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#welcome to the wafer community
cmglasgowaudra · 1 month
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MEET OUR FEB SPEAKER, EUAN ANDERSON!
We're pleased this month to welcome Glasgow photographer Euan Anderson to the stage! Many from the CM Glasgow community will recognise Euan from his work, as well as his time on our volunteer team as our chapter photographer.
Euan is a Glasgow-based photographer, juggling his time among advertising, fashion, and food and drinks photography. With 16 years in the industry, Euan's journey has touched various sectors, from press and journalism to the glitz of fashion and cosmetics advertising.
A Native Glaswegian, Euan is keen on supporting the local industry. In 2022, he opened Cove One Studios, boosting Glasgow's reputation in Scotland as a go-to spot for high-end photoshoots and a place for nurturing new talent. At our event on Friday, February 23rd (register here) Euan will be in front of the camera on stage at ALT agency to talking about social media's impact on how we read the visual images we see daily, including:
How does the surge in the frequency of imagery in our daily lives impact our interpretation of it?
How does this shift in appetite serve as a positive for those in the creative field?
Does it mean a potential loss of local cultural uniqueness?
This is sure to be a topical and fascinating talk! If you've not got your ticket yet, be sure to register as spaces are limited! For those who do not know Euan already, we asked him to share a few things about himself with us:
What are you motivated by? What’s your motivation? Who inspires you?
16 years ago I would have answered I was motivated purely by a passion for photography and the world it opened to me. I was motivated to reach a wider audience to show my work and was inspired by the great photographers, Bailey, Watson and Avedon etc. Nowadays though, the answer to all 3 is my girls, my wife Kim and kids Sophie and Emily. Though the old answer still plays a large part.
What’s a typical day like for you?
Too short. My days change constantly and a lot of the time very quickly and at short notice, The only constant is that it feel like there are never quite enough hours. I run 2 businesses and have young family, so maybe that’ll change someday.
Tunnocks Tea Cakes or Caramel Wafers?
Caramel Wafer every time
Lastly, if you could describe Glasgow in one word, what would it be?
Complicated ************** And there you have it! Get your ticket and we'll see you there!
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rithmeres · 10 months
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Hello Bryn so I started following you for your Trigun art (love love love ‘em) but your spring rolls pic just gave me so much personal and Trigun feels… sorry I’m about to ramble.
So my good friend is Viet and we lived together during Covid lockdown. We made and ate SO MUCH Viet food. It really is a whole event. A participatory art. I live alone now and I miss eating as a communal ritual.
Which reminds me of that Stampede scene where Vash finally started eating again “I deserve to eat, right?” They were eating together too—all of them, including the three random dudes that were on the sideline. There’s just something so natural and comforting about sharing meals; it’s making me kind of sad because Vash often had to eat alone (ex. when he first came to ship 3 and when he roamed around the desert). Vash was hungry for a family/community and now I can see that being one of the points of episode 4.
Happy eating together!!!
i feel the same way 😭😭 sharing food isn’t just about food, it’s healing. to be welcomed in, to be looked after, to participate together in the creation and consumption of what makes us so human
my roommate of four years was viet (i can’t even call her a roommate, we were so much more than that, she’s family) and she helped teach me how to cook and for us food wasn’t just what we ate, it was what we did. it was how we loved.
i’ve never seen someone eat so much in my life, countless shared meals, whether it was just the two of us or we were cooking for thirty other people, howl’s-moving-castle-breakfasts on weekends, hurried dinner leftovers scarfed down in the car while i drove the 55, hours-long hot pot feasts until we’re sweating and stuffed, wicked cold ice cream eaten on the curb downtown as midnight approaches, entire rainy mondays spent making phở, sandwiches with too much maggi seasoning packed in paper bags for hikes, inviting the boys over to gorge on wafer-thin bánh xèo, she’d chop tomatoes for my bruschetta because the smell of them made me sick and i would juice lemons for her when her hands were chapped and bleeding. and i’ve never had an easy relationship with food but something about lyss made eating feel so simple and right.
since she moved away and i eventually moved too i don’t have that same community anymore and i’ve struggled to eat well since losing it. i didn’t know what i had until it was gone. she never forced me to eat or chided me for not eating, she would just make really good food and share it with me. and i would eat it. i could eat it. eating was easier when she was around. so making dinner tonight was like a ritual, putting on the apron she gave me and making spring rolls for the first time in months and accidentally pouring out too much fish sauce just like she would do; and even though i don’t get to share spring rolls with her anymore, the time and the food that we shared together has changed me. and it’s okay. it’s easier to let myself eat and laugh when i can be the one to provide a meal for the people that i am with now, even if they’re not the people who make it easy, so for now i will do just that and maybe someday again i will be able to cook and eat with someone who makes it unburdensome.
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brucefromfamilyguy · 6 months
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Oh you're a terf too? Every time you post I love you more <3
FULL NAME
Bruce
LAST REPORTED AGE
52
PRIMARY EMPLOYMENT
Clerk of a horror novelty shop in "Chitty Chitty Death Bang"
CPR Teacher in "The Cleveland-Loretta Quagmire"
A medium in "Petergeist"
A priest in "Boys Do Cry"
A therapist in "Peter's Two Dads"
A lawyer in "Stewie Kills Lois"
A masseuse in "Baby Not On Board"
Bowling alley shoe counterman in "The Splendid Source"
Bartender in "We Love You, Conrad" (DVD exclusive)
Referee in "Baby, You Knock Me Out"
Laser Tag operator in "Forget-Me-Not"
Waste management in "Island Adventure"
Bowling alley desk in "Better Off Meg"
Couples counselor in "Boys & Squirrels"
Bruce is a major recurring character on Family Guy, known for his various jobs.
Bruce rarely appeared at all in the first three seasons of the show, but has become a recurring character since the show returned from cancellation.
He first appeared as the clerk of a horror novelty shop in "Chitty Chitty Death Bang". In "The Cleveland-Loretta Quagmire", he teaches a CPR course at the Quahog Community Center. His name was first revealed when he appeared as a member of the school board committee of James Woods Regional High School in "No Chris Left Behind". This position was implied when he heard the name change proposal to Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial High School sought by Shauna Parks and Brian Griffin in "Peter's Got Woods".
He appear as a Tetris piece in "Prick Up Your Ears" and as a medium in "Petergeist". He worked for Exotic Entertainment.
In "Untitled Griffin Family History", it is revealed he had an African American slave ancestor named Tobi, who spelled his name with several accents, and is seen being whipped by an English colonist.
In "Road to the Multiverse", he performs "It’s A Wonderful Day for Pie" as a parody of Tinker Bell in the Disney-style universe.
He is Peter Griffin's lawyer for his trial in the accused murder of his wife Lois in "Stewie Kills Lois". He calls Jeffrey about Stewie in "Lois Kills Stewie", and about Peter's mustache in "McStroke".
In "Boys Do Cry", he offers communion wafers with wine. He explicitly warns Stewie not to drink the wine.
In "Baby Not On Board", he is a masseuse.
He appeared at O.J. Simpson's welcome party in "The Juice Is Loose", and joins the mob that chases him out of town.
In "Peter's Two Dads", he is the therapist who helps Peter realize that Francis Griffin is not his biological father.
He debates which groceries to leave behind while in the ten items or less line in "Brian Sings and Swings".
It has been hinted that he may be homosexual throughout the series, such as in "McStroke" when a mustachioed Peter walks by. He has a friend named Jeffrey and in "Road to the North Pole", he declares in "All I Really Want For Christmas" that he wants to marry Jeffrey. Seth MacFarlane confirmed Bruce's homosexuality in an interview with LGBT website The Backlot, citing him as an example of a positive gay character on the show.[1]
In "The Splendid Source", it is revealed that he works at the bowling alley, selling rental shoes. He is one of the people to whom the dirty joke is traced. It s revealed he also has a pet rabbit named Steven.
He plays Greedo in Blue Harvest and Admiral Piett in Something, Something, Something, Dark Side.
In "Tales of a Third Grade Nothing", he seems to be the only one who enjoyed the performance of "Guys & Dolls". He also enjoys ginger ale.
He is the announcer of Lois Griffin's boxing match against Deirdre Jackson in "Baby, You Knock Me Out".
He is an alcoholic, participating in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings Peter attends in "Friends of Peter G".
Bruce can be seen as Stewie rides through town under Brian's car in "Family Guy Viewer Mail No. 2".
The uncensored version of "Ratings Guy" includes a scene of Peter getting a haircut from Bruce, who shaves a misshapen, deformed penis into the back of his head. When Peter questions it, Bruce runs out crying, noting that some people have had an accident.
Bruce is teamed up with Bonnie Swanson in the three-legged race in "He's Bla-ack!".
In the courtroom scene in "The Simpsons Guy", the openly gay Bruce is seated next to the closeted gay Waylon Smithers.
Throughout the series, Mike Henry has given certain anthropomorphic creatures such as Jaws and a Xenomorph the same voice as he's given Bruce.
Bruce is revealed to be 52 in "Underage Peter", having told Jeffrey that he was 39.
In "Married...With Cancer", Bruce officiates Brian's wedding and remarks that it's another wedding he has to watch. He makes his intentions of marriage known to Jeffrey who nervously looks away.
Bruce and the Kool-Aid Man swap bodies in "Switch the Flip". He also has a crowd scene cameo in "No Giggity, No Doubt".
Under pressure from his parents Phil & Candy Straight, Bruce proposes to Meg in "Meg's Wedding". She refuses to acknowledge that he's gay at first, but stops the ceremony and admits she's aware after finding pictures in his phone. He is forced to not only confront his parents, but proposes and marries his long-time boyfriend Jeffery.
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MEET OUR FEB SPEAKER, EUAN ANDERSON!
We're pleased this month to welcome Glasgow photographer Euan Anderson to the stage! Many from the CM Glasgow community will recognise Euan from his work, as well as his time on our volunteer team as our chapter photographer.
Euan is a Glasgow-based photographer, juggling his time among advertising, fashion, and food and drinks photography. With 16 years in the industry, Euan's journey has touched various sectors, from press and journalism to the glitz of fashion and cosmetics advertising.
A Native Glaswegian, Euan is keen on supporting the local industry. In 2022, he opened Cove One Studios, boosting Glasgow's reputation in Scotland as a go-to spot for high-end photoshoots and a place for nurturing new talent. At our event on Friday, February 23rd (register here) Euan will be in front of the camera on stage at ALT agency to talking about social media's impact on how we read the visual images we see daily, including:
How does the surge in the frequency of imagery in our daily lives impact our interpretation of it?
How does this shift in appetite serve as a positive for those in the creative field?
Does it mean a potential loss of local cultural uniqueness?
This is sure to be a topical and fascinating talk! If you've not got your ticket yet, be sure to register as spaces are limited! For those who do not know Euan already, we asked him to share a few things about himself with us:
What are you motivated by? What’s your motivation? Who inspires you?
16 years ago I would have answered I was motivated purely by a passion for photography and the world it opened to me. I was motivated to reach a wider audience to show my work and was inspired by the great photographers, Bailey, Watson and Avedon etc. Nowadays though, the answer to all 3 is my girls, my wife Kim and kids Sophie and Emily. Though the old answer still plays a large part.
What’s a typical day like for you?
Too short. My days change constantly and a lot of the time very quickly and at short notice, The only constant is that it feel like there are never quite enough hours. I run 2 businesses and have young family, so maybe that’ll change someday.
Tunnocks Tea Cakes or Caramel Wafers?
Caramel Wafer every time
Lastly, if you could describe Glasgow in one word, what would it be?
Complicated
**************
And there you have it! Get your ticket and we'll see you there!
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watchyourheid · 1 month
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MEET OUR FEB SPEAKER, EUAN ANDERSON!
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We're pleased this month to welcome Glasgow photographer Euan Anderson to the stage! Many from the CM Glasgow community will recognise Euan from his work, as well as his time on our volunteer team as our chapter photographer.
Euan is a Glasgow-based photographer, juggling his time among advertising, fashion, and food and drinks photography. With 16 years in the industry, Euan's journey has touched various sectors, from press and journalism to the glitz of fashion and cosmetics advertising.
A Native Glaswegian, Euan is keen on supporting the local industry. In 2022, he opened Cove One Studios, boosting Glasgow's reputation in Scotland as a go-to spot for high-end photoshoots and a place for nurturing new talent. At our event on Friday, February 23rd (register here) Euan will be in front of the camera on stage at ALT agency to talking about social media's impact on how we read the visual images we see daily.
How does the surge in the frequency of imagery in our daily lives impact our interpretation of it? How does this shift in appetite serve as a positive for those in the creative field? Does it mean a potential loss of local cultural uniqueness?
This is sure to be a topical and fascinating talk! If you've not got your ticket yet, be sure to register as spaces are limited! ************** For those who do not know Euan already, we asked him to share a few things about himself with us:
What are you motivated by? What’s your motivation? Who inspires you?
16 years ago I would have answered I was motivated purely by a passion for photography and the world it opened to me. I was motivated to reach a wider audience to show my work and was inspired by the great photographers, Bailey, Watson and Avedon etc. Nowadays though, the answer to all 3 is my girls, my wife Kim and kids Sophie and Emily. Though the old answer still plays a large part.
What’s a typical day like for you?
Too short. My days change constantly and a lot of the time very quickly and at short notice, The only constant is that it feel like there are never quite enough hours. I run 2 businesses and have young family, so maybe that’ll change someday.
Tunnocks Tea Cakes or Caramel Wafers?
Caramel Wafer every time
Lastly, if you could describe Glasgow in one word, what would it be?
Complicated ************** And there you have it! Get your ticket and we'll see you there!
0 notes
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Mango Bar Ice Cream: A Slice of Tropical Paradise in Every Bite
The Mango Magic
Mango bar ice cream is a celebration of one of the world’s most beloved fruits, the mango. With its golden-yellow flesh and sweet, slightly tangy flavor, the mango is often referred to as the “king of fruits.” It’s no wonder that mangoes have been adored for centuries, and they continue to captivate palates worldwide.
What sets mango bar ice cream apart is the use of real, ripe mangoes. The fruit is carefully selected and processed to capture its full, vibrant flavor. This results in an ice cream that tastes like a bite of a fresh, juicy mango straight from the tree.
Creamy Dreaminess
At the heart of every mango bar ice cream is the luscious creaminess that only the finest dairy can provide. The combination of rich, high-quality cream and the natural sweetness of mango creates a velvety texture that’s pure heaven on a spoon.
It’s the perfect blend of fruit and cream, a balance of indulgence and refreshment. Every mouthful delivers a creamy burst of mango flavor, leaving you craving the next bite.
A Taste of Summer All Year
Mango bar ice cream isn’t just a dessert; it’s a vacation for your senses. The bright, sunny flavor of mango transports you to a tropical paradise, no matter where you are. Whether you’re savoring it on a hot summer day or indulging in a slice of the tropics during the coldest winter months, mango bar ice cream offers a burst of sunshine in every bite.
Versatility at Its Best
Mango bar ice cream is a versatile treat. You can enjoy it on its own, as a refreshing sorbet-style dessert, or even sandwiched between two wafer layers for a delicious ice cream sandwich. It’s also an excellent companion to other desserts, such as cakes, pies, or fruit salads. The possibilities are endless, making mango bar ice cream a top choice for dessert lovers looking to get creative.
Homemade Goodness
For those who enjoy making their own frozen treats, mango bar ice cream recipes are readily available. Making it at home allows you to experiment with different textures and flavor combinations, ensuring that every batch is tailored to your personal taste.
Mango bar ice cream is a top-notch, realistic frozen treat that brings the essence of the tropics to your dessert plate. It marries the lush, irresistible flavor of ripe mangoes with the dreamy creaminess of high-quality dairy, creating a dessert that’s perfect for any occasion and season. If you haven’t had the pleasure of trying mango bar ice cream, now is the time to explore this slice of tropical paradise in every bite. Whether you’re a devoted mango enthusiast or simply looking to elevate your dessert experience, mango bar ice cream is a sweet, creamy indulgence you won’t want to miss.
SKEI — Kochi’s Ice Cream Gem
In a city as vibrant as Kochi, SKEI shines as a gem in the world of ice cream. With their unwavering commitment to quality, a wide array of flavors, strong support for the local community, and a welcoming ambiance, SKEI stands out as the best ice cream company in town. Don’t miss the chance to experience the magic of SKEI’s ice cream. Whether you’re a local or a visitor, make your way to SKEI and treat yourself to the finest ice cream that Kochi has to offer. SKEI is where sweet dreams come true.
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stockxpo · 2 years
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Hot Stocks to buy for Swing Trading for this week – Expert Stock Picks of the Week by StockXpo
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Hello to all our readers including Traders, Investors, Analysts, and others!!!!
Let’s recap this week’s latest news. CNBC’s Jim Cramer told investors on Thursday that there are four camps of thinking in the current market but only one worth listening to is the one that stays in the market and bets on the Federal Reserve winning its battle against inflation. Social influencers focused on financial education for the Black community are emphasizing a message of financial freedom this Juneteenth as the nation commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. Billionaire investor Ray Dalio is right to have bet against European stocks, and global markets still have a rough road ahead, according to Beat Wittmann, the partner at Zurich-based Porta Advisors.
If you are a regular reader, you may be already aware, we recommend 10-12 stocks in 2 different categories – 1. ValueGrowth and 2. TechFund, to fit different trading styles and strategies. You can find more details about these strategies in our FAQ section. This is more of a swing trading, as we keep balancing our portfolio on a weekly basis, mostly on Friday. If you are new, welcome. Visit our site to get all relevant information about stocks and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to get updates on our Swing Trading Stock Picks. We send out our newsletter as soon as we publish our stock picks. We hope that you love our articles and get all the details so keep coming to our site for more information. Swing traders primarily use technical analysis for swing trading, but here we combine technical analysis with fundamental analysis and choose the best stock market investment which is best and safe for swing trading. We have tested out our strategy with more than 20 years of data and it performed well against S&P 500.
Here we are again with this week’s recommendations. Please note that overall the market was very much on the upside, and whether you are following our recommendations or not, I am sure if you have been trading this week ending today then you must have collected a lot of profits. If not, and you are skeptical about the market, add swing trading to your trading strategy and get started to follow our recommendations. We are going to publish the performance results for the last few months and this year to date, to give you some ideas of how we have been compared against the S&P 500 and other major indexes.
Now let's look at our picks for this week.
StockXpo's – ValueGrowth Strategy
As you know, this is more like Buffett's Value Strategy, but our stock-picking criterion is to pick the top 3 out of such value stocks. Moreover, we are more likely to hold them for the short term, not the long term. Our backtesting suggests that weekly balancing gives very good results week over week and year over year, it can grow your portfolio exponentially if you just consistently follow these strategies. So our picks are $TWI, $UMC and $BRY in this category.
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TWI(Titan International, Inc.)- Titan International, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, manufactures and sells wheels, tires, and undercarriage systems and components for off-highway vehicles in North America, Europe, Latin America, the Commonwealth of Independent States region, the Middle East, Africa, Russia, and internationally. The company operates in the Agricultural, Earthmoving/Construction, and Consumer segments. It offers rims, wheels, tires, and undercarriage systems and components for various agricultural equipment, including tractors, combines, skidders, plows, planters, and irrigation equipment.
UMC(United Microelectronics Corporation): United Microelectronics Corporation operates as a semiconductor wafer foundry in Taiwan, Singapore, China, Hong Kong, Japan, the United States, Europe, and internationally. The company provides circuit design, mask tooling, wafer fabrication, and assembly and testing services. It serves fabless design companies and integrated device manufacturers. United Microelectronics Corporation was incorporated in 1980 and is headquartered in Hsinchu City, Taiwan.
BRY(Berry Corporation): Berry Corporation, an independent upstream energy company, engages in the development and production of conventional oil reserves located in the western United States. It operates in two segments, Development and Production, and Well Servicing and Abandonment. The company's properties are located in the San Joaquin and Ventura basins, California; and Uinta basin, Utah. As of December 31, 2021, it had a total of 3,417 net productive wells. The company was formerly known as Berry Petroleum Corporation and changed its name to Berry Corporation in February 2020. Berry Corporation was founded in 1909 and is headquartered in Dallas, Texas.
StockXpo's TechFund Strategy
This is the most active category and we give a lot of preference here to stocks that have strong technical and strong fundamental current and past track records. That’s why we call it the TechFund (TAFA) strategy. Just like other strategies, we pick these companies here for weekly based swing trade recommendations.
Please note that we have added it from this list $ULH, $CBIO, $PRPH, $OAS, $ASC, $GASS, $ZVO removed $CWCO, $SWIR, $TALO, $BRY, $DBI, $DINO
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CBIO(Catalyst Biosciences, Inc.): Catalyst Biosciences, Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, focuses on developing protease product candidates in the fields of hemostasis and complement regulation. The company's protease engineering platform creates improved or novel molecules to treat diseases that result from dysregulation of the complement system. It develops CB 2782-PEG, a component 3 (C3) degrader for the treatment of dry age-related macular degeneration (dAMD); and CB 4332 for patients with deficiencies in complement factor I (CFI), including dAMD. The company also develops ProTUNE C3b/C4b degrader and ImmunoTUNE C3a/C5a degrader platforms designed to target other disorders of the complement or inflammatory pathways.
PRPH(ProPhase Labs, Inc.): ProPhase Labs, Inc. engages in the research, development, manufacture, distribution, marketing, and sale of over the counter (OTC) consumer healthcare products and dietary supplements in the United States. The company operates in two segments, Diagnostic Services and Consumer Products. It offers a range of OTC dietary supplements, including Legendz XL for male sexual health; and Triple Edge XL, an energy and stamina booster. The company also provides contract manufacturing services, such as product development, pre-commercialization, production, warehousing, and distribution; SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) and COVID-19 viral mutation polymerase chain reaction tests through saliva and nasal swab methods; and other respiratory pathogen panel molecular testing services, as well as personal genomics products and services.
OAS(Oasis Petroleum Inc.): Oasis Petroleum Inc., an independent exploration and production company, focuses on the acquisition and development of onshore unconventional oil and natural gas resources in the United States. It engages in the acquisition and development of oil and gas properties. As of December 31, 2021, the company had 492,355 net leasehold acres in the Williston Basin. The company sells its crude oil and natural gas to refiners, marketers, and other purchasers that have access to pipeline and rail facilities. Oasis Petroleum Inc. was founded in 2007 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas.
ASC(Ardmore Shipping Corporation): Ardmore Shipping Corporation engages in the seaborne transportation of petroleum products and chemicals worldwide. As of February 15, 2022, the company operated a fleet of 25 double-hulled products and chemical tankers. It serves oil majors, oil companies, oil and chemical traders, chemical companies, and pooling service providers. The company was founded in 2010 and is based in Pembroke, Bermuda.
GASS(StealthGas Inc.): StealthGas Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides seaborne transportation services to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) producers and users internationally. It also provides crude oil and natural gas. The company's carriers carry various petroleum gas products in liquefied form, including propane, butane, butadiene, isopropane, propylene, and vinyl chloride monomer; and refined petroleum products, such as gasoline, diesel, fuel oil, and jet fuel, as well as edible oils and chemicals. As of December 31, 2021, it had a fleet of 44 LPG carriers with a total capacity of 389,426 cubic meters; three medium range product carriers with a total capacity of 140,000 deadweight tons (dwt); and one Aframax crude oil tanker with a total capacity of 115,804 dwt. StealthGas Inc. was incorporated in 2004 and is based in Athens, Greece.
ULH(Universal Logistics Holdings, Inc.): Universal Logistics Holdings, Inc. provides transportation and logistics solutions in the United States, Mexico, Canada, and Colombia. It offers truckload services, which include dry van, flatbed, heavy-haul, and refrigerated operations; domestic and international freight forwarding, and customs brokerage services; and final mile and ground expedite services. The company transports various commodities comprising automotive parts, machinery, building materials, paper, food, consumer goods, furniture, steel, and other metals.
ZVO(Zovio Inc): Zovio Inc operates as an education technology services company in the United States. It partners with higher education institutions and employers to deliver various personalized solutions to help learners and leaders in achieving their aspirations. The company offers technology and academic services primarily relate to the educational infrastructure, including online course delivery and management, assessment, customer relations management, and other internal administrative systems; support services for curriculum and new program development, and faculty training and development; and technical support and assistance services with state compliance. It also provides counseling services and support comprising recruiting and admissions, student financing and financial aid processing, and student retention advising; and marketing and communication services, such as lead acquisition, digital communication strategies, brand identity advertising, media planning and strategy, video, data science and analysis, marketing to potential students, and other promotional and communication services.
StockXpo's Diversification Strategy
Companies often think about diversification when they reach a certain point in their development. Igor Ansoff identified diversification as one of the four main growth strategies in 1957, and it allows companies to look at other markets or new products to expand their reach and revenue.
Diversification aims to smooth out unsystematic risk occurrences in a portfolio by ensuring that the positive performance of some investments balances out the negative performance of others. Only if the securities in the portfolio are not completely correlated—that is, if they react to market factors differently, frequently in opposing ways—does diversification pay off.
If you are following all strategies and watchlist – here is the recommendation for the StocXpo diversification Strategy-
SELL(CWCO, SWIR, TALO, DBI, DINO)
HOLD(PRPH, ULH, BRY)
BUY(UMC, TWI, CBIO, OAS, ASC, GASS, ZVO)
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I hope all this information is helping you to buy good stocks for your welfare. See you next Friday. Keep coming to our website for stock-related queries and information.
If you haven’t subscribed yet, please subscribe to our newsletter so you can get the updates delivered to your mailbox.
Happy Trading!!!!
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punemy-spotted · 3 years
Text
Dead Trees Like Lavender Fields Chapter 2
Chapter 2: In The Pines
Pairing: Old One!Bucky Barnes x Reader
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con Elements, Dub-Con, Soft!Dark Characters, Dark! Characters, Cult Elements, Human/Animal Sacrifice, Religious Elements, Blasphemy, Cosmic/Dark Horror, Stalking, Possessive/Obsessive Characters, Appalachian/Mountain Gothic, Gothic Horror, Descriptions of Death and Rot and Poverty, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, This Is Kind Of Horror So Please Remember That
Chapter 1
Chapter Warnings: Rape/Non-Con Elements, Fever, Sickness, Death, Burning, Religious Elements, Cult Activity, Immolation, Unclear Timelines, Unreality, Horror, Choking, Bruising, Potential References to Domestic Violence, Pregnancy, Churches, Shotgun Weddings
PLEASE REMEMBER THAT YOUR CONSUMPTION OF MEDIA IS YOUR OWN RESPONSIBILITY AND IF YOU ARE UNCOMFORTABLE WITH THE CONTENT THAT IS BEING PRESENTED, PLEASE DO NOT READ
Chapter Summary: You come to the mountain to burn and be reborn.
O Appalachia: mother and maw that births and devours us, roots sunk deep and winding as gnarled hands clasped in prayer, hold us fast and give us foundation..
- Old Gods of Appalachia, Episode 11: Season Two Prologue
Notes: Another chapter of my baby. Old Gods of Appalachia just completed their second season and ooooh boy am I in love. More lore to come. I'd call this fic slow-burn but that would be both a lie and a pun.
All of my work is 18+ Only, Minors DO NOT INTERACT. I do not consent to my work being posted anywhere besides Tumblr or Ao3 and I post my work there myself. Do not copy, translate, or repost any of my content.
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Names… names have power.
A power she cannot comprehend, can never comprehend, not in the years that are laid out before her, her path wound through trees of time and space.
Names have power.
The handsome coal miner boarding with her papaw’s family calls her Darlin’ and she is shy and cautious, is interested and sweet on his work-wizened smile and axe-sure hands.
Her fiancée calls her Sweetheart and she is bubbling and bright and full of adoring life.
Her husband calls her Missus Tucker, and she is welcomed, is a stranger in a new family, is in search of a community in a town not her own.
So here she kneels, this many-named she, composed of a thousand identities bound to one soul, dressed in the white of purity and death and rebirth in a church which looks grander and stranger than anything she had ever seen in her own life.
Here she kneels, a wafer of spun sugar melting on her tongue, consecrated by the brush of a warm hand over her veiled head, listening to the boom of a pastor the likes of which she had never known and would likely never know again.
He calls her Foundling, tells her she was once a lost lamb, tells her this flock is her family, this congregation of ringing voices raised up in a kind of praise she had never known before and might never know again.
And here in this church, with its pews hewn right out of the fine oak floors which lined this holy place, she believed him.
You come to us a lamb in need of sheering, in need of rebirth, in need of shelter from the storms beyond. You come to us to be forged, the Pastor booms, a looming man who looked like he might have been carved from marble itself, his hair the spun gold of Heaven’s own light, his eyes flooded blue with the fervor of the Lord, You come to us to be welcomed, to be named found, to be named the wife of Eugene Paul Tucker, to be the cornerstone of that new homestead you shall build here in this Holler. You come to be made whole, sheared of the sins of your old life, to begin anew.
They were already married, she and Eugene, ‘cuz the swellin’ in her midsection was starting to get a bit obvious and her mamaw weren’t about to let her great-grandbaby be a bastard. Her momma and poppa might’ve been taken out by the booze and the black lung but Goddammit, I ain’t lettin’ no good-fer-nothin’ rock-finder make a fallen woman outta my girl! You git down t’city hall afore I git myself a shotgun. You better make an honest woman outta my grandbaby, you gottdamned lout! And she’d never heard her mamaw swear that much — weren’t Good nor Godly, that sorta language — but she knew then just like she knew now, that her mamaw meant business. No point asking if she’d need some soap t’clean her mouth.
They were already married, she and Eugene, with a license from City Hall for the government t’be satsified, but Eugene wanted a church weddin’, a good proper one with praise an’ scripture an’ all the trappings of Godly Grace. The church in town, her momma and poppa’s town where they’d been born and died, well it wasn’t ‘bout t’let an unmarried — license by some gov’mint weren’t ‘nough for these folks — girl and an outsider get good and proper hitched in their sacred halls.
So that was it.
So they came here, to Eugene’s town. To Bell’s Hollow — or Holler, cuz government names ain’t the right names, plenty of people knew that — where they were welcomed.
She ain’t ever heard of Bell’s Holler before but that weren’t a worry — plenty of towns here not on the government’s radar, even if they had a mayor and a post office and a city hall. Ain’t nobody carin’ about these little places ‘less there was money t’be made of it.
So they came here.
And now they both kneel afore the Pastor, the smilin’ man with gold-flax hair and sparklin’ eyes and teeth placed all in a row like a neat little graveyard, booming out scripture and something else. The fire in her soul ain’t nothin’ like the feel of her old, somber church which rejected her for bein’ rich with life, moving slow and languid through every corner of her body, like the Lord’s Good Word was spreading into her with every beat of her loving heart.
But then the heat grows, blooms into something… uncomfortable.
Unbearable, before long.
Eugene watches her shift on her knees with a smile in his eyes, almost unbothered by the way stinging tears stream down his pretty new bride’s face, the way the Pastor makes her expression contort with pain and then terror with every fervent syllable pouring like stinging hornets from his mouth.
And when the hem of her wedding dress catches ablaze and his wife starts screaming, all he does his squeeze her hand like he could shackle her here, tie her to the wood and bone and Pastor Rogers booms, I strip you, lamb of God, I sheer the wool of sin from your skin and wrap you anew, anew with a new name, a true name, and when the Good Lord calls you to His side, let the name He draws you with be Eliza-Anne Tucker and may the fires of your love for Him be your guide Home.
And Eliza-Anne Tucker burns.
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You wake. Ablaze too, just like the woman in your dreams, the one you recognize and don’t all at once.
If the fever wasn’t presently decimating what remained of your thoughtful mind, you might have considered who your mother was before she married the man apparently called Eugene Paul, the man who apparently was your father, the man no one seems to mention anymore except to tell you he was dead.
Unfortunately, fever.
It’s the same unnatural burning as the other dream, the one you wish the fever would make you forget and yet you are never quite so lucky, invisible flames licking your heated skin and something like a brand stinging on the inside of your thigh. Sunlight filters in through the window, burns your eyes until you close them, too bright, too loud, too warm. You open your mouth to groan and feel claws sink into your throat, pine needles embedding themselves into you and you can’t… you can barely breathe, much less speak.
Sickness never sat well with you — your mother always knew all the right remedies to make, chamomile milk, honey and turmeric, a saucer of biscuits soaked in coffee — but you’re sure this is something… worse.
This isn’t warm milk and tea remedies. This feels like someone tied you to a stake and lit you up, too much smoke in your lungs to be washed away with honey, leaving you unable to do anything but choke on your own labored breaths, tasting blood instead of coffee-cookies.
If you looked at yourself in the mirror — that was, if you could actually pull your body up and see yourself, take a look at yourself in the vanity mirror right beside your bed — you might have seen the mottled bruises around your throat. Might have realized that they looked like fingers wrapped around you, choking quiet any attempt you might have made to make sense of yourself. But… seeing as you can’t, can’t do much more than roll over in your sweat-soaked sheets, you don’t see and thus don’t notice the way one of those bruises deepens, not even as darkness overtakes your senses.
It’s the fever, you would probably justify if you had the senses to do it, the fever. Just needs to be slept off.
Whatever sleep means.
You see things, behind your closed eyes. Scattered images, fractured visions and strange voices. Glowing red eyes, monstrous growls, fangs flashing in the unnatural light. You think yourself awake a few times, sure you see your momma pacing fretfully at the foot of your bed, see Sergeant Barnes sneering at you from your doorway and uttering words that sounded something like an incantation, see flames and horned beasts with glowing amber under their peeling skin.
The whispering voices too are numerous, too numerous to name each individual one, but you try — your mother’s, Sergeant Barnes, the golden-haired Pastor from your dream-mare, and… the slow singsong of someone you know and don’t all at once.
You wake to the voice and its source, a smiling woman with a cool, wet rag in her hand, pressing it to your forehead, Well hello, honey, and ain’t you a sight?
And well.
You are.
Sweat-soaked and uncomfortable, flushed with both embarrassment and fever, mumbling some sort of apology to the strange woman at your bedside. This was not exactly how you envisioned your homecoming.
Ain’t got no need t’pologize, honey, lord knows we should be the ones fallin’ over for you, the woman cuts off the half-formed words pouring from your mouth, still pressing that rag to your heated cheeks, Comin’ down this sick, well, I know your Auntie Estus’s cookin’ an’ I know she ain’t the type t’give food poisoning. Air must just not be agreein’ with you, but that’s alright. We’ll get you right as green soon enough.
You nod, trying not to think on how strangely your nurse speaks — an affectation of age, almost, the shape of her words somehow ancient and not, like seven voices all at once — and instead try your best to get a good look at her as waves of heat blur your vision.
She flickers, indeterminate, shifting through phases of being but always, always with that same rounded belly of a woman just weeks from popping out a squalling babe into the world, yet so comfortable in her gravidity.
Shh, don’t you try lookin’ too hard, honey. Only gonna hurt yourself, she assures you, pursing her lips when you turn your head away to rest your eyes and give her a greater view of your neck. You don’t see them, but she does.
Well. Looks like somebody already did, now how’d these come about, honey…?
The look on your face — confusion, concern, and a hint of panic — is enough to tell her you have no idea, and she tuts her tongue again, Tch. Have a talk with your people ‘bout that when I’m done gettin’ your fever down. Now… you can feel fingers brush over your head, cool spring water on your scalp, ice over your sweltering skin and you sigh softly as relief floods in like the tide, That’s a good girl. Just breathe now, for me.
Your senses flood with sweet orange as a battle is held in front of your nose, a sure hand helping you sit as pillows seem to rearrange themselves, laying you back at an angle and as you finally reopen your once-tired eyes, the world sets itself right.
A world blooming with light, the chirp of a warbler outside no longer sandpaper on your senses, and that same beatifically smiling woman watching you blink into what has to be finally clear awareness.
There we go, back to the land of the living, the woman’s voice is a bell, a constant press to your senses, pushing back the foggy film threatening to cloud your thoughts all over again.
You manage a smile, a warm nod to mirror your nurse, I’m sorry, before you can be interrupted, I… I’m not sure what exactly happened.
The nursemaid’s eyes merely crinkle, suppressing a smile of quiet amusement, No honey, I don’t suspect you would. Ain’t no reason t’worry ‘bout that now, ‘course. Never any. Now then… You have a mug pressed into your hands, the source of which you can’t quite place but you know enough to sip at it even before you can be told to. It smells of orange again, bright and sunny, tastes of nostalgia and home.
You almost let a tear slip quietly down your cheek, stopped only at the soft brush of a caring thumb. You must miss her somethin’ awful, honeysweet. She loved you a mighty ‘mount, didn’t she…?
Miss her?
You think on the dreams you remember a moment, the shape of your mother’s face, so young in the dim flashbacks of your memories and so full of… life.
A life you still can’t remember her having, not while she raised you up.
I’m realizing I don’t know her very much, you admit, unbidden, unsure suddenly where such honesty came from it isn’t like you to tell your secrets.
You never know your mama, not the way you think you do. They always got secrets t’keep, from you an’ for you. S’what mamas do, to protect their babies. Something about those words sits in you. Weighs on you, embeds into your heart like nails in the wall. The friction of realization.
The ache might have pushed you to cry again, to finally let out that deluge of pain and sorrow and loneliness you buried, just like she did. Ain’t got no reason t’cry, cuz I ain’t got no one t’care, but the hand at your cheek is warm and familiar and when you look at your nursemaid you see her again, hale and hearty as you wish you could immortalize her all over again.
It’s when she opens her mouth and the warbler outside turns from a song to a crow that you bolt upright proper.
Dreams in dreams.
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It was afternoon when the fever broke.
Afternoon, faded into a brick-grey dawn, the sound of a crowing rooster cutting through any words you might have heard the last vestiges of your sleeping mind say, and you…
You’re not sure if any of that was real.
Hell, you’re not sure any of this is real.
The bedsheets are… fine.
Unaffected. There’s no stink of sweat and sickness on them like you might have imagined from a fever so bitter it had you imagining your own mother’s memories and a nursemaid bearing her reborn visage, had you tasting sunshine tea and feeling bruises you couldn’t even see. No sign of…
No sign of the other dream too, the one you refuse to dwell on lest it heat your cheeks and something else entirely.
Nothing.
You almost expect to feel sore as you push aside the covers and let yourself rise from bed, listening to the house come alive around you. Someone hollers for eggs, someone calls back, Aunt Estus’s opera-singer voice calls for quiet or Ye’ll wake yer pa up!
Pa, whoever that is to the chastened down below, doesn’t appear awake to respond. And you, who expected aching between your thighs and the unsettling slick of the-thing-you-don’t-want-to-think-about, are both delighted and confused to feel neither.
Of all the strange realizations you have faced until this moment, somehow this — the realization of nothing at all — is the most welcome.
You dress, watching yourself in the vanity mirror and toying with the empty space where the bruises you were sure you would find were supposed to be, before picking up your necklace and breathing in deep. Never take it off again, never never never and you don’t know where that sort of knowledge comes from, but you know enough to listen to it.
Enough to clasp it around your neck, let the stone sit heavy at your collar, let it almost thrum, as if a heart had suddenly begun to beat to life within that carbonized gem. Heavy. Safe. Protective.
You ought to have minded your mother a bit more often, you remember. Ought to have paid attention to the warnings the late woman-who-was-once-Eliza-Anne-Tucker had always given you. Don’t go into the woods, don’t go into the dark, don’t listen to the call of the void.
Some lessons, apparently, need to be hard-learned.
You’re learning them now, as you stare at the door to the hall and steel yourself to face the new day before you.
Open doors are portals, you know from your mother’s warnings, as you step forth from the bedroom and into the hall.
And come face to face with a grinning shadow Sergeant Barnes, nonchalant against the wall, feet from where you’d locked yourself in for the night before, eyes bright and full of knowing.
Morning, kitten. Sleep well? Not too hot?
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seadem-on · 3 years
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“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied”.
- the Gospel of Luke, 6:20-21
Your probably too long to read, incomplete and obscure introduction to the themes of loneliness and forgiveness in the Good, the Bad and the Ugly (including religious references).
Image there just for cuteness. Let’s go!
1) Loneliness
Tuco is a tragically lonely character. The layers on which this loneliness is played out are multiple. Not only he is cast away from his family - having deserted it - and morally from religion - as his priest brother points out he has done nothing “outside evil” - and from the law-ruled society - being Tuco a literal outlaw, with a long rap sheet to testify for it - but also he is spiritually outside of God’s grace - “while I wait for the Lord to remember me” he says to his brother Pablo.
He does seek out company - he tries to reintroduce himself in his family at the monastery, when he meets his brother again after 9 years. The scene with his brother draws a parallel between Tuco and the “Prodigal son” of Jesus’ parable, who left his family for a life of sin. His angered brother Pablo cannot understand the reason why he came to visit and underlines the evil he has done. The scene does not only show the derangedness of traditional familial relations; it also expresses a strong anticlerical statement showing how far the Church is from putting into practice the original spirit of brotherly love and solidarity.
He has no one on his side. No God - when Tuco says that God is on his side something happens that contradicts his statement. No brother - being rejected by Pablo. No friend - being betrayed by Blondie at the beginning of their partnership.
The symbol of loneliness and lack of human connection is the desert. The torture of Blondie at the hands of Tuco takes place in the desert. The film itself begins with a long shot of a desert landscape which is immediately filled by a gigantic close-up on the face of a killer. In this desert we are immediately welcomed by a threatening figure: it is really the only kind of humanity that can be found there - ruthless and keen to murder.
Tuco is deeply violent too. He is a murderer, a torturer, a thief, a criminal. He is the lowest a man can get. And he is fully aware of his own nature. The image of the dog wandering at the beginning of the film in the ghost town embodies the way Tuco moves in the world - belonging to none, hungry, constantly threatened, constantly looking for company and food. He is in fact chased by the afore mentioned killer but manages to escape.
Though it is never stated outright, Tuco’s real quest is to find a friend. But in the kind of world painted by Leone “friend” is someone who can potentially turn on you. A danger. Society (food sharing, family) is embued with violence and threats. One has to put up a facade to hide their weakness and survive.
But this desire is persistent in Tuco. Through his lies he states it to Blondie: he needs to know that “even for a tramp like him there is always a bowl of soup”. He needs to know that there is someone out there that can fulfill this hunger for company. Someone who does not point out his sins like his brother does. Someone who loves him for who he is - a tramp, a criminal, a bastard, a sinner.
2) Presence
“Were you gonna die alone?”
Is there anything more absurd than loving your enemy? After all that Tuco has done to him, Blondie - the archetypal rebel - makes a disruptive gesture. He kindly offers Tuco the cigar passing it from his mouth thus symbolically offering himself.
The cigar is a part of Blondie, as we cannot imagine his character without it. Furthermore he is literally taking it from his mouth, as if sharing with Tuco a part of himself.
The parallel with the wafer of the eucharist is evident as the gesture - and its orality - symbolically represents union and community. From this moment on Blondie and Tuco form a partnership which is hard to break - that draws them back together when they are apart - a kind of connection that does not entail money. Furthermore, the wafer in the eucharist is the body of Christ - offered “to wash away humanity’s sins”. This meaning is carried out to the end of the film. “He who eats the body of Christ does not die”.
Blondie reaffirms his offering himself multiple times. When he reunites with Tuco, Blondie tells him to kill Angel Eyes and his henchmen, and then joins him in the fight, asking him mockingly “were you gonna die alone?”. He makes it clear he is on Tuco’s side, and actively supports him.
Finally during the last showdown Blondie offers him protection - right when Tuco is at his weakest. Blondie’s gaze and nod in his direction calm and steady Tuco.
This goes to close Tuco’s quest to find a friend; a competitor, a rival, and enemy who also is on his side when needed.
Blondie’s actions are aimed at mending the relationship with Tuco with forgiveness and love - making Blondie the bearer of a “love thy enemy” message. And this is clearer if we look at the parallels between Blondie and Christ: he is tortured, (almost) dies and comes back to life, loves the one who hurt him, and protects him (see citation at the beginning of the post).
Blondie is even seen occupying the same position as a statue of Christ - see image below.
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By this I do not mean he is painted as a superior being - actually it is the opposite. I mean more simply that as a character he carries a worldview embued with forgiveness, kindness, and love. He still is a criminal - but he is capable to feel tenderness despite his violent actions. Both he and Tuco show this “duplicity”, or ambiguousness. Moreover, in the film he and Tuco switch roles at different times - sometimes Blondie embodies Christ, as the “innocent” victim, whereas at the end Tuco takes on the position of Christ (and of course to they respectively embody Judas too, betraying each other for gold). That goes to show how thin the line is between victim and perpetrator, how there is both good and bad in our our nature.
Looking at the symbolicism again, Angel Eyes (whose name is originally Sentenza) embodies judgement, which opposes forgiveness. Tuco can finally escape judgement and death thanks to the presence and forgiveness of Blondie.
Also ultimately it is not Blondie who acts alone and saves Tuco. He lets Tuco take his decision. He lets Tuco make the choice to shoot first - choice which is possible since Tuco trusts that Blondie has his back. Tuco is freeing himself from the violence ridden world choosing partnership, trusting another person.
The most absurd thing of it all is that Blondie - the unbound rebel, the embodiment of individualistic self interest, and most of all the victim of Tuco’s torture - actively chooses to be by his side. This choice is disruptive in many ways. First, it is an act of tenderness in a world ruled by violence. Secondly, their partnership allows Tuco to find a haven out of the systems of religion, law and society that have excluded him. And ultimately it saves Tuco from death as a form of punishment for his crimes (forgiveness vs. Judgement).
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aces-to-apples · 3 years
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Your Reputation Precedes You
A response to “On Fandom Racism (and That Conlang People Are Talking About)” because lmao that cowardly bitch just hates getting feedback from people that she can’t then harass into oblivion
i.e. God I Wish I Could Use The Tag Fandom Wank Without The Titty Police Nerfing My Post
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To be frank, I'm not here because I think you or any of your little cronies are going to change your minds. If the 'name' wasn't a giveaway, your group of ~likeminded individuals~ have quite the reputation for espousing ableist, antisemitic, and, yes, racist views under wafer-thin the veneer of "calling out racism." I think we both know that what you're actually doing is using the relative anonymity of the internet and progressive language to abuse, harass, and bully fans that you personally disagree with. You and your group are toxic, hateful, and utterly pathetic, using many peoples' genuine desire to avoid accidentally causing harm and twisting it into this horrid parade of submissiveness to You, The One And Only Arbiter Of Truth And Justice In Fandom. Never mind that you have derided autistic people as lacking compassion and empathy, that you've used racist colonizer dogwhistles to describe a fictional culture based heavily on real live Maori culture, that you've mocked the idea of characters having PTSD, or that vital mental health services are anything more than "talking about your feelings with friends uwu." Let's just ignore that you have ridiculed the idea of adults in positions of power exerting that power over children in harmful and abusive ways, that creating transformative fan-content that doesn't adhere to the spirit of canon or wishes of the original author garners derision and hatefulness from you, and that you've used classic abuser tactics in order to gaslight people in your orbit into behaving more submissively towards you in order to avoid more verbal abuse.
Let's toss all of that crucial context aside in favor of only what you've written here.
What you've written here is nearly 3,000 entire words based on, at best—though, admittedly, based on your previous behavior, I am actually not willing to extend to you an iota of good faith—fallacious reasoning. You posit that a constructed language, to be used by a fictional religious group located in an entirely different galaxy than our own, is othering, racist in general, and anti-Asian specifically. This appears based in several suppositions, the first being that a language unknown by the reader will, by nature, cause the reader to feel alienated from the characters and therefore less sympathetic, empathetic, and caring towards the characters. That idea is patently ridiculous and, I believe, says far more about your ability to connect to a character speaking an unfamiliar language than any kind of overarching truth about media and the human condition. New things are interesting; new things are fun; the human brain is wired from birth to be fascinated with new things, to want to take them apart, find out how they work, and enjoy both the process and the results.
The second supposition this fallacy is based upon appears to be that to move away from the blatant Orientalism of Star Wars is inherently anti-Asian. While I find it... frankly, a little bit sad that you cling so viciously to the Orientalist, appropriative roots of Star Wars as some form of genuine representation, that's really none of my business. If you feel that a Muslim-coded character bombing a temple and becoming a terrorist and a Sith, a white woman wearing Mongolian wedding garb, a species of decadent slug-like gangsters smoking out of hookahs and keeping attractive young women chained at their feet (as it were), a species of greedy money-grubbers with exaggerated features and offensively stereotypical "Asian" accents, and an indigenous people wearing modesty garb based on the Bedu people and treated by most characters as well as the narrative as mindless animals deserving of murder and genocide are appropriate representation of the many, varied, and beautiful cultures around the world upon which they were "based," then that is very much your business. Until you pull shit like this. Until you accuse other fans, who wish to move away from such offensive coding and stereotypes, of erasing Asian culture from Star Wars. Then it becomes everyone's business, especially when you are targeting a loving and enthusiastic group of fans who are pouring their hearts and souls into creating an inventive and non-appropriative alternative to canon.
Which leads into the third supposition, that a patently racist, misogynistic white man in the 1970s, and then again in the 1990s, intended his universe to be an accurate and respectful portrayal of the various cultures he stole from. I understand that for your group of toxic bullies, the term "Death of the Author" holds no real meaning, but the simple fact of the matter is that George Lucas based his white-centered space adventure on Samurai movies while removing the cultural context that gave them any meaning, because he liked the idea of swords and noble warriors in space. He based the Force and the Jedi Order on belief systems such as Taoism and Buddhism, but only on the surface, without putting any real effort into into portraying them earnestly or accurately. He consistently disrespected both characters of color and characters coded to be a certain race, ethnicity, culture, or religion, and likewise disrespected and stole from the cultures upon which he based them. He was, and continues to be, a racist white man who wrote a racist story. His universe has Orientalism baked into its every facet, and the idea that fans who wish to move away from this and interrogate and transform the text into something better than what it is are racist is not only laughable, but incredibly disingenuous and insidious.
As I said, I am not writing this to change your mind, because I truly believe that you already know that "cOnLaNgS aRe RaCiSt" is a ridiculous statement. The way you've comported yourself in fandom spaces thus far has shown to me that you are nothing more than a bully who knows that the anti-racist movement in fandom can be co-opted for your benefit. If you tout your Asian heritage and use the right language, make the "right" accusations and take advantage of white guilt and white ignorance, you can have dozens of people falling at your feet, begging for forgiveness, for absolution. And I think that gives you a thrill. So, no, none of this will change your mind because none of this is genuinely about racism—it's about power, it's about control, it's about fandom being the only space where you have some.
So I'm writing this for the creators of this wonderful conlang, which has been crafted by multiple people including people of color, who don't deserve this nonsensical vitriol, and for the fans reading this manipulative hate-fest, wondering if they really are Evil Racists because they don't participate in fandom the way you think they should.
Here it is: fandom has a lot of racism, antisemitism, misogyny, queerphobia, ableism, etc. baked into it. Unfortunately, such is the nature of living and growing up in societies and cultures that have the same. The important thing is to independently educate yourself on those issues and think critically about them—not "think critically" as in "to criticize" them, but to analyze, evaluate, pick apart, examine, and reconstruct them again in order to come to a well thought-out conclusion. Read this well-articulated attack on a group of fans who have always welcomed feedback and participation, are open about their backgrounds, their strengths and weaknesses, and wonder who is actually being genuine.
Is it the open and enthusiastic group who ask for the participation of others in this labor of love? Or is it the ringleader of a group of well-known bullies who have manipulated, gaslit, and then subsequently love-bomb people who did not simply roll over at the slightest hint of dominance? The ones who spent hours upon hours tearing apart, mocking, deriding, and falsely accusing authors of fanworks and metatextual works of various bigotries and -isms, knowing that those evaluations were spurious and meant only to cause harm, not genuine examinations of the works themselves or even presumed authorial intent. The ones who made their own, quote-unquote, community so negative and toxic that even after the departure of a large portion of them, including this author in particular, that community still has a reputation for being hateful, toxic, and full of mean-spirited harassers who will never look critically about their own behavior but only ever point fingers at others. The ones who are so very determined to cause misery wherever they go that as soon as their usual victims are no longer immediately available, they will turn on each other at the slightest hint of weakness.
This entire piece of (fan)work is misinformed at the most generous, disingenuous at the most objective, and downright spiteful when we get right into it. The creators of Dai Bendu, along with various other works, series, and fan events that these people personally dislike, have been targeted because it is so much easier to harass, bully, and use progressive language as a weapon against them, than it is to put any effort into making fandom spaces more informed, more positive, more respectful.
As someone rather eloquently put it, community is not a fucking spectator sport. You want a better community, you gotta work at it. And conversely, what you put into your community is what you'll get out of it. This author and their friends have put a lot of hate into their communities, and now they're toxic cesspools that people stay well away from, for fear of contracting some terrible form of harassment poisoning.
Congrats, Ri, you've gotten just what you wanted: adoring crowds listening to you spout your absolutely heinous personal views purely to live out some kind of power fantasy, and the rest of us staying well away, because fuck knows nothing kind, helpful, or in good faith has ever come from Virdant or her echo-chamber of petty, spiteful assholes.
No love, bad night.
P.S. Everyone actually in the Dai Bendu server knows your ass got kicked because you didn’t say shit for a full thirty days and ignored the announcement that inactive members would be culled. You ain’t cute pretending like it’s because you were ~*~Silenced~*~ after ~*~Valiantly~*~ attempting to call out racism. We see you.
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Sweet Nothings (2/2) Rex x Reader
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A/N: Thank you guys so much for all of the support so far. I really cannot express how happy I am with how well received this has been. You guys are so nice and I am so glad that you like it. Enjoy!
Tags: @captainrexisboo @bad-batch-of-fics @mackstrut @jyvorakal @danger-xylophones @dissapointingpancake​
Length: ~1500 words
Warnings: none :) just pure fluff again
Part One
You had just gotten back from picking up the food from Rex’s favorite place when your communicator beeped.
 Just landed. Have to give a mission report but should be there in about two hours. ~ Rex
 You smiled and set everything down on the table. You cleaned up the rest of your apartment that you had not been able to the night before and set out everything that you had prepared for Rex. A pile of holofilms on the table by the couch and a sea of blankets strewn across the couch itself. When you were done with that, you made sure that everything in the refresher was clean so that Rex could take a nice shower when he got home. You set out towels that you had just washed and the soft, blue pajamas that you had bought him when he first started staying the night at your apartment. Once you had done all of that, you looked at the crono on the wall and saw that Rex should be there in about twenty minutes.
You brought the food from the table into the kitchen and began to reheat it. After you had done that, you started making a pot of caf, knowing that he would probably be tired. You were humming to the background music that you had on while you were working when you heard your front door woosh open. You looked over and saw Rex standing there with his helmet in his right hand and his bag in the left, a small smile on his face as he looked at you.
 “Rex!” You ran at him and he dropped both of his things as you jumped into his arms. Wrapping your arms around his neck and legs around his midsection, you buried your face in his neck. You both held onto each other as tightly as you could, both not wanting to ever let the other go.
 “I missed you,” he said gently as he pressed a kiss to the side of your head. You both stayed like that for a while. Not saying anything. Just holding on to each other like it was the last thing you would ever do.
 You finally stepped down onto the floor and brought your hands to either side of his face, placing your foreheads together. “I missed you too,” you whispered as your thumb rubbed his cheek. You pulled back and held his face while you looked at him.
 He looked tired and worn, dirt still covering his face and armor. You could tell that he was exhausted, but he was relieved to finally be home. As you looked over him, you could see that he didn’t have any kind of signs of injury and you breathed a sigh of relief. He gave you a small, loving smile and brought his hands up to yours. He pulled them to his lips and kissed both of them before letting them rest between the two of you.
 “Everything in the refresher is ready if you want to shower before eating,” you said tenderly looking up at his beautiful brown eyes.
 He looked down at you and sighed. “That would be amazing.”
 You let go of his hands and started helping him take off his armor and set it in its place by the door. Once all of it was off, you told him to go relax and take all of the time that he needed while you put everything away.
 After he had showered and you both had eaten, you sat cuddled together on the couch drinking caf under a blanket, a holofilm playing quietly as you listened to each other’s soft breathing.
 “Oh! I almost forgot!” You excitedly got up from the couch, letting go of his hand as you made your way toward the kitchen. “I have a surprise for you!”
 “A surprise?” He watched you leave and brought his hand up to the back of his neck. “Cyare, you’ve already done so much for me tonight. You didn’t have to you know.” He looked at you as you returned with your hands behind you back. A gentle, loving smile on his face as he looked at you with adoration.
 “I know, I know. I just wanted to do something special for my amazing Captain. Besides, I thought you could use a pick-me-up when you got back.” You smiled and brought the bag of Idelle wafers out from behind your back as you sat back down next to him.
 He looked down and his eyes widened. “Are those?”
 “Yes,” you beamed as your smile widened. “I remember you saying how much you liked them on our first date. I’ve been looking for them since then but wasn’t able to find them. It was a stroke of pure luck that someone from Sesid just moved to Coruscant and just happened to set up a booth in my path home from work.”
 Rex kept silently looking down at the small bag in your hands. His face staying in the same shocked state as before. He slowly reached out and picked up the bag and looked at it. He blinked a few times as he looked it over, his face unreadable.
 “Rex? Are you ok?” You were starting to get worried. “Are they not the right kind? I tried describing the ones you told me about to the man who owned the shop but—”
 Rex lurched forward and pulled you into a deep kiss. You gasped in surprise but quickly smiled into it. Rex brought his hand up to hold your face and pulled away. He brought your forehead to his and deeply breathed in as he smiled. “I love you so much Y/N.”
 You smiled and gave him a quick peck on the lips before returning to the keldabe kiss. “I love you too Rex.” You pulled back and pressed your face into his chest and hugged him tightly. “Welcome home.”
 *******************************************************************************************
 As you were snuggled together, Rex was lightly tracing shapes onto your arm as he slowly snacked on the sweet cookies that you had given him. You took a deep breath and scooted deeper into his arms. You had both been absent mindedly watching the old holofilms that played while you just enjoyed being back in each other’s arms. After a while, Rex’s breathing had evened out and you thought that he had fallen asleep. You gently started pulling the blanket overtop both of you, and just as you were about to turn off the holofilm, you heard him lightly say your name.
 “Do you remember the day we met?”
 You turned slightly so that you could see his face. He was looking down at you with heavy and tired eyes and a face with nothing on it but admiration. His small grin making your chest bloom with affection.
 You smiled back at him. “How could I forget?”
 “I walked into the hangar to see you yelling at General Skywalker with a screwdriver in your hand pointed at his face. You were saying something about not fixing his Starfighter anymore if he was just going to keep ‘modifying’ it and undoing all of your work.” Rex softly chuckled as he looked back on the memory.
 “Ha. Yeah… When you walked up and asked if there was a problem, I turned the screwdriver on you and snapped at you to control your Jedi.” You smiled. “Then you took your helmet off and I could barely form a sentence.”
 Rex chuckled again and pulled you closer. “You weren’t the only one you know. I was half tempted to not say anything because of how much I could feel my face heating up when I first saw you. Hell, if I had known that the mechanics who worked on the 501st’s ships would be so gorgeous, I would have had Skywalker intentionally crash his so that I could come see you.”
 You scoffed. “Oh, come on, doesn’t he already do that?” You stretched up to place a small kiss on his cheek as you shifted to lying on his stomach with your head on his chest. “But,” you said with a mischievous smile, “I can’t say that I would have minded all that much if you did. How else would I have met you?”
 Rex placed a kiss on the top of your head. “What did I do to deserve you?” He moved his hand to your back and started slowly tracing shapes on it through your shirt. He chuckled, “Guess we owe a thanks to General Skywalker for being reckless enough for you to call him to the hangar in person to yell at him.” As Rex spoke his voice got deeper and his eyes began to drift shut, a slight smile still present on his face.
 “Yeah,” you breathed out. “I guess we do.” You sat there for a while just watching as Rex’s body began to relax and his breathing began to even out. You carefully placed a kiss to his chin and settled into his chest as you pulled the blanket completely over the two of you. “Goodnight Rex.” You smiled as you closed your eyes. “I love you.”
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queenmarytudor · 3 years
Text
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Another Mary with dark hair... even when both of her parents are redheads in this version...
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also, Mary didn’t even attend the Field of the Cloth of Gold!
She was in England with a large group of lords and ladies, entertaining council members and French visitors: 
“They have sundry times visited the Princess, who is in good health, increasing in wit and virtue as in years. [...] After dinner, as tide [was commodious] for them, they being well accompanied by [the lord Barnes], lord Darcy and other, visited the Princess at Richmond. There were with her divers lords spiritual and temporal; and in the Presence chamber, besides the lady governess (countess of Salisbury) and her other gentlewomen, the duchess of Norfolk, her three daughters, the lady [Margaret], wife to the lord Herbert, countess of Worcester, the ladies Grey and Neville, the lord John's wife, and others. She welcomed the French gentlemen with most goodly countenance, proper communication, and pleasant pastime in playing at the virginals, that they greatly marvelled and rejoiced the same, her young and tender age considered. [...]  After communication had, goodly cheer was made unto them... strawberries, wafers, wine and hippocras in plenty.”
- The Lords of the Council to Henry VIII and Wolsey, 2nd July 1520
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Text
Seven Devils
Warnings: Catholic convent, Priests gone wild
AO3
Day 1
You looked over the wasteland that was now the world.
This was all your fault. You had caused this. You blamed yourself.
You thought back at what had led to this.
7 days.
It had taken 7 days for your curiosity to cause the end of the world.
“Why do you cry for the world? You gave into the temptation. The blood of 7 billion people is on your hands angel,” the blond man taunted.
You ignored him and continued to observe the landscape in front of you, thinking back to that week last summer.
////
When the sisters at your catholic school had announced that they would take a few girls to mainland Europe to spend a summer in a convent, you scoffed at the idea and threw away the letter. Turns out your parents get emails and had signed you up; you were not very happy about that decision.
So here you were, in the middle of fuckass nowhere, standing outside the Convent of Saint Y/N. The entire bus journey here was spent with your friends laughing at the fact you shared a name with this saint. As Sister Ruth was debriefing you all on behaviour standards and things of the sort, you turned to your friend Claire, “Actually, if I was a saint this is exactly what I’d want my convent to look like, it’s kinda sexy.”
“I hope the inside is sexier, I love a bit of stained glass,” Claire replied.
Sister Ruth interrupted your conversation, “Miss Y/N and Miss Claire! I can hear you both giggling while I’m giving you important instructions. The pair of you better behave yourselves, I do NOT want a repeat of Lourdes!”
The pair of you bit back a giggle as you remember the fun you both had last year, tormenting Sister Ruth and getting drunk when you shouldn’t have been. “good times man,” Claire said, as you made your way inside.
The interior of the convent was just as remarkable as the outside. High arches, colourful stained glass and columns carved with intricate patterns. You were greeted by the Mother Superior of the Convent. “Good afternoon ladies, I’m Sister Frances and welcome to the Convent of Saint Y/N. We have a lot of activities for you to get involved in this summer. For now, I’ll take you through to your rooms.”
You all followed quietly, taking in your surroundings. As you walked through the cloisters, you noticed a tree in the centre of the courtyard. It seemed to be growing both apples and pomegranates, as a gardener yourself, you knew it was impossible.
Mother Superior stopped at the tree, “Girls I must tell you about this tree and its importance. This tree is one of St. Y/Ns miracles. It somehow grows both pomegranates and apples. The tree was the only thing that remained after the great fire, and St. Y/Ns martyred body was found underneath it. It has been untouched since. Eating the fruit from this tree is forbidden, it is poisonous, and I fear we may not get you help in time; we do not want any deaths here.”
How ironic, forbidden fruit in a convent.
As you walked towards the dorms, you swore you heard a heartbeat coming from the tree. As if it were alive, or something was trying to break out.
The first day had left you with a strange feeling, as if you had been here before and were forgetting something. Your deja-vu had never been this bad before. You closed your eyes and tried to sleep, the sound of a heartbeat lulling you to sleep.
////
Sister Maria Y/N did not like change. She hated it. All the worst things in her life happened because of change.
Her mother got married and everything changed for the worst; her stepfather being a more pig than man.
Her mother died and everything changed; her stepfather accused her of being a witch, forcing Y/N to flee and seek refuge in the convent, becoming a nun to earn her keep.
This wasn’t her plan in life. But peasant girls didn’t have many options. Sisterhood was better than being married young and constantly with child. She learned to read and write, something the women in her family never did. She would spend the rest of her life without the company of a man, but she was never too fussed, no one was worth changing her rigid routine for.
The biggest and worst change of Sister Y/Ns life would come in the form of the new Monseigneur. Father Thomas had died of old age, the man had dedicated his life to God, and it was finally time for him to reap his rewards in the afterlife. Everyone was curious as to who would take over. Father Thomas had had the job for a long time.  
The new Monseigneur came in the form of Father Michael Langdon. Angelic in both name and appearance. He was the total opposite to Father Thomas. Michael was a lot younger and a lot more guarded. He wasn’t one for community work; you wouldn’t see him give direct aid to the poor nor would he be seen in the community gardens that were ran by the convent. He was only ever seen with the sick to give them their final rites, never to pray for the living. Father Thomas took his vow of poverty seriously, the man died with very little to his name, only the clothes on his back and the rosary in his hand. Michael’s hands however, were adorned with jewels that glimmered in the church candlelight. He was draped in fineries that were far too expensive for a man of the cloth.
She remembered her first sermon with him. His honey like voice had the room in a trance. The way he moved his hands to illustrate his points was almost sinful, as if he was the conductor and the parishioners were just instruments for him to play. People held on to every word that came out of his mouth. Church attendance had never been that high.
There was something off about him. Sister Y/N didn’t like the way he looked at her; he always seemed to be watching her. His fingers lingered far too long when he placed the communion wafer on her tongue. He loomed over her during her daily prayers, his exotic perfume from the east almost distracting her from her duty.
She thought she figured out what type of man he was when she saw the widow leave his quarters one night. Her dishevelled state indicating what had gone on. Sister Y/N wondered who her children were with. Father Langdon made eye contact with Sister Y/N as he was shutting the door. He brought his finger to his lips in a ‘sush’ motion and winked, smirking at her. She was at a loss for words, standing there wide eyed as he clicked the door shut. She put her head down and made her way to the chapel, hoping that God would give an answer to the question she didn’t know she was asking. But Sister Y/N was naïve, God had abandoned her long ago. She had devoted herself to an entity that did not care for her. The prayers of the righteous would not save her from the fate that was to come. Sister Y/N did not know this that night, but Father Langdon was a worse man that she thought he was.
Next>>>
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brucefromfamilyguy · 3 years
Note
Are you a mortician?
Bruce is a major recurring character on Family Guy, known for his various jobs.
Bruce rarely appeared at all in the first three seasons of the show, but has become a recurring character since the show returned from cancellation.
He first appeared as the clerk of a horror novelty shop in "Chitty Chitty Death Bang". In "The Cleveland-Loretta Quagmire", he teaches a CPR course at the Quahog Community Center. His name was first revealed when he appeared as a member of the school board committee of James Woods Regional High School in "No Chris Left Behind". This position was implied when he heard the name change proposal to Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial High School sought by Shauna Parks and Brian Griffin in "Peter's Got Woods".
He appear as a Tetris piece in "Prick Up Your Ears" and as a medium in "Petergeist". He worked for Exotic Entertainment.
In "Road to the Multiverse", he performs "It’s A Wonderful Day for Pie" as a parody of Tinker Bell in the Disney-style universe.
He is Peter Griffin's lawyer for his trial in the accused murder of his wife Lois in "Stewie Kills Lois". He calls Jeffrey about Stewie in "Lois Kills Stewie", and about Peter's mustache in "McStroke".
In "Boys Do Cry", he offers communion wafers with wine. He explicitly warns Stewie not to drink the wine.
In "Baby Not On Board", he is a masseuse.
He appeared at O.J. Simpson's welcome party in "The Juice Is Loose", and joins the mob that chases him out of town.
In "Peter's Two Dads", he is the therapist who helps Peter realize that Francis Griffin is not his biological father.
In "The Splendid Source", it is revealed that he works at the bowling alley, selling rental shoes. He is one of the people to whom the dirty joke is traced. It s revealed he also has a pet rabbit named Steven. 
In "Tales of a Third Grade Nothing", he seems to be the only one who enjoyed the performance of "Guys & Dolls". He also enjoys ginger ale.
He is the announcer of Lois Griffin's boxing match against Deirdre Jackson in "Baby, You Knock Me Out".
He is an alcoholic, participating in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings Peter attends in "Friends of Peter G".
Bruce can be seen as Stewie rides through town under Brian's car in "Family Guy Viewer Mail No. 2".
The uncensored version of "Ratings Guy" includes a scene of Peter getting a haircut from Bruce, who shaves a misshapen, deformed penis into the back of his head. When Peter questions it, Bruce runs out crying, noting that some people have had an accident.
In the courtroom scene in "The Simpsons Guy", the openly gay Bruce is seated next to the closeted gay Waylon Smithers.
Throughout the series, Mike Henry has given certain anthropomorphic creatures such as Jaws and a Xenomorph the same voice as he's given Bruce.
Bruce is revealed to be 52 in "Underage Peter", having told Jeffrey that he was 39.
In "Married...With Cancer", Bruce officiates Brian's wedding and remarks that it's another wedding he has to watch. He makes his intentions of marriage known to Jeffrey who nervously looks away.
Bruce and the Kool-Aid Man swap bodies in "Switch the Flip". He also has a crowd scene cameo in "No Giggity, No Doubt".
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skgway · 4 years
Text
1824 Sept., Mon. 13
7 50/60
1 35/60
Breakfast at 9 – Mrs. Mackenzie came and sat with me 1/2 hour. She is in doubt whether to stay here or not. Seemed to ask my advice and being inclined to stay if her father is pretty well. I would not speak decidedly, but was evidently in favour of her staying. She has had much unhappiness. Married against her choice from convenience [to] a man thirty years older than herself who made her unhappy, tho she always tried to do her duty. Her daughter cleverer than she is, and has rather the upper hand it seems. Mrs. Mackenzie’s being so communicative rather struck me – 
Mrs. Mackenzie gave me a ticket given to her by Mr. Brande that will always admit me to the Jardin des Plantes – Miss Mackenzie, too, came in and sat with me a few minutes – On this account, it was 12 before I had read over my 3 letters finished last night, and had no time to make any extracts from them – They must be in the general post office, Rue J.J. Rousseau, by 2 or could not be taken in today and there being no English post tomorrow must have waited till Wednesday. 
My letter to my aunt (began on Wednesday, 3 pages, the ends, and under the turn-down, giving an account of my journey, my being very comfortable here, of Madame de B– [Boyve]’s being handsome – Of our sitting in the Tuileries gardens, and of the Champs Elysées, and of the fête at St. Germain. Gave an  account of the shawls worn and their prices – excerpt this – 
My letter to M– [Mariana] on the same subjects only giving a more regular account, rather journalwise, and adding  short answers to M– [Mariana]’s last letter – Merely said on the subject of Mrs. H. S. B– [Belcombe]’s management of the going-to-York business, I did not understand it, but she and Steph had my best wishes – 
Entreated M– [Mariana] not to pother herself about Petergate money matters – Mrs. B– [Belcombe] knew what she was, and would take care of the girls – I did not think Dr. B– [Belcombe]’s practice could now be sold for much – He was not likely to be well enough to introduce anyone – but Steph’s name and kinship would serve him – 
Affectionate to 𝛑 [Mariana], kind about Miss Pattison, but much more the former to Miss Maclean. Very much  so to her, tho anybody might see it. Perhaps she herself may muse over a line or two in the first page – Told both my aunt and M– [Mariana] and Miss Maclean of my having Madame Galvani, that she alone was worth coming to Paris for; and all my time – would be taken up in endeavoring to gain the French language – 
My letter to Miss Maclean began at Shibden Wednesday 18 August, resumed and finished yesterday – Foolscap sheet 3 pp [pages long ends and under the turn-down – Very small and short – Treated of my journey being comfortable here, the Tuileries, Champs Elysées, fête of St. Germain etc. etc. very briefly – All the rest bavardage amical – 
Went out at 12 1/4 (took Cordingly with me). Direct to the general post-office in the rue J.J. Rousseau – Put in my letter to my aunt (Shibden) 22 sols and to “Mrs. Lawton Lawton hall etc. 22 sols and to “Miss Maclean of Coll Tobermory N[orth] B[ritain] (Ecosse)” 28 sols, because letters here are paid for according to their weight, and I had sealed this letter and wafered the 2 others – Wafers always used here because lighter than sealing wax, and for the same reason the French choose thin writing paper – 
Saw the man who took my letters, and those of the crowd standing round the wire grating of his bureau, weigh each letter in a pair of scales hanging close to him – From the Post Office walked thro’ the Halle au blés, and the church of St. Eustache for Cordingly to see them – Then along the Rue de Grenelle direct thro’ the palace of the Louvre to the Pont des Arts – 
Crossed the Pont Neuf, and returned over the Pont Royal thro’ the Tuileries gardens and got home at 2 – The porter gave me a letter, charged only 5 sols (brought by some private conveyance – Sent thro’ our ambassador from Miss Maclean (Tobermorey)
Oh! That I had had it before I went out – On coming upstairs to Mrs. Mackenzie to ask what they were going to do, found them going to the Louvre to try to see the exhibition there of the new (Modern) pictures – Done by living, and I believe, all French artists; for the King’s death was hourly expected, and all public places would be closed for 6 weeks – 
His majesty had taken leave of his family, and received extreme unction – The Garde du Corps to be changed – Monsieur the next King will go to St. Cloud and there will be no fête there – What a stupid place, says everyone with one accord, will Paris be! 
Away we went to the Louvre – Spent already, sans aucune except, till further orders – Sauntered in the Tuileries Gardens – Got back at 4 – Read my letter from Miss Maclean – Very kind and affectionate – I know not any of her letters that has given me more pleasure – Perhaps the receiving it here, might add to my delight – I shall keep, and read it by way of stimulus, for see the end of the crossing. Breadalbane thought me “almost quite handsome at Esholt” and Miss MacL[ean] evidently likes and admires me. 
Visited by an old admirer, “You once said you thought I would have been happier in the married state, no, no, you are mistaken. Unless with a mind and heart like your own, the married state would have been misery to me. Far happier as I am” – See the bottom of page one – 
And the last end for the following, after desiring a continuation of the extracts from my journal “You know not how I was tormented at home about you. Miss B[elcombe]’s manner of speaking half did this. She only, poor soul, jested. But very little difference of manner in you would have made me dislike you at that time. I believe it was mostly occasioned by a little tincture of jealousy at home” ..... 
Thought I to myself, this lets me into much the Belcombes are no advantage to me. I now really dislike Anne, not tho on her own hearts account, for she is good, but for the disagreeableness of her manners. I would not for worlds be thought a friend of hers. Poor soul. She too was jealous I guess, the style in which she would mention me – 
Breadalbane, by thinking me almost handsome at Esholt, has perhaps got over her prejudices and I may conciliate her perhaps entirely with a little care – She must have some idea of Miss MacL[ean]’s partiality, for on the arrival of my letter she threw it into the room with a “There be happy.” See the fir[s]t page and at the bottom of the second is the more than permission to write Sibella. 
Mrs. Grieves would have been most happy to see me – Miss M[a]cL[ean] inclosed me a letter from her niece Miss Hobart – I should fancy her a nice good hearted fashionable girl. The superior cleverness I have somehow expected would not strike one from her letter. She is in first rate nobility society evidently – I am to burn the letter. 
At the end of the envelopes the following “I certainly do spend a good deal on dress, but if I had all to buy I think I could manage very well. Surely a single woman can live very comfortably upon nine hundred a year, which I understand I have at my disposal. Uncle Sullivan told me before I went to Paris, as worth eighteen thousand pounds and rather more” 
At the 4th page, Miss Hobart’s letter (dated “13th” August), “Now as to your picture, your friend, whose name I forgot, is perfectly welcome to it now. I will with pleasure lend it for a short time, but you may tell her she is much more welcome now than at the horrible time you mention, for if I survive you, I shall not then spare it.” – 
Reading and musing over my letter till near 5, then came the Irish girl and another young person from Madame Romatier to try on my new gown – Not only my stays, but my petticoats ill made (true enough) – French stays would cost 30 francs and upwards – Such calico as my petticoats are made of, so strong and good, not to be got in Paris – The best I could get would be thinner and finer, 5 francs an aune. An aune wide, tho’ this of mine was 1/3 in England yard and ½ wide – it would take 3 or 4 aunes for a petticoat; and the making (at Madame R– [Romatier]’s) would be 5 francs – 
Dinner at 6 – A Mr. Moore who would speak nothing but desperately bad French all the while made his debut at the table – To stay for how long, I know not – Does not dance now in England – Does not like the present style of dancing in England except at Almacks – Rather a would-be-prig – Nothing great, methinks, aborigine and at home – 
Madame de B– [Boyve] would teach me Ecarte, and after a game or 2, set me down to play with Mr. Moore (not for money) and I played with him (the better of the 2 I think) for surely above an hour – In the evening had Monsieur Belleveue; a Swiss Count, a handsome young man; Monsieur Denappe, and Monsieur St. Auban – 
After playing at finding out words and talking to 1 or other (have not sat next Madame de B– [Boyve] these 3 or 4 nights) came up to bed (leaving the party, at 11 35/60 making memoranda of my accounts – Read and mused over Miss McL– [MacLean]’s all which kept me up so late – 
Very fine day – The sun out – Very warm – Fharenheit 69º at 12 3/4 – E [two dots, treading venereal complaint] O [two dots, marking discharge] –
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Text
Puppetry
By Ion Fyr
©2019 Ion Fyr
ISBN: 978-1-7331291-1-4
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means with out explicit permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real or imagined people or events is purely coincidental.
I wish to thank M, K and R for their support.
Published by Jon Rodebaugh
I
Londbridge, Terra, the year 247 of the World Commercial Congress.
The vast and populous city stretched from the coast inland for a great distance, its boundaries clear along the southern rim, where the depopulated agricultural land was a deep green against the grey of the city. Arcologies reached skyward like geometrically formed mountains. They stretched up through the brownish-orange fog, to the bottoms of intermittent, low hanging clouds. The wind off the sea to the west pushed the ground-hugging smog inland, where it flowed over the plastic and concrete housing blocks of the low-slung slums and wards.
Crude, steel rectangular blocks—massive airships—plied unseen lanes in the air. Some were a kilometer long, many were far less than that. They were cargo ships of the air, haulers of raw materials and finished products and everything in between. There were passenger transports and the occasional Corporate-emblazoned Skyship. Among them was a car shaped like a scarab of ancient Kemet.
The car was a low profile, sleek oblong of metal and synthetics. It’s skin was somewhat dark and greener than iridescent and there were no windscreens visible from the exterior. Unlike many, far less expensive vehicles with protruding nacelles, in this case the gravity-repelling Naskovich drives were enclosed in four slightly visible hips, two on the front sides and two on the back, otherwise it was featureless. It settled into the local traffic lanes at a lower altitude as soon as it crossed the perimeter fence separating urban squalor from automated farmland.
Inside was a man, lit only by the glow of dimmed wraparound screens showing the view outside mingled with telemetric data and a map overlay. He was of Mediterranean complexion, tanned by the sun, having thick black hair reaching his collarbone and a matching beard which he unconsciously stroked. He was bare-chested and muscular, and wore linen pants and sandals. It would seem he was ill prepared for the climate of northwestern Europa throughout most of the year.
Connect-device -car6 | Course-plot -new -1605 Attilastrass/178th Ward/Londbridge District -efficient | Velocity -LocalityLegal
Force-thinking, for those with wireless internal drives, was a simple process once one got used to it. It amounted to running code with one’s brain. Preprogrammed commands and related implanted hardware augmentation allowed wireless interaction with the ubiquitous Network. 
Wireless worked effectively to a hundred meters, beyond that without a wired network connection or light-node semaphoric line of sight coms, one was out of luck. The wired part of the network spanned much of Eurasia and the Sint—the subcontinent embedded in the south of Asia, and the northern half of the Farad, the southern continent.
Luc knew he was already connected to the the car, but it didn’t hurt to initiate the connection to “car6” again. 
Change-IdentCert -car6 | New-IdentCert “12hA126334w6”
A little sloppy. More important on the way out. He should have changed the vehicle’s identification before coming into range of the city’s cameras. The slop in the air will do something to obscure their visuals, though. He was going to church.
The Attican Universal Church on Attilastrasse was largely a tourist attraction these days. Once it’s gothic architecture drew supplicants and worshipers from all over Europa. Now, hardly anyone believed the the ancient Neoplatonic version of the gods. Not even in backwater Hellas.
He already missed the white and blue visual textures of Hellas. 
The car chimed warmly at his arrival. Luc slipped his feet into his sandals. Looked first left, then right, and found his holstered pistol. He clipped it to his belt, in the small of his back. He then looked around. He was not a believer, by any means, but him entering an ancient sacred space without a shirt would have horrified his mother. 
Luc didn’t have a shirt. 
Instead, he pulled a barely used leather jacket from an under-seat compartment and slipped his arms into the stiff sleeves, the leather rustling like new. He had worn it once before on a trip north in the winter. He dimly remembered he had a shirt back then, too.
It was black, vat-leather and remained unzipped. It was almost too tight to zip anyway. From a different under-seat compartment, he shifted some detritus and pulled out two loaded magazines for his pistol, slipping these into his pocket. He also found a breather, one that would cover his nose and mouth and allow normal breathing under the toxic haze. For good measure he put on his sunglasses, which formed seal around the edges, protecting his eyes against the air as well. The sun was not even visible at the street level here, but that wasn’t the point.
With a fluid motion the car slowed to landing velocity and the four landing legs unfurled themselves just as the car settled to the ground.
Luc opened the gull-wing door and set foot on the damp pavement outside. Despite the smog-cover, the bright lights did their part in illuminating the street. There were other vehicles parked without regard for orientation or pedestrian traffic. Even beyond the 100 meters of practical visibility, one could still make out the multi-hued urban glow.
Surface traffic on the road had ceased a century ago, at least by passenger-carrying surface vehicles. There was a crunch of debris underfoot, forming heaps in some spots.
He could feel cool air on his chest, along with a slight chemical sting. While standing, the jacket just barely covered his pistol.
Luc scanned the street. There was at least one (albeit damaged) camera to the left, two indeterminate ones to the right. Six vehicles sat on the street, perched on their legs like giant plastic beetles, mostly shit economy rides.
The ancient architecture of the temple, or church, had been damaged considerably during the Wars of Consolidation over two hundred fifty years ago. Sometime after the half-destroyed structure was refurbished and stabilized in an unfortunately clashing architectural style. Its collapsing roof was now supported by cylindrical steel columns and a monstrosity of a replacement wall.
He pulled open the right side of a set of double doors and entered the tall building. Luc’s footsteps, the soft flap of his sandals on the cold stone floor, echoed. The building’s shattered acoustics still reflected the sounds from the left side.
The interior was thick with sandalwood incense, even detectable through his breather, and despite the efforts of the building’s atmosphere scrubbers. There were perhaps a dozen ancient, gilded, life-size bronze statues representing the Olympian gods. Each was enclosed in a plasti-glass cube, to prevent unwanted touching (or theft.)
At the fore of the temple was a massive stone sculpture of Zeus. On the floor in front of the king of the gods was a smoking bowl of some intentionally antiquated looking ceramic. There were only two other individuals in the place, a man and a woman. They were not together. The man crouched close to the incense bowl and was old. He looked Hellic. The woman was younger and was sketching with a stylus on an open scroll, its screen unfurled from its cylindrical shaft, it’s bluish glow reflected off her features.
Luc walked down the center of the building, imagining what it would have looked like when it was built hundreds of years ago. He did not like the aesthetics of mingling late Industrial Age girders with ancient wood ceiling beams. He scowled faintly at the the plasti-glass enclosures. They were eyesores and were smudged by hundreds, maybe thousands of tourists pushing their grubby fingers and noses against them, hoping to gain a better view or wondering if the gilded bronze was actually gold.
He walked toward Aphrodite and stood, admiring the beautifully sculpted figure. He waited.
A few minutes later—late—footsteps approached. Commando boots on the worn marble of the floor, echoing more boldly than his sandals, expressing the strength of her approach.
Luc turned slowly, his right hand on his hip, near the butt of his pistol, more out of paranoid habit than anything else. He knew who he was expecting, and could tell by her stride it was her.
“Lucretius, welcome back.” The girl was exuberant. Pretty, Luc thought. Vandalian emigre, north Farad complexion, from the other side of the Mediterranean. Black hair in two braids, one dyed a glowing pink. Leather head to toe, a jacket longer than the one he wore, matching pants with lots of pockets, boots.
“Hey, Nosrit, I haven’t spoken Standard for three years. Forgive me.” The words were spoken slowly, with concentration on the correct pronunciation. 
“That’s ok. You look the same. Still no shirt. Aren’t you cold?”
“You look...older.” No longer a child. “So, Muskrat tells me there is a problem with some twat in Tanic Park?”
“Yeah, I’m just supposed to give you the contact data.” She slipped him an external, a little black wafer of data, a few millimeters square. Not wireless.
“I will look into this. Tell Muskrat I will contact him.”
Back in the car, Luc wired into the external. Data cascaded through him through the intermediary encrypted wireless node. There was a mafioso wannabe thug pressing his people. 
Tanic Park was a poor community in the shadow of Dogtown Arcology, a mix of peoples from all over, some from outside the WCC. They were too poor to merit protections from MetSec. Londbridge Metropolitan Security was at best a hinderance, if not an outright threat. Only their drones patrolled Tanic, and then only in some areas. Nets strung across streets kept them out of certain others.
In the lawless, refuse-filled streets, an economy developed. In the polished halls of Dogtown Arc people lived in a heaven of sorts. The unaware upper echelons of Londbridge went about their shallow lives oblivious to places like this. Luc was fully aware that arcology life was far from perfect. He just resented their compliant, obedient comfort. 
Here it was far from that polished existence, though from most places in the Park residents could see the looming monolith of the Arc. Automation brought riches to some, but there was no work for the majority of the residents of Tanic Park. No work. No money. Amidst the untold wealth, in the shadow of gilded statues, people starved. And starving, they fell prey to petty thugs with balls and uppity ambitions. 
Marcus Dusselberg was a small time gangster with such ambition. Somehow, he had gotten himself a military grade assault bot, one of those things that were like cement blocks propped on two legs, bristling with guns and sensors. His muscle.
Out of retirement, I guess, Luc thought. Dank Londbridge was not where he wanted to be, but his friends were here. Family.II
Muskrat was a skinny man with a badly shaved head and an unflattering mustache. He had jacks—five of them—but the gossip was that only one of them did anything. The rest were cosmetic. He smelled of booze and cheap cologne, which he used to cover the smell of the booze, as if any of that mattered in the Park. 
The warehouse where they met—the address coming from the data chip—was spartan and bleak. Muskrat’s battered breather was under his chin. Luc kept his on. The air here was shit.
“Mr. Lucretius, thank you for coming,” he began, sniveling.
“What do you want, Muskrat? You call me back here to deal with some shit who you don’t have the balls to fight back against?” Brethmanic Standard was coming back easily.
“Luc, these are your people. They asked me to send for you.”
I did come all of this way. Luc thought, still not sure what he was doing back. He knew he always would have come back to help his people—that wasn’t the problem. What was the problem? What led to Muskrat being left in charge?
“This man threatens the community with a robot?” Knowing the answer. The 1500 kilometer flight was not spent idle. I did some thinking and some research.
“Military. Bought surplus from some Aquacorp off-load.” Muskrat stuttered. 
Who named themselves after extinct animals? Wolf or bear he could see, but Muskrat?
“When I left, Muskrat, I left you in charge. I had faith that you’d look after the community. I know it is hard. I did it myself for years. It’s five fucking blocks, man. What the fuck are you doing? How do you lose that to some petty shit gangster?”
“Mr Lucretius, you didn’t leave us with any weight. We are light. Only boys and girls and old women.” An attempt to swagger. It’s not about being a man or not, not in any literal sense.
Nosrit will be experienced enough in a couple years. She’s got it. But what is it? Enthusiasm. Drive.
“I mean no disrespect,” Muskrat held himself back, stepped back.
“Ok. So the shit has a mech, a mec, a meh?” How do you spell robot warrior from future, from entertainment fiction? Luc laughed out loud at his own joke, disquieting Muskrat who stepped back again another half a meter.
“I need a truck that can fly 300 kg and handle urban-use projectiles thrown at it. I’ll do the ops and code myself.” Luc’s mind was spinning, churning. “Truck needs to be stripped and off-net, Can Nosrit drive?”
She couldn’t. She didn’t have to, though.
The code was not complex. Once the identity of the vehicle was wiped and also, once the net was wiped of any hint of Luc, Muskrat and Nosrit, Luc was somewhat satisfied. The absence of information would eventually appear on the State servers like shadows from unseen objects, but for now they would be invisible.
The truck was a bulbous monstrosity. It sat on its landing legs like an egg with parasite-like nacelles. The ass-end opened with two curved doors. It will do the job.
Nosrit was there. She hadn’t had the three lateral piercings across the bridge of her nose when he had seen her last, years ago, and he hadn’t even noticed them in the church on Attilastrasse. Six steel balls lined up between her eyes that weren’t there three years ago. Community. She was going to drive. 
Connect-device -ShittyTransportVehicle | Course-plot “Londbridge Metropolitan Security/Floor 67”
“Remember, girl, ditch this thing after we are done. It will go fast. And by that I mean, our activities will,” he added, “This piece of shit won’t go fast.”
Nosrit giggled a little, then pulled herself back into adulthood and tried to look serious.
The truck dropped up into the local traffic lanes. Nosrit looked nervous. Luc had confidence, both in her and the plan. Even though he hadn’t seen or talked to her in several years, he had kept tabs on his community. He still knew every one of them, remotely pushed them in beneficial ways. I need to be here. Gods, I hate Londbridge.
There was a grating buzz when the truck/car/cargo transport pod—however you render it—arrived at the destination. 
The plasti-glass windscreen, through decades of abrasions, showed floor 67 of Londbridge MetSec HQ. 
Luc turned it, so that the aft end was facing the building.
“There will be a slight impact. Are you strapped in?”
She was. He accelerated in reverse, crashing the truck through the window panel. Glass rained down into the street below. The bulk of it flew into the 67th floor of the building.
“Open the doors.”
Nosrit unbuckled and moved to the back of the truck. The doors butterflied out and open. The truck was still hovering, the Naskovich drives keeping it aloft, though the ass-end was two meters into the building.
“Stay here...” Luc drew his pistol. He was shirtless, jacket less, and his breather hung around his neck, its rubber pulling at his beard. He cranked up the intensity of his goggles. The ambient light was exaggerated, revealing the contents of the room.
It was storage. Dozens of anthromorphs—humanoid robots—designed to be controlled wirelessly by remote human operators, stood in ranks. Somewhere, outside of this space, this storage place, were the wireless repeaters that allowed humans to control them well outside the range of even most standard military wireless tech.
Don’t have time for that. Put it on the wish list. Luc could probably crowdsource a solution to make up for that anyway. 20 million cred for a mesh-network!? They’re all scamming each other. Focus now, Luc. Small fish to fry this time. Luc dropped out of thoughts and back into the contours of the meat-sac realm.
Luc quickly, and with purpose, walked to the nearest one and abruptly ripped a wire out of the back of its head. Contact point. Wireless connection. Stupid design.
He pushed it and it made a loud crash as it landed on its back. It was armored and harden. It would be unharmed. The dim red glow of its internal mechanisms didn’t even flicker. 
They were made of some hardened version of plasti-glass, classified stuff. The material itself was transparent. Anthromorphs, after construction, after the biomechanical servos and structure were in place, were cloaked in counter-projectile armor. The gaps in the armor glowed red, a design feature intended to create an effect—especially since their interiors glowed red all along. 
Just gave us something to aim at, idiots. 
Luc took it by the feet. Only seconds had passed.
It was heavy, but he was strong. Nosrit added her slight weight to the pulling as he got to the truck, which shifted slightly, either from their movement or from some fluctuation in the Naskovich field, maybe even from the wind.
Glass dropped out of the gape as they accelerated out of the building, dropping with stomach-churning speed, into the lower-city murk. They returned via a circuitous route.
Nosrit was driving, which really only consisted of issuing commands to the vehicle’s otherwise autonomous navigation system. She had no visible wireless nodes, but that didn’t mean anything. Neither did Luc.
III
The truck rested on its reinforced, weight-handling legs in the same warehouse where Luc had recently met Muskrat. 
“They didn’t even see you?”
“They probably did. Someone probably did. The truck needs to be destroyed.”
The anthromorph was heavy. It took all three of them to get it upright. Nosrit had enthusiasm and contributed more to the effort than Muskrat.
There would be a brief microsecond, after replugging the coms cable, when the thing could call home, recontact MetSec servers, looking for its proper master.
Luc had the code waiting though. It would reroute the anthromorph’s command and control to him, as well as block out every other user.
“Do it,” he ordered. 
Muskrat reconnected the wireless controls with strands of wires looped over his forearms. Luc streamed his override package the same instant.
The thing stood more erect, coming to life. The red glow from its biomech insides increased. Was there a biological component?
Luc could feel it, feel its extremities, feel it like a second body. It was powerful.
It was unarmed.
“I will need a weapon, Muskrat.”
It took a day, but Muskrat found an old energy gun, rifle shaped, glass rods in the place of a barrel. It was sticky and covered in grime, like it had spent decades in a shed or storage locker. They charged it up to around 80%. The battery wouldn’t take more than that. Luc and Nosrit spray-painted the anthromorph a matte black, masking its eyes. Every other part of it was black. Some loose oversized robe was gathered and the sleeves slit from wrist to armpit and this tent was draped over the thing, giving it the appearance of an oversized streetfella, if one didn’t look too closely. The gun would be noticed, especially by other streetfellas.
Luc, in control of the MecSec commando anthromorph, took the weapon into his symbiotic arms. The bio-feedback was precise and intense. This will do, he laughed, high on the feed back with the mech, or was it meh?
 IV
Dusselberg was in a low, two story building in Tanic Park, in a very precise location that Luc had scoped out years ago. Five blocks, he thought. Someone—not him—had long ago hollowed out much of the second story and connected a series of flats, which had then been reinforced, fortified and hardened.
Luc being Luc drove there himself in his own car. Nosrit and the anthromorph sat behind him. She looked at the anthromorph like she’d look at a set-up date, some guy her parents wanted her to hook up with. No, she thought, repelled them. I am not that girl.
The car could seat eight comfortably and, honestly, could probably sleep at least six. It was spacious. The anthromorph had the gun across it’s lap as it sat, approximating a human sitting posture. It was a tight fit. The thing was two and a half meters tall, big enough to be imposing, but just small enough to move in normal human environments, hallways of buildings.
Word had it that the mech belonging to Dusselberg was in the cellar beneath the housing block. Luc maneuvered between the gaps in the nets that the locals had  put up to impede MetSec security drones. The things weren’t good with nets. Tended to get caught—nacelles tangled. Gutterpunks would then strip them of essentials.
The block, Luc remembered, was in a camera-free dead-zone. That meant no cameras for Dusselberg. No cameras for him either.
Why was he bringing Nosrit? Maybe she could drive if he was injured, though that was unlikely. He liked the company. It also gave her valuable trade experience. Someday she might run her own missions, look out for her community, the community.
He set the car down in the street outside the block. First the anthromorph stepped out. Luc was sure of that as soon as it did. Shit would unleash. He was right.
A trio of hired thuggery stood outside the main entrance to the block—some cross-sections of streets from two hundred years ago—becoming suddenly alert to the MetSec anthromorph stepping out of Luc’s car, despite the streetfella “disguise” they had come up with.
It was never easy to switch back and forth between moving his own body and piloting the anthromorph, but he managed to slide out of the car behind the thing, loosely holding his pistol in his hand.
The anthromorph fired at the men. A pink-blue beam crackled and arced from the thing’s gun at them like a lightning bolt. They fell, smoldering on the way down, bodies filigreed along the path of the current. The door behind them now hung from its hinges. Their bodies were entangled on the stoop.
The speed of the anthromorph was better than a human’s. Luc force-thought its actions, seeing what its eyes saw, superimposed on his own vision. The door was flung aside and the bodies were stepped on, stepped over.
Dusselberg must have been alerted, because a stream of heavy caliber projectiles sliced through the floor of the building’s atrium from below.
The mech was awake.
Ratty carpet fibers drifted in the wake of the bullets strafing up from the basement. The projectiles would land miles away at that angle, probably killing people somewhere else in the city. Luc rolled the anthromorph to the side and leaned against the car. Nosrit was watching the screens inside. Why did I bring her?
The anthromorph fired down, through the floor. This was not going to work. New plan.
He called the anthromorph back to the car. He and it hung out the opened door. Nosrit flew them to the roof of the building, while the surplus mech extricated itself from the cellar, using a freight elevator in the rear of the building, by the loading dock.
The roof of the building had an open-ended car shelter, big enough for two or three cars. Nosrit set Luc’s car down in the open though, near the small shed that contained the building’s roof-access stairs. The second floor had reinforced windows.
The anthromorph, followed by a appreciably clumsy Luc, dropped to the roof’s surface as soon as they were close. Controlling the anthromorph made Luc’s equilibrium sketchy.
The plasti-glass-armored commando android fired at the shed, turning the door and most of the housing into metal and plastic slag.
In the hallway below, down the aging, crumbling stairs, they faced the mech. It had come up—Luc wasn’t sure if it was moving under its own automated volition or if Dusselberg was controlling it. It didn’t matter. Luc swung himself back into the stairwell as the thing sprayed the hallway with high-velocity ammunition, shattering the wall at the far end, over the entrance. It had to hunch down, keeping its girder-like legs bent, with its weapons-bristling, block-like head scrapping the ceiling.
Luc looked at the MetSec anthromorph next to him, shielding it by moving it back from the fire in the doorway of the stairwell. It was dizzying controlling it and his own body at the same time. The android had taken some hits. Luc could feel them. One to the hip. Three to the torso. The armor took most of the impact, however. There was no loss of function.
The anthromorph swung out, just as the mech was reaching their location two meters from the entry to the stairwell. Its lightning beam strafed the hallway, blacking the walls, searing them and the mech’s metal block-head.
Ammunition stored within—its magazine deep within its steel bulk—erupted in a fizzing explosion, held in by its own armor plating. Sensors, cameras were thrown out, burned out by the fire within, ejected violently by the internal pressure. The smell of electricity and smoldering plastic filled the hallway.
It listed to the side, the servos in its right leg cutting out. It broke through the wall while still sparking from an inferno inside. Magnesium-white fire flared from its empty camera sockets, sparks falling into the smoldering carpet.
Luc looked at the doors on the other side of the hallway, the side with the reinforced external windows. Dusselberg was in there.
The doors were more than likely reinforced. Luc force-thought the anthromorph to fire at the wall between them. By this point the hallway was full of smoke. A lick of flame ate at the wall around where the mech fell through.
Lighting ripped through the opposite wall. Luc was glad for his breather, now on his nose and mouth, though he should have worn the goggles also. He squinted against the heat and the searing light of the energy weapon born by the anthromorph.V
The space on the other side of the wall was open and, at some point, had been gutted, opening a large space that had once been five or six flats. Dusselberg hadn’t been here long. He also had little taste in furnishings.
He sat in a swivel desk chair surrounded by monitors, a scrawny little man. He was armed. He had his own energy gun, not as big as the anthromorph’s, but just as effective. That gun’s beam practically cut the anthromorph in half, and would have cut Luc in half had he not rolled to the ground. 
Luc fired a half dozen shots at Dusselberg from behind a wheeled tool chest. The anthromorph was dead, its connection to Luc’s mind broken. Its servos still tried to get it upright with a futility that approached that of an animal struggling to live.
Luc fired a few more shots from the pistol. His ears rang now from the cover fire. It was a distraction while he pulled the energy weapon from the anthromorph’s hands. Back behind the tool chest, Luc checked the power level remaining in the energy gun. 
It had plenty. The thing was made for combat. He could hear movement. Dusselberg was trying to flee. 
“Luc?” said Nosrit, sticking her head in through the hole in the wall. 
“Stay down! Out!” He yelled.
She pulled her head out, back into the hallway as Dusselberg’s beam burned an arc across the wall. The distraction served well, however, as Luc took the opportunity to burn a gaping hole in Dusselberg’s chest. The man fell to the bare floor, smoking and oozing. His own smaller weapon sliding from his hands. Some of the wall behind him burned as well. Nosrit peaked in again hesitantly, then smiled when she saw that Luc was intact.
“Welcome back, Lucretius,” laughed Nosrit.
Out of retirement, I guess.
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