#but nevada’s a place full of people being people and making mistakes and living
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this one post from @poryphoria has been living rentfree in my head for months. it’s so true. i am so normal about this concept and this theme and this fandom.
alt ending below the cut, based off the project nexus ending. while it’s cool as fuck, i am not sure if it conveys what i wanna convey!! so it’s just here as bonus content
#madness combat#madness project nexus#hank j wimbleton#mc deimos#mc sanford#2bdamned#jebediah christoff#tricky the clown#actual art#i am but a sappy little bitch who just wants all my favourite characters to be happy#but genuinely just. smth smth what it means to be human#i think#because like#yeaj life is meaningless whatever#but not in a bad way#just in the way that there’s no inherent… anything to it#but that doesn’t make it any less worth living! doesn’t make it any less importang or special#that people are here and living#so for this fuckin series to also say much the same thing. because nevada’s all mean and terrible and morally grey yeah#but nevada’s a place full of people being people and making mistakes and living#idk man the original post says it better than i can. it’s just so important to me#is the (original) final segment SAPPY AS FUCK. Yes.#do i care. No.
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Say no to Netherite 9
First , Prev , Next
TW: Same as before
Digging had been backbreaking work under Sam, and when Quackity said he was taking over as manager for a project, Dream had at first been thankful; that didn’t last long. Ever since Slime died, ever since Quackity thought that he had let Slime die, Dream’s workload had increased. He could have saved Slime, he had come so close, but Dream knew his efforts had only made the man go mad in his sorrow. Slime could have been saved, not by Quackity himself, but by the person he hated the most. And even he had failed.
Dream and Foolish had been made to construct a bunker under Las Nevadas, a place safe from Purpled, and any allies he may have. Dream had no choice but to pour hours of his time into the thing.
He had been digging and building one of the many rooms when he heard Quackity talking to Foolish, theorising about who he could possibly be allied with. Chests full of building materials were exchanged for cobblestone as Dream put together the room from the plan Quackity had provided him, written entirely in Foolish’s handwriting.
“Technoblade maybe?” He heard Quackity say, speaking in a low tone to avoid being heard, unsuccessfully.
“Why Techno?” Foolish asked, also trying to keep his voice quiet, but failing even harder than Quackity.
“He hates governments, and he has a favour he owes Dream.” Quackity snapped back.
“Ahh, yeah that makes sense, actually,” Foolish said, “But, if you don’t mind me asking, why does he owe Dream a favour?”
Dream smiled despite himself, he could picture the scowl on Quacktiy’s face. But before long, he got back to work, he couldn’t be caught slacking off, not with everything else going on.
Only when it was done did Dream find out its true primary function: housing Slime’s body.
It was moved into the bunker, one whole room dedicated to the man. Quackity came in to talk to him from time to time, clinging to the theory that he was just in between lives. Dream hoped he was right about Slime not being fully dead, Quackity would really be pissed off if Dream was wrong. His words echoed off unhearing walls.
The bunker (Quackity’s one, Dream wondered if he should change the name of the bunker he met his allies in to make it easier to remember) had an eerie atmosphere, the knowledge of why it was made weighed the air down, gave it a musty quality that no amount of ventilation could fix. This was their last escape if Purpled came back, if he brought allies. But once it was done, life almost went back to normal. Almost, Dream had been given more shifts, and he could never quite shake the exhaustion from his bones. Late nights and early mornings became his normal routine, enough that Fundy had even tried to sneak him out just to get him some sleep, only to be caught by Foolish, who sent them both back to their posts with a “Be glad I’m not Quackity.”
One other new thing was the increased number of late night entertainment sessions he and Quackity provided. More people had started coming, Las Nevadas was quickly becoming a popular tourist destination. One time Dream had even managed to spot Sapnap in the crowd, causing him to get distracted enough to get hit by the Pillager he had been forced to fight.
The roar of the crowd allerted him to his mistake before the pain hit. Cheers sounded from the plush red velvet chairs as his blood stained the coarse sand. Iron bars dug into his back, he could run away no longer.
Dream jumped, ready to hit a crit, and swung the wooden axe down onto the pillager, then ducked away before the Pilliager’s superior weapon could hit him again.
He scrambled back towards the middle of the cage, always on the defensive.
He had to be defensive outside of these cage fights as well, all whilst trying his best to stop whatever Quackity or Sam had planned, trying desperately to find any way out of the hellhole of labour they had made for him. At least he had allies now, that was one thing he could count on. Not just Punz and Techno, but Fundy as well, Phil was happy to help as long as Techno was on board. And while Purpled hadn’t been seen since Slime’s death, and despite everything that had come because of that, Dream was thankful he thought Dream could help at least a little in making Quackity’s life hell.
The Pillager advanced again, iron axe held up, but this time Dream was ready. He grinned despite knowing nobody could see it, the mandated smile mask hiding his true emotions always, hiding his true intentions.
He knew that despite this, Sapnap would be able to tell, the man who used to be his brother could read him like a book, or at least that’s what Dream had always thought. With recent revelations though, he doubted that was true anymore. But then that had been part of Dream’s plan, it was by design that Sapnap didn’t know him anymore. So Dream acted as he would months ago, when there had just been a few people on the server, when he could have relied on the fiery man to be at his side for anything.
Cocky grin on his face, confidence in his steps, Dream held out his own axe, ready to strike.
The pillager came at him, leaving tracks in the bloodstained sand.
But before it could do anything, Dream hit. One crit to its face, Dream sidestepped the returning attack only to deliver another crit to its side.
The pillager erupted into a cloud of smoke, dropping the iron axe that Dream then held up in victory.
The crowd booed, as expected. They wanted blood, they wanted him to hurt, they wanted him dead. And while they knew Quackity wouldn’t let him die, not yet anyway, they had been promised a show, a show Dream wasn’t giving them.
So Dream prepared himself for the next wave of mobs, looking expectantly at the piston door Dream himself had helped build, waiting to give the crowd what they wanted.
The hiss of pistons sounded, the next wave was about to appear.
But, instead of more pillagers, or skeletons, or even a ravager, there was just a single man. Quackity. Holding a chair.
Dream took a step back as Quackity walked to the centre of the cage and placed the wooden chair down.
“Sit down,” Quackity said, his voice low, sounding like he did all those months ago in the prison.
“But-”
“Sit down, Dog,” Quackity commanded.
Dream sat down.
Rope was tied around his wrists, securing him in place. Dream could only sit and wait for what was to come.
“Hey fellas!” The crowd cheered, “Look, this man, Dream, the prisoner, has hurt everyone here! He’s hurt everyone! And while I’m sure you’re all very happy watching him get beat up by random mobs,” Quackity paused to let the crowd cheer again, “I think you guys deserve better!” He grabbed Dream by his hair, taking off his mask to let everyone see his fear, “So, for the first time, I want to invite you to enter the cage, I want to invite you to give this tyrant what he deserves. For only a few diamonds, you can have your way with him for a few minutes, rules do unfortunately apply.”
Quackity walked to the front of the cage, towards where the majority of the crowd were seated, and broke two of the iron bars to get out. Dream could only sit and watch as people came up to Quackity, diamonds in hand. Sapnap was first in line.
Diamonds were exchanged and Dream watched in disbelief as Quackity gave a small talk to Sapnap, a briefing, instructions. Boundaries set for him, on how best not to permanently injure Quackity’s property.
“Our first friend is up!” Quackity announced as he walked back into the cage, Sapnap following behind. The crowd cheered as Quackity held his hands out to them, welcoming the energy.
Sapnap just stood there, staring at Dream. They both kept their expressions cold, devoid of anything that could give their thoughts away to the other.
“The tyrant’s old best friend, Sapnap! They used to be brothers, who else better to introduce Tommy’s murderer to his new life.”
Dream smiled at that, if they wanted a bastard to beat then he’d let them have one. He could be their monster, their murderer, if it helped them sleep at night after everything they did. Sapnap didn’t bother looking at the crowd, but let his disgust show.
His fist landed in Dream’s face.
The crowd roared as blood trickled down from Dream’s nose, as he laughed. He laughed and leaned as far forwards as he could in his bounds, smirking at Sapnap. The metallic taste of his own blood creeped its way into his mouth as he opened it to speak.
“Long time no see, brother,” he greeted, reminding Sapnap that no matter how much he tried to distance himself from Dream, they were brothers. Everything Dream had done was done in part for him, for Sam, for Quackity even. They had betrayed him, yes, especially Sam, but they were still his family, still worth saving.
Another fist, this time in his stomach.
Dream gasped as the air escaped his lungs.
This was how it was going to be huh. He gritted his teeth and refused to cry out, refused to give them the satisfaction. He may be their monster but he wasn’t going to go down easily.
Quackity walked behind, holding Dream’s shoulders to keep him back, giving the crowd a better look. He was the show after all, the star attraction, come and see the server’s villain get hurt and ignore the suffering outside. Sapnap knelt down, becoming eye level with Dream.
“What kind of freak are you? Call me brother again, I fucking dare you,” Sapnap said brother with such disgust, spitting the word out like it was a fruit gone bad.
“To be fair,” Dream started, and Sapnap turned in disgust, “you are my brother, you always will be. You really think anything could change that?”
Sapnap punched him again.
Dream finally broke, groaning in pain. And for the first time since he had entered the cage, Sapnap’s expression changed. A smirk of satisfaction, a hint of regret.
Dream spat blood in Sapnap’s face.
“Oh you motherfucker!”
Sapnap stood up fully again, looming over Dream. More fists came, more cheers came. The sound of the crowd faded into the background as the roar in Dream’s ears.
For a moment it stopped, and Sapnap stood back to admire his work. Dream knew how he must look, he could feel a black eye forming and his nose was broken, again.
Dream hurt, his head felt light, he tapped his foot twice, trying to signal to Quackity that he needed to stop, that he had reached a limit. It wasn’t certain if Quackity would listen, but with Dream now an employee it was sometimes more useful to keep him able and moving.
Quackity stopped holding Dream back, and moved towards the front of the cage again.
“Fellas, I’m sure you all enjoyed that very much, but unfortunately we do have to keep him alive and going, so could we all give a massive applause to Sapnap!” The crowd followed Quackity’s instruction, “You too can have your chance later don’t you worry! But if you would now all please make your way to the exit while we clean this bitch up.”
Sapnap hadn’t moved.
Quackity came back to where the two were standing, going to untie Dream. When he was done, Dream slowly stood up, bringing him face to face with Sapnap. His whole body ached thanks to the smaller man, and he was pretty sure he had a concussion. He grinned down at Sapnap, showing off his now bloodstained teeth.
“What?” Sapnap spat, glaring up at Dream.
“Thank you, brother, you know how much I love putting on a show.”
Dream could do nothing to stop the next punch from landing, his mind already too cloudy, he could do nothing to stop his vision turning to black.
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Quackity watched as Dream fell.
This was going to be a pain, he'd have to start vetting who got to have a turn better. He'd been so excited to see Sapnap have a go, not just for the marketing opportunity but because it had been so long since he had seen his fiancé. The piston door opened and Fundy rushed in.
"Take him away, he'll need healing," Quackity ordered, not bothering to look away from Sapnap. He looked good with Dream's blood on his knuckles, Quackity wondered if he would look as good in the same position, if he had looked as good. He hoped he did.
Quackity didn't watch as Fundy tried his best to drag Dream's unconscious body away, didn't watch as Foolish came in to help carry the prisoner, didn't look away from Sapnap until they were the only two left in the room. Only then did Sapnap speak.
"Hey, uh, sorry for the trouble," he said while scratching the back of his neck. He was so cute when he was nervous.
"No worries, babe, no worries at all!" Quackity replied, "But where have you been, I haven't seen you in ages."
"We've been at Kinoko, you know Kinoko," Sapnap said, life suddenly coming back, his vacant stare was gone and instead he was looking at Quackity with a mix of excitement and confusion.
"Hmm," Quackity hummed, he had heard of Kinoko Kingdom, yes, he hadn’t heard why he hadn’t been invited, "I've heard of Kinoko, I didn't know you were there. Come, let's get some air, let me show you what I've made for us."
Quackity led the way outside, via the service exit to avoid the crowd overhearing their conversation, and into the winter night. Cold air and neon lights greeted them and Quackity could see their breaths forming clouds.
"Us?" Sapnap asked eventually, having paused for the journey outside.
"Yes! This, Sapnap, all of this for us, all of this for you and Karl," Quackity said, turning to Sapnap.
"Why didn't you come to Kinoko with us?" He asked. Sapnap avoided Quackity's eyes, was that guilt? or just sheer nervousness? Sapnap shouldn't be nervous around him, Quackity thought, they were going to get married after all.
"I never got an invitation, I- I didn't know you two were there until today," he lied.
"Karl invited you!" Sapnap said, becoming defensive, "He must have, it's us two and George, obviously we'd invite you."
Quackity frowned, taking a step away from his fiancé. Sapnap held out his hand slightly, a signal that he wanted to be closer to Quackity, to the man he had barely seen these past few months. Quackity ignored him.
"Why didn't you come to get me?" Quackity asked, voice quiet.
"I didn't even know you were here until today!" Sapnap said defensively, "I didn't know Dream was either, how the hell did you manage that? Listen, I don't know what's going on, why he's here, why you're here, but I want you back. I miss you, we already have a house for you in Kinoko. And, like I get if you want to stay here, it looks… amazing, really, but I'd love for you to see Kinoko."
"Did you even try to find me? Or did you leave that one up to Karl?" Quackity asked.
"Of course I did! I followed every rumour to try and find you." Sapnap said, throwing his hands out.
"Don't lie to me!" Quackity shouted, "Fucking Punz found out about this before you did, Punz! He's never even around anymore, has something going on with that fucking stupid egg Bad's fucking with and is fucking about with that valorant thing."
“Valorant?” Sapnap said in disbelief, “The egg’s gone Quackity, why would that hold him back, you dealt with the egg!”
“I have been here for months, Sapnap, I’ve been here for months while you three did fuck all to find me, I’ve seen George, talked to him even, he didn’t say shit, didn’t invite me to Kinoko. You guys made a new country and didn’t even fucking tell me! I had to bump into George randomly to find out! Not you, not Karl, not the people I’m supposed to be fucking marrying!”
“Babe, I’m sorry-”
“Don’t fucking babe me, Sapnap,” Quackity interuppted, “You lost that right when you fucking abandoned me!”
“If that’s how it’s going to be,” Sapnap said, turning to leave, “I’ll leave your country in peace, I don’t want there to be any more bad blood between us.”
Quackity reached out to Sapnap, held him back from leaving.
“You’re not leaving, you damaged my property, you went against my instructions and now you have to pay up,” He had been willing to let it go, had been willing to let Dream take the fall, for Sapnap. But with Dream out of action for a while now, Sapnap had cost him a lot of income, and protection.
“What?” Sapnap asked, brushing Quackity off with ease.
“You owe me, Sapnap, you owe me for all the money Dream was going to make me. Property damage. Sam’ll be pissed as well and he is not someone you want to piss off right now,” Quackity threatened, walking closer to Sapnap, looking up into his eyes.
“Fuck off Quackity,” Sapnap spat, before turning away and heading off into the night.
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“... You can do this, you can do this, you can do this...”
Dream heard a voice as he woke up. It was a familiar voice, a nice one. His head hurt, and he felt nauseous, but then he had been expecting to feel like hell after that shitshow. Still, it was better than prison.
“Oh he’s waking up, you can do this Fundy.”
Ah, that’s why it was so nice.
Dream opened his eyes, or at least as much as he could. His left eye was swollen shut, and the harsh light of his room hurt his eyes, he squinted up at Fundy, who was pacing all over the room.
“Hey,” he croaked.
“You worried me, Dream. Here, take some water,” Fundy went to hand Dream a bottle of water, before realising he was in no state to sit up. He put the bottle to Dream’s lips, helping him drink from it. Dream grimaced at the taste.
“That’s got a healing potion in it,” He said with disgust.
“Thought you would like a health pot after that,” Fundy said, dabbing a cloth - soaked in another health pot - at Dream’s black eye.
“Hmm, they’re useful, sickly.” At least the watered down health pot had quenched his thirst.
“I guess you’ve had too many forced down you to enjoy them now,” Fundy said, to which Dream said nothing.
“They told me not to feed you,” Fundy whispered, not out of fear of being heard; the weight of the information admitted had quietened him, “Something about you breaking rules.”
Dream nodded, that was to be expected, especially if Sam had heard about this.
“But,” Fundy started, “Fuck how are you still pretty all beat up?”
Dream chuckled, although it sounded more pained than happy, a wheezing laugh that hurt his ribs.
“But,” Fundy tried again, “I brought you this?”
Fundy held out a bowl of beetroot soup.
“Thank you,” Dream said as he took it from Fundy’s hands, letting their fingers brush.
It would be a long recovery, especially with how much he was going to milk it, but it would definitely be better with Fundy by his side.
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the will to live ( was only a whisper before i went )
MAJOR SPOILERS FOR TECHNO'S PHIL'S QUACKITY'S AND SAM'S LORE STREAM
Rumors were hard to ignore.
They spread around, scattered in the wind as more and more people started to believe its faulty truth.
Rumors were hard to ignore, especially when the truth started to leak out. Technoblade had been gone for three months. Three months too long, in Phil’s opinion, but there was nothing he could do now. All he would do was wait and hope that Techno would be able to survive in the prison.
However, Phil would not worry so much if he didn’t know one key factor.
Techno was at one life. He had foolishly lost two of them in hypixel when he was a kid, too cocky and too confident for his own good. One misstep and one swing later, he rested at two lives. One faulty move and one arrow later, he was on his last life. He had learned enough from his mistakes, he told Phil one day, and he made sure to never make them again. He hid it from the rest of the world, joking around and acting as if he was still at three lives, rushing into battle at a moment’s notice.
Phil knew the possibilities of Techno coming back to him alive, and he knew that Techno knew that too. He had seen it in his eyes and in the way he moved, had seen right through him as if he were looking through ice. But he had let him go with a forced smile and a promise that they would see each other again, no matter how long that may be.
A will was placed in his hands with a promise to not open it for three months, but those three months had come and gone, and now the will rested in Phil’s hand, waiting to be opened and read.
Dear Philza Minecraft, the will began with.
I am going to the prison to visit Dream and make sure he’s alright. If I do not return within a few days, activate the pearl I left in our book club’s meeting room.
Of course, their pearl stasis chamber, how could Phil have forgotten? A laugh bubbled up and out of his throat, relief flooding through his body. There was hope after all, and a chance of getting Techno safely back to the Arctic. Not wasting a second more, Phil threw on his coat and ran outside, his wings taking flight.
His wings beat against the harsh winds, snow entangling itself between his feathers and his hair, clutching on for dear life at the speed he flew. Not soon enough, he was at the entrance of the stronghold. He barreled down the lava and landed in the water that rested below. He skidded on the ice, sliding through the corridors as he made his way through all the twists and turns.
He finally made his way to the portal room, hope coursing through his veins as he made his way to where Techno’s seat was and-
Oh.
The pearl was gone.
And with that, Philza broke, collapsing on the stone floor. Cries of anguish echoed throughout the empty room, never to be full again. At least then no one was there to witness him break. Techno was gone- gone for good this time.
And Phil had a strange feeling that even if the pearl was there, it would only teleport back Techno’s remains.
If the pearl is gone, well, it was nice knowing you. Look after the others for me when I’m gone.
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I left my valuables in a barrel hidden in the top floor’s ceiling and a chest under the stone in a corner of that one weird room under the house with the potions. Distribute them as you see fit. Please keep Steve and the foxes well-fed, the wolves can be released into the wilderness.
Steve was curled up on his owner's bed, the bed creaking against his weight. He whined, nose burying itself between his paws.
The foxes pulled at their leads, searching for the one with pink hair and kind words, but to no avail.
Yipping sounded throughout the forest, the once blood-hounds exploring the forest. They searched all around, but could not find the one they had gone to war with.
Tell Ranboo and Niki that they’re stronger than they know.
A knock sounded throughout the near-empty mansion, causing Ranboo to jump. He recognized the pattern of the knocks, a grin forming on his face.
“Phil! You startled me-” Ranboo smiled at the other as he opened the door, but it slipped off of his face as his gaze landed on Phil.
Phil’s hair was ruffled and dried tear tracks covered his face. He avoided eye contact as he spoke, voice wavering.
“Techno’s gone.”
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Niki was working away at her city, beads of sweat forming on her face as she moved objects around. Her city was coming together nicely, and she just needed to put some finishing touches to complete it.
However, she was interrupted by a knock at the entrance. She looked up in curiosity, recognizing the pattern as Phil’s.
“Phil! How nice of you to visit-” She said as she climbed up the staircase, coming face-to-face with Phil. She paused as she took his appearance in. “Are you okay?”
He shook his head wordlessly, “Techno’s gone.”
Tell Tommy that I hope he finds what he’s looking for, whatever that is.
The day was calm with a slight breeze rustling through the trees, a perfect day for Tommy to bring Shroud out.
“Remember what I taught you, big man, stay close to me, don’t wander off, if you see anyone, anyone at all, you alert me, and if I get into trouble, you run all the way back home and hide, okay?”
“Okay!” Shroud happily chirped from where they sat. “Can we go now?”
“Yeah, let’s go.” Tommy clutched Shroud’s hand, opening the door to reveal Philza, hand raised like he was about to knock.
“Philza Minecraft.” Tommy said, voice cold. He gestured at Shroud to leave the room, which they reluctantly did. “What do you want?”
“It’s about Techno.” Phil looked defeated as he spoke.
Tommy’s heart started to hammer in his chest as a pit started to form in his gut. If Phil was coming to him about Techno- then something was horribly wrong.
“What’s wrong with Techno?” He demanded.
“He’s gone.”
Phil, I’m glad I met you in this life.
“Where is he?”
The Warden looked up from where he sat, not surprised to see Phil’s face.
“Philza, what a pleasant surprise. What brings you here to the prison?”
“You know full well why I’m here, and I’m only going to ask once more. Where is Technoblade?” Phil spat out, rage coursing through his veins.
The Warden remained silent, the only sound filling the room being keys typing away.
“Listen, if you don’t give him to me, I’ll destroy this prison bit by bit until all that’s left of it is its charred remains.”
“You want him so bad? Fine.” With that, The Warden typed some words into the computer, and a circular tube similar to a coffin appeared out of the wall.
His heart dropped as he saw the tube, mind screaming as he dared to look at what was inside. He didn’t want to confirm his suspicions- but something urged his body to peer into the tube.
It was Techno’s body, scarred and burnt but still recognizable. He knew that Techno was dead, but confirming it just hurt so much more.
“Who.” His voice was quiet, almost muted.
“Quackity.” The Warden simply said, eyes focused on the computer. “He’s in Las Nevadas.”
Phil wordlessly nodded, carefully picking up his body and cradling him in his arms. “Thank you,” with that, Philza walked outside and took off, tears slipping down his face.
For you, the world.
Techno’s grave was placed atop of the mountain.
The gravestone was carved with care, with the prettiest flowers blooming above it.
Five people came to his grave.
Ranboo mourned the loss of his mentor, and at the missed chance of showing Techno his family. He was sure that Michal would have loved Techno, even if the other was cold towards children. Techno’s axe was clenched tightly in his hand, his tears and the snow burning his skin, but he found that he didn’t have the energy to care.
Tubbo stood from afar when he visited, fists at his side as he felt both anger and sadness at the one six feet below. His mind screamed at the other for hurting him, for taking his childhood away so soon, but yet his body stood still as if he was made of stone.
Niki visited when she was sure no one was there, and she cried. She screamed at Techno for leaving and screamed at the world for taking her friend away too soon. She cried and yelled for what seemed like ages until her throat was sore and it felt like she swallowed shards of glass.
Tommy visited when it was still day out, allumins clutched tightly in his hand. He wordlessly planted them in the ground, dirt and tears staining his shirt. When he left, the Axe of Peace rested next to Techno’s grave.
Philza visited last, his feet dragging in the snow. He sat there in front of the grave, mind numb. He didn’t know how long he sat there but he knew that when he got up, it was day once more. Phil didn’t want the world if Techno wasn’t going to be in it, but he knew that Techno would want him to move on.
But there was something he had to do first.
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Clouds of smoke filled the air as a fire raged on Las Nevadas. Three people stood in front of the fire, gazing at the sight before them. Quackity laid dead beneath their feet.
“For Techno.” Phil said.
“For Techno.” They echoed.
I love you.
#technoblade angst#technoblade#philza minecraft#ranboo#niki nihachu#nihachu#tubbo#tommyinnit#quackity#awesamdude#mcyt#angst#dream smp
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Forgotten Light: Chapter 7: Preparations
1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11
Chapter 7: Preparation
Agad came in over breakfast.
“Agad, welcome to my home,” Seth said, taking a long drink of milk. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve, “Have a seat. What have you got on Kendra?”
Agad looked more tired than Seth had ever seen him, and let Seth’s joke go flat. He sat down and the six-armed woman that worked in the kitchen put a plate of oatmeal out for him. “Thank you, Simrin,” Agad said. “I have some news, not much of it good. I was able to track the goblins that stole the barrel, they were hiding in Goblin town.”
“Sounds like a fun place,” Seth said.
“You would probably enjoy it,” Agad said, bowing his head, “Just make sure not to lose your eye, or your tooth. It’s in Nevada, not a proper preserve, no caretaker. But they keep to themselves and have general distractor spells, so everyone leaves it alone. I found Slaggo there.”
“Long trip for a goblin on the run.”
“The Sphinx probably helped him, and a wizard named Vernaz. I thought she was an ally and gave Mendigo’s materials to her to be reconstructed. She was good at laying enchantments, much better than me. Her other talent is teleportation, and could have easily helped Slaggo leave Fablehaven with the barrel. I’m positive the barrel made it to the Sphinx.”
Seth finished his last bite of oatmeal, “Then we’re sure that the Sphinx and Ronodin are working together. That sucks, one of them is bad enough.”
Agad massaged his forehead, “I fear it was a mistake to make the Sphinx an Eternal. It will certainly keep the new demon prison closed from him, but I underestimated how cunning he is, even with his Shadow Charmer powers diminished.”
“What did you do to him?” Seth asked.
Agad shrugged, “Not enough apparently. He can’t hear the undead anymore, but we couldn’t dampen much else without killing him. He can put out fires, undo locks, shadow walk. That’s apparently enough to strike against us.”
“The Sphinx had this huge rant about refusing to be a captive,” Seth said, “We should have paid more attention to it. There was no way he was ever going to live by someone else’s say so. Remember, you gave all of us the call, we’re all to blame.”
“Yes, the long life seemed the greatest weakness to the mortal locks,” Agad replied, “It made sense at the time to have at least one person who would not feel that burden, but you are right. He firmly believed in his own rhetoric, and not acknowledging that was a mistake. Both the Sphinx and Vernaz have slipped away. Vanessa is going to be insufferable, and I am going to deserve every minute.”
Seth gave a joyless laugh, “Plenty of mistakes to go around. If the Sphinx happens to die, will that open the new prison? Asking for a friend.”
“No, the prison will remain closed,” Agad said, finally a little amused, “I do not think you would be able to let him die, and that’s fine. But if he happens to die, there are enough already constructed locks in place that the demons of Zzyzx will remain sealed. If the Sphinx comes under your power, save him because you are good, or do not save him because he has harmed those you love and will continue to do so for his own benefit. Do not worry about Zzyzx.”
“Noted,” Seth said. Agad finished breakfast and Seth led him to the War Room.
“I also examined the barrel here,” Agad explained as they walked, “The other half appears to be deep underwater.”
“Why would they do that?” Seth asked. “Did anyone touch the letter we left?”
“Your letter remains in place. An interesting response, and I see only advantages in it. The letter remains physically here, my only recommendation is to make it waterproof so when they pull the barrel up and remove the letter, it doesn’t get ruined by surrounding water. Which answers your other question. They didn’t destroy the barrel, which means they likely intend to use it again.”
“Can you find it?” Seth hoped. “Even a general location would help narrow down the search.”
Agad was already shaking his head, “It’s too deep, and somewhere protected. I can’t get a read on it aside from the fact that it is deep enough that the pressure would kill a human.”
“Great,” Seth said, running a hand through his hair. They approached the War Room, and Seth sat down with Agad across from him. Grandma and Grandpa were already there, and rushed to greet Agad. They updated him on Tess running around the preserve with the Cloak of innocence. Agad gave them the same information about Kendra.
“Any other leads?” Seth asked when everyone was caught up.
“Not quite,” Agad said, “I was unable to gain contact with the Fairy Queen, so we are waiting to see if her connection to Kendra remains strong. No further leads on Bracken either. The only good news I have is that Warren and Vanessa managed to help the caretaker regain a foothold of the Crescent Lagoon sanctuary.”
“I have Bracken’s horn,” Seth said, blinking. He was glad that his friends had some success, but they were okay, Bracken was not. He pulled it out of his emergency kit, “Kendra gave it to me before she lost her memory, along with the medallion and a bunch of information she was keeping to herself.”
“Bracken did say that he had re-established full connection with his horn,” Agad said, “May I see it?”
Seth nodded and offered it to the wizard. Everyone was silent as Agad’s brow pinched in concentration.
“The connection is weak, it feels as though he is under water. No, underground and under water,” Agad said, snowy eyebrows rising, “I would not have been able to tell had I not recently examined the barrel, but working around the water, earth and darkness, I can sense that he is not currently in pain. He seems…bored. He can’t sense me on this side of the connection. But…I would venture to say, he’s at approximately the same depth as the barrel. Within a couple hundred feet of each other.”
“Good,” Grandma said, “Ronodin is handling everything from a master base. There is a good chance Kendra is near them as well. Can you tell Bracken anything about Kendra being near him?”
Agad concentrated, then shook his head, letting out a shaky breath and lowering the horn. “At most, I might be able to push his subconscious thoughts in a certain direction. But I’m positive thoughts about Kendra already haunt him. His last prison ended with her after all.”
Uggh, of all the times to be a lovesick dummy. “Ronodin wants the horn,” Seth said, “That’s what Kendra told me, and I think he tried to get her to give it to him at the Dragon feast.”
“I shudder to think of why he wants it,” Agad said, then offered it back to Seth. “If he wants it badly enough, he’ll find whoever has it. He will likely be more willing to deal with you, knowing how much you want Kendra back. He will also suspect that you have it if Kendra does not. If he contacts you, use your judgement, rely on your grandparents and allies, contact me, and do not endanger the world.”
Seth took it and nodded, placing it back in his adventure kit, silently thanking Agad for placing the lead back in his hands. He would have thanked him out loud, but didn’t want Agad to rethink the choice.
There was a knock on the door, and Knox opened it, letting Tess fall through. “Seth! Seth! I saw the nice dragon! It was so huge!”
Nice dragon? Oh, she left with Eve and they went to see Dromadus. That’s okay then.
“Tess made it back,” Knox said, following her. Patton Burgess’s stingbulb shut the door behind them.
“We took turns flying the winged mounts and walking along the road, over all a very short trip,” Patton said, taking a seat next to Seth. “We heard about Kendra losing her memory. I’m so sorry.”
Patton offered his arms for a hug, and Seth took it, squeezing tightly.
Patton smiled and patted Seth on the back, returning the hug. “Don’t get too attached, I only have a day left.”
Seth released him, “I know,” Seth said, “But I’m glad you’re here while you are. Kendra was kidnapped by Ronodin and the Sphinx working together, and we’ll take any help you can give.”
“Hey, I deserve a hug too,” Doren protested, and both he and Newel tackled Seth in hug, ruffling his hair, before settling back like nothing had happened.
They went through yet another round of catch-up, as Tess squeezed herself in between Knox and Seth, fairly bouncing while waiting to tell her story.
“Tess, this is serious,” Knox scolded, “Kendra’s in a lot of trouble.”
“I know,” Tess said, holding still, “But the fairies at Fablehaven told me all about Bracken and Kendra. Bracken is like, this super cool fairy prince who likes Kendra and totally saves her all the time. And Kendra has a bunch of wicked cool powers from the Fairy Queen, they’re going to be okay until you and Seth rescue them, if they don’t rescue themselves.”
Not how Seth would describe them, Kendra spent a lot more time saving Bracken than the other way around, far as he knew. He was surprised that the Fablehaven fairies were that nice about Kendra though. He wasn’t the only one.
“The fairies said that?” Grandpa asked.
“Well, they said Bracken pitied her, not that he liked her,” Tess admitted, “but that’s what girls always say when the cool boy likes someone else. And they said that the Fairy Queen gives Kendra powers to do stuff for her, and the Fairy Queen is the most powerful person ever. So everything is going to be okay. Really, we need to worry about us.”
Attention snapped to Tess like a guitar string.
“The Dragons are planning to attack us. Tonight! Dromadus doesn’t know how, but he heard them acting like they already won,” Tess explained. “I was supposed to tell Seth. Oh! And don’t tell anyone who told us about the dragons, that’s a secret.”
“Tess,” Knox said slowly, “That’s the kind of thing you say right away.”
“But it’s rude to interrupt people,” she said, confused.
Seth stood up, and he saw Grandpa raise his eyebrows in surprise. Why was he surprised? This was Seth’s job, after all, for a little while longer anyway.
“Okay Agad, welcome to the next round,” Seth said, “Did you check the magical defenses? How are they holding?”
Agad shared an amused look with Grandpa, who just nodded. “I did. The protections seem more secure than ever, even more than when I was caretaker here.”
“The Dragons are certain of victory, but will be unable to mount a frontal assault,” Grandma mused.
“Is Celebrant being hasty?” Patton asked, “From what I understand, dragons with losing streaks don’t stay king for long.”
“Perhaps Dromadus is toying with us,” Marat offered, “His help is rather unexpected.”
“I don’t think Dromadus would do that,” Seth said, “When Kendra and I met him, he seemed kind of like the Fair Folk. Didn’t want the sanctuary to fall, but not gonna do anything about it. And if he isn’t right, and the dragons don’t attack, there’s nothing to gain. If he lied, we wont trust him in the future.”
Marat tilted his head, acknowledging Seth’s statement.
“Anything is possible,” Agad said, “It could be that Dromadus is working with Celebrant, and they are hoping to find a weakness as we scramble to cover ourselves.”
“We have to treat it like a real threat,” Seth decided. “Whatever we show, it can’t be worse than them coming after us when we are unprepared. Possible weaknesses?”
“We should go over our magical defenses one more time,” Marat suggested, “Review the treaty and see if there is anything we missed. It is possible we have a traitor in our midst that will grant them access.”
Unfortunate, but true. He hoped they had been careful enough, though he hadn’t been around much to make a good guess himself.
“What about the barrel?” Knox asked. “We know where that is now, right? Could that be the weakness?”
Agad frowned, “It feels out of character for Celebrant to brag of a victory achieved by allies on the other side of the barrel, but we should not discount it. It is currently the greatest hole in our defense.”
Something about what Knox said bothered Seth. They know where it is now. They weren’t dealing with the Sphinx, but they kind of were. What had the Sphinx done in the past while they thought they were safe? And what was it about Knox’s statement that bothered him?
There wasn’t the textbook method: create a problem, send a friend to help, friend is a traitor. This was a different tactic. The Sphinx liked to stay one step ahead, control the board from both sides, and make threats to force you into action when you’d really just like to sit on your winning streak. Seth thought about the stories he had shared with Knox. Sometimes he planted a traitor, and sometimes the Sphinx sent invisible assassins after you because he already knew where you were going to be. Sometimes he let demon dragons out of their prisons when you weren’t looking.
“Guys,” Seth said, a sick feeling in his stomach, “Hey,” he stopped Marat and Agad in the middle of their discussion about magical defenses. “Bad thought. Someone was controlling Mendigo way before when the barrel was first stolen, right? Probably Ronodin, since he’s been hanging around the preserve and making deals with the Dragons. We thought the person left with the barrel, but it was in the basement the whole time.”
He waited for someone to deny what he was hinting at.
“Ah,” Grandpa Sorenson said, “I see. Between the time the barrel was lost and found, both sides of the barrel were out of our control, and Mendigo was available on our side to assist a sleeper agent.”
Grandma, Tanu, and Agad all looked like they were about to throw up.
“What are you saying?” Knox asked.
“Seth is suggesting the possibility that someone is already here, but remaining hidden,” Marat clarified, “An insightful observation and deduction.”
“Celebrant could claim credit for successfully distracting us,” Agad admitted, “Not as good as a frontal assault, but enough for him to claim the win. Especially if he can claim the kill. If the enemy is hiding near the Blackwell, it would be nearly impossible to sense them around the aura of the undead.”
“The question is,” Grandma said, “whether the source of the threat is already here, or will it come through the barrel yet. I am loathe to give up our only connection to Kendra.”
“Any way we can make sure we aren’t being listened to, Agad?” Grandpa asked.
“Not that I can create without knowing our spy and what he is using,” Agad said, shaking his head. “We will have to plan even though we may be spied upon.”
“There can’t be a bunch of them,” Seth decided, “I can see through most hiding spells, and I haven’t seen anyone. I can’t get around distractor spells, that was Kendra’s half…” he looked down at Tess, fairy struck, who was sitting still and paying attention like a good girl. Plans were starting to come together “Let’s not talk about everything here. I want everyone to split into groups. Agad, Marat, where’s the best place to examine the magical defenses?”
They shared a look, “The tower where the Roost used to be,” Agad said at last. “The protections still form a small dent there, where a dragon may come closer than other area.”
“Okay, head to Seth Tower, I’ll meet up with you after.” Seth said. It was energizing, being heard and listened to. And to actually be doing something! The brothers nodded.
“Tanu,” Seth said, “I want your potions ready by dinner, whatever happens, you’re going to need to be stocked and ready to go.” Several people caught his emphasis, but didn’t say anything, just like he wanted. Well Tess asked, but Knox shushed her.
“I would appreciate an assistant,” Tanu said.
“I’ll help,” Patton said, standing up, “Unless you have a job for me elsewhere.”
Seth shook his head, “Helping Tanu is perfect.”
He turned to Grandma and Grandpa, “I need you guys to work with the staff. Let them know we’ve been warned of a threat, organize extra lookouts and patrols, organize a watch over the barrel, that kind of stuff. We don’t know what direction the threat coming from, so we cover as many directions as possible.”
Now it was time for Grandma to look amused, and Grandpa to look proud.
“Understood Seth,” she said. “We will retreat to the Winter Study to plan. Henrick will be back soon, and his help will be invaluable with this. We should wait to inform the staff until after he joins us.”
“Great idea, go for it. Er, where’s the Winter Study?” Seth asked, trying to remember from their tour.
“Directly below Kendra’s bedroom,” Agad said. “On the first floor.”
Seth nodded, he’d knock on doors until he found the right one.
Seth turned to his remaining players, “And finally: Doren, Newel, Tess, and Knox. I have a very special job for you. Wait outside the door while I make sure of something with Agad.”
“That’s our cue to leave,” Grandma said, patting a hand on her husband’s leg.
“The abundance of caution while in command suits you,” Grandpa said, standing up. He put his hand on Seth’s shoulder as he passed, “I’m proud of how you’re handling this situation.”
Considering a little over a week ago, he’d gotten a stern lecture about endangering his cousin and the consequences to trying to trick magic, this was quite the change. Grandpa smiled, and walked past him. There was a small lump in his throat. This feeling was why Kendra always did her best to make people proud of her. It was rarely sent his way.
Tanu and Patton also left, then the satyrs and his cousins went just outside the door.
Seth walked close to Agad and lowered his voice, “Tess is Fairy struck, can she see through distractor spells?”
Agad nodded.
Seth smiled and nodded as well. He whispered. “Can you bring the treaty document to the tower?”
Agad shook his head, “It is locked in a box in the Winter Study. The medallion opens the box. I recommend against moving it.”
Seth looked at Marat.
“I agree, with my brother. We have the contents memorized, we should only consult them upon need.”
Seth nodded, then stepped back.
“See you at Seth Tower soon.”
The two of them left, and Seth took a moment to fling himself on the couch and groan. The energy had left when everyone else did. Leading was such hard work! For the millionth time, he wished Kendra had let him turn the key. Sure he’d be kidnapped and being trained into an evil Shadow Charmer right now, but Kendra was so much smarter than him, she would have figured out about the intruder way before.
Probably because she had better judgement than him and didn’t usually trust terrible people right off the bat. And like she said, people usually had enough confidence in her to just trust her with important stuff.
The door creaked open, “Uh, Seth, did you have a job for us?” Newel asked.
Seth got up and went to the door. Remembering from his first day, he used the medallion to unlock a desk drawer in the corner, and pulled out a key ring, slipping it into his adventure pouch.
“Yeah, follow me, I don’t know how much of the keep Tess and Knox got to see,” Seth said, “And it’s a good time to get an updated map of it, in case we come under siege. It’s possible the Dragons are just going to stare us down until we run out of food. Any of you got any talent at drawing maps?”
There was a pause as Seth led on.
“I’ve dealt with a fair amount of treasure maps in my day,” Doren admitted, “And I’m not a shabby hand with a pen. I can draw.”
“Awesome,” Seth said, “Start with the storerooms in the basement storerooms, where the barrel was before, then the dungeons, then the ground floor. If you can get through those floors by lunch, that’d be great, but make sure to do them all. I want you three to go with him, and look for anything that seems suspicious. Look through the dungeons, but if any of you touch the Blackwell, or the chain next to the Blackwell, I’m throwing all of you inside it,” Seth said.
Seth had led them into the library and started pulling out loose sheets of paper, “Doesn’t matter how small. If it seems out of place, make a note of it.”
“Are you sure this is the best use of our time Seth?” Newel asked dubiously.
Seth grinned, “It’s a very good use of your time.”
Seth started writing on various blank papers, while they all watched him. He turned to his younger cousin when he was finished.
“Right. Tess? I want you looking for pictures and weird things on the walls.”
On this sheet of paper, Seth had written:
Every single time you see a person or creature, point at them, say something nice about them, and ask if you can talk to them. Knox will either say that you’re busy, or that the person isn’t there. Nod and keep walking every single time. Don’t let anyone know what’s written here, keep it a secret. Put a clean sheet on top of this one.
“Here’s a list of the things you should look for. This is an old castle, there might be secret passages that we need to find out about before someone sneaks in,” Seth said, handing her the paper. She immediately started reading.
“Knox, you’re looking up higher, pay attention to cold or warm drafts and the items in the rooms, make note of which ones have weapons, look for places where the intruder could be staying,” Seth said, handing him a piece of paper that read:
Tess is going to ask to speak to everyone she sees. She has magic eyes like Kendra. If you see who she’s pointing to, tell her that you’re too busy to bother them. If you don’t see who she is pointing to, tell her that there’s no one there and you don’t have time for games. Make notes, but don’t engage.
He turned to Newel, “Your job is to make sure no one runs into walls while writing stuff down, and make sure to explore everything. Bring the cool stuff back to me, so that our item troll doesn’t try to keep it for the shelves.” Seth said, spouting nonsense. “Write down where you find it though, in case Agad says we need to return it or unleash another apocalypse.”
“Better to ask forgiveness than permission,” Newel nodded with a salute. Seth handed him a paper that read:
If someone was listening to our meeting, they are going to be following you. Watch for them. Tess and Knox are going to be acting weird, just ignore them. You’re on protector duty.
And Seth handed fully blank sheets to Doren, “And, of course, you’re on the map. Here’s paper, pens, clipboard, and scotch tape. Everyone know their job?”
The four of them looked excited as they nodded. “Good,” Seth said, “Meet back in the War Room after lunch.”
Doren and Newel slung another salute. Tess tried to copy them and slapped herself in the face. Knox just rolled his eyes.
They left, and Seth debated between going to check up on Grandma and Grandpa, or heading straight to Seth Tower.
His grandparents couldn’t set anything in stone without Hendrick, so he’d head to the Tower. He’d be able to see Henrick coming back, and take him to Grandma and Grandpa when the Alcetaur arrived.
Up at the tower room, Marat and Agad were waiting for him.
“So, magic defenses in place?” Seth asked.
Agad nodded, “Perfect, just like I said twenty minutes ago. Mind explaining more of your plan?”
“Sure,” Seth said, “Grandma and Grandpa are doing exactly what I said they were. Running the past week from Blackwell made them the best people for that, until Hendrick gets back to help. Tanu is also doing exactly what I told him too.
“I sent Tess, Knox, and the satyrs looking for people hiding themselves with distractor spells, but they look like they’re creating a fresh map of the lower floors. Tess is pointing out everyone she sees to Knox, Knox is telling her that they’re too busy to talk to anyone and taking note of the people that Tess sees that he doesn’t. Because they’re the group doing the most suspicious work, I’m hoping any spies here are following them, letting the rest of us get things done. Newel is on the look out for someone following them, and thinks that’s what he thinks they’re doing. Doren is actually creating a map.”
Seth was rather proud of that plan, and feeling pretty ingenious for coming up with it in only ten minutes.
“Once again, not bad,” Agad said.
Seth gave a dry smile, “I learned from the best teacher. The Sphinx betraying me and my friends over and over. After this, I’m going to do my own sweep, trying to see through the shadows while shadow walking.”
“Might I recommend also holding your unsheathed sword at the same time?” Marat said. “That is the sword of Tregain, yes?”
Seth glanced down, “Oh that’s right! This sword helps make people look away from me, especially bigger creatures. I’ll definitely do that.”
“A very pro-active plan,” Agad said, “I will admit to not even considering the idea of someone hiding in the Blackwell. The barrel messes with the traditional rule of only allowing visitors a single night of stay, as that magic is activated upon crossing the boundary.”
“I do not believe that is all to our caretaker’s plan,” Marat said, amused, “I believe he feels he will do more for our mission elsewhere, and intends to return the mantle of caretaker to me.”
Agad gaped, then turned, “Is this true, Seth?”
Seth nodded, “Celebrant is no longer co-caretaker. The issue we came here to solve, the weakening barrier, is fixed. There’s no problem with Marat being caretaker, according to Dromadus, so long as he stays in human form. I’d be a lot more useful helping track down Kendra and Bracken.”
“Before you go any farther,” Agad said, holding up a hand, “There are things I wish to disclose to the caretaker of a dragon sanctuary. The remaining lines of defense after the sanctuaries fall. We can continue to discuss your possible resignation afterwards.”
Seth hopped onto a wide window ledge, “Okay, hit me. What else we got before the next apocalypse?”
“These secrets should not be repeated,” Agad warned, “Except to your most trusted ally at the time of greatest need.”
Seth glanced at Marat, who nodded, “I am already aware of the provisions my brother speaks of. Do not worry.”
“The first is why Dragons from fallen sanctuaries have yet to invade the mortal world,” Agad explained, “There is a magic item, perhaps the most magic item in existence —”
“More then the Wizenstone?” Seth asked, eyebrows raised. He was starting to suspect that there wasn’t an actual standard for how ‘magic’ an item is.
Agad paused, and Marat chuckled. Agad continued, “No, I suppose, not greater than the Wizenstone. Possibly it’s equal. I would not like to test either object against the other. The skull of the first dragon that ever lived, Abraxtus, is more heavily ensorcelled, than any other object I have ever come in contact with. It is called The Sovereign Skull. It takes all the disbelief in magic that all mortals generate, and creates a repulsive barrier against dragons. This is our absolute last line of defense, and must be protected at all costs. Only a few wizards know the location, and that information will never be divulged for its own protection.”
Seth nodded, “Can I have the name of a wizard that does know? Just in case.”
Agad looked him straight in the eye. “No.”
Seth nodded, “That’s fair. Sounds like we’re hoping it doesn’t get that far.” As though they had ever had any luck in that department.
“Another line of defense: the Dragon Slayers,” Agad said.
Seth grinned, “The Somber Knight was so cool. A bit of a downer, but a real life-saver. He’s still a bit…messy, after rescuing Kendra from being dinner. You’re talking about the ones at the other six sanctuaries, right?”
Agad nodded, “In addition to the other six at sanctuaries, there are five others that have been living in the world, waiting to be called upon again. It will take a while to wake them up, but Celebrant declaring war was the key.”
Seth nodded, “You did the same thing with the dragon preserves that you did with the demon prisons. How are these guys at handling immortality? We sure they didn’t try to off themselves?”
Agad said, “They all already had experiences with extended lifespans, so hopefully we are rousing them from a pleasurable retirement. And then there is a line of defense you are slightly more familiar with: the three treasures in the secret dragon temples.”
“Right, gauntlets that control dragons. Every dragon in a hundred miles comes by to kill you if you look at them funny,” Seth recited, remembering Thronis’s warning.
Agad nodded, “There are two other items, and two other sacred temples guarding these items at dragon sanctuaries. The harp that can send any dragon to sleep, and the shield that can defend against any dragon’s attack. These items were necessary to winning the war against the dragons the first time, and now that we’re facing war again, we need them back.”
Seth tilted his head, “Did they already get new guardians for the temple here at Wyrmroost? Cause we killed them, and its not like those were your ordinary, everyday dragons, and no one besides Gavin and Thronis knew we went there for the obsidian waste key.”
“It would be foolish to assume they aren’t guarded,” Agad said, considering carefully, “Though it is also strange that Celebrant has never ranted against your party for that affront. The answer is that I do not know.”
There was a moment of silence as everyone thought about the predicament.
“Well,” Seth said, “How buried is the translocator? Me and Kendra have been in the temple treasure room, we, er, I, for the moment, could grab the gloves and come back in a snap.”
Marat spoke up, “Bringing the translocator back into play at this time would be a dangerous move. That item is really too powerful. Dragons in human form could use it to escape the sanctuaries without a fight.”
Agad nodded, “All the artifacts are currently inaccessible. We used the Chronometer to hide the translocator, the sands of sanctity, and the occulous six more years in the future, waiting for us to finish designing the vaults. The Font needed to remain in the present, to support our first immortal, but that is the only artifact accessible. At least, until the Sphinx made off with it during his escape. Good thinking, but unfortunately untenable.”
A horn sounded from the parapet over the gate.
“That means a dragon is coming, right?” Seth asked, turning around in the window. “Raxtus maybe?”
“It means official visitors,” Marat clarified, “It certainly has been seeing its use this week. It also announced the arrival of the carriage from Stormguard.”
“Got it,” Seth said, standing up, “Anything else you need to tell the current caretaker of wyrmroost about the grand scheme of defenses?”
“No, those are our three lines: talismans, dragon slayers, and The Sovereign Skull,” Agad counted.
“Okay, I’ll keep those in mind, and never tell anyone, unless I absolutely have to,” Seth said, drawing a cross over his heart for good measure. “My plan is simple. Celebrant is a great big ego, right? He hates Kendra for insulting him, and it’s embarrassing that he keeps losing to a couple of kids. He’s getting help, he’s getting desperate, no matter what his plan is, right?”
Agad nodded.
“So, I’m going to offer him one last insult as caretaker,” Seth said with a grin, “His little rebellion isn’t even worth my time. After we deal with our guests at the gate, I’m going to do my sweep of everywhere while walking through shadows. Then I’m going to give being caretaker over to Marat, and we’re going to leave, with the barrel. That’s Blackwell’s biggest weakness, and it doesn’t need to be here for us to use it. I’ll leave Marat with a parting note to read to Celebrant, letting him know that we have better things to do.”
Agad started chuckling, moving his hand to cover his mouth when it didn’t stop.
“Boom,” Seth said with relish, “Biggest weakness removed, whoever is in the castle has to figure out how to kill Marat, who’s going to be a lot harder to kill than me, I get to go after Kendra, and we throw one last insult over our shoulder.”
Agad continued to laugh, but the most Marat gave was an amused look.
“And how exactly do you intend to leave?” Marat asked, “The walkway between the typical entrance and the Keep will not be guarded for this trip.”
“We have some pretty cool rides,” Seth said, “Not sure you saw them when Patton came in, but Kendra met up with a fairy godmother and boom, the luvians we were riding all have wings. We’ll need to make it so they can leave the sanctuary with us, but if they can make it through the sky on a festival night, they can probably get us past the barrier. We’ll have to ask them of course, but I think we’ll be in pretty good shape. They strike me as adventurous.”
“I would like to make one suggestion,” Agad said, wiping a tear from his eye, “Leave in peace, no one attacks at all, and leave before night falls. I’m sure they intend to strike in the dark. You leave two hours before sunset, and Celebrant likely wont have time to demand to know what you’re doing. Use Tess’s cloak of innocence to see you safely past the barrier.”
“Oh, that is wicked,” Marat chuckled. “But we have dawdled enough. The horn summons the caretaker to official business.”
Seth took one last look out the window and down the road, and paused. He pulled out his eyeglass from his adventure pouch. “Is that…Henrick leading a bunch dryads?”
#Forgotten Light#Fablehaven#Dragon watch#Seth Sorenson#Longer chapter#Look at my little boy#All grown up and leading people
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located in southern california,
goliath valley is a high-profile private neighborhood, home to a variety of stars and those connected to them. painters! poets! actors! musicians! directors! you name it. one of goliath’s key selling points is its exclusivity, only accepting the best of the best--or so they say. money can’t buy you happiness, but it certainly can buy you a mansion. this gated community isn’t the utopia one might think. with a clear divide between those living at the center of goliath and those closer to the gate, it’s difficult to completely leave the real world behind.
tldr: a small-town style rp about wealthy/celebrity neighbors. themes of fame, class, and identity are at the center of our story ! but really: this is pretty low stakes.
RULES:
muses and muns must be 18+ as there are mature themes involved.
there is no set activity rule but you will be contacted if you are inactive for more than three days with no notice--this includes ic or ooc.
this is discord exclusive. no need to make a tumblr. no need to use any gif icons in replies.
do not godmod. be kind to each other. please respect triggers. any nsfw should be placed in a nsfw tagged channel. nsfw and triggers should be hidden by spoiler text.
drama ic is great. drama ooc is not. boundaries should be respected at all times. no bubble roleplaying.
no problematic fcs. please contact me if there’s someone you are uncomfortable with.
please follow the yes, and and no, but rules when writing and plotting. keep the flow going!
APP SAMPLE + LOGISTICS:
you can send your app to me through submit or tumblr dm! please do not take a lack of acceptance personally, it’s first come/first serve. those who just miss the cap will be the first to know about any extension! each mun is allowed two characters to start.
( faceclaim, gender, pronouns ) wait, you didn’t know first last lived here ? they’re what they’re rich/famous for living on road name. i read they’re a age in numbers zodiac originally from location. apparently they’re pretty two positive traits but also two negative traits. sometimes, when you drive by their house you can hear them blasting song by artist. they’re so different in person, they remind me of 3 character aesthetics. written by alias, age and pronouns.
LOCATION OPTIONS:
(there are obviously more streets than this, but these are the important ones)
shiloh circle. the center of goliath, where the richest of the rich will live.
eastman drive. the next tier of houses, slightly less expensive than those on shiloh.
bristol lane. the next tier, typically home to c & d listers.
scott street. the last tier, closest to the gate. they’re the smallest of the houses.
currently at a cap of eight muns. may expand to ten under special circumstances !
8/8 SPOTS TAKEN!
( sky ferreira, non-binary, she/they ) wait, you didn’t know heaven fields lived here ? they’re an ex-child star living on shiloh circle. i read they’re a 26 year old pisces originally from orlando, florida. apparently they’re pretty captivating and friendly but also erratic and secretive. sometimes, when you drive by their house you can hear them blasting delete forever by grimes. they’re so different in person, they remind me of the resurgence of fairycore, the legacy of the olsen twins, and the soothing sound of synth . written by syd, 23, they/them.
( aaron tveit, cis-man, he/him ) wait, you didn’t know luke bradley lived here ? they’re the son of famous actors living on bristol lane. i read they’re a 30 year old cancer originally from los angeles, california. apparently they’re pretty charming and easygoing but also vain and cowardly. sometimes, when you drive by their house you can hear them blasting the rat by the walkmen. they’re so different in person, they remind me of people who vape at inappropriate times, the tendency to deflect with dumb jokes, and unmistakable wasted potential . written by syd, 23, they/them.
( im jinah, cis female, she/her ) wait, you didn’t know tallulah “tally” hong lived here ? they’re an heiress/socialite living on shiloh circle. i read they’re a twenty-seven year old aries originally from new york, new york. apparently they’re pretty astute & alluring but also darwinian & supercilious. sometimes, when you drive by their house you can hear them blasting out the bottle by lolo zouaï. they’re so different in person, they remind me of treating walks of shame like a runway, three passport photos & a bite as big as her bark. written by jules, 23, she/her.
( sian lilly, cis female, she/her ) wait, you didn’t know annick warner lived here ? they’re an actress/influencer living on bristol lane. i read they’re a twenty-three year old gemini originally from toronto, ontario. apparently they’re pretty enchanting & creative but also risqué & careless. sometimes, when you drive by their house you can hear them blasting the worst in me by kaytranada ft. tinashe. they’re so different in person, they remind me of treating most spaces like a concert venue when any of “your songs” are on, fogged-up car windows and lux lavender baths with prosecco and plenty of natural light. written by jules, 23 and she/her.
( richard madden, cis man, he/him ) wait, you didn’t know donny lister lived here ? they’re a photographer living on bristol lane. i read they’re a 32 year-old leo originally from hoboken, new jersey. apparently they’re pretty observant and social but also pretentious and proud. sometimes, when you drive by their house you can hear them blasting ahha by nate ruess. they’re so different in person, they remind me of empty train cars at 2am, always carrying a lighter despite quitting smoking years ago, and rambling about ephemerality and commercialism every time he walks into a gift shop. written by jace, 23, he/him.
( zoë kravitz, cis? woman?, she/her ) wait, you didn’t know meadow fields lived here ? they’re an ex-child star living on shiloh circle. i read they’re a 28 year-old gemini originally from orlando, florida. apparently they’re pretty adventurous and intuitive but also abrasive and closed-off. sometimes, when you drive by their house you can hear them blasting killing boys by halsey. they’re so different in person, they remind me of scuffed doc martens, campy horror movies, and trying just a little too hard to act like you don’t know all the words to disney songs. written by jace, 23, he/him.
( katie stevens, cis woman, she/her/hers ) wait, you didn’t know andrea matthews lived here ? they’re a singer/songwriter living on scott street. i read they’re 26 year old cancer originally from paradise, california. apparently they’re pretty adaptable and creative but also insecure and paradoxical. sometimes, when you drive by their house you can hear them blasting body in a box by city and colour. they’re so different in person, they remind me of freshly made beds, a cracked iphone case, and always nodding. written by diana, 24 and she/her/hers.
( froy gutierrez, cis man, he/him/his ) wait, you didn’t know sebastian 'bash' guerra lived here ? they’re an actor living on bristol lane. i read they’re 22 year old leo originally from san diego, california. apparently they’re nurturing and protective but also self-sacrificing and irresolute. sometimes, when you drive by their house you can hear them blasting frank d fixer by jason mraz. they’re so different in person, they remind me of family dinners around the table, always having sunscreen, being the knight in shining armor. written by diana, 24 and she/her/hers.
( delilah belle, cis woman, she/her ) wait, you didn’t know riley hargreaves lived here ? they’re an actress living on shiloh circle. i read they’re a 25 year old pisces originally from santa barbara, california. apparently they’re pretty intuitive and charismatic but also spacey and docile. sometimes, when you drive by their house you can hear them blasting boys by charli xcx. they’re so different in person, they remind me of layers of gold chains around her neck, a wardrobe full of denim and neutrals and the constant pressure of needing to charm the whole room. written by jay, 23 and she/her.
( kail peery, demi girl, she/they ) wait, you didn’t know maxine ‘max’ hill lived here ? they’re a musician living on scott street. i read they’re a 21 year old leo originally from chicago, illinois. apparently they’re pretty fervent and loyal but also dogmatic and temperamental. sometimes, when you drive by their house you can hear them blasting i am king by nasty cherry. they’re so different in person, they remind me of the obnoxious sound of popping gum, making deliberate eye contact from across the room to assert dominance and unintentional all-nighters. written by jay, 23 and she/her.
( lorenzo zurzolo, cis male, he / him ) wait, you didn’t know bandit knox lived here ? they’re an actor living on eastman drive. i read they’re a 23 year old scorpio originally from reno, nevada. apparently they’re pretty resilient & convivial but also facetious & heedless. sometimes, when you drive by their house you can hear them blasting debra by iDKHOW. they’re so different in person, they remind me of under eye circles so dark that they look like he just came back from the dead, a messy head of curls that hair & makeup are always badgering him about on set, and anxiously fidgeting with the rings around his fingers. written by gray, 24 and she/her
( christina nadin, cis woman? (she doesn't rly know), she/her ) wait, you didn’t know juniper darling lived here ? they’re an artist living on scott street. i read they’re a 21 year old aries originally from chicago, illinois. apparently they’re pretty jovial & observant but also pigheaded & gullible. sometimes, when you drive by their house you can hear them blasting dog years by maggie rogers. they’re so different in person, they remind me of mistaking paint water for a cup of tea, modern music played exclusively from vinyl records, and long hair wound up in a messy bun that's held together with a paint brush. written by gray, 24 and she/her
( diana silvers, cis woman, she/her ) wait, you didn’t know charlotte arnault lived here ? they’re an artist living on eastman drive. i read they’re a 24 year old leo originally from paris, france. apparently they’re pretty talented and charismatic but also lazy and irritable. sometimes, when you drive by their house you can hear them blasting dinner & diatribes by hozier. they’re so different in person, they remind me of expensive cocktails with ridiculous names, diving into a pool with all of your clothes on, and the need to be the most interesting person in the room . written by morgan, 19, she/her
( riz ahmed, non-binary, he/they ) wait, you didn’t know rasul rajani lived here ? they’re an up-and-coming indie film director living on eastman drive. i read they’re a 35-year-old capricorn originally from newton, ma. apparently they’re pretty ambitious and hardworking but also aloof and mercurial. sometimes, when you drive by their house you can hear them blasting money machine by 100 gecs. they’re so different in person, they remind me of chain smoking cigarettes to stay awake, a dog-eared notebook filled with scribbles and storyboards, disappearing into the wallpaper at a film premiere’s afterparty. written by char, 24 and she/her.
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[ CHARLES MELTON , MALE , HE/HIM ] it’s nice to see you [ CLYDE SHAW ] ! the last time i saw you, it was at the last town meeting, and you were acting a bit [ WITHDRAWN ], i have to say. but i’ve also seen you around being really [ LOYAL], especially when you get called a [ THE DESPONDENT ]. so i totally get it – everyone has their bad days ! how’s it been, by the way, working as a [ LANDSCAPER ] at just [ TWENTY NINE ] years old ? i hope it’s been good – you were so excited to start there ! hopefully they didn’t ask about [ AFTER AN ACCIDENT AT WAR HE WAS THE ONLY SURVIVOR, HE SUFFERED MAJOR INJURIES BUT WHEN HE GOT BACK HE FOUND OUT THAT THE MEDIA PICKED UP HIS STORY AND PEOPLE THINK THE MISSION HE SURVIVED SHOULD HAVE BEEN A SURE THING. BUT INSTEAD HE WAS THE ONLY ONE TO WALK AWAY. HE’S HIDING IN GLORY VALLEY ]. but i promise i’ll keep that between us.
tw: blind/deaf, war, ptsd
GENERAL INFORMATION.
full name clyde shaw
alias shaw
age twenty-nine
date of birth august 19
place of birth pheonix, arizona
zodiac leo
gender cismale
nationality korean/american
religion non-practicing catholic
orientation straight
relationship status single
PHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES.
face claim charles melton
height 6′1′’
weight 172 lbs
hair color black
eye color brown
voice claim charles melton
tattoos joker playing card on sholder
distinguishing marks scars on the side of face and ear, down leg, arm. he has very deep scars from the war.
outfit/clothing style anything really. doesn’t care for appearance
BACKGROUND INFORMATION.
hometown pheonix
current residence
past residences nevada
spoken languages english, mexican, german, ASL, korean
financial status lower
education level high school, community college
occupation landscaper
B I O:
his mother was an exotic dancer in pheonix butshe started in korea and his father was a product of a loss of casualty at war. it his the family hard but that didn’t stop his precious mother for making just enough money to get her son across the border to live his life in america,when he grew old enough he just moved out to live with a family friend, rodrigo and his wife cassandra. away from his mother and younger sister who he didn’t even know how to connect with; whether it be the age difference or just how different they were.
he did his mother proud, getting passing grades in school, not letting the hard life of being alone get to him he had friends, went to parties. he was a typical boy, and grew into a strong and very independent young man.
at nineteen he felt the need to fight for the country, just as his father did to fight in the war. and he was sent off to climb the ranks until he had face the ultimate hurtle. he and his team were sent out to an unmarked city, there to make grounds and start a set up for their next ground camp. only it was littered with landmines and he made the wrong step sending he and his team blasting into the air. he lost great soldiers and would never forget the looks on their faces as he tried to save each one.
through the shock of the explosion though clyde didn’t realize how hurt he had gotten. not until he passed out and woke up in a hospital back in nevada. they told him to take things calm. to take in the new surroundings as they came to him; only, not all of them did.
in the explosion he had lost hearing and sight on the left side of his body, the explosion destroyed his ears, left him with a limp, and he was smacked dead in the face by shrapnel leaving a scar and such damaged tissue they had to remove his eye. he wears a glass one now but the scaring has been hard for him to get over. (rodrigo calls him the phantom of the opera when he wants to piss clyde off.)
it was in the hospital after waking up from the explosion that he realized something strange. he woke up with a flash; camera men swormed him daily for being the only survivor in the accident. he was depressed and overwhelmed and needed to escape if he wanted to heal; and dealing not only with trying to live with a healing body and a broken one at that the male walked out of a hospital not in nevada as he had thought. no, he stumbled out of the doors and made his way to gory valley where he hides off of the media. only now not only is he the only survivor, but they found out that the mission was supposed to be a one and done, only something happened that no one can figure out and they think clyde is behind it. now he really is trying to hide from the people who hate him.
he has had to deal with 78% of his hearing taken from him and 50% of sight. along with his mental breaks of PTSD, depression, and survival’s guilt.
M O R E
physical training was hell for him. he refused help and grew angry with himself for letting himself make such a huge mistake after all the training he went through. but worse of all he blames himself for the solders who didn’t make it home.
he walks with a limp but tries to hide it no matter how badly it may hurt him some days.
he may be angry at himself but just as he pushed himself not to let the pain get to him as a child he tries to be positive; still kind to people and as helpful as he can be. he never wants to be a burden on others so even though he constantly wants to help others he refuses any help for himself.
he picked up gardening as a form of therapy and even if he’s not the best he does have a pretty decent collection of herbs he grows in a soap box and a few house plants
when he arrived to glory valley he joined a program to get a guide dog, the rush of the city was new to him so he needed to get a little help as much as he didn’t want to admit it.
he acts like his dog isn’t that big of help but honestly he loves he loves him more than anything. he is a GOLDENDOODLE almost complete with training that he named CHINO
as landscaper he takes his job seriously
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Yugioh Episode 30 Season 4: The Dead Joey Shuffle
Lets ignore everything happening on planet Earth right now and talk about old ass anime, shall we? Yes, my sky turned a horrible end of the world yellow/orange color for an entire day because of a LOT of fire in my state. But thankfully, the winds have changed, the sky is blue...and I can write about Yugioh again.
Last we left off, Tristan, Tea, and Yami stumbled across two fresh corpses. Now, when Joey died a season or two ago (I honestly can’t remember when), we had my favorite storyboarder at the helm just sweeping emotion all over the field and the intense weeping for Joey Wheeler lasted for like 30 minutes. Yugi freaked out in the puzzle headspace for like half an episode and nearly gave up playing cards again, Yami punched a wall and then put a duel disk on Joey’s arm like a funerary send off to the afterlife, Tea started losing her mind and begged Yugi to drop out of the tourney so Yugi wouldn’t die, and Pharaoh was like “yo Tea, Yugi can’t talk right now can we do this later????” And then Tristan, out of nowhere, just started shaking Joey and screaming at him to wake up (and I think he punched him in the face and it got censored? Yo that episode is wild.) Joey got plugged to some Kaiba Corp med bay that had like 2 dozen weird sensors attached to his chest and feet to keep him alive. Serenity was like hyperventilating in the back, just a LOT of stuff was happening all at once.
But this time, with an ordinary animation team, these three kids are so distracted by the other corpse, that they only cry just a little bit before being like “woah what?”
And like this is their second time. Maybe they’ve gotten used to Joey being dead? Maybe they got it all out of their system and are now a lot more accustomed to the fact that they all must die. Several times.
Confronted with this Agatha Christie brand debacle, Tristan makes an incredible reach that is also completely correct. Like this is such an amazing incredible reach.
Hire Tristan as your detective, hot damn. There are like 7.8 billion Orichalcos-possessed people on this planet right now trying to kill Joey Wheeler and Tristan actually called the right one.
Yami never tells us who he blames, but it’s OK, because the show immediately cuts over to Dartz’ silicon valley fortress to tell us without telling us. So while this animation team isn’t as insanely extra as our previous animation teams, they still know how to edit their cuts to work alongside their dialogue just fine.
(read more under the cut)
Lets take a little while to just take this in. Someone took a while to make it, so rather than look at it for half a second before it passes--please lets count the number of floating streets in this scene.
3.
So before when I talked about the history of San Francisco, I mentioned the old Embarcadero, which was a double decker street wrapped around the peninsula. (we still see parts of this double decker set up on parts of the highway to this day.) But what if--they actually have no idea that the Embarcadero was a thing before it fell down in an earthquake?
What if they just...wanted San Francisco to be vaguely cyberpunk in this universe and that floating freeway was supposed to be futuristic and not just an 80′s throwback?
Because there’s 3 streets stacked on top of eachother right here and yo there is no where in the city built like this. This is a Gotham situation where the poors live on the lower levels and the rich just kind of hang out on the top. We have too many Earthquakes in reality to ever support this setup but Yugioh...wow. They went for it.
Also, our art deco architecture isn’t quite in this style as Dartz’ mansion. Mind you, this isn’t full deco, and the structure has more of an ancient world vibe. But...while San Fransisco does have a lot of deco, it’s just different (sorry you’re not really here for the architecture but youknow, I’m an artist so I do think a lot about why concept artists may have gone where they went)
++++++++++RANT ABOUT SF DECO VS COMIC BOOK DECO FEEL FREE TO SKIP++++++++++++++
So I’m not going to dare say this is a mistake on the Yugioh team by any means, since Deco is Deco and who knows when Dartz built that building. But like I’ve seen the SF skyline many times in this show and it’s got some funky shapes in it that are just sooo off to me. They keep drawing a more Futurist New York. Truth is, we don’t have that many skyscrapers in SF.
Most of the pictures you see of scaling buildings are of this one area around the financial district--everything else is...pretty short. So in those photos they very carefully crop out all the really squat as hell buildings on either side of it, to give the impression that our city is super tall, much like a dating app.
And, as far as Art Deco Gotham-esque skyscrapers go, we got ones like this guy:
Where at a glance it’s like...that’s barely deco (and barely that impressive. This is 1/3 the height of the Empire State building.) Compared to a lot of cities in America, our skyscrapers aren’t as...clearly deco from far away? We don’t have the huge ass humps and long ass gilded lines of the Empire State building or the Chrysler building. You only really get those details when you zoom in.
Our other skyscrapers are kinda understated or modern in comparison. And the reason why we just don’t have many deco skyscrapers is because...our ground ain’t good for building skyscrapers at all, so it took us kind of a while to build up.
Like we got this tower that we built recently (the first skyscraper they built in SF in a good while) and they decided to name it the “The Millennium Tower” which...I know...good job, team, clearly you wanted to get cursed. Well the tower started leaning about 3 or 4 years ago, like well over a foot from it’s original spot, it’s just tilting and sinking away, and people are freaking out because it’s surrounded by other tall buildings so they’re like “damn it we’re gonna dominoes.” The people in charge were like “well...we don’t know why it’s leaning...but I’m sure it’s fine” and it’s like “the ground. It was the ground...you dumbasses” not to mention that it’s clearly cursed by at least one angry Egyptian Ghost but...what do you do?
I would absolutely watch the Yugioh spinoff season about the Millennium Tower and the SF tycoons that got possessed by a ghost and have to play card games to keep their tower from squishing all of San Francisco. Yo you should hire me, Yugioh, I got IDEAS.
Man...Yugioh predicting the future, how did they call the ill fate of The Millennium Tower????
But anyway, most skyscrapers in SF are kind of boring because they have to be sturdy as hell. But, they have some neat modern shapes (like the Transamerica Pyramid--in the shape of A PYRAMID that hasn’t shown it’s face once this entire Egyptian influenced anime)
I mean, come on Yugioh, it’s right there.
Also the hell is this weird UFO on this picture I lifted off of google?
Like I think it’s 4 jets?
I may have lifted this from an alien website, so forgive me, q-anon for lifting your image, I’m trying to talk about architecture in my Yugioh blog.
In fact the only building I (and google) can think of that is both really tall and deco-ey is this one:
And it’s a Marriot hotel built in the late 80′s. And honestly, it looks way more 1980′s Las Vegas than it does Deco. (It honestly looks like photobashing but made real, this is a weird building.)
And I could be wrong and overlooking a very important structure, but most of the city’s really cool art deco buildings are in the form of theaters, libraries, churches, schools, and houses--which are only a few stories tall. They’re gorgeous buildings with cool and different silhouettes, it’s just not very big.
Like I believe this is an old high school?
also a lot of our “art deco” has no idea if it’s victorian, deco, or art noveau so they’ll just hit all of it to see what sticks. It’s a lot more eclectic than other places where Deco is typically more...straight-lined. I kinda hate defining art styles as masculine or feminine but honestly it’s the quickest way to really hit home the difference between a Bruce Timm art deco that you’d see in a comic book, (which is very New York inspired) and what we have in San Fransisco which is really decorative and decadent.
The Yugioh SF just has no curvy nonsense and that really sticks out to me.
Ornate swirls get shoved Everywhere. Willy nilly. Just everywhere randomly. And it sits next to other structures that are modern and simplistic. It’s very San Francisco to have this old world next to new world.
And it makes sense. SF is the other side of the continent from New York, and about as far West as you can go from the movement going on in Europe. So...we made our own take and tl;dr the art deco in our city doesn’t look like Gotham at all.
And, while it’s not as grand or dark or iconic, it’s a good thing. It’s what helps make San Fransisco look really unique compared to other American cities--the fact that we're...short and eclectic. Our district with the skyscrapers is where it’s kinda boring, actually--the good stuff is when you get away from that. Where every little building has a spunky wild personality.
But in a show like this you gotta make it seem more grand and less homely so--they scaled up the buildings a lot more than we really have and homogenized all the stylings into one (and they axed every Victorian swirl because they don’t want to draw that). They really just turned SF into comic book New York--especially since I’ve only seen like...one steep hill since we got here.
It’s fine, and it makes complete sense why they did it, (I’m more confused as to why most of California is a Nevada desert so I can easily forgive a San Francisco without the right Deco) it’s just a very different energy.
and honestly...it’s an energy influenced by the tone of the show. Everything has a very dark blue-gray palate, and it’s because it’s literally the end of the world, Joey has died, everyone is sad...maybe it would be out of place to have a building that looks like it sparks joy? The harsh and cold lines do add to the gravity of the situation.
Maybe I would have done the same thing? In the end, the legibility of your story matters more than the accuracy of your story--especially when it comes to TV. Which is somewhat a controversial statement, and there’s exceptions when it comes to cultural stuff. But while the culture of San Fransisco was erased (a culture that they did draw in the beginning of the season! they did show alcatraz, a trolly, and the golden gate!), it is at a point in the show where...all of humanity is being erased anyway. Could also be symbolic? Maybe?
+++++++++++++END OF THE ART DECO RANT+++++++++++++
So anyway, stepping away from lovely buildings and into this gross ass abandoned park, Yami decides he’s gotta get himself to this gaudy ass Batman building ASAP.
He can ride a horse but he absolutely will not ride a motorcycle. Or touch Joey Wheeler’s dead body.
Which is wild because apparently there’s a Yugioh spinoff where all they do is ride motorcycles??? But from what I heard, Yami is not in it. Which is the most wild thing.
So uh...you know how much I love art details, lets take a long look at this one.
AH no.
Nope nope nope nope.
I hate this logo. It looks like an emperor penguin’s eyebrow thingies. Like a face with just four huge eyebrows.
Not sure why we randomly have a new logo. It’s nearly the end of the season, we’ve already shown the Orichalcos logo so many times. Was this episode made earlier in development than the rest? Is that why there were like - I dunno, put this random logo here... Maybe we’ll figure out the rest of the logo later?
I don’t know. This weird logo feels so out of place.
And then because I’m thinking about buildings...maybe it’s influenced by our Shell building?
Maybe? Or not? Just saying you got a round thing with radial lines hovering over a trellis...the possibility is there that they were inspired but had to edit it down for animation? Eh, I’m reaching desperately for anything that looks like San Francisco at this point.
Anyways, the front door of this building is an elevator (????) and in a somewhat confusing set of cuts, out of this elevator comes the murderer herself.
And she’s dead.
SO HAPPY I didn’t have to watch that card game but like...c’mon. There’s no way Mai would lose to Raphael.
Maybe that’s why they couldn’t show it? Because she’s the only person on this show who uses a themed deck with cards that actually sync with eachother? (outside of Pegasus’ toon deck and Grandpa’s voltron deck ((sorry it’s name isn’t voltron, I’ve forgotten the name of the robot that you build out of other cards. Exodus? Exodysseus?
It’s Exodia isn't it? Wtv. 2020′s been a real long one, all y’all.)) )
(don’t ask where the smoke came from, we don’t know. Maybe Yami felt like making it to be more aesthetic. It is a fun visual tic to the show.)
So Yami goes into this elevator instead of anticipating that this is obviously a trap. Like most would just decide to take the stairs instead, but Yami loves falling for a good obvious trap every once and a while (or, in the case of this season--each and every single time a trap is placed in front of him) and so this takes him directly to the fightclub roof of yore.
Ah. We started this season on fightclub roof, in like...2010 or whenever I started this season. Feels like forever ago. How long has the year of 2020 been? 20 years of my life? 40 years of my life? Was I in fact never born before 2020 started? I honestly don’t remember anymore who I was before this year happened. Probably because I inhaled just a hell ton of wildfire smoke and now my brain is a bunch of jelly beans rattling around in a jar.
Anyway, Raphael just hands Yami (by hands I mean throws aggressively) Joey’s dragon card.
A little unsure why he’d do this since...this is the weapon to destroy Dartz. Why are you giving it back to the Pharaoh? But apparently, Raphael did that to prove that he is the murderer of Mai, who murdered Joey and...youknow...the stuff that we know but would be pretty difficult for the people in this show to follow.
Mai’s voice actor seeing “Mumbo-Jumbo” and being like “Well if I’m doing this, I’m going to commit.“
WE ARE NEVER DUELING DARTZ.
I refuse that a duel with Dartz, in fact, ever happens in this season.
Kind of surprised whenever I see there’s still people left. SF is basically abandoned in comparison.
Thing is...that’s just SF on a holiday weekend.
And then, because Tristan’s in the middle of the street, the rest of the party has to try and run him over.
It is really funny to me that Seto went out of his way to ditch these people so MANY times, but keeps ending up around them again and again, and each time in a wildly different vehicle, each and every time it’s when these guys need a lift...he’s very quickly turning into the group’s soccer mom. Should’ve gotten a minivan.
And then this happens?
I’ll just leave this here:
I’m sure that fanfic writers everywhere rejoiced when Seto reached out a hand to catch Joey’s face from hitting the pavement. In all this was a bizarre animation and now that I’ve figured out my blender settings for the new update, I can finally cap little segments again.
Just don’t you dare flag me, tumblr. Hopefully segments less than 10 seconds long are fine.
Like there was this part where they had to just drag around Joey���s corpse over this rail, and it was Mokuba and Tristan just prying him up there like he were a potato sack and like...
...Joey’s gonna wake up with so many rail-shaped bruises! They do not treat him gently!
Then back on fightclub roof, Raphael made me do a bit of a double take when he accidentally implied the existence of another bean within that Pharaoh bean.
And no, Bakura did not show up at this point.
I would LOVE IT if Pharaoh biffed it a second time and Bakura suddenly took the reigns and was like “Oi loves! that was bloody easy!” but I...have a feeling that this team didn’t actually watch the episodes where Bakura is just vibing in that puzzle piece.
If this never comes back to bite Pharaoh in the ass...
It might never come back guys...I don’t know. How do these writers have this much self control to ignore Bakura for like a full season. How do you do it? I can’t hold a plot twist in for even like 5 seconds. How....how do you do it?
Anyways, now that Seto has Tea who has a map, they walk up to the entrance (I honestly forgot if they drove or walked because knowing this show, Seto would absolutely ignore the car. Either way, the Ferrari isn’t necessary anymore. Written right out of the script. Cars are hard to draw. Get rid of it)
You know, Mokuba’s seen an awful lot of corpses for a kid! Like 20ish corpses if you count the 2 times the Big 5 biffed it. Really should have left him with Rebecca! Youknow, the other kid the same age as him!
But it’s fine, we gotta train Mokuba to suppress that trauma deep, deep down like a proper Kaiba.
Youknow when I started this series I was like “I don’t get why everyone talks about the Kaibas so much, these two seem kinda like whatever” but now I’m on like S4 and like...I’m SO concerned about the Kaibas. With Yugi...whatever...he’s gonna be fine, but the Kaibas? Oh boy. Either one of them could go completely evil and I’d buy it.
And probably root for them.
And I know they won’t go full tilt, I’m pretty sure--but like...they COULD. I can’t say that about the rest of the cast.
Everyone’s made it!
Even joey’s weird coma/dead body for some reason!
Lol also I love this random sci-fi tech water tower next to Tea. What is that?
My drought senses are screaming, is that a huge ass water tower the size of a 4 story building next to Tea? Chances are, it’s got a jet in it or something because this is Yugioh, but...man. At least it doesn’t look like one of those rusty New York rooftop water towers. This show just completely not getting what SF looks like.
Whatever, he can resurrect the leviathan, maybe Dartz can make water?
Youknow, all you have to do to make California worship you forever is make rain. Screw this lizard nonsense. The man can power water. What’s he doing with this stupid snake?
But youknow, Yugioh just never really figures out how to harness the weather. They CAN and they do it all the time. But, do they use it for their benefit? Like freakin never.
Anyway, that’s all for now. I went on a looong rant about SF but maybe I’m just sick of my own house? Been a lot of fire and quarantine over here. It’s been messing with my head a fair amount so thanks for bearing with me and my weird ass update schedule (remember when I used to be productive? Was that just a dream I once had?)
But if you just got here, here’s a link to read these recaps in order, from the beginning way back in S1.
https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono
#ygo#yugioh#episode recap#photo recap#s4#ep 30#yami muto#joey wheeler#'s corpse#raphael#mai valentine#'s also a corpse#tea gardner#tristan taylor#'s carrying a corpse#seto kaiba#mokuba kaiba#valon is a corpse too but only in the background#a ton of architecture for some reason#and so many rats#ps maybe don't go to rat bar this year you will get covid
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Trees (2021)
A talk abut growth, hope, and paying attention to history
Revised and expanded for the Washington Ethical Society by Lyn Cox
February 7, 2021
In this place halfway between the beginning of winter and the beginning of spring, we draw on imagination and memory, caution and optimism, hope for the future and learning from the past. Many of these things are contained in stories.
I don’t know if the story happened exactly this way, but I believe it’s true. A sage, a wise person, was walking along the road and saw someone planting a carob tree. The sage asks, "How long will it take for this tree to bear fruit?" "Seventy years," replies the gardener. The sage then asks: "Are you so healthy a person that you expect to live that length of time and eat its fruit?" The gardener answers: "I found a fruitful world, because my ancestors planted it for me. Likewise I am planting for my children." I will tell you where this story is from because I want to give credit, but I also want to notice that this story has a universality to it, a truth that the beginnings of things we set in motion can have an impact long past the horizons of our own lives. This story is from the Talmud, a collection of rabbinic conversations on ethics and customs. (Talmud Ta'anit 23a)
We drink from wells we did not dig and eat from trees we did not plant (Deut. 6:11). Our physical, intellectual, and religious lives depend on those who have gone before. Following their example will lead us to plant literal and figurative trees for the world of the future.
I believe caring for ourselves AND others will help us sustain a shared life of meaning and compassion for a long time.
My first semester studying for my M.Div. degree in California, I worked at one college in the south bay area, and went to school in the east bay area. I enjoyed the fragrance of eucalyptus trees around both campuses. The dry leaves rustled in the breeze, leaves rubbing together like the wings of singing crickets. Some people were distracted by the sound and allergic to the smell, but I liked them. The eucalyptus trees were tall and graceful. One might imagine that they had always been there. There’s a story about those trees. I don’t know if it happened exactly this way.
The American West in the late 1800’s was heavily influenced by dreams of getting rich quick. Non-native eucalyptus trees were brought from Australia because they grew quickly. It was imagined that the lumber and oil would become quickly replaceable commodities for those who farmed them. They were promoted as ornamental trees for rich landowners new to the area and not used to treeless landscapes. Eucalyptus trees were all over California by the 1900’s, and were tested for use as railroad ties. They didn’t work out. Eucalyptus from Australian virgin forests, seasoned and treated properly, behaves differently than eucalyptus grown from seeds in California, hastily treated, and set down in the Nevada sand. Some of the railroad ties were so cracked they couldn’t hold spikes. Some decayed within four years.
The trees themselves grew like weeds. They did what non-native species are famous for doing: thriving in the new environment, edging out diverse native plants that provide food and habitat, with consequences for the entire food chain. An attempt at a quick profit turned out to have unintended consequences. Recently, there has been more discussion in that region about restoring native trees, but it’s complicated. To say that it will take time to mitigate the damage of an invasive species is an understatement. Then again, compare that to the 2,000-year growth of some living redwood trees. May we learn patience and commitment from slow-growing trees.
We strive to be among those people who have the hope and imagination it takes to envision a world of justice and compassion, a world of liberation and self-determination, a world of peace where people sit calmly in the shade of slow-growing trees. In our neck of the woods, we might imagine a world where every person lives in safety and abundance, with access to the shade of a Witch Hazel, Hackberry, or Redbud tree; the three logically native trees our Earth Ethics Action Team recently arranged to have planted on the WES property. In folk music and wisdom tales, slow-growing trees symbolize enough time for a generation to grow without being uprooted by hunger or violence.
The California eucalyptus story reminds us that some of the environmental mistakes we humans have made were decisions made by a few but using the resources and the risk pool of many. Another time, we can unpack the harm that white American westward expansion had on indigenous land rights and communities, and on the horrors of labor exploitation involved in the transcontinental railroad, and on the energy and resources that were available for white colonization but not reparations for formerly enslaved people after the Civil War. Understanding the wrong choices that have been made in the past may help us turn toward making better choices as a society going forward. We can play an active role in the governments, corporations, and organizations to which we belong and who act on our behalf. Let us embody these relationships for repair and renewal.
Contrast the rushed, climate-disrupting story of the eucalyptus trees with the story of George Washington Carver. I had to catch up on some of his story this week, when my kids noticed discrepancies between what was said about Dr. Carver in the elementary school reader on our bookshelf and what they had read elsewhere. Some of us learned in school that the most important contribution Dr. Carver made as a scientist was discovering and promoting new uses for peanuts, but this version of his story is grossly oversimplified and obscures the way his research and activism supported Black self-determination as well as environmental repair.
After he graduated from the Iowa State Agricultural College in 1896, Dr. Carver accepted a position at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Riding on the train to his new home, he noticed immediately that growing nothing but cotton was causing soil erosion and depletion. He had scientific solutions to that. What took longer was figuring out how to empower Black farmers -- especially those who were being exploited as sharecroppers -- to feed their families, improve their chances for subsequent years, and still make enough money to try to get out of debt. Smithsonian Magazine quotes biographer Mark Hersey about the way Dr. Carver understood the problem:
“What Carver comes to see,” Hersey says, was that “altering [black sharecroppers’] interactions with the natural world could undermine the very pillars of Jim Crow.” Hersey argues that black Southerners viewed their lives under Jim Crow through an environmental lens. “If we want to understand their day to day lives, it’s not separate drinking fountains, it’s ‘How do I make a living on this soil, under these circumstances, where I’m not protected’“ by the institutions that are supposed to protect its citizens? Carver encouraged farmers to look to the land for what they needed, rather than going into debt buying fertilizer (and paint, and soap, and other necessities—and food). Instead of buying the fertilizer that “scientific agriculture” told them to buy, farmers should compost. In lieu of buying paint, they should make it themselves from clay and soybeans.
So ends the excerpt. Dr. Carver understood way before what we think of as the modern environmental justice movement that liberation and conservation are entwined projects. The decisions we make for our families, for our communities, and for the planet all go together, and they all benefit from remembering interdependence and the long years of generations to come. Honoring the very beginnings of things, continuing to work on hopes that are barely tangible, believing in the distant future, allows us to live into Beloved Community. White Supremacy depends on the hurry-up-and-profit mindset that brought cracked eucalyptus logs to the Nevada desert. Beloved Community invites us to consider what may come from a seed.
Strong trees grow slowly. Strong communities learn and grow and make connections to other communities little by little over decades. Healing takes time. Repair takes time. And for all of these, we can’t always tell that it is happening. In most cases, we don’t see the seed unfolding under the soil. Our senses are not adjusted to notice the growth of trees right in front of us. Sometimes resilience is about knowing in your heart that change is possible, even when the evidence is not yet obvious.
The nearly imperceptible beginnings of change are also a theme in the earth-honoring holiday of Imbolc. The Celtic calendar where this holiday comes from is rooted in the seasons of light and dark of the northern hemisphere and the agricultural cycles of western Europe. At approximately the same time of year in the British Isles and here in the mid-Atlantic, the middle of winter means that we can start to perceive the time of sunrise and sunset edging toward spring, just a little more daylight each day.
February into March is the time of year when lambs start to be born, vulnerable and full of promise for the coming spring. It’s still cold outside! One theory for where the word Imbolc comes from is that it’s related to the word for sheep milk. The lambs need a lot of help to stay warm and to survive. Yet their arrival shows the persistence of life. Sometimes resilience is about remembering that life is possible.
This is also the time of year when people who grow vegetables in climates like ours make a plan for the next six months, gathering seeds, starting a few indoors, and figuring out how to make the most of the soil and sun that will be available later. Making plans at this in-between time of year takes courage.
For earth-honoring folks in Celtic traditions, the goddess Bridget (and, in her later form, St. Bridget of Kildare) is associated with this early February holiday. In the legends, Bridget protects access to clean, healing water. She is also a figure of light and flame. When you put fire and water together, you can make entirely new things out of what you had before. You can forge iron, cook food, sculpt clay and fire it into ceramics. Maybe this transformative potential is why Bridget is also associated with childbirth, poetry, healing, song, and art.
There is one thing that newborn lambs, vegetable seeds, soup ingredients, raw iron, and future poetry all have in common: They don’t look at the beginning the way they are going to look at the end. You have to have some hope and imagination to believe in the transformation that is coming. You have to keep doing what you are doing, when the evidence for success has not yet appeared. We need to hold on through the long term, through step-by-step processes, through the discomfort of growth and change. And so another thing we learn at Bridget’s holiday is the need for commitment.
If we’re paying attention to a legendary figure of generosity, art, and transformation, it’s a good idea to listen to the voices of poets who figured out how to sustain themselves and their families and communities through difficult times. During Black History Month, we are reminded of many examples of poets and artists who showed and inspired perseverance as they provided hope and imagination about a better world that was not yet fully manifest.
Back in October, on Vote Love Day, we heard about the story of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. She was born in Maryland in 1825 to free parents, was educated at her uncle’s school, and had published a book of poetry by the age of twenty. She became a full-time lecturer and writer, and she was an activist for abolition and for economic self-determination in the Black community. One verse of her 1895 poem, “Songs for the People,” [more on that poem here] reads:
Our world, so worn and weary,
Needs music, pure and strong,
To hush the jangle and discords
Of sorrow, pain, and wrong.
Harper was well aware of the injustice, economic inequality, and violence that still plagued the cities and towns where she toured. She didn’t fail to address any part of that system in her other writing. Yet she still saw a place for music and art. For Harper, poetry was not a distraction from building the Beloved Community, but one of the technologies that can help bring it into being. Out of intangible words and ideas are woven a network of visions that lift up possibilities for liberation.
Good things grow from beginnings that are not yet obvious. The forces that will become spring are already at work under the snow in the middle of winter.
On the Jewish calendar, we’ve recently passed the holiday of Tu B’Shevat, the new year of trees. This is a minor holiday. It’s been around for hundreds of years, yet more people seem to be noticing it as we learn to connect spirituality with care for the earth. Sometimes people in Jewish homes and communities gather to eat different kinds of fruit and nuts, to give thanks for ways of growing, and recommit to stewardship of the planet. In regions where it makes sense, Tu B’Shevat is a time to plant trees.
Clearly, looking out the window today, it is not the right time to plant a tree where we live. Nevertheless, in our gratitude for trees, we are reminded of the growth and the fruition of work that exist because of what has come before. The forces that create and uphold life and our ancestors who cooperated with them knew that growth and resilience don’t always look that way from the outside. They knew that growth can start with something tough or plain. They knew the importance of allowing time and of giving thanks.
We drink from wells we did not dig and eat from trees we did not plant. As a community, part of our task is to muster the hope and imagination it takes to consider growth and resilience over time. We think long-term. We honor beginnings of change, even when they are hidden or barely perceptible. Let us be mindful of the impact of our choices, now and in the generations to come.
May it be so.
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Papa Louie Prudence HCs
(Nobody asked for these, but I gotta show love to my 8 year long favorite character)
Edit 9/23/20: Sorry I didn’t realize Pickles was a girl, last time I’ll ever listen to the forum lmao anyways I’m about to fail a test tomorrow even though I’ve studied nonstop, but that’s probably just how science goes
-Prudence Carmichael-Wagner is 22 years old and lives in a fabulously rose colored loft in Tastyville. She doesn’t plan to leave her job at the Pancakeria any time soon, but she is studying hard to become a veterinarian. She is the half sister of the famous Rudy Diamond; the daughter of Arugula Bank’s owner, Anselm Wagner; and his ex-wife, Lola Carmichael, the headmaster of Eclair Academy. Prudence has a strained relationship with her emotionally manipulative parents who care more about her achievements than her wellbeing and tried to avoid them whenever she can. Prudence’s mother loves dropping by her loft unannounced, which makes Prudence upset and anxious.
-Prudence can mostly be described as a kindhearted socialite with a strange obsession with the color pink. She is very hospitable and doting on everyone around her, making her seem like more of a mother/older sister figure. She also carries assorted sweets and mints in her purse for both emergency consumption and to cheer up anyone who’s sad. Prudence does also have a habit of panicking at first under pressure, but has learned to adapt very quickly. Prudence also loves to volunteer and help those less fortunate than her. But call her a dumb blonde and we’ll see how many teeth you have left afterwards (as a result of either her purse or Rudy’s fist).
-Her and Rudy were born on the same day only a few hours apart. Many people joked that the two were twins due to their shared birthday, blonde hair, blue eyes, and close relationship. However, she didn’t know that her father and Rudy’s mother, Carla, (his chief financial officer) had an affair that led to Rudy being born. After this was found out by Lola, Carla’s reputation was ruined and she relocated with Rudy to Powder Point, much to Prudence’s dismay. After reuniting years later when the Cheeseria opened, the two found out about the affair and realized they were siblings. They share a close bond now, but still have terrible relationships with their parents.
-As previously stated in Cooper’s headcanons, she is in a polyamorous relationship with him and Taylor. She met Taylor at their shared night school and met Cooper at their shared workplace. While her feelings for either of them weren’t very strong, Taylor’s heartfelt confession made her fall for both of them hard, thus starting the third most wholesome relationships in Flipline’s history (Penny and Alberto have the top spot filled and second place is definitely Olga and Edoardo). She loves to buy them roses or chocolates and see how flustered they both get when they’re delivered. Prudence’s parents definitely don’t approve of this relationship, but she actually doesn’t care this time.
-She and Trishna’s parents were very close in business growing up, so they both quickly became best friends, along with Rudy. She is three years younger than them and is still stuck attending high school. While Trishna isn’t too close to Rudy anymore, she and Prudence still hang out and text all the time. If Trishna is somewhere, then Prudence is probably nearby or at least on the phone with her. Trishna also offers Prudence discounts at Fashion Flambé, but Prudence always declines saying that it feels weird to not pay the full price if she didn’t have any coupons.
-Prudence was given Pickles as a gift from her father. However, he said that she could only keep the dog if she would have good grades and continued with being a debutante, meaning most of her effort was for Pickles’ sake. When she earned a C on a test, Pickles was almost taken to the pound, but she quickly entered them in a dog show to make up for her “mistakes”. The dog show started out as sort of survival, but Prudence continued doing it since she and Pickles actually enjoyed it.
-She and Trishna both attended Croquembouche Preparatory Academy along with Alberto, Penny, Joy, Roy, and Mindy. Prudence was notably crowned prom queen her junior year, all around tennis and cheer star, student body president her senior year, and salutatorian. She also joined multiple clubs. Unbeknownst to her classmates, having to keep up with these high expectations from her family and teachers almost broke her from the stress. However, a pep talk from Vicky allowed Prudence to drop many clubs and sports and take it easier in school, much to her parents’ dismay.
-Allan has thought that Prudence would play a very good Sandy, but Prudence can’t really sing well. She would, however, make for a good Elle Woods (as in the movie version) or any kickass Barbie protagonist (which is all of them, I stan Barbie). Prudence can dance amazingly, but she just doesn’t fit Cha Cha’s sassiness and overall nastiness. She’s a great cheerleader, so she’s a good fit for Patty Simcox, but then again Patty also sucks, so looks like Prudence is just a background dancer.
-She thinks of Johnny as her father, Hank as he other father, and Vicky as her mother. She also considers Trishna, Scarlett, Utah, Clover, Nevada, and Mindy her sisters. Chuck, Marty, and Greg are her brother figures. Rudy is also thought of as her brother, but he’s also her actual brother, so it’s actually very accurate.
-If you smell pickles on the bus, it’s because Prudence opened her big ass jar of them and started eating it. I personally hate pickles, especially when people eat them on some sort of vehicle. Sure you can eat pickles ain’t nothing wrong with that, but I’m not tryna smell pickles when I’m trying to get to school.
-Prudence is a master at fashion and makeup. However, she mostly wears simple cropped shirts and jeans everywhere for comfort. Her only standout accessories are her purse (since she carried Pickles in it) and her bow (she had to find some way to be twinsies with pickles, and she wasn’t wearing no dang collar).
-She and Maggie are both queens and often converse about how to maximize their joint slay. They also love finding examples to disprove the dumb blonde stereotype.
-She likes to get the good dog food for Pickles, but she sometimes gives her some pickles or vanilla ice cream. Cooper and Taylor spoil her with other types of human food when she’s away, though. Not chocolate or any of that kinda stuff though.
-Prudence likes to sit in the stands and drunkenly cheer really loudly for Cooper and Taylor, which actually encourages them even more. Dang they’re just all so cute together like aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
-She basically lives at the mall and salon, earning her closer relationships with their workers. She and Kaleb like to drink tangerine pop together and she always gossips with either Mindy or Vicky. Sometimes she takes Cooper and Taylor to get their nails done together. Taylor prefers his nails in ultramarine with white flowers while Cooper likes a classic French manicure better.
-Rudy can’t dress for shit and neither can Johnny, so she tries to help them both out together outfits better. They’re very close to her, but none of them take her advice and she is very sad. She hates flannel, but whatever makes him happy, she guesses.
-My favorite girl and has been for most of my life. I love her so much.
#flipline studios#papa louie#flipline#my hcs#prudence#prudence’s parents suck#prudence and rudy are siblings#i love i love i love her#prudence is barbie now#distinguished bi prudence
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Green Energy Boondoggle
The “Green” Energy Boondoggle
By NewNarrative
One of the more popular narratives in the U.S. today concerns “green energy” and the elimination of the use of fossil fuels. This topic is popular in the media throughout the U.S as well as here in California. One simply cannot read a newspaper these days without finding a reference to the greatness and future of solar power. But has anyone considered what they are saying when they demand for the push to end fossil fuels? Or do they think about how much it will cost to build all of these new clean power facilities? What about what the REAL cost to the environment is?
Make no mistake, clean energy has its place. Reducing green house gasses is a noble cause. But before we rush headlong into destroying the economy (see below), let’s look at some facts about solar power and specifically energy uses here in California.
Today, solar power represents a mere 7% of the State’s total retail energy usage. Currently, 41% of the state’s energy consumption is dedicated to transportation (fossil fuels), and another 24% of the State’s energy, mostly fossil fuels, is used for industrial uses. With this in mind, one begins to see that the goal of the elimination of fossil fuels, while well-meaning, does not begin to address the end of fossil fuels.
Fossil fuels are essential in the operation of many solar facilities. Solar panels are comprised of a number of rare and extremely toxic and hazardous materials that are used in their manufacture. Some of the materials used to make solar panels release in excess of 20,000 times the amount of green house gasses as the CO2 they are meant to help eliminate. Additionally, there is significant waste in the manufacturing process used to create the solar panels. Finally, the panels represent a huge problem at the end of their lives as there are currently no laws in the U.S. concerning how these toxic panels are safely recycled or what they will do to the environment when they are put into landfills. Source: California Energy Commission
It is useful then, to gain an understanding of the place that solar has in California, how much solar capacity the State has, and how much energy in total the State needs. Without the proper perspective, it becomes easy to fall in line with the narrative.
California Solar Production Compared to Other Sources
Currently there is one major solar facility in San Bernadino County, California known as SEGS. SEGS is a actually series of facilities that were initially built in the late 1990’s and commissioned in 2004, where it started with a capacity of 50 MW. The complex has since grown to a capacity of 354 MW spread over several sites. These sites initially were built utilizing Solar Thermal Energy but that has since evolved into a photovoltaic complex.
The facilities that make up SEGS now consist of a total of 9 solar power plants spread throughout the Mojave Desert. The original site was a Solar Thermal Energy Facility, which when it was built was the world’s second largest. This type of facility uses sunlight to heat oil to 400 degrees C (or more) which is then used to transfer the heat to water to create the steam needed to spin turbines, thereby creating electricity. This type of facility is located at Harper Lake and Dagget and employs about 140 people. Source: Solargenix Energy
One of the initial problems with Solar Thermal Energy is the use of fossil fuels. In 1999, at the SEGS Dagget facility, a 900,000 gallon tank of therminol (a type of mineral oil), which is a heat transfer liquid used to transfer solar heat to the steam tanks, caught fire and burned for hours. Firefighters had to rush to keep the fire from spreading the other nearby tanks that contained sulfuric acid and caustic soda. It seems that not all solar plants generate electricity without the use of other fossil fuels. Source: LA times
The largest U.S. Solar Thermal Energy facility is a Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) facility located at Ivanpah (Mojave Desert, near the California- Nevada border). At a cost of $2.2 billion to build (of which $1.6 billion was federally guaranteed money), this facility uses 173,000 mirrors designed to concentrate sunlight to the top of three towers in which boilers are placed to transfer the heat to boil water which spin the turbines used to generate electricity. This facility was, at the time of its initial construction, the largest such facility in the world, and it has never lived up to its potential due to the high construction cost and numerous incidents and glitches in its operation. These glitches include a fire started by the mirrors directing heat to the wrong part of the solar tower, starting a fire which caused the shutdown of that portion of the facility, and the thousands of birds killed each year as they fly through the beam of heat generated by the mirrors. The complexity of the facility also leaves open the possibility of any number of piping or, other mechanical issues that impair full production. Source: BrightWorks
The cost per KWh from various solar facilities such as mentioned here is also about two to three times that of the cost to produce electricity versus the more practical Photo Voltaic facility at SEGS. As a side note, this facility created 1000 construction jobs to build the plant and has 89 permanent positions on site. Source: US Department of Energy
According to the US Department of Energy, the cost to build a solar plant based on the most recent numbers (2015) is more than four times as much as the cost to build a natural-gas fired plant. Natural gas facilities last between 30 and 50 years, while a solar plant only has a life expectancy of 20 years. Source: US Department of Energy
The cost to build a Solar Thermal Energy facility or a Photovoltaic facility, is considerably more that the cost to build a natural gas facility, as noted by the chart below.
As of 2018, the total percentage of solar energy produced in California represented just 14% of the state’s electricity needs, while energy from coal was 15%. Electricity from nuclear power has fallen to 9.4% from the sole facility at Diablo Canyon, where production has remained constant as other sources of electricity have risen. As a side note, Diablo Canyon is slated to be shut down in 2024, which will make California’s energy shortfall worse.
The combined totals of wind, solar, small hydro, geothermal and biomass produce 32.3% of the state’s total energy output, but that number reached 43.6% with the addition of large hydro electricity production. Electricity from natural gas remains the top source of electricity with a total of 46.5% of the state’s total production. Source: California Energy Commission
One other important fact is that currently, California imports 32% of its power from other states. The total electrical generating capacity in the State of California is around 54,000 MW. Remove the +/-10,000 MW from Diablo Canyon and the total magnitude of the problem begins to emerge. If California produced 100% of the power it needed, it would need an additional 17,000 MW of capacity. To achieve 100% “green” power from solar it would take roughly 20 square miles of panels! That is a lot of panels.
An essential component of the solar conversation has to do with how the solar panels are manufactured.
Solar Panels – How They Are Made
There are two types of solar power plants, photo voltaic (PV) and heat generating. PV facilities use solar panels like the ones on your house to convert sunlight directly into electricity, whereas heat generating facilities use reflective panels to heat a liquid which is then sent to a turbine which in turn spins to create electricity.
The manufacture of the solar panels and what happens to them once they have reached their life expectancy is of some concern. According to ChemService Inc., an industry standards magazine, the manufacture of solar panels is, like fracking, reliant on a variety of chemicals in order to work successfully and efficiently. The panels use silicon like they use for semiconductors, except that even pure silicon is not pure enough to make a solar panel efficient, so the raw silicon must be treated with a chemical-rich process.
First the silicon is mixed with copper and Hydrochloric acid to produce Tricholosilane gas, which is then reduced with hydrogen to make Silane gas. The Silane gas is heated into molten silicon which leads to silicon crystals that can be reformed and used for PV cells and micro chips. This process is very energy intensive and materially wasteful, with about half of the initial pure metallurigical silicon lost in the process. Silicon dust represents safety dangers and Silane gas is incredibly explosive (it ignites when it mixes with oxygen).
Some other chemicals used to make solar panels include Cadnium, Nitrogen Trifluoride and Sulfur Hexafluoride. Cadnium is a naturally occurring earth metal, produced from smelting zinc, copper or lead ore. The EPA has noted that inhaling or being exposed to Cadmium can lead to cancerous and noncancerous damage to lungs and other organs. Cadnium is also very expensive, and like silicon only about half of the cadmium is used in the PV making process - so
the rest is waste. Finally the risk of any type of breach or leak of cadmium into the water supply would be very harmful.
While solar panels do not generate greenhouse gasses when they operate, the manufacturing process of solar panels does. Two additional chemicals used in the manufacture of solar panels includes Nitrogen Trifluoride and Sulfur Hexafluoride. Nirgoen Trifluoride is 17,000 times stronger than CO2 while Sulfur Hexafluoride is 22,800 times more potent than CO2. These gasses are released into the atmosphere during the manufacturing process. Source: ChemService Inc. Magazine
Finally, there is the matter of what to do with the solar panels once they have reached the end of their life expectancy. Currently, there are no laws in the US (as there are in Europe) with regard to the disposal of the used panels. Most panels go to a recycler first, who will remove any copper wires and the aluminum frame. But the rest of the panel is essentially chemically-laden glass which is toxic and potentially lethal.
According to the International Renewable Energy Agency there is a solar e-waste glut coming with an anticipated 78 million metric tons of waste being generated by 2050 with another 6 million metric tons each year thereafter. This is an environmental problem that has yet to be addressed. Source: Renewable Energy Agency
World Wide Manufacturers of Solar Panels
The drive toward 100% clean energy, and specifically from solar, represents a boon to the companies who manufacture the panels, or the polysilicon crystals used to make those panels. The list that follows represents the top ten solar manufacturers and their country of origin as of 2019.
1. JinkoSolar, - Shanghai China
2. Canadian Solar – Guelph, Canada
3. Loom Solar – Faridabad, Haryana
4. Trina Solar – Changzhou, China
5. SunPower Corp – San Jose, CA
6. Hanwha Q Cells – Seoul, South Korea
7. JA Solar – Beijing, China
8. First Solar – Tempe Arizona
9. SF-PV - Changzhou, China
10. Yingli Solar – Baoding, China
Source: SolarClap.com
As of June 2019, only two of those companies, Sun Power and First Solar, are located in the U.S., meaning that in order to continue to work toward 100% “clean energy”, that the panels or components will be purchased largely from China or from elsewhere around the world. It is not clear if all of the panels manufactured by Sun Power or First Solar are made in the U.S., but it is likely that the polysilicon crystals are not.
Add to that fact that the construction, maintenance and operation costs of solar facilities exceed
that of most gas-fired energy facilities, and that the solar panels themselves represent a toxic
disposal problem that has yet to be addressed, and a new picture starts to emerge – that the
true cost of the shift to solar has not been adequately addressed or publically discussed.
While the move to “clean energy” is noble on its face, there is much to be said for energy independence. The U.S. has a 1000 year supply of fossil fuels. The thought that fossil fuels can / should be eliminated to “save the world” is short-sighted at best, and an outright lie at the worst.
Goal of 100% Carbon Free by 2045
California has a stated goal of producing 60% “clean energy” by 2030, and 100% clean energy by 2045. This information comes from CA SB 100, “The Clean Air Act”, a report produced by the California Energy Commission. A close look at this document reveals that this goal only applies to the RETAIL sector. So we are looking at 100% (or green energy) being used to serve the needs of 7% of the total energy market. It’s all about misdirection. Smoke & mirrors. A narrative put forth by well-meaning politicians and the media. Let’s all (not) get on the bandwagon.
According to the Wall Street Journal, 80% of the world’s solar components are made in China. The push to build more solar facilities in the U.S. represents what could be the single largest transfer of wealth to other countries in the history of this great nation. Those panels require extremely toxic chemicals in their manufacture, some of which release extraordinarily high levels of greenhouse gasses.
Finally, the disposal of the used panels represents yet another hurdle, as there are currently no laws or regulation as to their disposal. 78 million metric tons represents 172 TRILLION pounds of toxic waste. How green is that?
It is becoming clear that solar by itself is not the answer to producing “clean” energy. Nuclear power is clean. Nuclear facilities last a long time, and despite the bad rap that has been placed on these facilities, there have been very few issues here in the U.S. Hydro power is efficient and clean, but there is not enough of it. Biomass as an industry that is still in its infancy, but one that has potential to become an important part of the creation of green energy. Natural gas is dominant and relatively clean, especially in California, and will remain the go-to source for electrical power for a long time to come.
With all of this in mind, we need more transparency when it comes to having an honest and realistic discussion about green energy. Unionizing a labor force is not the answer, especially when the competition (China) is using forced labor to make solar panels. We must also be honest about the cost, which is rarely discussed. Any rational discussion about green energy should focus on the resources we already have in the U.S. If we have a 1000 year supply of natural gas, it seems that it would be far more cost effective to utilize what already works.
Timelines to generate 100% clean energy are nothing more than a push to lower the United States and California specifically into a second class society at the effect of the New World Order. The total cost for the conversion of California’s energy to solar is in the trillions. The footprint of these facilities is considerably larger than gas-fired power plants. Solar facilities do not last as long as other types of facilities. Disposal of used panels is a problem.
With regard to “going green”, the cost is clearly not worth it.
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Best Mobile Rv Repair Service and Cost in Las Vegas NV | Towing Services of Las Vegas
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Mobile Rv Repair service near Las Vegas NV: Are you looking for Mobile Rv Repair service near Las Vegas NV? Towing Services of Las Vegas, We also appreciate knowing the tech will be focused only on your rig while he or she is at your home or on your site. This means mistakes are less likely to be made due to distraction, and you know you are paying for hours spent focused purely on your RV. Cost? Free estimates! Send us a message or call us today. Best Mobile Rv Repair Service around Las Vegas NV. We serve Las Vegas NV and other areas. Get a Free Quote Now!
MOBILE RV REPAIR SERVICE IN LAS VEGAS NV
LAS VEGAS NV MOBILE RV REPAIR
Everything You Need to Know About Mobile RV Repair Services
Mobile RV Repair Service near Las Vegas NV: One thing we love about RVs is the fact that most repairs can be made quickly and easily by the owner. That said, there are times when you might need a little help with a repair. When these bigger issues arise, many people take their RV into the shop to be fixed. However, some people prefer to turn to mobile RV repair.
Wondering what mobile RV repair is, and if it might be a good option for you? This article covers the ins and outs of RV mobile repair, so you can decide with confidence whether or not this is the route you want to take next time your rig is in need of some TLC.
What is a Mobile RV Repair Service?
As you might imagine, mobile RV repair service is a type of repair service that comes to you. This might mean that a mobile RV tech visits you in your campground or at your home.
In some cases, people choose this service out of necessity because they can’t move the RV due to damage. However, more often than not, a mobile RV mechanic is called out because it is the most convenient option.
Types of Mobile RV Repair Services
Many people seem to believe that a mobile RV mechanic is one size fits all. However, this is not actually the case. In fact there are a total of three different types of mobile RV repair service.
1: RV Dealer or Repair Shop House Calls
Some RV dealerships and repair shops will make house calls on request. This is typically done only on an emergency basis, and you will likely pay a huge sum to have a tech from one of these places visit you. For this reason, we don’t recommend going this route if it can be helped.
2: Mobile RV Repair Specialists
There are some repair techs out there who specialize in a certain type of repair. These specialists often work out of their trucks, and if not that, they tend to be more willing to visit customers due to having a niche customer base. That said, because these repair people are specialists, you can also expect to pay well for their services.
3: General RV Repair Techs
Finally, there is the general mobile RV tech. This guy tends to be a jack of all trades, with a bit of experience fixing pretty much everything that can go wrong on an RV. They rarely have a shop to work out of, meaning mobile work is all they do. In most instances, this is the person you want to call in when you want mobile repair work done.
Getting Parts for Mobile RV Repair
Mobile RV Repair Service near Las Vegas NV: Unfortunately, because the general mobile tech (option #3) tends to work from his or her truck, you can’t expect them to have every RV part you could possibly need on hand. This means the parts might need to be ordered online or picked up at a local store.
In some cases, the tech has connections and is able to get a bit of a discount, making it beneficial to order through them. That said, it often works just as well for you to order or pick up the needed items yourself.
You might find that it’s best to talk to the repair person beforehand to find out what you should order, and have it ready to go when they arrive. This will save everyone time and will likely save you some money.
Benefits of a Mobile RV Repair Service
Mobile RV Repair Service near Las Vegas NV: The obvious benefit to hiring a mobile RV tech is the fact that you don’t have to move your RV at all. If you’re already all set up at your favorite campground, there is no need for you to unplug and hitch up to have repairs done.
Likewise, if your RV is sitting in your yard, calling in a mobile tech removes the need to drive the rig into a shop. Finally, there is the chance that you are unable to move the RV at all. In these cases, this benefit is not just convenient, it’s necessary.
Another awesome benefit of choosing an RV repair service that comes to you is the fact that the work can be done in your yard, meaning you may not even have to take off work to get it done.
We also appreciate knowing the tech will be focused only on your rig while he or she is at your home or on your site. This means mistakes are less likely to be made due to distraction, and you know you are paying for hours spent focused purely on your RV.
Other mobile RV repair services include:
● Window blind and shade repair
● Carpet replacement
● Oil & filter changes
● RV detailing (wash & wax)
● Holding tank clean-out
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Mobile RV Repair Service near Las Vegas NV: In an effort to always provide the highest level of service to our customers, we try to anticipate our customers’ needs in order to be proactive in our service and care. That being said, it’s not out of the ordinary for customers to have questions about our RV services, and so we’ve compiled a list of the questions frequently asked.
How often should I have my RV serviced?
This typically depends on how often you use your RV. If you’re a full-time RV enthusiast, you’re going to want to have certain systems, including your air conditioning and furnace looked at and cleaned at least once a year. You should also have your brakes checked and bearings repacked once a year, or every 10,000 miles whichever comes first. If you’re living in your RV at a park full-time, just make sure you get your brakes and bearings checked and serviced before you set out on the road again. Bearing grease will break down over time, and brake parts will rust-up, so it’s best to be proactive.
There are other items to check routinely, including your RV’s roof and exterior wall sealants, overall roof condition, jack systems, and any other systems that you frequently use. These need to be checked or operated and lubricated every six months or so in order to ensure that they’re functional and keeping the elements out of water is an RV’s WORST enemy!
What RV types do you work on?
Yours! We may not cover every system you have, some motorhomes are more complex than a 747 but we can repair most of it! We’ll be upfront and honest with you about which parts and systems we’ll be able to work on before we begin. We’re not going to waste your time or take any chance of damaging your RV or our reputation by taking on a project that we can’t handle.
What forms of payment do you accept?
Cash, check, Bitcoin, or credit card. I have even worked for food. It was worth it!
What RV manufacturers do you specialize in?
For the most part, all manufacturers build their RVs in a similar way, which makes RV service and repair fairly straightforward for any model. The same systems that are in a Forest River are also in a Highland Ridge or a Coachmen; the RV manufacturer doesn’t matter all that much, and we can repair them all.
What is the turnaround time for repairs?
Our turnaround time depends on several factors, including:
● The extent of the repairs
● The availability of the required parts (if we don’t have them in stock)
● The amount of jobs already in progress or scheduled
Normally, we can get to your RV to at least diagnose the problem within the week you call. We work with all of our customers to ensure timely and efficient service.
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Service area:
10 Cities within 30 miles of Las Vegas, NV
Blue Diamond, NV | Boulder City, NV | Henderson, NV | Indian Springs, NV | Jean, NV | Nellis AFB, NV | North Las Vegas, NV | Overton, NV | Sloan, NV | The Lakes, NV | Arden, Nevada | Calico Basin, Nevada | Callville Bay, Nevada | Citibank, Nevada | City Center, Nevada | Clark Co Courthouse, Nevada | Cold Creek, Nevada | Corn Creek, Nevada | Embarq Telphone, Nevada | Enterprise, Nevada | Las Vegas Brm, Nevada | Lv Valley Water Co, Nevada | McCarran Airport, Nevada | Mgm Properties, Nevada | Mount Charleston, Nevada | Mountain Sprg, Nevada | Mountain Springs, Nevada | Mt Charleston, Nevada | Nevada Power, Nevada | Old Nevada, Nevada | Sloan, Nevada | Sw Gas Co | The Lakes | Univ Nv Las Vegas
the zip codes in Clark County, NV and the city/neighborhood in which the zip code is in: 89002 (Henderson), 89005 (Boulder City), 89011 (Henderson), 89012 (Henderson), 89014 (Henderson), 89015 (Henderson), 89016 (Henderson), 89030 (North Las Vegas), 89031 (North Las Vegas), 89032 (North Las Vegas), 89044 (Henderson), 89052 (Boulder City), 89074 (Henderson), 89081 (North Las Vegas), 89084 (North Las Vegas), 89085 (North Las Vegas), 89086 (North Las Vegas), 89087 (North Las Vegas), 89101 (Las Vegas), 89102 (Las Vegas), 89103 (Las Vegas), 89104 (Las Vegas), 89106 (Las Vegas), 89107 (Las Vegas), 89108 (Las Vegas), 89109 (Las Vegas), 89110 (Las Vegas), 89113 (Las Vegas), 89115 (Las Vegas), 89117 (Las Vegas), 89118 (Las Vegas), 89119 (Las Vegas), 89120 (Las Vegas), 89121 (Las Vegas), 89122 (Las Vegas), 89123 (Las Vegas), 89124 (Las Vegas), 89128 (Las Vegas), 89129 (Las Vegas), 89130 (Las Vegas), 89131 (Las Vegas), 89134 (Las Vegas), 89135 (Las Vegas), 89138 (Las Vegas), 89139 (Las Vegas), 89141 (Las Vegas), 89142 (Las Vegas), 89143 (Las Vegas), 89144 (Las Vegas), 89145 (Las Vegas), 89146 (Las Vegas), 89147 (Las Vegas), 89148 (Las Vegas), 89149 (Las Vegas), 89156 (Las Vegas), 89158 (Las Vegas), 89161 (Las Vegas), 89166 (Las Vegas), 89169 (Las Vegas), 89178 (Las Vegas), 89179 (Las Vegas), 89183 (Las Vegas).
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— && guests may mistake me as ( david castaneda ), but really i am ( dante soto + cismale + he/him ) and my DOB is ( 08/19/1987). i am applying for the ( maintenance supervisor ) position as part of the EHP and would like to live in suite ( #217 ). i should be hired because i am ( + consistent, appreciative, capable ), but i can also be ( - fierce, bothered, demanding ) at times. personally, i like to ( garden, physical training, crosswords ) when off the clock, but that won’t interfere with work. thank you for your consideration! ( duckie, est, 25 ).
tw: blind/deaf, war, ptsd
GENERAL INFORMATION.
full name dante soto
alias soto
age thirty-three
date of birth august 19
place of birth taxo, mexico
zodiac leo
gender cismale
nationality mexican
religion non-practicing catholic
orientation straight
relationship status single
PHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES.
face claim david castaneda
height 5′11″
weight 172 lbs
hair color black
eye color brown
voice claim david castaneda
tattoos joker playing card on sholder
distinguishing marks scars on the side of face and ear
outfit/clothing style anything really. doesn’t care for appearance
BACKGROUND INFORMATION.
hometown taxo
current residence malnati, worker suite, #217
past residences nevada
spoken languages english, mexican, german, ASL
financial status lower
education level high school, community college
occupation maintenance supervisor
B I O:
his mother was an exotic dancer in mexico and his father was a product of a loss of casualty at war. it his the family hard but that didn’t stop his precious mother for making just enough money to get her son across the border to live his life in america,when he grew old enough he just moved out to live with a family friend, rodrigo and his wife cassandra. away from his mother and younger sister who he didn’t even know how to connect with; whether it be the age difference or just how different they were.
he did his mother proud, getting passing grades in school, not letting the hard life of being alone get to him he had friends, went to parties. he was a typical boy, and grew into a strong and very independent young man.
at nineteen he felt the need to fight for the country, just as his father did. and he was sent off to climb the ranks until he had face the ultimate hurtle. he and his team were sent out to an unmarked city, there to make grounds and start a set up for their next ground camp. only it was littered with landmines and he made the wrong step sending he and his team blasting into the air. he lost great soldiers and would never forget the looks on their faces as he tried to save each one.
through the shock of the explosion though dante didn’t realize how hurt he had gotten. not until he passed out and woke up in a hospital back in nevada. they told him to take things calm. to take in the new surroundings as they came to him; only, not all of them did.
in the explosion he had lost hearing and sight on the left side of his body, the explosion destroyed his ears, left him with a limp, and he was smacked dead in the face by shrapnel leaving a scar and such damaged tissue they had to remove his eye. he wears a glass one now but the scaring has been hard for him to get over. rodrigo calls him the phantom of the opera when he wants to piss dante off.
M O R E
physical training was hell for him. he refused help and grew angry with himself for letting himself make such a huge mistake after all the training he went through. but worse of all he blames himself for the solders who didn’t make it home.
he walks with a limp but tries to hide it no matter how badly it may hurt him some days.
he may be angry at himself but just as he pushed himself not to let the pain get to him as a child he tries to be positive; still kind to people and as helpful as he can be. he never wants to be a burden on others so even though he constantly wants to help others he refuses any help for himself.
he picked up gardening as a form of therapy and even if he’s not the best he does have a pretty decent collection of herbs he grows in a soap box and a few house plants
when he arrived to chicago he joined a program to get a guide dog, the rush of the city was new to him so he needed to get a little help as much as he didn’t want to admit it.
he acts like his dog isn’t that big of help but honestly he loves he loves him more than anything. he is a GOLDENDOODLE almost complete with training that he named little harold
as maintenance supervisor he takes his job seriously
CONNECTIONS:
-romantic: girlfriend, exs, hook-ups, crushes
maybe a friend that he doesn’t know if the feelings are just friends
hes known to be super into hook-ups and it could have happened
a girl hes had his eye on but is too embarrassed to talk to and when he does goes shy and messes up
fwb: like ya’ll get that friendship and that s*xship
please give him that i hate you while they are f*cking shit. love it. get kinky with yah boy then act like you cant stand him
-friends:
a best friend: someone he knew when he first got to chicago two years ago
drinking buddies
an enemy
someone he opens up to
ride or die
someone who has known his family friend? maybe they moved together to chicago maybe more can come from it
little harold gets out of his suite CONSTANTLY and finds this person
(under construction)
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Comfort or calling? Stop stalling it’s time to ride.
God doesn’t place a calling in your heart and not give you the ability to see it through. Are you choosing comfort or your calling?
Last week I was seeking God to inquire him about a word he gave me a few months ago revolving around FTP. Most people don’t know, but we are closing in on the last few months of our lease here in Kennesaw, and the word he gave me was in reference to what the furture would hold for us. When I asked, I wasnt given a direct answer, so I expressed a lack of assurance to close friends and members of FTP. Since the inception of FTP, God has always given a clear vision of what was to come, and this was the first time where there wasn’t a direct clear cut direction or instruction on what we were supposed to be doing. So I went walking in solitude spending time with God and he began to speak to me.
Often times when God talks to me the most, Its during these times where I’m walking with him in a remote location free from distractions and any input, or out side interference. On this particular day, God placed it on my heart that it was time to uproot myself from Kennesaw Georgia, and move to Las Vegas Nevada to do his will. Cause you know, that’s super normal and all 😂
At first I felt very worried because it’s moving across the nation to a place I don’t know, surrounded by people I also don’t know, to places I’ve never been before in my life. Automatically, my first inclination is to worry. Yet God choose to remind me of a word he sent me around a year ago, when he said, “I’m bringing a raging river to dry sands.” I quickly remembered that I used to walk around a repeat it daily, often times I still do; but I never really understood it until recently. On September 6th, I saw the post come up on Facebook, Circa Sept 6, 2019. Exactly a year later, God was reaffirming his word from exackty year ago, and it lined up perfectly with the message he had just given me! Guess you would have to be there to know the full gravity of the situation, but let’s just say it was all the confirmation I would ever need.
But, in the process of such a massive transition, you obviously have to iron out a few wrinkles with such an undertaking. So, I immediately reached out to Alex and Jordan, who are very close brothers and members of FTP to ask them what they thought. Amazingly enough, they not only supported it, but they felt lead to deployed there as well! Talk about faith in action! I really don’t think you could ask for more than that. God says go, thier answer figuratively speaking was, “Say when.” It’s literally the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
Obviously all of our intentions are there, but this is when the opposition likes to creep in. See, technically we are still here until the lease is up. We have to manage to somehow raise funding, continue expanding discipleship, and elect overseers to continue our work here in Georgia, while we expand to the west as God has instructed. In the middle we could come up with a number of excuses, fears, doubt, insecurities, distractions, and opposing opportunities in the process. Hence why the topic up top is, “Are you choosing your comfort, or your calling?”
Up until yesterday when I would think about the transition I would start asking questions that I think any sane, logical, rational person would ask. Stuff like, “Where are we going to stay?” “Are we shutting down the businesses we run?” “How do we all manage to uproot multiple families and make it work?” “Where will we work, etc.“ “Where will the resources come from to help make the transition happen?”
Now, everything isn’t complete, but the Lord has already answered about 90% of these questions, and in the coming months we are going to reveal the plan God has placed in motion, and we hope that you share in the vision and take the opportunity in helping be apart of Gods work! But, for now this is where God calls his followers to have faith, and to be prepared to put that faith in action by trusting that he will create the way to see it to completion!
Sounds tough, and it is! Yet, he specifically reminded me of one answer he gave that changed the complete trajectory of all of my thoughts. A question so imperative, that it shifted everything Ive ever known when it comes to following God. What’s that question you might ask?
The question was, “If I choose to stay and not go, would you be mad at me?”
Even reading the question as I’m writing it, it sounds loaded. But in the loving grace that only my Heavenly Father could answer in, I got a peaceful “No.” So, God is calling me to go do his will, but if I don’t go, he won’t be mad at me? Hmm..... I felt a prompting in my spirit to ask God another question. “If I don’t go, can I be just as successful here doing your will as I would be there?” He gracefully and calmly replied, “No.”
“So, if I go I’ll be more successful than if I stay, why wouldn’t I go?” I had a lot of answers to that question. It’s probably one the easiest list I could ever come up with. Because of job security, comfort, and fear. Because of being rooted in what I’ve grown accustom to on a daily basis. All of the things I take for granted that would simply disappear if i choose to be obedient. If you really think about it for awhile there’s sooo much stuff that I could list, and go on and on about. As I sat there and thought about every excuse in the book, God blessed me with a wave of insight that came crashing down on me, saturating me with love, insight, revelation and understanding. If you made it this far, stick around because I’m about to share it with you.
🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁
God showed that I can be saved, be doing good works, and still be far outside of his intended will for my life....
Listen.... It’s the times that God asks for obedience, yet we choose to shrink back from it. You might understand examples like, “God telling you to say something to someone, but your scared to do it so you shrink back. Or, you know you should have done something in a particular situation but looking back would have handled it a million different ways, but froze up. All those are good examples, but imagine that times 100 million, it’s that deep of a revelation.
What God revealed is that often time we will ask Him questions, and he will answer them in accordance to the condition of our hearts. Re read that slow 5 times and meditate on it.
Jesus often times does similar in scripture, by answering people’s questions with a question first, to reveal the motive of there hearts. What God was showing me was that when we ask him questions, we often times ask out of good intentions, but it’s filtered through our intended desires. We ask with intentions on receiving what we want the response to be. Let’s slow it down cause it’s really heavy. It means we aren’t really seeking his will, but instead, we are seeking what we want his will to align with it.
This means when asking God, we can have all the best intentions in the world of serving God, but when we ask him for something, we are asking it for self, and he graciously and lovingly gives us the desires of our hearts. But if your hearts will, even though being good, isn’t what’s God wants for your life, is it a life worth living? It may appear to be good, you claim it’s for his kingdom, but if it’s not the mission he’s called you to....?
Walk with me bro...
How many of you have seen visions in your head from God, or felt a prompting in your heart to expand in ways you can’t even fathom, but then you quickly rationalize every excuse of why it can’t happen for you, and you write it off as a day dream How many times have you asked God for something but if it doesn’t happen how you wanted it to, or expected it to, you start questioning if you have unresolved sin, or if you did something not pleasing to God. How many of you reading this are weighed down by your past decisions in life, and they hauntingly become the excuses of your future?
God literally loves you enough, to bless you, save you, bring you into heaven, and you still not have lived the life he had intended for you. Most people I’ve met say, “Well everything happens for a reason, and God allowed x______ to happen to learn from it, so I don’t consider it a mistake. Yet they refuse to take ownership of truthfully considering if they were choosing their will or his!
God meets you where you are, when you turn to him, then He gives you beauty for your ashes. Things happen because you choose his way or your way, second by second day by day. When you’re on track and fully submitted to his will, you will live how he wants you to live. When you choose your will, and realize what you’re doing is wrong, he meets you where you are at. When you turn from your way, (aka repentance) Thats when he puts you back on the right path.
When you take ownership you realize, you can’t be focused on fear and faith at the same time. You’re going to choose one or the other daily. Several times God gives orders in scripture, man choose his own way, and he meets them where they are at. It’s literally the whole entire book. Man chooses flesh, God sets them straight, repeat. God tells Isreal do this, they don’t do it, they repent, he blesses them. You think he wanted them to mess up? No! He wants to bless them, but just as we do, we pursue our own ways, and then ask God to bless them.
Long segway, but I hope it was useful. Point is, how many times have you been given a vision, or felt the feeling and didn’t act? In my experience, JUST MY PERSONAL experience, everything God calls me to do, is wildly uncomfortable, and he always places me in a positions that my faith is required to go further than my flesh has ever been capable of. Meaning, God gives me visions that I cannot complete on my own, that I have to overcome fear, walk in faith, and be wildly dependent on him to complete the mission. Period.
So, what calling has you placed on your heart that you haven’t been listening to? Are you so far past having them that you don’t even ask God anymore? Are you just focused on, watch over my family, help me make it through this work day, get a decent spot at the mall, next promotion, and don’t let me get stuck in traffic?
Or is it, God you know what I’m going through, if you would just give me a sign, I’ll do whatever you tell me? But, then you don’t read the Bible enough to realize, he’s already given you the sign, your mission, purpose and calling, and you would just rather wait on magic to drop from the sky, settling for comfort and complacent over sacrifice and obedience?
Come on bro!! Excuses are void in the kingdom of heaven, act like you knew! Don’t be the guy who gets so far off path that you say you believe, but don’t seek Gods will daily, so you walk around professing God, but living nothing like what he’s called you to live. You’re better than that.
So, what’s the answer to this ridiculously long blog?
Fully submit yourself to Gods will daily, no matter how crazy it may seem to others. Use me as an example if you need to. If you know me, I’m not the trophy boy for exceptional Christian. I’m what most churches would call a heretic, a false profit, or lost in sin. Yet, all I eat sleep and breathe is doing Gods will daily. My point is, people will always have an opinion, even the people who thought they were closest to God, killed his son, and the prophets who came before him! Christ rebelled against their man made religion, called them a brood of vipers, prob some more stuff, and then went on to reveal love, care, generosity, forgiveness, and compassion! A little different example than what they had set. He goes on to show mercy trumps sacrifice, and forgiveness and love conquers all. He literally displayed the example of what it means to be his disciple for all to see, when he picked up his cross, took on the sin of judging hypocrites, and said “Father forgive them, they know not what they do!”
Yet in this world, being a true disciple is a stumbling block for most religious people. It’s the very ones who claim to know him the most, that continuously persecute his elect. So, if you don’t look like mans religious church, and you don’t look like the world, you might just find that your walking on the narrow path with Jesus, that he himself said very few will find.
So don’t choose the ways of the world and they will hate you. Don’t seek to align yourself with mans religious customs and narrow viewpoint, they will hate you too.
For they fear what they don’t know, and kill what they can’t understand. Blind guides, full of judgment, an outward display of selfish insecurity, masquerading itself as righteousness. They’ve been judging themselves their whole life, because it is all they’ve known to do. Some past judgment on the world, others understand the word enough that they don’t pass judgment on the world, but comprehend the word enough to pass judgment on the church. Yet when they do so its a perversion, because they do not know love, so they lack the truth. They themselves can’t even look in the mirror and love themselves, so they cannot rightly ever loves others! When they look in the mirror they see sin and not their savior. So they outwardly reflect their shortcomings onto others. Claiming to be free, yet they tie a burdensome yoke onto others that they themself cannot carry, because they have skeletons they cannot bury. Depraved bunch in high positions, appearing to be Shepard’s, but they are like chaff in the wind, being thrown to and fro, judgment to judgment. If the words I speak aren’t from God himself, then let this day be held in account for all to see, so that the motives of my heart be displayed for all to bear witness.
Take the time to seek his will, and you to will find yourself on a similar path. But in this walk of righteousness remember, God won’t place a calling in your heart and not give you the ability to see it through. You just have to have the courage to bring it to fruition.
So in closing, are you choosing comfort or your calling? Search your heart man of GOD, the end has yet to come. Will you have the courage to follow his will? Fear is for the fire lake, be bold and courageous, you’ve been called to go and spread the good news of the gospel, baptize in the name of The Father, The Son, and the Holy Spirit! You have been commissioned!
Stop looking for the approval of man, and rest assure in your approval and right standing in God through Christ, who sacrificed everything for you to be set free! Let God himself be the only judge you consider in your pursuit of his calling. Go to where the pastors don’t preach, and where the teachers won’t teach. Go be a light in dark in the dark, a city on a hill for all to see. Stop settling for tradition, and go complete Gods mission! May his spirit rage inside of you, calling you to relentless actions of faith, being bold as to laugh in the face of fear, and courageously walk out your destiny. God be with you always even until the end of this age. Don’t do, be. because you already are.
From the front lines, -ES
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On an unrelated note, I always think that I love “drunk impulse married in Vegas” fics until I actually read one and it’s like:
impaired mental state due to intoxication while forming the marriage contract is ground for annulment in most places including Nevada, stop acting like you can’t get an annulment because you “consummated” it
they could dissolve? the marriage? and still date? Like, I so get the conflicted feelings of, “We formed such a strong immediate connection (which is probably why this happened) and the sex afterwards was so good and I don’t want to lose that but I can’t be married to you we just met” that is half of the reason why I am here, but it’s such a weird emotional whiplash when the characters go from freaking out about being surprise!married to being all hurt and rejected when their new “spouse” starts making practical plans to undo it. Like, I get that they can’t actually do it because then there would be no story, but there needs to be some plot point for why they can’t just be all, “Well, I’m glad we both agree that this was a drunken mistake, let’s undo it, and then maybe we can go out for coffee? Dinner? Would you be interested in seeing a movie?”*
when they do decide to “stay married” for plot reasons so that we get this wonderful combination of fake dating and arranged marriage and being strangers but living together and it’s the best thing and the other 95% of the reason I am here - your lawyer is not evil for suggesting you sign a post-nuptial agreement. That is the right thing to do. This is a bizarre situation that only the genre-savvy readers know is going to end in a happily ever after real marriage. You, the characters, do not know that. Hashing out property and financial rights in advance so each of you knows what you are and are not entitled to in the (unusually likely) event of a separation is the smartest thing you could do right now. Get your own lawyer. Agree to a fair deal. Sign the post-nup. When you inevitably renew your vows in a full ceremony in front of friends and family on the second anniversary of your impromptu Vegas wedding, making that commitment to each other with sincerity and forethought, you can ceremonially burn the prenup in a romantic and touching ritual. Don’t fire that lawyer, he is Correct.
*omg, actually, what about a fic where two people hook up/get married on the first night of a week long vacation and annul it in the morning but decide to keep seeing each other and then *every night* they wind up drunk and at the Elvis Chapel and *every morning* they have to annul it again until the last night when they finally manage to exert enough self control to stay sober and are both like, “Holy crap, the sex is even better than my bleary half-memories suggested, no wonder our drunk selves keep wanting to lock this down for the rest of our lives!”
#not a vague at any specific fic#just tropes that i have noticed and that bother me every time#fanfic#opinions
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Chapter 7: Team Dreamcatcher
Project introduction | Previous chapter | Next chapter
Word count: 2100
Warnings: Profanity
September 23rd, 8:52 PM, The Society headquarters, Trinity Gate
“Alright,” Wiccan says. “Anyone else has doubts?”
Sienna, still pale in the face, shakes her head. The rest of the team follows her.
“Good. So now you learned there are other races besides humans. They are called inhumans and used to be pretty common. But now, most of the inhuman races are on the verge of extinction. But still, they are here with us and need some kind of supervision. You know how much panic would it cause if they just roamed freely. There are many inhuman races and they are all described there,” he points at The Society’s Guide to Inhumans, the book Whisper was about to pick up earlier.
The said girl opens her eyes wide. “So our task should be oppressing the inhumans?”
“No, not at all,” Wiccan calms her down. “We are not oppressors, more like the police. In times long ago, humans could easily match the inhumans using magic and ancient knowledge. But then, the magic faded away and the knowledge was forgotten. And the inhumans, on the contrary, gained something. Namely human technology. There aren’t many inhumans, but if they combine their special powers with human inventions, they become a pain in the ass, especially if they decide to rebel against us.”
“And so The Society is here to prevent the inhumans from misusing the technology and also makes sure they remain hidden from the civilians,” Sienna takes a guess.
“Clever girl,” Wiccan nods. “The Society isn’t some kind of ancient organization. We’re here since the 18th century or so, when the industrial revolution started and the inhumans started to get out of control. The individuals who knew about their existence and actively smothered their little rebellions suddenly weren’t enough. We had to team up - the humans with exceptional abilities and the inhumans willing to fight for our case.”
Gary shyly raises his hand. “Excuse me… where are the inhumans if they can’t be seen? Are they all like Kirlian? Or do they look like humans?”
“That’s a good question,” Wiccan says and Gary puts on a relieved smile. “The remaining inhumans live in so-called enclaves. They, sadly, have to be segregated from the outside world, but they are not some kind of ghettos or slums. They are financed and supervised by The Society and the inhumans who live there have very decent standard of living, I’d say even better than a lot of humans. They also aren’t completely isolated since the enclaves are connected by inhuman-exclusive underground railroads.”
“So why are we here?” Parker asks. “As far as I know, there’s no such enclave in Trinity Gate.”
“There is,” Wiccan smiles. “Fifty points to anyone who can find out where.”
“I… I think I know!” Sienna bursts out. “Luminance Haven. The facility in the northern part of the city. The name is an anagram for inhuman enclave!”
Parker gives her a doubtful look. “Ya mean Area 52?”
Luminance Haven is a company that operates in the northern Trinity Gate. The company possesses a rather large area which is more or less a city in a city. They work for all three territories and commence secret researches. At least that’s what the inhabitants of Trinity Gate have been told.
The area has, besides the research facilities, its own stores, a hospital, all the basic infrastructure including a large housing estate allegedly for the company’s employees. The area is separated from the outside world by a wall with only several ways in, all guarded and secured with a checkpoint. The area has a system that prevents drones from flying above and taking pictures.
Of course, there are conspiracy theories about what’s going on there. Most people just accept it’s a research center working on things that shouldn’t be presented to the public yet. But it seems that the truth is something completely different from any theories regarding that place.
Wiccan confirms it. “Well done, Sienna. The grounds of Luminance Haven are in fact Trinity Gate’s inhuman enclave, secured from the outside world.”
“And… what exactly lives there?” Whisper asks. She expected her world to be turned upside down when she came to the meeting, but she certainly didn’t expect to learn that the government research facility not so far away from her home is secretly inhabited by beings like Kirlian.
Wiccan once again points at the Guide to Inhumans. “Those who live in Trinity Gate are marked.”
Whisper scowls, expecting a more detailed answer.
The man laughs at her reaction. “You will soon find out. But first, a team has to be officially formed. We already have the members - you, Parker, Sienna, Gary and Kirlian. Now, only some bureaucracy is needed. You have to pick a team name and then you receive official Enforcer passes. They are required to enter the enclave. Don’t worry, the enclave is mostly safe, unless you venture to some of the parts where The Society’s enforcers aren’t welcome.”
The girl gulps. She’s aware that they will have to venture there sooner or later.
“So, should we choose a name?” Kirlian says. “To be frank, I’m used to the team name we used when it was me, Wiccan, Ophelia, Vlade and Gerard.”
Parker squirms when he hears the name of his older brother.
“And the name was?” Whisper wonders.
“Team Menhir,” Kirlian replies. “The Society’s teams usually pick up names connected to something mysterious or esoteric. We picked the name because the founding members, Wiccan, Ophelia and Tara, used to meet at the menhir which stands close to the Heap of Ashes. After the team was founded, we all used to meet there. It was our second meeting point after this office.”
Parker eyeballs every member of the team. “I suggest Team Freaks,” he utters. “Because this is a fucking freakshow and I have to be a part of it.”
Wiccan shakes his head. “I wouldn’t recommend that. Team Freaks is rather common in The Society and there is a renowned team that goes by this name in Nevada.”
“I think I have an idea,” Whisper says. Then she stands up and turns her back to the rest of the team. She removes her hair from her back, tossing the dreadlocks over her shoulder, and, to everyone’s surprise, removes the straps of her dress from her shoulders.
She makes the dress halfway fall, prudently covering her chest with her arms even though it’s out of everyone’s sight. Her intention was to show the tattoo which begins in her shoulder blade area and covers her whole back up to the level of her hips.
Everyone takes a look at the circle with a spiderweb-like pattern weaved inside. There are strings attached to the lower arc of the circle, each one carrying bird feathers. The tip of the lowest feather touches the girl’s coccyx.
“That’s… a dreamcatcher,” Sienna says. It is indeed the Native American decoration which is supposed to rid its owner of all bad dreams. The tattoo looks impressive on the girl’s back. Wiccan is the only one not surprised since he saw the ornament right after Whisper got it tattooed for her seventeenth birthday.
“It is,” Whisper looks over her shoulder. “I guess Team Dreamcatcher sounds good, don’t you think?”
Whisper’s idea is approved by all members, including Parker who doesn’t really seem to care about the team’s name. When she sees her idea met success, the girl brightens up. She puts the upper part of the dress back on, makes sure nothing is showing and turns back around.
“It’s an honor for me to be a member of Team Dreamcatcher,” she chants solemnly.
This could be a nice moment for the whole new team, but Parker decides to interrupt it anyway. “Wait,” he says. “Did she just strip off her clothes in front of all of us?”
Whisper gives him a furious look. “I certainly didn’t strip for you, asshole,” she retorts.
Despite Parker’s improper remark, the atmosphere within the team changes. In fact, they are still only a ragtag team of people who have never met before. However, it’s finally something concrete. They still have to get to know each other. They have no idea what to expect. But at least they know they are a part of The Society, the newly formed Team Dreamcatcher.
“Congratulations, you are the new law enforcers of Trinity Gate’s inhuman enclave,” Wiccan stands up and begins his speech. “I know how you feel. Nervous. Scared. Not knowing what to expect. But also curious. I felt the same when The Society recruited us and we took over the baton of Team Archangel. And I’m sure Ophelia did, too.” He grabs his wife around her waist and the woman cuddles up to him.
The woman continues where Wiccan left off. “You are going to make mistakes. It takes time to learn certain things, but I’m sure you can do it. But you also have to realize you are going to carry great responsibility. The enclaves and the existence of inhumans mustn’t be exposed. All the teams before you succeeded, save for a few unfortunate incidents. And it will be up to you to continue.”
“We’ll do our best,” Whisper says quietly.
Parker rolls his eyes. “I’m so gonna regret this. Fuck, I need another cigarette.”
Wiccan speaks again. “I guess that’s all for today - you have a lot to digest. Let’s meet again tomorrow, I hope four in the afternoon is convenient for all of you. The Capital Branch should have your passes ready. You are going to learn the rest of the things you need to know.”
The team slowly disperses, still full of mixed feelings. Their worlds have been turned upside down within an hour. Wiccan observes their confused faces. All new teams have this look in their eyes. If someone seems too eager, they tend to be troublesome. This team seems to have much-needed humility. Including Parker.
Whisper hugs her uncle as a goodbye and steps into the elevator, leaving Wiccan alone with Ophelia and Kirlian, the former members of Team Menhir.
“So, what do you think?” Wiccan looks at his wife.
“I see some issues, but no team is perfect immediately,” Ophelia says. “I see one main problem, and that’s their synergy. I can see they work well as individuals, but I’m afraid about their teamwork.”
“You mean Parker, right?”
Ophelia runs her hand through her thick hair. “It was Sienna I had in mind. I could clearly sense her arrogance and bossiness. She thinks she’s better than everyone else and if she keeps that attitude in the future, she’s going to have a hard time.”
“Sienna is fine,” Wiccan smiles. “She just has to let go of some things she was used to as a prominent daughter of a wealthy entrepreneur. Take a look at her files. She can work efficiently even under pressure as soon as she receives a concrete task. Her intelligence is unmatched. She’s a prodigy in math, IT and technology… but I see that her empathy suffers because of that. But I’m certain we can get her to change.”
“There are just too much contradictions for my taste,” Ophelia sighs. “Gary is too timid and insecure while Parker is way too brash. We have Whisper, a natural-born empath and - let’s be honest - a weirdo, and Sienna, an upper-class girl who enjoys being in the spotlight.”
“And it will be up to me to finally unite them,” Kirlian finally speaks. “It will be a thankless job, but I guess that’s what I get since I insisted I want to continue my Enforcer career.”
In The Society, it’s customary for one member of the “old” team to join the “new” team, but it’s not a rule. Kirlian offered himself to take this role since he was the only one willing to continue working - Vlade died, Gerard disappeared God knows where and the couple, Wiccan and Ophelia, decided to retire and enjoy some time together without the inhumans and The Society interfering.
“Good luck with them,” Ophelia giggles.
“I wouldn’t be so negative about them,” Kirlian replies. “Sure, at first glance, they don’t look like a team to save the day. But I see something positive in all of them. Sure, Parker is an asshole, but he also has an iron will and some useful skills. Sienna’s intelligence has already been mentioned. I can see Gary is the most loyal person you can find. And Whisper… to be honest, I like her the most. I just regret scaring her so badly.”
Wiccan smirks. “This is the first time you feel sorry for a victim of your prank.”
“Well, it’s the first time I feel like they didn’t deserve it.”
Author’s Note
I wholeheartedly thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed the chapter, and if you did, please leave a comment, send me a message or share and let more people know about this story! You can also consider a small donation at www.paypal.me/lukassladky. Have a great day and stay tuned for the next chapter!
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OKAY. It’s Sunday night, I’m on the plane back to Chicago from Clexacon in Las Vegas. What a weekend man. I had such an amazing time with friends I already knew and ones I just met for the first time. However, much of how the con was run was an absolute shit show. I must’ve said a hundred times that being that they’d done this for like 3 years already, they should know better than to do the stupid kind of shit they were doing, and yet there we were. So that led to some crappy situations, but I still had a great time do to the awesome people around me. I can’t say I’d go again though, because it was just a very poorly run event and I’m (obviously) not afraid to call them out on it in public, because it’s clearly needed when they’re prioritizing getting every last dollar out of everyone rather than the safety/wellbeing of the guests and the experience of the congoers (and the sanity of their volunteers, for that matter. But I should start from the beginning.
I left off Thursday night right before trying to fall asleep. I say trying because sadly it did not come easy, I think I fell asleep finally some time around 4, which put me at like 3-4 hours of sleep for the night, which made me feel a lot more exhausted through all of the very long day I had. I think I woke up at 7:30 am on Friday, that sounds right. Threw the last of things together and got an Uber, picked up Jess and was on our way to the airport. Got through everything okay, for one reason or another they let us go through just the metal detector instead of the full scan machine thing which was nice because the whole machine is a giant pain. We got to our gate and waited, and got somewhat delayed but eventually got in the air. Landed about 1 pm Las Vegas time, so 3 pm for us, so it already felt like it’s been forever and we wanted to get there as soon as we could. We ended up taking a taxi to the place instead of dealing with their airport’s Uber procedures, whatever those were. It was a pretty short drive, so we got there and walked into the casino part, and proceeded to get very lost until we saw someone that looked like they would be going (take that to mean whatever you’d like) and begged them to help us which they readily did thankfully lol.
So with some help we got to the actual part the con was taking place at, and found our friends who were in line for the Avalance panel that was at 3 pm. They were fairly close to the front for the regular admissions at least, so we got fairly good seats. I was going to live tweet but since getting off the plane my signal had been very poor (apparently Verizon doesn’t get good reception in Nevada) and not only did the place not have WiFi, but some people were saying they actively dampened the cell phone signal to “keep people focused on gambling” or something like that which is wild, really, all of this leading to the conclusion that my battery was gonna die a lot quicker than normal and I couldn’t afford to live tweet. Clexacon is also really good about putting their whole panel’s online though (one thing to their credit at least) so I didn’t feel too bad about it. The panel was great though, Jes and Caity together are always fucking hilarious and they were honestly so bad at paying attention and staying on topic it was really funny. They definitely like, hinted heavily at several things upcoming in the rest of the season, I won’t get into it because I know some people don’t like spoilers so I’ll leave it there and say if you want to know more go watch the panel. It was really great though, and as was suspected, Katrina Law crashed it and it was hilarious.
After the panel we rushed over to Jes’ table as soon as we could, which took a minute because instead of the normal con set up where each celebrity has their own table, they were switching off tables in shifts more or less (a dumb mistake which led to issues when they needed the table for the next guest but still had a mile long line, one of many things they totally should’ve known better than to do). So we had to wait a minute and then get in line and wait for her to head over, which wasn’t too long. Jess got a photo signed because she had a nice new one and it let us talk to her lol. She was doing selfies but that wasn’t quite established yet, since the con had put out a whole statement saying there would be no selfies (and then the guests were like yeah right we’re gonna do them anyway, bless). So we talked to her for a few minutes about some spoilery stuff we had gotten told about and then moved on since she had quite a line already.
After that we walked around the merch hall for a few minutes before heading over to the photo ops, and oh what a chaotic mess that was! After a while we managed to get in the right place with the right people and then had to wait a while longer lol. But for that night we had a duo op with Caity and Jes with Season, Jayne, Jess and I, with a pose inspired by the breakfast club (I’ll post my crappy quality picture of the print out since they don’t have the digital downloads yet and don’t know when they will after this) which involved me lying on the floor lol so that was amusing, got to say hi to Jes and told Caity I’d see her tomorrow.
Once we were done with that we waited for a bit for other people that had different ops since they were all clumped together (singles for any of the three including Katrina, duos with any of them, or trios with all three) and then once we were all done we left to go to the Taco Bell, the infamous Vegas Taco Bell that you can get married in and was famously featured in Jess’ social media au that I didn’t read 😂 but it had become quite a big deal, so we walked for about 15 minutes till we got there. They were blasting music inside at like a way too loud volume, so after ordering and getting our food we ended up sitting at their little outside portion, where we could still hear the music but it wasn’t quite so bad, lol. So that was certainly an experience.
When we walked back to the con place we met up with some friends who had brought along some games and such for a game night, and we ended up playing games with them for several hours, which was very fun. We played one called The Resistance which is kind of like Mafia and whenever we play any game like that I will ALWAYS end up being the “spy” as it was in this case, and it happened both rounds we played 😂 it’s just more fun that way. We played a few different fun ones. It was getting late though and I was like high key tired, and since we weren’t actually staying at the hotel there because it was very expensive (though the rooms were very nice) so after a while Jess, Melissa, and I ubered back to the holiday inn where Melissa had gotten a room and was letting us crash with her lol. Our Uber that night was a red hummer, so that was wild. I was like getting deliriously tired at that point but I knew if I didn’t wash my hair it would look like shit in photo ops the next day so I forced myself to wash it quickly and then go to bed right afterwards.
I set my alarm for 8 or 8:30, I’m not sure which, but I got up and got ready for the day, grabbing a quick breakfast at the hotel before heading over to the con. The Nyssara panel was first thing that day but since we knew it was gonna be online anyway we decided to skip it in favor of Jes’ line on a hope that most people would be at the panel instead (there were actually a good number of people there, but I’m sure there would’ve been a lot more without the panel). So we waited a bit for her to show up and she started signing, then we had to wait a few minutes while she went and crashed the Nyssara panel of course in payback for Katrina crashing the Avalance one the day before, which we fully expected to occur lol. Then she came back and we got to her pretty quickly. I had her sign the op of her and Caity that we got the night before.
Once that was done we headed to the photo ops since they were shortly afterwards, also a shit show but no surprise at that point. I just had a Jes op, and I decided since I was wearing my Captain Marvel tank top I got from hot topic a few weeks ago I decided we should do the pose with our arms extended since that was their kinda thing, and it came out really well, I was happy with it. Once everyone was done with photo ops, which took a while longer, we went to the autograph/merch hall and decided to hit up Caity’s line while we could, I had her sign her side of the duo op from the night before and got some selfies, it’s always great to talk to her, Sara’s always gonna be my favorite character and a big part of why I love the fandom as much as I do so I always love getting to interact with Caity, and she seems like she remembers me pretty consistently at this point so that’s always nice.
Once we all got through Caity’s line Jes’ was still really long so we decided to go to the Black Lightning/ThunderGrace panel with Nafessa and Chantal, who were both super awesome and the panel was great. They were so much fun to get to talk to and it was good to hear the writers were playing the long game with their relationship since at the beginning of season 2 it looked like that might not be the case. Towards the end of the panel we were informed that Jes’ line had been capped, which was very weird because she was supposed to be signing till 5 and it was only like 3:45 at that point which is WAY too early to cap a line. So after the panel we headed straight over there to figure out what was going on. One of the other stupid things the con was doing was overpromising things to their VIPs and basically just letting them through over the regular admissions at a rate that was impractical and frankly just didn’t make sense. So there was a VIP line that was very long and looked like it might be being added to, and a shorter regular admission line. We basically decided to be stubborn though and see if we could play it out on the hope that if they tried to end it before we got there Jes would see us and want to talk to us basically, which I’m not sure how successful we would’ve been and did not at all know if it would work or not. But basically we planted ourselves at the end of the regular admission line on the premise that we were talking to our friend who had managed to get added to the line, and then as things evolved basically more people started getting in behind us which the volunteers were not happy about (I want to make it clear though, I’m not at all blaming the volunteers for the shittier parts of this weekend, that blame lies solely with the con and the decisions they made, including not training their volunteers for all the situations they should’ve been trained on, but the volunteers were just doing their job and I would never fault them for that) which was understandable but we were gonna try.
We eventually more or less got added to the line but there was zero guarantee we were actually going to get to see her.
At some point around 5 Jes wanted to stay through the line so she had to get moved to a different table since they were still doing their shitty system with the tables, and then had to lead the whole line over behind her, which we think they basically just put the entire VIP line in front of the regular admission people, even those who had arrived clearly after us, so we ended up waiting quite a while there with seeming little to no movement. After we had been waiting a little while they Black Lightning girls had come to the tables nearby and Nafessa didn’t have a line, so I ducked out quickly (with plenty of friends to save my spot ofc) to her table because I’ve wanted to meet her for a while now but never had the chance, and thankfully she was doing selfies so I got to talk to her for a bit and then take some selfies with her, she was really really great and I basically cried talking to her about how much I love the show and the character of Anissa so much and just how iconic it was to see the image of her standing there in her superhero outfits and having the bullets just fucking bouncing off of her after so many LGBT female characters were killed off often for very shitty reasons, I’m like tearing up just thinking about it now lol so I was really glad I got to meet her.
Once I finished there I ducked back into Jes’ line, which had finally seemed to move some so we were a little closer, but still had to wait a bit longer. Jes was a total champ because she absolutely did not have to stay for everyone there, but she chose to do so despite being super tired and worn out herself, so she gets major credit here. We got to see her finally though after going through way too much shit to get there lol, I got my op from earlier that day signed, but had to forego a selfie because I was out of cash lol. Oh well. It was sad because the only con coming up she has scheduled is the love fanfest which is in Barcelona this summer (and in case you were wondering flights to Barcelona for those dates are sitting solidly around $800) and we’re ofc not planning on attending that so having to say goodbye without knowing when we’d see her next was kinda sad (and of course we’ll be bugging HVFF like crazy to fucking invite her to their cons, ugh) but I was still really glad we got to see her.
When we finally finished there god we were all so wiped and hungry since it was almost 7 pm at this point and we hadn’t really eaten since breakfast, so we ended up taking an Uber to the closest In-N-Out which was of course a must whenever we’re somewhere there is one (usually California but in this case Vegas). It wasn’t terribly crowded so we were able to get a table and food fairly quickly, god their strawberry shake was so fucking good and their burgers and fries were great too. We stayed there for a while and just talked and had a good time before deciding to walk back since we now had food in our stomachs, lol (we were originally going to walk there but my stomach was already like mmmMNOPE and walking for 20 minutes would’ve been high key bad). Once we got back to the con place we met up with the game friends again and played for the rest of the night. We started with a game called joking hazards which is like cards against humanity but based on cyanide and happiness comics which I read religiously for years and you basically had to build the funniest comic strip and my entries had everyone cackling basically the whole time even if I didn’t win the round, it was just all really hilarious and fun. We moved on to some other games which were fun, around 10 or so Jess had to head to the airport because she had been planning on going to Star Wars Celebration Sunday (plans which got thwarted by unexpected snow in Chicago) so she was flying out that night and arriving at like 6 am Sunday morning. We kept playing till like 1 or so at which point everyone was just really tired so Melissa and I headed back to our hotel. I washed my hair again quickly and got ready for bed. One thing we messed up on was forgetting to bring any makeup remover wipes or otherwise makeup remover, and there’s only so much you can get off in the shower, so when I get home tonight I need to like, douse my face in makeup remover and get off all the damn mascara that I couldn’t get off for three fucking days. We headed to bed though, Melissa’s flight was early Sunday morning so we said our goodbyes and went to bed.
I was set to wake up to my alarm at 10 to an empty hotel room which did in fact occur, but it took a little longer for me to actually get out of bed because I was very tired lol, I don’t think I actually fell back asleep but I rested my eyes a bit more until like 10:26 at which point I convinced myself to get out of bed. I got ready and officially checked out of the hotel room (which just involved telling the front desk the room number and that we were checked out) and headed over to the con place, messaging a few various friends I had made since arriving since my original friends were now gone, lol. I met up with them shortly afterwards in the merch hall where we wandered around for a bit and I did buy some stuff, mostly small art stuff and a few buttons, before we headed to the short film festival that was taking place from 12 to 2. I grabbed a sandwich quickly from the little cafe they had and headed in. The films ranged between comedies and dramas of different subjects, they were all really good and several made me cry, one had me like on the verge of sobs at the end lol so yeah they were very good I’d say. Once those were finished they had a little talk with some of the film creators and actors that were there which was fun.
Once that event was done I headed back to the merch hall with one of my friends to find a few things, and once we were satisfied there we ended up walking out across the street to the New York, New York casino which had a shake shack, where I got a burger and a root beer float which was very good. So we ate and talked and had a nice time. We walked back to the con area after, my friend went to a pitch session and I went back to the merch hall for a final round before finding another friend and sticking with them for a bit, one of the tables had been doing a raffle so we waited for the results of that which was entertaining, then talked to a few vendors we knew, and ended up going back to my friend’s hotel room for a little bit. My flight was supposed to leave at 7:25 so I was planning on leaving the con for the airport around 5, but I had gotten an email from southwest saying it had been delayed half an hour, so I ended up staying until around 5:30 before saying my final goodbyes and getting an Uber to the airport.
The Uber ride was quick, check in was very easy and I breezed through security, again only having to do the metal detector, so I made it to the gate shortly after 6 and then had plenty of time lol. So I just sat and listened to podcasts and went on my phone while having it plugged into one of the outlets they had under the seats for about an hour or so until I got up and grabbed some Burger King for dinner, then returning and eating that while we started the boarding process, the flight before us ended up getting in a little late so I think our ultimate take off time ended up being like 8:10 or so. We’re supposed to get in a bit before 2 am Chicago time, which should be fairly soon since my phone is currently reading 11:25 pm Vegas time, which would be 1:25 am Chicago time. Of course I packed super light since I was carrying my backpack around all day for two of the days I was there, so I just have the shorts I wore today which was great for the 80 degree Vegas weather, but being that it FUCKING SNOWED in Chicago today I’m guessing they’re gonna be a bit less than adequate. Since I flew Southwest we’re getting into the airport that’s further from me, but the roads will at least be clear and you can just take the expressway up so it doesn’t take too much longer than the one that’s closer to me (which is always just a pain in the ass because it’s O’Hare but it’s where pretty much everyone flies out of except Southwest). So now I’m here, sitting on the plane and typing this. As things stand right now, Jess had gotten off of work tomorrow for Star Wars Celebration which she wasn’t sure she was gonna do on Monday but since today didn’t end up working out she’s gonna go, I was able to get a single day Monday ticket to go with her so we’re gonna get brunch at 10 and then head down to that con, lol, probably stay mostly in their merch hall and maybe meet up with some people, before going home to watch the Legends episode of course. And yeah, that should be fun. I’m running low on battery so I’m gonna stop typing for now, I’ll probably write a final few sentences once I’m home or almost home and about to go to sleep.
Okay, flight landed at 1:49 am, it’s now 3:08 am and I’m lying on my bed about to go to sleep. Goodnight peeps. Hope you had a good weekend too.
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