to hire skilled workers. In a recent survey of 661 building contractors by the Associated General Contractors of America, 72 percent reported having open, salaried positions. The number one reason for all the openings: “Available candidates are not qualified to work in the industry.”

In the past, Reyes recruited workers out of high school and trained them up. But he’s reluctant to do it again. It costs his technicians time, it costs him money, and there’s no guarantee that the people he invests in will stick around because the job market is so competitive.

The workforce is also aging. Reyes said he knows of a few electricians getting ready for retirement who would like to hand over the business to their kids, but they just aren’t interested. The way he sees it, younger people are getting lured into the tech industry with the promise of big salaries and just aren’t as interested in getting dirty underneath houses.

Gotta bring back slave labor

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theworldvsyoshiko · 6 months

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Well, this newest camp is drawing to a close. I know I haven't said much about this one, but here's the thing: Long Night is an awful fucking garbage event if you are playing non-farming nomads. It's not so much 'challenging' as it is 'a borderline automatic game over.' You have no plants to forage. You can't graze your animals, which you're dependent on for moving from base to base. You can't make kibble for the animals unless you have plants to make it with, and if you had plants you wouldn't be in this mess. You can get food for your colonists by hunting, but meat won't last long when you're on the move... unless you make it into pemmican or packaged survival meals, which you need plants for.

If there was a geothermal plant on this map, I would have seriously considered setting up a sun lamp just so some small area would be able to grow grass.

So yeah, this camp has mostly been a long tedious slog to keep all the animals alive, with a side of too many raids. On the upside, the kids have... not amazing gear or anything, but they're not going into combat with hand-me-down clothes and garbage weapons anymore.

Since Lewis hit 13, this seems like a good time for an overview of the current state.

Overall

Thanks to the fucking Long Night, the kids have plenty of food, but less than they had when they left the last camp. This was another great climate, so it would've been a good place to stock up before moving on, but instead the supplies have been slowly evaporating. Still, the ship's actually not parked that far north. It'll be sub-tropical or temperate climates the whole way, so the biggest hazard food-wise is going to be areas where it's too dry to grow much.

Not a lot of trade goods left, but with 10k silver saved up, trading goods is kinda optional anyway. They can just buy shit with cash. Now if only anywhere had shit to buy. They'll be making another round of shopping trips on the way out of this area, so here's hoping. This isn't their last chance to buy new gear, but there are only a few opportunities past here. I could have them linger in this area for however long it takes to find quality gear, but that would be 1) boring and 2) probably overkill.

While the ship is expensive, these ruin maps are pretty expensive, too. Dev mode informs me that the current map, in fact, would currently get raids of 950 raid points. The ship shouldn't be too much worse than that--if the kids dump a lot of their unneeded possessions and there aren't fancy ruins around the ship, the ship raids could go as low as 500. So, the fights they're having right now might actually be pretty representative of what they'll need to be capable of handling.

That's all banking on nothing bumping the raid point level a lot higher on that map, though.

I haven't kept things to three pawns for any strong reason. Good candidates have just been hard to find. As Lewis showed, preteens aren't a good fit for this lifestyle. Hussars and Wasters are automatically disqualified, because they're just going to die to a lack of psychoid. I've also only been looking for recruits who are younger than Umeko, which limits it further, and thanks to the nomadic lifestyle, prisoners are only a great option if they capture one early enough to recruit them before they have to pack up camp.

So, just the three kids for now.

Umeko Keith

Now she's great at fighting and construction, the two main things she does. Construction is the big one, really--it's not a full-time job in most colonies, but this group has to build a new base every 20-30 days. She's also the group's de facto crafter, but... crafting isn't quite as important here. Researching something like gunsmithing would be a long-term project. The only things to craft are trade goods and clothes, really. Fortunately, the herd of alpacas and all the hunting for meat means that she has an unlimited supply of leather and wool.

She's got an archotech arm, a bionic leg, and a sterilizing stomach. The sterilizing stomach was an instant buy when I saw it. Umeko and Choco are both good at cooking, so food poisoning is rare, but... the last time it happened, it was an outright existential threat. When you only have three people, two of them being nearly downed by illness is an absolute disaster if anything actually dangerous happens.

Umeko likes both of her companions a lot. This might be the most tight-knit group I've ever had. Umeko and Lewis are pretty much always at 100 relationship in both directions.

Choco, though... Umeko has like a near-paralyzing crush on her. Choco, on the other hand, is straight. Way Better Romance (I think? I don't believe this is core, and I'm not sure what else would do this) seems to make it so sexualities aren't absolute, so while Choco is straight, she's like... an 0.4 on the Kinsey scale. She can conceive of a circumstance in which she might possibly have a relationship with another girl, and thus has like a 1.4% chance of agreeing to romantic things with Umeko. That's good enough for Umeko. She asks Choco on a date at basically every opportunity, and gets politely shot down every single time.

At this point, Umeko's wearing trooper armor and a flak helmet, with a sniper rifle and carbine. Since the group usually doesn't have good defenses set up, having her snipe enemies on the edge of a pack before they attack the base has been vital to continued survival.

Curca Choco

Choco's taken over cooking duties, and she's the group's default medic. She's also pretty good at killing, and psychopath + masochist is admittedly a really nice combo for that. She doesn't mind hauling the bodies away, and if she gets hurt in combat that only makes her happier.

She also doesn't mind needless killing or violence. I have a policy that when somebody needs to, say, run outside and spray bullets at the cavemen next door until they stop trying to hunt the alpacas for dinner, that's Choco's job. If a bullet goes through one of their eye sockets, she can drag the body off and it's no big deal. Umeko doesn't need to know the dark price of her alpacas' continued safety.

That's true friendship, right there.

With double passion in shooting, I've been setting her up as the main general combatant, so Choco's got recon (!!) armor, a semi-automatic rifle, an assault rifle, and an SMG.

And a... look, the group only had two flak helmets. So instead, Choco wears the next-best head protection we've got.

A hyperweave bowler hat.

Lewis McLaughlin

For somebody who's been around since he was 4, Lewis's general setup is just sad. He could've easily had 5+ passions in a normal colony, but the nomad lifestyle's hard on a kid. Still, he's good at plants + animals, aka the skills that let them eat, he can shoot well, and he'll be the group's head researcher soon. Plus, with Iron Stomach, two out of the three pawns are immune to food poisoning.

Lewis likes everybody! Choco is 100% neutral on him.

He's got the least impressive combat loadout, with a flak jacket and helmet, a bolt action rifle, and Umeko's starting combat handgun. Good guns have been in short supply.

#the world vs. umeko

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antoine-roquentin · 1 year

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The previous part of this series, Part 2, is available here.

In the world of internal Democratic Party politics, the chosen party of the professional-managerial class, fighting for a role in the party hierarchy is done by resume-padding. You have to have worked the correct jobs under the right managers with subsequent letters of recommendation from your patrons, showing both that you care but your primary commitment is to the job itself, not to the cause you were purportedly fighting for in that position. In that sense, Allard Lowenstein fits the bill as a typical upwardly mobile member of the party in the same way Pete Buttigieg does today. If America knows Lowenstein at all, it's from his role in the popular PBS documentary series on the civil rights movement Eyes on the Prize, especially episode 5. The emotional climax of the episode comes over the party machinations to keep the alternative slate of black voters from being seated at the 1964 Democratic convention, which LBJ, Hubert Humphrey, and his protege Walter Mondale succeeded in because of their superior knowledge of debate club tactics. A series of copyright claims by rightsholders for whom licenses had expired kept this show off the air in the 90s, but early filesharing advocates got to work promoting the show across the internet. After all, if they were trying to ban it, it must be important. The clip here is from that episode.

Lowenstein got his law degree at Yale, did his stint in the military like an honorable American, and then got a job from Eleanor Roosevelt directly, always the most powerful player in the party from her husband's death to 1960. However, Lowenstein also cared to an extent. He wanted the black people of the American south to have a chance to vote, based to a large extent on what he witnessed on a fact-finding tour of Namibia, then an internal colony of Apartheid South Africa. His passion was such that he was a major player in the movement to prevent LBJ from being renominated in 1968, recruiting Eugene McCarthy to run against him. This was because they were both politics nerds in the West Wing sense. Young guns, they believed they knew better than the Democratic machine politicians what voters wanted. They knew the people wanted an anti-war candidate who satisfied liberal pieties and who thumbed his nose at the old hierarchies. The result was three unsuccessful campaigns for presidential nomination and Lowenstein himself becoming a one-term congressman. As Gus Tyler, president of the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union (himself a young rebel against an old guard at one point, now an old man leading younger women) said, Lowenstein was leading politics "away from economics to ethics and aesthetics, to morality and culture", and ultimately "to the Republican Wolves".

The problem here wasn't that Lowenstein cared too much, as most of his contemporaries wrote. Rather, he'd performed like a racer trying to slipstream/draft who had spun out of control. This was because of Lowenstein's background and training. As the consummate liberal striver, he'd managed to become president of the National Student Association in 1951 (note this in particular for future posts). This was a union of students' unions, which was basically the debate club to end all debate clubs because that's all student unions are. Even today, but especially so in the 40s and 50s, the only reason to get involved in student politics was because it was a training ground for how parliaments and congresses work. All they do is argue over arcane resolutions on mundane subject matter, until one manages to land a blow strong enough to gain a majority in favour. It's a weirdo politics junkie's dream.

Lowenstein brought that energy to organizing black people in the American South. Even before his role in organizing 1964's Freedom Summer in Mississippi, the project for which Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner were murdered, he was already getting on the nerves of more radical black people. James Forman, right of MLK in the pic below, ended up on the wrong side of Lowenstein at the 1956 NSA convention. Lowenstein didn't want passage of a more progressive civil rights platform than the one the Democratic Party had adopted. At one point, he literally shoved a black man to the microphone to speak on his behalf, according to Forman. He won, of course, because he knew his debate club tactics better.

7 years later, Lowenstein and Forman butted heads over the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee's work in Mississippi and Alabama. Forman notes that he arrived almost unannounced, and yet many of the white volunteers suddenly claimed that they were under his orders to do what they were doing, including going to towns that were centres of white violence and had no organizing done. As a Yale alumni, Lowenstein probably had links to major white supremacist orgs to protect these people given that Yale was the university of choice for white southerners in the Ivy Leagues. On the other hand, Lowenstein's line was against black radical politics and towards conciliation. Forman found that Lowenstein often worked hand-in-hand with Bayard Rustin, James Farmer, and John Lewis (far right in the pic above), and were close to Norman Thomas and Michael Harrington's Socialist Party (eventually Democratic Socialists of America), bankrolled by Walter Reuther of the United Automobile Workers union. He was particularly piqued when they went to the Dominican Republic as supposedly independent observers and certified the election of the pro-American candidate not long after an American invasion, despite the well-known popularity of his opponent Juan Bosch.

This rankled Forman because the struggle in America for the civil rights of black people was part and parcel of the decolonization struggle abroad, or so he thought. To have America going around and imposing governments on nations through its military industrial complex and arcane intelligence apparatus reeked of what South Africa was doing in Namibia. After all, there was a reason the SNCC had adopted the phrase "one man, one vote" for its 1964 Freedom Summer campaign: it had been a slogan of the 1958 All African Peoples' Conference, the first meeting of black revolutionaries from all of Africa in history.

This conference was convened by the newly independent Ghana, the eighth independent nation in Africa and the first of a long wave which gained independence between 1958 and 1994. The resounding waves of this action were felt in America. Martin Luther King Jr explained in an interview that year "This event will give impetus to oppressed peoples all over the world. I think it will have worldwide implications and repercussions—not only for Asia and Africa, but also for America… At bottom, both segregation in America and colonialism in Africa are based on the same thing—white supremacy and contempt for life". But "Our independence is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of the African continent", incoming Ghanian prime minister Kwame Nkrumah declared, which is why the All African Peoples' Conference had to be held.

Nkrumah did not learn his debating skills from the NSA. As a student in America in the 30s, he'd given sermons in churches across New York City and Philadelphia, talking always about Africa. Yet it was his experience of American segregation that radicalized him. Being told he was only fit to drink from a spittoon was one of many insults he faced from white Americans. At times, he would buy a subway ticket so that he had a place to sleep. He knew the civil rights struggle was the same as his own, and this followed to the rest of his government. When Ghana became independent, it had virtually no skilled workers because universities in the country barred black students and everybody who had the ability travelled to America to learn. In 1958, Nkrumah spoke at an NAACP dinner in Harlem, telling black American dignitaries that the next step in their fight for civil rights was to send their well educated members back to Ghana, where they would receive a warm welcome and teach their fellow Africans to build a strong, independent nation that could one day bring together a united Africa to rival America.

The opening salvo in this project was the call for all freedom fighters of Africa to send representatives to the AAPC. Nkrumah welcomed them personally. First came Tom Mboya (keep your eyes on this guy) from Kenya, a trade unionist official and future Minister of Justice who one day soon would ensure a member of his tribe, Barack Obama Senior, made his way to America to attend university. Future successful and failed revolutionaries like Joshua Nkomo, George Padmore, Kenneth Kaunda, Hastings Banda, Frantz Fanon, Dr. Felix-Roland Moumie, and Holden Roberto, as well as notable black US Congressman Charles Diggs, were among 300 delegates. Perhaps the most important delegate was accidental. Joseph Kasavubu had initially been invited as the representative from the Congo. However, when the plane to Ghana stopped in Leopoldville/Kinshasa, Belgian authorities had stopped him from getting on, recognizing him from anti-colonial speeches earlier. However, they did allow Patrice Lumumba and two comrades who had impressed the plane's passengers with their rhetoric at a bar to join in. When Nkrumah met Lumumba, he was deeply impressed and called for a photographer to record the moment.

Also among them was Horace Mann Bond as a representative of the African American Institute, a group funded by western mining interests but staffed with academics from major American black universities like Howard and Lincoln. He brought along a reporter named Bob Keith, who was arrested during a closed session of the congress with bugging equipment. Bond was also president of the American Society of African Culture. AMSAC had deep pursestrings, bailing out a number of black groups soon after it was founded, and sponsored Bond as well as CUNY professor John Aubrey Davis, who reported on all the proceedings to former National Student Association president and current AMSAC leader James Theodore Harris Jr, according to AMSAC's archives. A third group that attended the conference was the Congress for Cultural Freedom, who sent white AFL-CIO leader Irving Brown. AFL-CIO in turn sponsored International Ladies' Garment Workers Union member Maida Springer, one of the few black women. One thing that AAI, AMSAC, AFL-CIO, and CCF shared was an explicit commitment to anticommunism in their charters, even as some claimed apoliticality otherwise. CCF sent its future president, South African poet Ezekiel Mphaphele. Some CCF funding came from the Fairfield Foundation, a charitable organization that sent its own observer Patrick Duncan, a white member of the South African Liberal Party. Other funding came from the Ford Foundation, which sent white University of California Santa Cruz professor John A. Marcum on its own. Marcum and Brown helpfully offered to translate ad hoc between French (spoken by Lumumba) and English (spoken by Nkrumah), and the two report an unknown American helping them with all their conversations.

I note these people because they or the organizations that sponsored them were all revealed to be CIA fronts or conduits by the magazine Ramparts in 1967 (Brown's one time boss at the CIA's International Organizations Division, Thomas Braden, wrote a response entitled "I'm glad the CIA is 'immoral'"). Many of them defended themselves by saying they were unaware of where the money was coming from or that they did not know the people they reported to were compromised. As Ramparts was drawing primarily on IRS information that had been leaked as well as corroborating testimony, they did not know the full extent of their integration into the intelligence apparatus. As many of these organizations folded in the 70s and 80s after these revelations their archives were given over to universities for preservation. They were rarely perused, two notable exceptions being by Frances Stonor Saunders and Hugh Wilford in the 90s and 2000s respectively. What they revealed was not wholesale domination or complete innocence, but rather a joy that the CIA was funding them to do what they knew was the right thing combined with strident insistence to the conduits for their funding that they not be forced to do anything that would contradict with their politics. When Farmer, of Forman's Lowenstein faction at CORE and SNCC, went on an AMSAC-sponsored tour of Africa, he criticized Malcolm X's beliefs as "apartheid and… worse", then got into arguments with diplomatic staff for his criticisms of American policies towards South Africa, Portugese Africa, and most of all the Congo. He later claimed that seeing apartheid abroad helped to calcify his opinion the American government. When Brown became harshly critical of Nkrumah, Springer, his subordinate and mentee at AFL-CIO, explained decades later that the 1958 conference gave her "goosebumps" and was more significant than the fall of the Berlin Wall in her opinion.

Evidently, many of these liberals, like the more radical leftists they battled, viewed the American civil rights struggle as an anti-colonial one. So too did the CIA, given the similar manner in which they infiltrated both through the liberals. However, portrayals of the struggle in popular culture like Eyes on the Prize show nothing of the sort. They tend to show a struggle from the streets right into the Democratic Party. This pattern also befits all of the above named associated with the CIA, albeit with the ones less inclined to support whoever the current president was also ending up becoming less powerful. Typically, they emerged in academia rather than politics, ie the other glorified debate club. In contrast, the radicals tended to find themselves sidelined or shot. Forman was an early supporter of the Black Panthers along with his associate at the SNCC Stokely Carmichael, but as the group descended into factional infighting, his former comrade stuffed a pistol in his mouth and threatened to shoot, giving him a nervous breakdown. He went into academia and helped ensure his son, now a Yale Law professor, could do the same. To co-author his autobiography, "The Making of Black Revolutionaries", Forman picked Julian Bond, son of Horace Mann Bond.

‘Irving Brown was never a CIA agent’, said Cord Meyer, the head of the International Organizations Division of the CIA. ‘The very notion is laughable. He was as independent as you could get, and very strong-willed. What the CIA did was to help him finance his major projects when they were crucial to the Western cause. But in his operations he was totally on his own’.

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poisonheadcrabsalesman · 1 year

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Hey stumpy what do you think the most important things are to think about re: what's going on inside Spartan-IVs as people?

I'm going to cheat and say two things.

Most of the Spartan-IVs are shown to be 30 something or younger, meaning their entire lives have been during war time when the loss of human life has been in the billions and cultures, species, and entire planets have been wiped from physical existence and all records. The impact that has on the collective remainign human psyche has to be catastrophic. You are always living in fear and powerlessness.

All Spartan Augmentations are treated as experimental, because they are, but the IIs don't seem to have problems after the initial surgeries that lead to the deaths or mutilation of a third of their cohort. The IVs are treated like experimental time-bombs with even more complex bullshit with higher risk of implant rejection. Meals are specially prepared for them based on their caloric needs, yet they were also said to be augmented to get more nutrients from their food. They are required to be scanned, reviewed, and treated before and after each sortie. IVs only need 2.5 hours of sleep per 48hr cycle.

I know the IIs get the brunt of the "you're a freak, you're not human" talk from regular ODSTs and marines, but the IVs are even worse off with the level of shit done to them. Please read the in-universe propaganda, it's insane.

I'm cheating and adding a bonus because it's my blog I get to ramble, but there's also a pattern of scooping up people in their 20s as candidates for the Spartan Program when they have just been grievously wounded and treating it as a service to their country and as the only way forward. Horvath had all his fucking bones shattered and Jun recruited Palmer from a hospital bed.

What kind of military prays on young people in impossible situations and acts like the only way out of a hard life? [Wouldn't it be cool if Halo had the liberty to actually be a commentary on the US Military and predatory tactics and Imperialism?]

#crab text #asks #zitasaurusrex #thank you for the ask #halo #Spartans #Spartan IV

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argisthebulwark · 1 year

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The very first time tld calls bryn her husband out loud he fucking giggles, and imminently every head in the guild whips around cuz holy fucking shit did brynjolf just giggle???

In the few months since Mercer got the boot and the Skeleton Key was returned, the Guild expanded. The new recruits were younger and some were worth training, stealthy enough to become a new generation of thieves.

The Guild Master was busy. She'd been gone for only a few weeks on a trip with Brynjolf to celebrate their marriage but upon returning she found a dozen new recruits wanting to prove their worth. Delvin and Vex had done a phenomenal job in finding new candidates, most of them had made it through the Ratways with only a few scrapes.

"That's Vipir, he'll be teaching you to be a pickpocket. Niruin will show you how to master a bow. Rune is our collective therapist." She pointed at each member while speaking and bit back a laugh when the new kids noticed the thieves lurking in the Cistern's shadowy recesses. They must've looked quite intimidating to those who didn't know them.

"Forgetting anyone, lass?"

"Ah yes." The Guild Master tried to hide her smile, wanting to keep the intimidating demeanor in front of the new kids. "My lovely husband will be the one coordinating and assigning jobs to each of you."

She'd never heard Brynjolf's laugh so high pitched before but by god, he'd just giggled. Pressing a kiss to her head he pointedly ignored the way every single head whipped his direction at the sound. Vex's smile was downright diabolical.

"He plays favorites." She warned, already steeling herself for the quips their friends would have at the Flagon that evening. "So you better get on his good side."

#brynjolf #skyrim #tes #writing #asks #anon

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tomorrowusa · 4 months

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It's ironic that the administration of the oldest president could be marked by the emergence of a fresh crop of politically savvy young politicians.

David Hogg, one of the organizers of March For Our Lives, is co-founder of a group dedicated to supporting young liberals who run for office.

Leaders We Deserve describes itself as an "EMILY’s List for young people" and that's a useful way to look at it.

The PAC was founded just over five months ago and it's off to a good start.

A Democratic group that aims to recruit and support young candidates for state legislative office announced it raised more than $3 million in the latest quarter of fundraising. Leaders We Deserve — a group founded by activist David Hogg along with Kevin Lata, Rep. Maxwell Frost’s (D-Fla.) former campaign manager — announced Wednesday its fundraising haul between October and December. More than 100,000 donations were made, with the average contribution being $25, according to figures first shared with The Hill. The group received donations from every state.

Their original goal was to raise $1 million but they took in triple that. And they are using those funds to help younger candidates in races where they can make the biggest difference.

In an interview with The Hill, Hogg said that the goal last quarter was to raise at least $1 million. Hogg, a survivor of the Parkland high school shooting in 2018 who also co-founded March for Our Lives, said the group would be announcing its next slate of endorsed candidates “very soon” and was in the “final stages” of choosing the next picks. “Part of what we’re doing is really narrowing in on the states where young people can have the biggest impact and not just in voting for these candidates, of course, but voting in statewide races where they may be more inspired to turn out and vote in the first place, especially in a place like Montana, for example, where we could potentially help to break the supermajority,” Hogg told The Hill. Hogg also noted the importance of keeping young voters engaged, as they’ve proven to make or break key races. “The number one reason why young people have turned out to vote so much over the past three election cycles is because of Donald Trump in terms of voting against him, but Donald Trump is not going to be there forever,” said the Leaders We Deserve co-founder. “And from the work that young people [have] done in the movements over the past several election cycles like March for Our Lives, the environmental movement, the movement for racial justice and others, we know that young people are one of our best ways of stopping Democratic backsliding, ’cause they turn out and vote in such a high rate,” Hogg said. “But we can’t just keep voting against things. We have to vote for something, and we also need to see ourselves represented in office to know that our votes are actually mattering and having an impact and to give us what I perceive to be the greatest way to help our democracy, which is hope.”

People who vote are taken more seriously than people who don't vote. And one thing which encourages voting is having candidates who reflect the electorate.

Briefly mentioned in the article is that Leaders We Deserve places a high priority on state legislative races. Many disturbing anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ laws get passed in red states because MAGA Republicans have supermajorities in legislatures.

If you're interested, visit their site. If you do contact them, encourage them to become active on Tumblr.

Leaders We Deserve | Invest in Young People

And because state legislative races deserve more attention, look up who represents you in your state capital. If it's MAGA Republicans, get active in the campaign of their Democratic opponents.

Find Your Legislators Look your legislators up by address or use your current location.

Thinking of running for state legislature yourself? The age and residency requirements are mostly lower than for Congress. See what the requirements are in your state.

Eligibility Requirements to Run for the State Legislature

Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter, and Barack Obama (among others) all served in their state legislatures at one time.

Perhaps you are one of the leaders your state deserves. 🙂

#democrats #young people #leaders we deserve #david hogg #kevin lata #support younger liberal candidates #state government #state legislatures #run for state legislature #election 2024

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desnayy · 9 months

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More about the magical girl/hero au, but before that I want to say that it is 100% inspired by @anonymous-dentist's deli superhero au, cause that is sorta living in my head rent free rn soo,,, yeah

Anyway! The Federation creates the monsters in less actually making (most of) them and more in that they are researching/taking resources from another dimension that results in portals opening up in wherever this takes place (perhaps a large citystate thing on an island in the middle of the ocean idk) which then releases the monsters, and they've been doing this for decades, hence how the adults were also magical heroes in their youths.

A thing that also comes from this dimension are magical gems that allow younger folks to tap into the powers of the crystals to transform and use unique abilities. But these gems have to be surgically implanted to work :D, so the adults still have their gems, they just can't transform and the magic they can use is very weak. The Federation has eyes in all schools around the citystate that will pick out the best candidates for the program, and the most recent victims recruits happen to be the children of the first ever set of heroes, isn't that just an amazing coincidence? (It's not. The Federation has been keeping tabs on them, and well. These kids are too good to pass up, being around even dormant gems can greatly increase someone's magical potential.)

#qsmp #qsmp magical hero au

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best-underrated-anime · 4 months

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Best Underrated Anime Group B Round 3: #B8 vs #B2

#B8: Middle school idol drama

#B2: Girls aiming to become top stars in a Takarazuka high-school

Details and poll under the cut!

*#B2’s tagline has been changed.

#B8: Pretty Rhythm: Rainbow Live

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Summary:

Naru Ayase is an 8th grader who can see the colors of music when she listens to it. For Naru, who is extremely good at decorating, becoming the owner of a shop like Dear Crown was her dream. One day, she finds out that the manager of a newly-opened shop is recruiting middle school girls who can do Prism Dance, and immediately applies. Naru begins to Prism Dance at the audition, and an aura she’s never experienced spreads out in front of her. At that moment, a mysterious girl named Rinne asks her if she can see “rainbow music.”

Propaganda:

WHERE DO I START.

First off: Lesbian activities. Ayase Naru and Rinne Amagi are very close friends and even end up living together. Naru is also only one of the few characters without a proper love interest which really helps further the Naru/Rinne ship.

Otoha Takanashi: often talks about fairy tales, but the only characters she ever sees as Princes are women. Baby lesbian, I love her.

Second: DRAMA. So two of the characters (Ito and Kouji) actually start dating, but their parents do not approve for reasons they are evasive about until it is later revealed in the story—[This part of the propaganda has been cut by admin due to possible spoilers]

Third: banger music. This series includes many covers of popular 90s dance tracks from band TRF, which I am fond of. It also has a lot of unique music written for the show itself which is also good, especially for a children’s show.

Trigger Warnings: It might need the emotional abuse tag for specifically one of the characters’ parents, who is a pretty extreme perfectionist when it comes to her daughter. But nothing else aside from that. It’s a kids’ show, so it never goes that far in terms of actual harm. Most things also get resolved peacefully.

#B2: Kageki Shoujo!!

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Summary:

After being forced to graduate from JPX48 following a controversial incident with a male fan, Ai Narata swears to never interact with another man ever again. Using her talents and strong desire to get away from men, Ai auditions for the exclusive all-female Kouka School of Musical and Theatrical Arts. The school is renowned for producing the best actresses that go on to perform in the famous all-female Kouka Theatre Troupe. Coming from the idol industry, Ai is the perfect candidate for the school’s hundredth generation class, but her aloof demeanor alienates her from her classmates. The eccentric Sarasa Watanabe is the only person who wishes to become Ai’s friend. She enters Kouka with the goal of becoming a top “otokoyaku” performer—an actress that plays traditionally male roles. After seeing a Kouka performance of The Rose of Versailles when she was younger, Sarasa dreams of performing as Lady Oscar one day. Unfortunately, Sarasa's inability to read a room causes friction between her and her classmates, including Ai, who reluctantly becomes her roommate and partner in many of their classes. Succeeding at Kouka will involve more than just raw talent for these young girls as jealousy, deceit, and the harsh realities of show business put their mental fortitude to the test. Will Sarasa and Ai be able to rise to the top and stand on the silver bridge?

Propaganda:

If theatre setting/schools is your thing, you’re probably going to love this series! We follow our protagonists and their schoolmates following their dreams to become actresses for the prestigious Kouka Revue. Not an easy road as they will have to face and overcome many challenges, the hardest ones coming from themselves. Indeed, the story is not afraid to address sensitive topics and their resulting traumas (see TW list) always rightfully handed. These episodes may be a bit hard to see if you’re sensitive to these topics, but the show never leaves you in discomfort: everything is properly addressed, and characters are cared for realistically.

The characters are all very well-written, portraying individuals with way more depth than they may appear at first glance. We follow their growth—or its start—during the series. Sarasa is a walking sunbeam, and her blooming friendship with the withdrawn Ai is a delight to watch. We learn to know—and love—all their classmates as well, as episodes switch focus to one or the other.

The OST is really good, with a catchy opening, and no less than five different versions of the ending song, a fabulous duet voiced by the cast! The animation features really pretty art with iconic details like the stars in Sarasa’s eyes. The series is a homage to Takarazuka and scatter references to famous real-life Revues and older famous shôujo manga series like “Versailles no Bara” or “Glass no Kamen”. Actually, it feels like a modernized version of their essence: roses, sparkles, spotlight, drama, all while staying safe!

This anime is like candy for eyes and soul, and I really hope we'll get a season 2 to explore the girls' voices further!

Trigger Warnings: Child Abuse, Pedophilia, Self-Harm

Nothing is too graphical nor explicit, just the right amount to let the unsettling situations be clear enough to watchers, and they’re always addressed correctly.

Child abuse/ Pedophilia: episode 3 (+4), about Ai’s traumas

Self-harm: episode 5 focuses on a girl with an eating disorder, forcing herself to vomit (not sure if that really counts as TW?)

When reblogging and adding your own propaganda, please tag me @best-underrated-anime so that I’ll be sure to see it.

If you want to criticize one of the shows above to give the one you’re rooting for an advantage, then do so constructively. I do not tolerate groundless hate or slander on this blog. If I catch you doing such a thing in the notes, be it in the tags or reblogs, I will block you.

Know one of the shows above and not satisfied with how it’s presented in this tournament? Just fill up this form, where you can submit revisions for taglines, propaganda, trigger warnings, and/or video.

#anime #best underrated anime #polls #poll tournament #tournament #anime tournament #animation #group stage #group stage round 3 #tournament polls #group b #pretty rhythm rainbow live #pretty rhythm: rainbow live #kageki shoujo #kageki shoujo!!

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76istracersdad · 8 months

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plants - 3.2k words, incomplete

ft. a lot of jack comparing himself to lena and feeling guilty about it, speculation about the slipstream & overwatch's involvement in it, and government coverups

hi all - i figured i'd start posting some of the fic i've written over the years to make this a better archive. note - none of these are complete :(

this one is titled just "plants" and was written late 2020. i think i was aiming for an overarching theme of perennials vs annual plants (ie ones that last and ones that die to put it bluntly) thus some of the plant based commentary.

only change i've made is cassidy's name.

Lena Oxton is, by far, the best candidate for the Slipstream. Her test scores are perfect across the board, her commanding officers give glowing reviews of her abilities and all mention her natural aptitude for taking on challenges, and leadership abilities that shine despite her position as a non-commissioned officer. Despite the flight program not technically being under Jack Morrison’s command, he is currently the highest ranking officer in Switzerland right now, and Director Petras wants to give this ace pilot a warm welcome. And neither he nor Ana Amari, his second-in-command and the woman sitting directly to his right, know anything about this mysterious pilot.

“They didn’t even give us her age,” Ana comments idly, legs crossed at the ankles and fingers tapping on the table. “She could be older than you, Jack.”

“I thought you said that was impossible?” Jack tosses back, smirking a bit despite the uncomfortable situation they’re both in. First meetings in any military-esque organization are rarely actually first impressions, due to the personnel files stored on anyone who’s ever so much as sneezed on a recruiter. He runs a hand through his grey hair, thinning and receding at the front. Ana’s has gone grey as well. Gabe, the lucky bastard, is the only one out of the three of them to even have a hint of his original hair color left, and he shaves most of it off and sticks a beanie on top just to spite them.

Jack’s pulled out of his musings by the sound of a knock on the office door, and he and Ana stand up straight. “Come on in,” Jack says, a little unprofessional and hits the button to open the door.

Lena Oxton is, in fact, not older than Jack or Ana. Ana stiffens a bit next to Jack when she sees the younger girl, smiling wide and walking confidently in RAF service dress, two chevrons on her arms denoting corporal rank. Her hat is tucked underneath her arm, and the sergeant who walked her here nods and salutes to Jack. Jack nods back at him, and he takes his leave. It’s a meeting just between the corporal and Overwatch, after all.

“Good morning Strike-Commander Morrison, Captain Amari,” Lena Oxton says, maybe out of turn but her eagerness and the sharp salute she gives them, all with a cheerful grin on her face, makes Jack let it go.

“At ease, Corporal,” Jack says, waving his hand and motioning towards a chair across the table from him and Ana. Ana is still silent next to him, and it’s only from years of service together does he know that she’s silently furious. He hasn’t let himself feel any anger yet, and instead pulls a notepad out from underneath the limited files he has on Oxton. Clicking his pen once, he gives her a small smile and says, “I have to say, you’re not exactly who we were expecting.”

Lena smiles wider, back straight but legs kicking in the seat a bit. “I get that a lot,” she admits, tilting her head. Her hair is short, obviously growing back out from a buzzcut, and is already beginning to show signs of wildness. It makes Jack wonder how recently she got out of basic training.

Ana’s one step ahead of him as she asks, “When did you become a corporal?”

“Earlier this year,” Lena answers. Ana frowns, and Lena’s posture becomes nervous, looking between Ana’s own displeased face and Jack’s clearly shocked one. “They streamlined me, sir, they said because of natural aptitude. I’m far from the youngest enlisted.”

“How old are you?” Jack asks, a bit afraid of the answer. The RAF would know better than to send them a child. Cassidy was strictly kept off the battlefield and not given an official position until six months after he turned eighteen, all at Reyes’ hand. Even then, it made them all uneasy. Jack and Gabe knew too much about being selected for a special program when they were too young to understand everything that was going on behind the scenes, blinded by patriotism and the concept of being special. They were eighteen then, too.

“Eighteen, sir, as of a few months ago,” Lena replies, grin gone and face now matching the solemn feeling of the room, although she doesn’t seem to understand it. She looks as if she wants to argue for her case, prove her worthiness, tell them to give her a chance and let her show her skills, thinking they might reject her because of naivety. Neither of them doubt her skills, though, and neither does Director Petras, who all but ordered Jack to approve this girl for the Slipstream.

The rest of the interview goes normally, with Oxton thanking them effusively when Jack tells her the position is hers. Jack knows this was all orchestrated over their heads when she tells him the RAF already shipped her belongings over to Zurich. They insist on walking Oxton over to her new quarters, where her room is designated by a fresh new nameplate and a singular cardboard box on the desk inside.

“Wicked,” she says, looking around the room, and then turning back to them and saluting crisply. “I’ll do my best here, Strike-Commander, Captain!” She promises, and Jack just nods and gives her a thin smile as he and Ana walk away. It’s not until they’re in Jack’s office again does Ana speak.

“She’s younger than Fareeha when she left home, for goodness’ sake!” Ana yells, Jack sitting in the office chair and looking thoughtfully at the personnel files. Mysteriously, they only showed up when Jack had approved Oxton for the Slipstream position. Ana reads them over his shoulder, flipping the page before he finishes, making him look up at her, annoyed.

“Listen to this. Lena Oxton, age eighteen. Applied for the Royal Air Force when she was fifteen, Jack. Fifteen. Enlisted as early as she possibly could.”

Jack rubs at his eyes tiredly, already resigned to the whole situation. Petras already strong armed everyone into it, and it seems like he has the backing of the United Kingdom.

“I know that, Jack.” Was he speaking out loud? “What I’m saying is, she’s maybe not the youngest person to ever be drafted for Overwatch, she is the youngest one enlisted on base right now.” Ana frowns, sitting down on the desk across from Jack and sighing. “I just don’t like it.”

“Me neither. But it seems like it's gone above our heads, again,” Jack grumbles, running a hand through his hair again and leaning back in the chair. “Best we can do is offer a support system. Maybe introduce her to Cassidy.”

The conversation switches to a less disheartening topic, from the new recruit to old friends and their new updates. After an hour or so, Ana excuses herself to go to dinner, chiding Jack lightly and reminding him to eat. After threatening to set Angela on him, she leaves, the door shutting quietly behind her. Jack gathers up Lena Oxton’s scattered files and reviews them again, this time without Ana grabbing the papers out of his hands.

The majority of it is test results in more detail, seemingly to justify choosing Oxton over a more experienced candidate. They even included her high school transcript, which shows a fairly average student before it stops abruptly, replaced with military academy grades. It shouldn’t surprise him. The United Kingdom had increased their recruitment rates for the Omnic Crisis and continued to take on new recruits after it ended.

At the very end of the file are photos from various points of Oxton’s career. The most recent was only taken a few days ago, Oxton giving a half-smile at the camera. The oldest two are most striking, however. They seem to show a before-and-after: in the before, Lena Oxton scowls at the camera, head half-shaved and hair dyed white. The after shows her, still scowling, in a military academy uniform with a nearly-bare head. The pictures give him more insight into Oxton than any of her official records do.

Jack makes a note to himself to talk to Lena Oxton before she leaves the base for the Slipstream project.

Of course, he never gets that opportunity. It isn’t until a week after the Slipstream incident that Jack gets to read the report. One pilot missing in action. One teleportation matrix currently being searched for. The scientists note that the chances of finding the matrix are likely, due to the magnetic fields or whatever the technobabble is, but that the fate of Lena Oxton is completely unknown.

“It’s none of your concern, Commander Morrison,” Director Petras tells him over the phone. “Research and development isn’t your jurisdiction.”

Jack grits his teeth. “I understand that, Director.”

“Great. I know I don’t need to remind you that the Slipstream project is highly classified. As such, our official stance is that there was no experimental flight program, no test flights, and no missing pilots. Understand?”

Jack stays silent as he thinks. He thinks about a twenty year-old young man laying in a hospital bed in a classified military hospital. He thinks about the way the injections made him feel like he was burning from the inside out. He thinks about seeing doctors wheeling covered bodies to the morgue, whispering about another failed subject. He thinks about being told to never speak of it again.

“Of course, Director,” Jack says, and the phone line goes dead.

He hasn’t forgotten the lifeless bodies in the beds next to him. He doubts he’ll forget Lena Oxton, either.

They recover Slipstream’s flight recorder two weeks after the crash, one week after the gag order is placed. In the audio recorded by the cockpit voice recorder, Lena Oxton speaks clearly and confidently, reporting all signals normal.

“Order received,” she says, her voice tinny. “Activating teleportation matrix in fifteen seconds.” And then, almost too quiet for the recorder to pick up, Oxton says, “This ought to be fun!”

A few moments pass before Oxton speaks up again and announces the activation of the teleportation matrix. Harsh static follows, and the recording ends.

Morrison isn’t sure if the hint of a scream before the static is real or just his guilty conscience.

Lena Oxton was never a part of Overwatch, officially, so Jack Morrison has no flags to place over caskets and no next of kin to inform - not that Oxton had any, he remembers grimly.

There were no flags or ceremony for Soldier: 75, the teenager in the bed next to him who cried out in the night, whose bed was empty when Soldier: 76 woke up in the morning. Jack hadn’t even known his name. He hadn’t even thought of him for decades.

That night, when he sleeps, he dreams of the soldier enhancement program for the first time in years. In his dreams, Lena Oxton is wheeled out of Jack’s room, her still body covered by a white sheet. The doctors tell him not to think about it, tell him that the bed next to him was always empty. The doctors tell him to forget.

Ana brings it up first, when they’re sitting alone in his office. Jack has his hands folded and pressed against his face. Someone who didn’t know him would assume he was praying.

“We failed her,” Ana says. Jack doesn’t look up. “What are you going to do about it, Jack?”

“There’s nothing I can do,” Jack replies without looking up. “She accepted the position. She knew the risks. This is what happens in war.”

“I know that. It doesn’t make it any less wrong,” Ana retorts. She’s been a soldier longer than he has. There’s another long pause.

“After I had Fareeha, I fought so she wouldn’t have to,” Ana says. “I thought that she could grow up in a time of peace. I hoped that she would become something - anything besides a soldier. I failed her too.”

“Fareeha made her own decision. She knew the risks. This is what happens in war, Ana -” Jack repeats, but Ana cuts him off.

“What war, Jack? What war are we fighting?” Ana stands and moves to leave. “The Crisis is over. You and I and Gabe each have the medals to prove it. So why are our kids soldiers?” She hesitates by the door. “We failed them, Jack.”

The door slides shut behind her.

Lena Oxton doesn’t let any of them forget her.

The Slipstream’s teleportation matrix is found after months of searching, with some reclusive new signals expert named Winston apparently being the one to pinpoint its location. Within a week of its return, the scientists note chronal anomalies surrounding it and place it in an asymptotically timelike chamber in the Swiss base specially designed during the beginning of the Slipstream experiments.

Jack takes a moment to scrub at his eyes, squints at the page, and skims over the next few dozen lines of equations. He respects the scientists, but he wishes he knew how to ask them to dumb their reports down without coming across as dismissive. He flips the page and begins to skim over the paragraphs when he reads:

Upon reactivation of the chamber, the pilot previously assumed killed in action, Lena Oxton - callsign Tracer - reappeared, though she exhibited many anomalies that could not completely be contained by the chamber.

Five more pages of analysis follow. The report concludes by stating that Dr. Ziegler and the scientist from earlier, Winston, have been assigned to her case.

Jack goes back and rereads the paragraph. He rereads it again.

“Athena, where is the, ah, asymptomatic timelike chamber?” He asks out loud.

“The asymptotic time chamber is located on level 2B, wing E,” Athena replies.

Jack sprints the entire way there.

---

They make her speak at his funeral in Arlington.

He’s watching from a distance, hacked into some security livestream via drone, less than a mile from the actual thing. All the old heroes of Overwatch, the ones alive, anyways, are gathering around his grave. The sun is shining brightly. He can see Reinhardt sweating in his old Overwatch formal dress. Jack Morrison’s glad it doesn’t rain for his funeral, because it would just be another nail in the empty coffin.

Lena’s been made to speak. It makes sense that they would - the funeral is popularized by the media, with Overwatch’s downfall and the scandals that led up to the explosion, why wouldn’t it be? He wonders where she’s going after the Petras Act, the heroic law that saves the world from any other superheroes trying to do good and fucking up the planet more than it already is, goes into effect. For now, she’s still the golden child, the posterboy of Overwatch, for better or for worse. He’s read his own slander. He can’t bring himself to read anyone else’s.

“He was an excellent commander.” A goddamn lie. He couldn’t run a military company for his life. Maybe he was charismatic enough on the field, enough of a solid figure in a rapidly shifting war-torn field, to be considered for Strike-Commander, but it blew up in his face. He touches the lesions that are just starting to heal, ugly stripes breaking his facial features. Blew up in his face, alright.

Lena’s never sounded ungenuine in her life. She quips advice sometimes, to whoever she feels needs it at the moment, never sounding haughty or out of line. Even now, when she’s spouting lies that he’s sorry she believes, she has the conviction of someone announcing the sky is blue and the grass is green. “He was a mentor to me, personally, after the Slipstream Incident. I could have gone back to civilian life, but he inspired me. I wanted to make the world a better place. Jack Morrison helped me learn how it could be done.”

He tunes out. Stays on the drone’s line for hours, waiting for anyone to say anything about Gabe. He’s not sure why he cares so much. Morbid curiosity? Looking for revenge? Nothing interesting turns up until it’s late into the night, and the motion-activated camera has been off for hours. Its night vision spins on quickly, and Jack sits up, studying the footage.

There’s a small figure standing in front of his gravestone, a baggy hoodie barely concealing the light of a chronal accelerator. Lena’s changed out of her formalwear and is back in front of Jack’s grave, obviously trying to stay hidden. The drone picks up every word she says, and though he can’t see her face, the tears are obvious in her voice.

“I hate you,” Lena says, voice shaky as she lowers herself to sit on the ground. “...I don’t mean that. I hate...I don’t know what I hate. But I hate this situation, and I hate Director Petras, and,” her voice cracks, but she continues, “I hate that you’re gone.” Silence for a few more moments as she picks at the grass around his grave, then picks up the flowers someone had left there and inspects them. “You would’ve hated these,” she says. “This is an annual. One year and it’s gone.” She picks at the petals absentmindedly, voice still thick. “Y’know, I’m coming up on my first year as an active field agent. Streamlined me so fast, people seem to think I’ve been here for years. I think being new is the only thing that’s keeping me from being demonized in the news, like you.” Jack shakes his head. He deserves what they’re saying about him, and more. But he can’t tell Lena that. She drops the flower and stares ahead at the gravestone, not saying anymore for a few more minutes, just crying quietly to herself. Sometimes she starts to say something, but breaks off. It’s not until a car pulls up to the road nearby, and Angela comes out, pausing by the car door as Lena whips around to look at her.

“Listen, C’mander…” Lena begins again, standing up and tugging the hoodie firmer around herself. “I told you about my shit family and all, but, ah.” Jack watches Angela walking closer, his own throat growing tight at the words coming out of Lena’s mouth. He doesn’t want to hear them. Doesn’t want to disappoint anyone else.

She says them anyways. “In the end, I had a pretty good one. I don’t think tossing pulse bombs at me to teach me not to drop them counts as catch in the park, but what the hell would I know?” Lena shifts where she stands, digging a heel into the dirt. “For what it’s worth...I would have liked to call you dad.” The last bit comes out almost silent, almost too quiet for the drone to capture and almost too quiet for anyone but a supersoldier to hear. Angela comes up to Lena and wraps her in a hug, and Lena loses it again, crying into her shoulder.

“Oh, liebling,” she says, guiding Lena away from the gravestone after pausing for a moment at it. “Come back to the hotel room. Winston’s worried sick about you.”

Jack shuts off his connection to the drone, heading out of Arlington through the shadows.

It takes him months to locate Lena, find where she’s settling into civilian life. With the networking today, it hardly takes any time at all to pick out some perennials and have them sent to her apartment. The hardest part, he thinks, as he clicks the anonymous option, was not having them sent with the message, ‘to my daughter.’

#overwatch #soldier 76 #tracer

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creacherkeeper · 1 year

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wait can you explain the premise of your dnd campaign I am so curious about it

YES I ABSOLUTELY CAN

so the basic premise is that its based on the tv show the librarians (which only our dm has seen lmaoo)

a long time ago magic was very free and well known, but an evil king was using magic to oppress and harm people, and so many bad people had their hands on magic, that the court apothecary convinced the king's sister to intervene (because they were gay for each other). the king's sister, in a great act of magic, sealed away much of the magic of the world into a library, forming herself into an immortal god of knowledge and sealing away the apothecary to act as her immortal cleric and the keeper of the library

several hundred years later, the keeper of the library's child betrayed the library, stole away a bunch of the magic artifacts that kept the library functioning, and theyre now working with the very bad people who have obtained those artifacts and are trying to use them to unleash magic in the world once again. the library stays functional by having one librarian, who keeps the knowledge, and one guardian, the library's protector, at all times. however the bad people have gone and murdered all the viable candidates and now what's left is the very bottom of the barrel (us)

our dm is @beatricexbenedick who is insane in the head (affectionate)

i play bo dawson, a human ranger/cleric and a guardian of the library. he was framed for a murder attempt as a child and grew up in juvie, and had been serving his years of community service by working as a firewatcher in a national park when the library found him. has a service dog named dolly because his special interest is dolly parton and is a good downhome southern boy

@strangetorpedos is nox, a tiefling divination wizard. nox grew up in a community that knew about magic but banned its use, and after having a falling out with their parents ran away, starting learning magic, and was making it on his own but scraping by when they got recruited

@punkbarbarian is kai, a human sun soul monk, who didn't know about magic growing up but learned that his grandmother was a cleric of the japanese goddess amaterasu and that she's chosen them as her monk. after their grandmother died he was bounced around in foster care until emancipating themself and had been slumming it up in boston working odd gigs and just trying to get by

nettle is a more recent addition and is played by @paladinbaby. she's an alchemist artificer/wild magic sorcerer and only just found out she's an aasimar. she found the library entirely on accident and was convinced magic was not real but that making potions or having infinite space in your bag after doing some embroidery on it was just like. stuff normal people could do. she's simply been having a very bad time since becoming the library intern

the npcs are also fucking insane so theres: wren (the apothecary turned immortal keeper of the library, she is a bitchy 900 year old lady), lensa (god of the library, permanently stuck as a 23 year old), ezzy (the oldest librarian, traumatized middle aged artificer werewolf, has a semi estranged teenage daughter), sylvie (wrens child, the betrayer, now with the bad guys. has a dragon.), theo (eldest daughter of the main villains, was dating sylvie, is now? on our side kind of?), c (younger child of the main villains. on our side but is scary about it. hates theo), bubba (bo's father who he was reunited with after like 17 years, middle aged ranger, is raising ezzy's teenage daughter but Its Complicated), rosie (the daughter, teenage werewolf, Figuring Herself Out, bo's new foster sister)

did i mention that our entire party is autistic and it was on accident because the other three players did not know they were autistic until i got my grimy social worker fingers on them

anyway we're all having a normal time!!!!!! as you can tell!!!!

#thank you for letting me ramble nonny im feeling Hinged today #library of lensa #bo tag

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