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bills-pokedex · 3 years

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Worldbuilding Month: Day 8

{First off, don’t forget that we’ve got a worldbuilding doc going on! Make your mark in the blog’s universe by throwing your hat into here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aSEWsh8wQQbSr7pTBpUOQnrHTKYc1xwJqRLkqh3WKFs/edit?usp=sharing

That said, today’s entry piggybacks off of yesterday’s (on what pokémon actually are) with one simple question:

Do animals exist? (And also, do humans actually eat pokémon?)

The short answer is ... yes.

The long answer is yes, and furthermore:

1. The reason why we don’t often see them is because we’re following the POV of children who are more interested in pokémon than anything else. This is also why we don’t see any of the things that are also likely there, like grocery stores, bathrooms, schools that aren’t specially for trainers, or, idk, the government.

2. I’ve heard about the mythical interview in which it’s officially stated that there are no animals, but I’ve never seen it on a reliable source. Having lived through the era of pikablu and all of the supposed codes to get Mewthree, Yoshi, and the other Pokégods on your games, not to mention all of the times we’ve gotten supposedly totally for-reals leaked starters, I know better than to believe anything this fandom says without seeing that info on a reliable source. And if you’re asking me for advice, you should too.

Snark aside, yes, animals exist. Obviously, given that humans exist, and we’re animals, but I also mean broadly speaking. They just don’t exist in as high numbers as they do in real life because they have the added competition of organisms made of the literal forces of nature. That goes for humans too, incidentally, which is why you have these huge swaths of land between cities that are really concentrated into one tiny space, combined with a lot of routes that are barely much more than dirt roads. The exception here is Unova, ironically enough, which may be why Team Plasma was able to get such a foothold there.

But let’s stop talking for humans for the time being because you’re probably wondering about things like cats, dogs, birds, and whatever we grind up to make hamburger patties.

The truth is that animals absolutely exist, but they’re often harder to find. Wild ones are more likely to live in deeper parts of the wilderness, where humans don’t often go, sometimes alongside pokémon dens containing their actual young. This is because wild pokémon are extremely protective of their young and more likely to drive off threats caused by humans (you read that correctly—the biggest threat to nature is man, and nature knows this), which means wild animals are more capable of establishing safe territories in the vicinity of these dens. Or, well, within reason. Wild pokémon will chase off wild animals as well if they get too close to their young, especially since hungry apex predators will still attempt to predate pokémon hatchlings if desperate for food. Insert wolves attempting to hunt and eat scorbunny hatchlings here.

For the most part, though, pokémon take care of animals the way humans take care of pokémon. They live symbiotically with their animal neighbors and often protect species they’ve become particularly attached to. For example, deerling? Will absolutely protect actual deer from wolves. (I don’t know why I keep going after wolves here, but there you go.) Raticate might protect insects and rats from birds (while getting a free meal on top of that), and so on.

On the other hand, they also, well, eat each other. Insects absolutely can and will infest grass-type pokémon that don’t move all that often, bird pokémon eat insects and worms (canonically at that), and predators further up the food chain will often compete for the same prey. (That is to say, both mightyena and wolves will hunt deer ... as well as deerling.) Then again, you’ll also have predator pokémon teaming up with predator animals to hunt, prey pokémon and prey animals teaming up to protect each other, and ... just a whole lotta balance going on out there.

When it comes to domesticated animals, yes, humans keep both pokémon and other animals as livestock, and pokémon are used as the exact same way as their animal counterparts. For example, both miltank and actual cows are milked, and both are used for meat. People eat torchic eggs and chicken eggs, and that poultry you’re having for dinner could come from an actual chicken or a combusken. (Torchic don’t have that much meat on them to eat, and blaziken meat is often too tough.) And of course, sushi comes from both actual fish and practically any fish-like pokémon, with the exception of qwilfish (which is completely poisonous and therefore inedible) and magikarp (which canonically possesses scales too tough to get past and an unfortunate lack of edible meat). Then of course there are the animals who are kept for purposes other than for food, including for textile-friendly fur (e.g., sheep are still sheared for wool), for work (work horses still exist and have always existed), and ... for pets.

Let’s talk about pets for a second. You might be thinking, “Why would you get an animal pet if you could have a magic cat?” The answer is ... not everyone can have a pokémon.

In fact, you can see great examples in asks right here on this blog. Even though the PC is perfectly safe and even if storing your pokémon in it indefinitely isn’t a bad thing (and I say this as the mun, not as Bill, who will tell you this because he’s its inventor so of course he would), the problem is if you want a pokémon as a pet, then you probably don’t want to do that. You probably want to have a pokémon partner in your home at all times, right? Well ... pokémon require a lot more than animals. They’re often larger, so they need more space. They need more food because their attacks make them use more energy. Oh, you’ll also need to ensure your home is safe for a creature that can literally summon things like fire, electricity, or ungodly amounts of water at will. As Bill has said, you’ll need to commit at least an hour of your day every day to training them (so they can better learn how to control their powers and because they need more guided exercise than even your pet dog), and to cap it all off, if you don’t give yours an everstone, you could very well come home to a pet that’s many times larger than it had been that morning.

This is not a situation that many people can deal with once they retire from their trainer’s journeys, in other words, which is why a lot of people trim down their teams and keep their beloved pokémon with a relative or friend who has the space, if they don’t just release them or leave them at a shelter. I mean, think about it. If you’re an adult, you probably know what I’m talking about. It’s hard enough to find a place that will let you keep your cat, but imagine living in a tiny apartment with a six-foot-tall winged lizard that can breathe fire.

And that’s just the situation Bill’s told you about. There are other people who just, well, don’t want a pokémon. There are plenty of people who don’t even like pokémon, as well as people who would just prefer a cat, even if given the choice between a cat or a cat that has magic powers. Humans are kinda funny like that.

So yes, for all of these people, cats exist. Dogs exist. Pretty much every animal you could legally keep as a pet exists. Your buddy absolutely has a complex-looking tropical fish tank when they could have a finneon. (Although I guess to be fair, some people keep tropical fish and finneon, but anyway.)

Alternatively, yes, it’s possible to keep animal pets alongside pokémon pets, and oftentimes, they get along quite well. Or, well, sort of. Pets that end up jealous of each other is a thing that absolutely exists too. (Insert mental image of your pet cat absolutely throwing paws with a new clefairy.) But other than that, it’s not unusual for animal pets and pokémon pets to become best friends ... and for pokémon to try to train animals to use attacks because they see animals as unfortunate pokémon that don’t seem to have any powers.

So to wrap up on this one, yes, animals exist, and they have a fascinating relationship with pokémon. They’re often practically equals, living symbiotically with their pokémon counterparts, only often a bit more in hiding than their real-world selves.

Oh, final note: I could get into the evolutionary history of animals and what’s different, but honestly, that gets a bit too involved. Just know that all animals that exist in the real world (and all animals that have ever existed) have Pokémon-world counterparts. Are they slightly different the way humans are (meaning, can they have special powers too)? ... yes. Yes, you can have an aura-bending cat.

I mean. Originally, this answer was gonna be no, but about halfway through writing that last sentence, I realized that I’d be missing one big effing opportunity, so now animals can potentially have the same powers as people. Granted, yes, they’re not as strong as the powers possessed by people (to the point where it’s more likely they won’t manifest), but eff it. Aura guardian cats.}

#pokemon lore #pokemon headcanon #pokemon worldbuilding #worldbuilding month #resources #long post

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wolves-in-a-clown-car · 3 years

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im on a certain wavelength right now so based on my last post i may summarize some concepts for a personal ideal WD mayhaps

all in all my hypothetical goals for Theoretical Wolvden are

spending money is an incentive (site deserves mons!!) but not something that will benefit you in a way that other people cannot get

less of a focus on trading ‘elite’ wolves, and more showcasing and improving the ones you have

everyone on equal footing more or less, with effort the primary way to get ‘up there’ rather than money

no currency gotten through normal means, the only currency are real life purchases for tokens/GC that you can only buy food/medicine/herbs (any survival/gameplay stuff) with in the raccoon store or as gifts for other players (i.e you cannot transfer tokens, but you can buy a food bundle for someone else). theres no ‘if i spend this much money ill be such a huge player!’ its just making it a little easier not to have to grind/worry about wolf health

customizer items no longer behind the GC paywall, instead not consistently accessible and on certain ROs or milestones (i.e wolf to level 10, 20.etc)

more elite customizer/decor items are unlocked by harder goals, more common items are RNG across the board (rng has its own levels of rarity, though, esp with decors!)

more emphasis on transforming existing wolves into smth better through effort and gameplay rather than breeding, pups have better starting stats/quality with better parents, but not to the same huge extent. def a boost, but still a lot to attain by leveling up and spending time on that pup u feel? just in general not having pups worth at birth be the same as an adult. as a wolf ages/levels up, they get a prettier version of their base coat, or get an applicator at a certain level that lets you apply tier IIs to it, can increase stats indefinitely, longer life span)

addition: perhaps your main wolf gets reincarnated and is the best at preserving their prior stats?? so effort isnt to ‘waste’ when they die (even if your pups will still steadily improve birth stats) but you’re not just immortal? or whoever you appoint as the next lead gets half of your current lead’s stuff added even at their current level? you can pick another lead at any time, but you will not get any (or get less/significantly less if you replace before they die/retire) of your chain of stats transferred to them?

another addition: also for clarity less emphasis on daily activity/having to do a ton of stuff in a day, but moreso longevity! you dont need to grind for hours unless you want to, and using your daily energy can still get you pretty far in a short period of time that adds up the more consecutive rollovers you have, so not to make people with busy lives feel like they cant get anywhere even if they wanted/tried to! so the morning/daily routine (feeding wolves, using inital energy bar, basic stuff) is relatively quick and gets a boost based on how many consecutive days youve done it, and you can keep doing more throughout the day but that stuff doesnt get the boost? so theres still reason to keep checking in daily/you can get farther the more time you spend, but you can still get far on longevity alone!

trading center is SOLELY trade, again no currency. exchange amusement items for wolves, food for herbs, all of that stuff!

you cant buy territory slots, you earn them through ROs/milestones

higher emphasis on socializing with other players (will think more abt that at some point later)

addition: some people dont want the harsh game of chance/grinding and thats ok!! perhaps at a certain level of wolves/lead level a lot of the issues you face are nullified? if you have less than 10 or something, or all your wolves are under a certain average level, or your lead is low level/stat youre drastically less likely to get sick, hunting chances improve, wolves get less hungry and its easier to just play casually! you wont get those huge elite bonuses unless you put the effort in, but the game isn’t difficult if you dont strive for that and you can just enjoy it! however, it does nor get harder as you go up; theres the easy area, and then theres the normal area, and nothing is made harder except the challange of keeping a growing number of wolves fed/happy! so you can keep as many wolves as you have time to upkeep :D (or there could be a switch between the two settings, but your wolves would be demoted to a certain level/appearance? so if youre high level you dont have to wait for your wolves to kick the bucket to be able to chillax)

look i know this is a huge pipe dream because WD is already established enough but i can imagine it pls let me have this (and share your theoretical wd ideas too !!!) KSJKS

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murasaki-murasame · 5 years

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More Dragalia Lost liveblogging under the cut where I talk about my Halloween summons, the upcoming version update, and my thoughts on high dragon trials now that the HDT weapons are a thing to work toward.

First off, I can’t remember exactly how many summons I’ve done on the Halloween banner, but I got all of the Halloween units except for Elly and Maritimus, and as much as I want to get H-Maritimus, I think I’m gonna wait until they announce the next banner to see where I want to put my resources. I have a feeling we’re going to get a water banner next that might give us our first 5-star water blade, which might be really tempting. So I’m gonna wait it out for now.

I also got Lin You as a random pity break along the way, which was really nice, since I was considering dream summoning her in the future. Now my wind roster is pretty much fully rounded out, except that I don’t have Wedding Elly yet. And funnily enough, regular Aeleen is still the only 4-star in the summoning pool that I don’t have yet.

And on the topic of dream summons, I decided to go ahead and get Xander from the current one. Which really took me by surprise since I figured we weren’t getting one anytime soon, since they didn’t announce it during the anniversary, but here we are. I felt a bit awkward about how just a few hours later we found out that the new Halloween banner was gonna have a new stun-res water sword on it, but I don’t regret getting Xander. My water team really needed him.

At this point there’s only a handful of units in the regular pool that I’d be interested in dream summoning eventually. It’s basically just Delphi, Ramona, and Lucretia at this point. Mainly Delphi at this point. I’m still salty about how I got a dupe Wedding Aoi in the last banner instead of him. And to make things worse I also got a dupe Ezelith during my Halloween summons, lol.

I was really surprised by the new Halloween units being a mix of flame and water ones, but they all serve nice roles, even if they’re awkwardly useless for the Halloween event itself. I also ended up being completely wrong about which characters would get alts for this in the first place. Mostly since I wasn’t expecting them to branch so far outside of the launch unit pool. I vaguely thought we might get a Mym alt, but I figured that it’d go to a different party member instead. But I’m actually happy that H-Mym is a thing, because I didn’t have a flame axe built up before I got her [which is why Ramona’s still high on my priority list for dream summons], and axes are one of my favourite weapon types to use. Sadly it sounds like G-Mym is better than her, but I’ll probably still just use H-Mym since I like her more as a unit.

Most of all I love and adore H-Lowen. He’s the best thing ever and he’s never leaving my flame team, lmao. On the one hand I still dislike it when units get alts where the only real difference is their element type, but I’ve been specifically hoping for us to get a good sleep-res flame healer for ages, so I can’t complain. He’s also just a really great healer all around, aside from not having the right resistance for HMS. He at least seems equally as good if not better than Verica. His kit is less specifically focused on healing potency than hers, but he has some really valuable support utility, especially since he has skill prep. I actually ended up using him last night in my very first HDT clear, against standard HMS. He doesn’t have the right resistance, but he can easily pass the HP check, and with his skill prep he can get off his defense buff and his HP buff, which is really nice. It doesn’t seem super essential for standard HMS, but for expert and master it might be a lot more important, like why Choco Thaniel is so important to HBH. And honestly even though H-Lowen’s sleep res, I found that it was pretty easy to avoid getting hit in the first place after the opening blast.

I still have my Xania set up as a DPS-focused alternative to use in HMS, but I really like using H-Lowen, and I’ve kinda resigned myself to the fact that Xania probably won’t be very good for anything above standard HMS. I have units like Mikoto, Sarisse, and both Myms who I can use in the fight instead if I need to, but I like Xania so I want to use her wherever I can.

Even though I’ve been playing this game for like six months, I’m only just starting to get into HDTs, lol. Part of it’s just that there really hasn’t been that much of a need to do them in the first place before they introduced HDT weapons recently, but mostly I’ve just been going through the typical motions of performance anxiety that you get with online co-op stuff like this.

I’m still really happy that I got my first clear, but I was kinda surprised by how relatively . . . simple standard HMS ended up being, in spite of knowing in advance that it had been heavily powercrept as the game’s gone on. I don’t really know what I expected, though, especially after knowing that the void dragon fights were specifically designed to prepare people for the HDTs. I really shouldn’t have been surprised that in the end, the HDTs would just feel like harder versions of the void dragon fights I’ve already done, lol. I actually feel like Void Zephyr almost feels harder than standard HMS right now, from what little experience I have with the latter, since Void Zephyr has way more unavoidable damage, and the tornadoes and stuff are a lot more frequent and get in the way a lot.

I might just stick to HMS for a while, but I have units I can use for the other ones. For HMC I have all the meta units except for W-Elly, but I’d lean more towards using Noelle or Lowen since I prefer playing as ranged units for these sorts of fights. For HBH I have a Choco Thaniel set up, but I don’t have a great dragon for him [which is why I’d like to get H-Maritimus but I can live without him], though I also have Lily, Summer Celliera (and I’ve promoted Elly and Orsem]. For HJP I have Gala Cleo, who I’ll probably stick to since I prefer ranged units, but I also have Curran, Heinwald, and Natalie. And then for HZD I have Gala Euden, and then Fleur and Yachiyo who I haven’t promoted. I’m kinda hoping we get better 5-star units I can use instead, so I’m not interested in investing a lot of resources into those two, so I’ll probably stick to Gala Euden. Sadly ranged units don’t seem to be very in favour for HZD, but I have S-Cleo in back-up.

I’m way too early to be thinking about the whole expert HDT thing just yet, but thankfully I have Noelle and a 2UB Freyja who I can use to get my foot in the door with expert HMC when the time comes.

I have mixed feelings overall about the entire concept and implementation of expert/master HDTs [and the time attack rankings are their own whole mess], but I can’t really say much about them since I’m so inexperienced with this whole part of the game in general. I do get the feeling that they gave us too much too fast, though.

Mostly I just hope that they don’t start balancing new endgame content around the assumption that everyone has HDT weapons, since that’s just not going to be the case for the most part, and it’d just be boring if new content becomes effectively locked to anyone outside of the top 1% or whatever of players. In the short term, I’m worried about how the new wave of humanoid endgame bosses they’ve teased at will go. They’re said to be ‘harder than high dragons’, but it’d really suck if they’re basically gated behind expert HDTs. Getting a whole new wave of permanent endgame content that I can’t even begin to access for who knows how long would just be kinda . . . demoralizing. I really hope that, even if they’re presumably harder than standard HDTs at least, they instead exist parallel to those fights, and you can basically get into one or the other first, instead of one being gated behind the other. That way it wouldn’t take as much grinding for people to be able to even start challenging the new bosses.

I also have a feeling that, like how you can grind the HDT fights to get the high dragons from the trade store, you might be able to grind the new endgame bosses in order to obtain them as playable adventurers. Which on paper I like the sound of since they at least seem to have really neat designs, but I can’t help but worry that it’d be like the HDT weapons where they basically create their own meta in the community, while suffering from a sort of ‘key in a locked box’ scenario where you’re expected to have those units/weapons/etc in order to even start doing the content you need to grind to obtain them. Which definitely seems to be a problem with HDT weapons, with how there seems to be barely any wiggle room for entering the expert HDT grind cycle if you don’t have a HDT weapon.

I’m at least assuming that the new bosses will be basically the same as HDTs in terms of being co-op content with four players using one unit each against a single boss. In which case it’d be pretty easy for similar issues with the meta and whatnot to arise with it. I kinda hope they shake it up a bit, though. It’d be pretty nice if it was actually solo content that plays out more like facility event bosses. We really need more solo endgame content in general. But I think it’ll probably still be co-op focused.

And then there’s the new version update coming out in a week or so. Which mostly just seems to be quality of life improvements and stuff, but I’m really happy about the improvements to the regular log-in bonuses. Getting five times more wyrmite from it is pretty neat. Which reminds me of how they’ve recently started implementing tenfold vouchers as rewards for clearing raid/facility bosses for the first time. So overall we’ve been getting a lot more regular access to summoning resources, which is nice.

I’m also happy that we’re getting the ability to put facilities into storage while keeping their effects. I recently maxed out my elemental altars and slime facilities, so it’d be nice to put them all in storage to free up space in my halidom.

We’ll see what happens at the start of November when the Halloween event ends and we get our next This Month In Dragalia Lost post, but I hope we get a Celliera event rerun next, both so we can get a good new water banner, and so I can finally get OG Celliera since she’s one of the few event units I don’t have yet.

#murasaki rambles #dragalia lost #Halloween Lowen is my SON BOY and I LOVE HIM ;_;

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eiasuh014 · 3 years

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Safer way to play 비트게임 RE-DO #367

Jacob Riis, in his famous book about the underbelly of New York, How the Other Half Lives (1890), wrote of entering a Chinatown fan-tan parlor: "At the first foot-fall of leather soles on the steps the hum of talk ceases, and the group of celestials, crouching over their game of fan tan, stop playing and watch the comer with ugly looks. a graduate degree. (See Figure 3.5.) About 28% had some college credits or an associate's degree. Nearly half (44%) had not attended college. This compares roughly with education levels on a national basis. Therefore, to provide enticing jackpots, many players must lose all of their Tuesday night bankroll. If a player accidentally acts so as to make further play impractical, and the players are playing for money, then everyone else can claim the most that they might have won had play continued; and the player causing the accident has to pay for all the claims. For example: A and B are partners against C and D. The pair which win the hand will each win $1, and the other two will each lose $1. A accidentally drops her hand face up on the table so that everyone can see all her cards. C and D claim that they could have won the hand, and receive $1 each. B claims that she and A could have won the hand, and B receives $1. A has to pay $3.

His boots shows his indefatigable activity and his face reveals his deep thoughts. https://www.washingtonpost.com/newssearch/?query=사설놀이터추천 This made reproduction of cards easier and the production process much cheaper (Tilley, 1973). As a result, of course, this meant that the French style of playing cards became more affordable and accessible for peasants. When presented, hop bets are located at the center of the craps layout with the other proposition bets. It concludes the house edge, as measured by the ratio of the expected loss to the mandated two initial wagers, is 4.90%. It goes on to say the average loss to the total amount wagered, what I call the Element of Risk, is 2.38%.

Casinos are one of the most interesting ways of learning more about the gambling industry and people involved. This is simply the ratio of the unfavourable possibilities to the favourable ones. Gambling was illegal for most of the nation's history. After paying or taking each wager, the dealer must spread the player’s cards, count them, and place them in the discard rack before the dealer moves on to the next player. The cards of players who have a hand qualifying for a progressive jackpot payment will be left on the table face up.

There’s also strategy and how you play the games themselves. If the dealer's hand qualifies for a payout that is a percentage of the jackpot amount on the progressive meter and if more than one player wagered on the dealer's hand, the jackpot will be divided equally among the number of players who wagered on the dealer's hand. In World of Warcraft, there are cards that randomly drop from humanoid enemies.In the home game, all of the players have the opportunity to be the dealer (a "changing bank").

Nonetheless, as shown by the recent closing of three Atlantic City (New Jersey) properties, consumer demand is not infinite, and cannibalization occurs if too many casinos target a given population base. There are 4 possible outcomes where all three dice will match The legend that oxygen is pumped into casinos to keep customers alert is not true—it would be an extreme fire hazard.The fundamental bet in craps is the pass line bet, which is a bet for the shooter to win. This bet must be at least the table minimum and at most the table maximum.

There are many variations of street craps. The simplest way is to either agree on or roll a number as the point, then roll the point again before you roll a seven. Rick (played by Humphrey Bogart) uncharacteristically takes pity on a young Bulgarian refugee couple. A ball that enters a catcher will trigger a payout, in which a number of balls are dropped into a tray at the front of the machine. 온라인사설바둑이게임주소 They usually offer one-hour sessions, on the odd hours, e.g. 9am, 11am, 1pm daily, typically from 9am through 11pm, with relatively modest stakes except for coverall jackpots.

There are claims that one of Lowe's friends was so excited to have won that she yelled out "Bingo" instead of "Beano," or that the word echoes the sound of a bell. The push on 12 or 2 is mathematically necessary to maintain the house edge over the player. In addition to being able to offer higher kakuhen percentages, koatari made it possible for manufacturers to design battle-type machines.Today video poker enjoys a prominent place on the gaming floors of many casinos. The game is especially popular with Las Vegas locals, who tend to patronize locals casinos off the Las Vegas Strip. These local casinos often offer lower denomination machines or better odds.

Usually the signs are color-coded to correspond to the color of casino chips -- a white sign usually denotes a table with a $1 minimum bet, a red sign denotes a $5 minimum, a green sign denotes a $25 minimum, and a black sign denotes a $100 minimum, just as at most casinos $1 chips are white, $5 chips are red, $25 chips are green, and $100 chips are black. The Crystal fountain roundabout between the Town Hall and St Rémy de Baccarat This applies only to generous casinos as there are other casinos with higher wagering. For every extra wager requirement on your bonus, the harder it is to fulfill.Early surrender is a rule that’s mostly seen in online gambling, where the player is given the option to forfeit their hand when the dealer is aiming blackjack. A surrender is the equivalent of a poker fold.

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arachnexdragoon · 7 years

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☁ five times my muse has thought about yours, and the one time they do something about it.

send me a symbol for…

“It’s not working, Lady A!”

Damn – what was it again? The last timeAranea and Dave found a necromancer, he had known right away the weakness. Itwasn’t lightning energy, that much she was sure – but which one worked? Gosh,she missed the head hunter in times like these. He was a friggin’ daemon encyclopedia.

“Try fire energy!” she yelled back, andWedge nodded before using it… Only for it to have next to zero effect. Sighing,the dragoon realize they were going to need to go old school on that bastard,because she had no ice energy and by exclusion it was the solely thing thatcould wo-

“Captain, look ou-“

A shove to the side and Aranea fell to theground, rolling over and avoiding the petrification beam. Wedge, however, wasn’tso fortunate – and he turned into stone, his face the picture of urgency andworry for his commanding officer. Aranea groaned, cursed her luck and got toher feet – she would fight this ugly bastard herself then.

II.

It was a desolating scenario – hungry andhopeless people, some of them so weak and frail that getting them to trust thathelp had finally arrived was nothing short of a miracle. She was comfortablyprotected by the snow in her warm clothes, face hiding behind a crimson scarfto ward off the biting wind – but still, work to be done. They needed to movethem into the carriers as quickly as they could because they were sitting ducksotherwise.

A small child was by herself, crying; sheseemed to have no relatives, and Aranea frightened her with the magitek lance.The ex-commodore had tried it all – smiles, soft words, dropping the weaponaltogether, even making silly faces at the small kid… But nothing. She steppedaway from Aranea every time, and apparently no one felt well enough to help.

She was at a loss at what to do. Dave,though… Dave would know how to get that girl in his arms in seconds. He’d knowthe right words, do his magic and have the child laughing and safe. Well, howone couldn’t feel safe with the head hunter protecting you from everything?

Sighing, the ex-commodore dropped the lanceand opted for dirty tactics – she jumped into the air, landed near thescreaming girl and threw her over the shoulder, marching back to the ship withthe girl and ignoring her squealing.

III.

“You guys suck so, so hard.”

Aranea and a couple of young recruits wereby the Taelpar Rest Area; the local tipster had called and she had volunteeredto go, dragging along three new and fresh boys. Two of them refugees fromTenebrae, one of them used to be a farmer near Old Lestallum. They were allshowing some promise, but they still needed to be put to the test.

So when the flan infestation happened, theytravelled south to take care of it. Battle had been swift and good, despite thefact that one of the guys got his foot stuck into the jelly-like creature andthe way he screamed had been less than dignified; but Aranea took care of itand they returned to the outpost safely, and were now playing a game of darts.

Only everyone sucked and she had nocompetition – well, either that or they were too afraid of putting up a decentchallenge for the famed ex-imperial commodore. Throwing her arms into the air,she shook her head when one of the guys protested, saying that there was areason none of them had elected to be archers.

“Well, I use a damn spear and I have someaim. Y’all just lazy,” she said with a grin, suddenly missing Dave. Well, therewas a guy who had never held back on the field or anywhere else, really… Exceptmaybe on the flirting game. That one was entirely on Aranea’s hands… And itlooked like she was winning.

IV.

“This place used to be so nice,” Araneacommented, earning twin ‘aye!’ exclamations from her men. Chuckling, theymerely stared into the eternal dark ahead – before, when starlight and the moonallowed for it, they could see all of the Alstor Slough and the lake, and itmade for a very beautiful landscape when camping at that haven.

The radio was on, just a couple of feetbehind them. The three Niff-born mercenaries turned army officers turnedunofficial hunters had been sharing some beer and talking when the radio wentsilent from the usual chatter, making Biggs frown and reach for the settings,working on them. And somehow, they found a station which wasn’t broadcastingdaemon updates – but music.

Actual music.

“Haven’t listened to that in ages…” Wedgecommented, turning his head around, “You remember this one, Lady A? Hunters andfolk used to sing it back in the day.”

“Yeah…” A song about resting when the workwas finally done… She didn’t know it had been ever recorded, let alone playedin the radio. Maybe this is why it was on right now – a hymn to unify andmotivate all people across Eos, regardless of wherever they were. But sheremembered the night Dave picked up his guitar and played that melody while shesung along to it.

“You think Dave is listening to this?”

A smile appeared on her lips before Araneaactually looked at Biggs to answer him. “I hope so, honey.”

It was getting harder and harder to keep intouch, in a sense. Dave was everywhere – his face was the one people knew andtrusted; he needed to go to places and running HQ fell to Kaleb and hisdaughter, sometimes other trusted folk. Aranea missed being out in the fieldwith him – for someone who had been a solo fighter in most of the instances,she had adapted wonderfully to his strong presence and his keen knife work.

But she couldn’t very well ask for hiscompanionship because she felt lonely – and she wasn’t even sure that was theword for what she felt. It was just… Weird. Returning to what she had beenbefore. Dave had been a partner where she had never one – she had either beenabove or below the others, giving or obeying others. Never an equal. And shefucking missed all that.

Aranea grabbed her phone – more than acompanion in the darkness, to fight off daemons, she missed him. His lowlaughter, his worried glances, the touch of his calloused hands on her skin…They had been brief and all too professional, but damn him. He respected thewoman too much to make any advances and limited himself to being the most chivalrouspartner ever, even when she made it crystal clear that he was welcomed to crossthe lines.

Well. There was a daughter, there was ahunter group, there was a fucking continent for him to organize. She understoodit all – so she dropped her phone before texting him and having him using hisphone battery for that. It wasn’t urgent anyway.

VI.

The look of surprise on Dave’s face couldprobably be attributed to the fact that he had found Aranea on his couch, bootskicked off and a book on her lap – meaning she had been there for some time –while he had just stepped outside of the bathroom in nothing but a towelwrapped around his waist. Aranea knew his surprise was justified – he probablythought himself to be alone.

But the front door was open, so…

“Well. Maybe I should have knocked?” sheinquired with a smile, but the way her gaze ran over his body was shameless andappreciative; these tattoos – she had only seen the suggestion of some of them.It was damn nice to have a full picture.

“Personal boundaries not a strong point yet?”he asked, but he had a small smile on his face and he appeared to have forgivenher trespassing. She just grinned back, watching as he toweled off his hair,and then made a motion of his hand to ask her for a minute – but as soon as heturned around to make for the room (probably to get dressed), Aranea moved fromthe couch and soundlessly approached him from behind, hugging him.

“Wait.”

“Aranea…?” his voice was different. A bitshaky and his body tensed under her grasp. Her mind was calculating the odds ofsuccess there, whether she had interpreted things correctly or not but… Oh fuckthat. Aranea had never been a strategist, she didn’t plan things ahead. Shejust had the guts to after what she wanted.

And that thing happened to be DaveAuburnbrie.

“I miss you,” she breathed into his back,feeling him shiver and his hands slowly making for hers, but if he wanted todisentangle himself from his arms or not remained to be seen, “I have beenthinking about you a lot. And I miss a lot of things.” His voice, his guitarplaying, his accent, the way he looked at her whenever she jumped into the sky,his gentleness with the refugees…

“I’m here, darlin’,” he replied, and whenhis hand settled over hers, they didn’t try to push her arms away. He gave hera gentle squeeze, and he turned around gently, using his thumb to bring herface up – and Aranea’s eyes were unclouded and clear, almost unnaturally so. Nowinks, no mischievous twinkle, no nothing.

“Why didn’t you say anything before?”

“I’m saying now,” she smiled, and her handsmoved from his hips to his neck; Dave appeared surprised at her actions, butnot displeased; if anything, he pulled her a bit closer and she felt something increasing– tension; and her own heartbeat. “You were always too busy and doingtoo many things. It wasn’t right to interrupt.”

“Aranea, one of the reasons I was too busyand doin’ too many things… Is because I was trying to get y’all off my mind,”he said with such unguarded simplicity that Aranea almost had to ask for aconfirmation – what? When? She had dropped so many hints and clues, how couldhe…?

“I’m not one of them younglins, honey. Youcould have anyone so I just thought you were…”

“Oh, shut up Dave,” she laughed and movedforwarded, finally stealing the kiss she had hungered for so much. And that meretouch triggered it all – suddenly they were walking backwards, with Araneafalling into the couch and the hunter on top of her, their hands no longerprudish.

“Gladly.”

#Dave #meldaciomartyr #five times #meme #one that's not ridiculously long!#or nsfw!#or angsty!#or with plot twists!#...guess I'm getting tired haha

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double-birds-blog · 7 years

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Mike Matheny, a Right-Wing Billionaire, and an Islamophobic Grill Salesman Have a Plan to Change the World

By Chase Woodruff

There is a crisis among America’s youth, a clear and present threat menacing our most precious hearts and minds, and the men of the BASE Foundation are determined to stop it, even if they’re not entirely clear on what it is.

“I’m concerned, quite frankly, about the culture of youth sports in America,” said Rick Sems, a local bank executive and the foundation’s new president, last week. He was speaking to a small crowd of donors at Ballpark Village, at a fundraising event emceed by Cardinals broadcaster Mike Claiborne.

If you’ve never heard of the BASE Foundation, don’t worry—you’re far from alone. It’s a small St. Louis-based nonprofit that offers a program, Baseball and Softball Education (or BASE) Training, designed to teach young ballplayers good sportsmanship; by its own account, a few dozen kids per year have completed the training since the organization was founded in 2006. But the BASE Foundation has plans to get much, much bigger, and soon.

“We’re talking about young lives,” said the next speaker, Cardinals manager Mike Matheny, who is involved with the foundation’s new project in a visible but publicly unspecified role. “We’re talking about changing the culture that we live in through sports.”

“As we create something that helps these kids, we’re changing the world that we live in.”

That “something,” it turns out, is the POWERplex, a $55 million youth sports facility in suburban St. Louis’ Chesterfield Valley, a few hundred yards from the levee that once broke to submerge the valley under 20 feet of water and a mile down the road from the property Matheny once went bankrupt on. Plans for the POWERplex include a permanent 225,000-square-foot sports dome, a smaller temporary dome to be raised every winter, and a 2,500-seat outdoor stadium—in addition to a hotel, restaurants, office and retail space, an urgent care center, a 300-seat auditorium, and other amenities. If all that doesn’t sound quite ambitious enough, don’t worry—it’s just phase one, with an as-yet-undetailed second phase scheduled to follow soon after.

The POWERplex is a joint venture of the BASE Foundation, the Buck Innovation Group, and Big Sports Properties, which is to say it’s the brainchild of broadcaster-turned-nonprofit-executive-turned-consultant Dan Buck, the man behind all three entities.

“What the BASE Foundation is going to achieve in the next three years,” said Buck at last week’s fundraiser, “is going to be truly one of the most remarkable things we’re going to ever see in American sports.”

To hear Buck tell it to the Ladue News in 2015, it was an on-air rant about the evils of Section 8 housing vouchers—“this multibillion dollar program…that just holds people down and disincentivizes work,” he says of the rental assistance that keeps millions of low-income families in their homes—that led the president of one of St. Louis’ most well-known charities to ask him to ditch his broadcasting career for nonprofit work. One way or another, Buck left his KTRS hosting gig in 2003 and went on to spend eight years as CEO of the St. Patrick Center, a Catholic organization that provides services to the city’s homeless.

Buck later joined SSM Health Care as vice president of philanthropy, before leaving in 2015 to start his own consultancy, the Buck Innovation Group, or BIG. The group’s mission, according to its website, is “to improve your business results and organizational performance through improved process, bold innovation and new idea development.” It’s unclear whether any businesses ever took BIG up on the offer; its only known project to date was The Manly Man Show, a product-showcase infomercial that ran for five episodes on Fox Sports Midwest last year.

Buck filed articles of incorporation for the BASE Foundation in Missouri in 2006, and has been pitching BASE Training to local youth teams ever since. By all appearances, it consists principally of material that teaches kids such lessons as how to “Honor the R.O.O.T.S. — Rules, Officials, Opponents, Teammates, and Self.” It’s difficult, however, to find much public record of the organization’s activities before last year; Buck only registered the domain for its website in December 2015. The IRS granted 501(c)(3) status to a separate “Base Foundation,” a Delaware nonprofit registered under the NTEE code for “Amateur Sports,” in July 2016.

Since plans for the then-unnamed POWERplex—and yes, the name is indeed an acronym for “Performance, Opportunity, Winning, Education, and Recreation”—were announced last October, the BASE Foundation has undergone some dramatic changes; its board has expanded to sixteen members, including Sems as president and local sports-development Sisyphus Dave Peacock as chairman. Buck no longer appears to be involved with the foundation in an official capacity; his name has been scrubbed from its website.

It’s unclear when Buck and Matheny’s paths first crossed, but there’s no doubt that it was a match made in heaven. Matheny, of course, had made the leap up to big-league managing after a post-retirement stint coaching Little League, during which time he’d authored a long, fastidious neighborhood listserv post that later became known as The Matheny Manifesto. Buck told the Riverfront Times last year that the book-length version of the Manifesto, published in 2015, “will be brought to life through a curriculum-based classroom program that will take place at this facility.”

If you’ve never had the pleasure of reading it, rest assured that the Manifesto is the perfect holy text for the BASE “curriculum”: headstrong, urgently written, and almost entirely devoid of substance. Mike Matheny has a message, and you may not like the message, but you need to hear the message, and the message is…players should hustle, and parents should be good parents, and Wouldn’t It Be Tight If Everyone Was Chill to Each Other.

A similar fervid, overdetermined vagueness permeates what little information about the BASE Foundation’s philosophy is offered on its website. For one short introductory paragraph it is relatively straightforward in describing the crisis it sees in youth baseball: a “great game…being disrespected on multiple levels,” from “angry parents” to kids’ “lack of respect” to “a glaring problem with ballplayers unable to control their negative emotions.” But if you’d like virtually any other details regarding the organization that wants to raise $55 million to open one of the largest indoor youth-sports facilities in the country—testimonials, perhaps, or sample materials, or evidence for its claim that sports psychologists helped develop its program—you’re out of luck.

The question that hangs over all of this is so obvious that not even Matheny can ignore it: “People ask me, why would you be involved in this? Why is there a need?”

“And the why is,” he said, gesturing beyond the donors gathered at Ballpark Village, “as you look out those windows and you see that stadium, the truth of the matter is, this is the greatest baseball city in the world. And when you have the greatest baseball city in the world, you should have some of the greatest baseball facilities in the world.”

This is an admirable sentiment; it would be terrific if young ballplayers in St. Louis had access to great facilities. It would be terrific, for example, if Ozzie Smith Field, near Vashon High School, had proper grading and drainage so that a little rain didn’t turn its infield into a swamp. It would be terrific if many of the other such fields in North St. Louis, built with funds from Cardinals Care and opened with feel-good ribbon-cutting ceremonies, didn’t soon similarly fall into disrepair due to a lack of resources.

There is a theoretical version of the BASE Foundation that, rather than waging a nebulous war on a supposed crisis of poor sportsmanship, is engaged in a battle actually worth fighting: reaching underserved kids in impoverished, predominantly black neighborhoods in North St. Louis and North County, providing resources and stability to communities that often lack them, helping reverse the decline in African-American participation in baseball in a city where the sport is a lingua franca, a civic religion.

That’s not the version the city is going to get, and as is often the case in St. Louis, the proof is in the geography. Chesterfield is about as far west as the suburban sprawl of West St. Louis County goes, less than four percent black in a metro area that’s nearly 20 percent black overall, and reachable by public transit from communities like Ferguson or Florissant only through an hours-long odyssey. Building the POWERplex within city limits, or even in a more central County location, could have sent a strong message about the degree of inclusivity and civic unity it aims to achieve; its planned address sends an equally strong message in the other direction.

Don’t assume, though, that this was simply the invisible hand of the market guiding Buck and his associates to the most efficient possible location. The most conspicuous speaker at last week’s fundraiser was Mark Harder, the St. Louis County Council Member representing District 7, which includes Chesterfield and other similarly lily-white suburbs like Ballwin and Wildwood.

“I know what you want to hear tonight,” Harder told the crowd. “All I can say at this point is that I’ve been working with [County] Executive Steve Stenger and the County staff on a multimillion dollar package to upgrade the infrastructure to this property.”

He’s referring to water and sewer service, which currently don’t extend to the area of the floodplain where the POWERplex is planned; according to journalist John Hoffmann, Buck had initially told the Chesterfield City Council it would take $4 million to cover these infrastructure costs, then revised the estimate to $13 million. Harder’s comments would seem to contradict Buck’s repeated assurances that no public funds would be directed towards the project—as well as his public confidence that POWERplex is a done deal.

Obtaining County funds isn’t the only hurdle the POWERplex has left to overcome, either. The Army Corps of Engineers must conduct testing on the floodplain before approving the construction plans. And in order for Chesterfield to move forward with a plan to purchase the land and lease it to the BASE Foundation, Buck must secure an initial round of $23 million in binding financial commitments.

While it’s light on details regarding exactly what the program, you know, does, the BASE Foundation’s website is positively overflowing with information on how you can help them reach that $23 million goal. For the price of $200,000, up to nine “Field Founders” will get one of the facility’s turfed fields named after them. “POWERplex Heroes” will receive a place on the “Heroes Wall” in exchange for a $100,000 commitment, and the “Champions Walkway” will feature both large bricks (honoring $30,000 commitments) and small ones ($5,000). A mere $1,500 gets you on the “All Star Wall of Gratitude,” while $100 is only good enough for the “MVP Video Monitor.”

It’s important to emphasize that these are not investments that the BASE Foundation is asking for, but charitable donations. Dan Buck would like very much for some very rich people to give him enormous sums of money, please—not to provide adequate facilities and equipment to young athletes in low-income areas, not to help bridge the tragic divide between kids growing up in North St. Louis and those in West County, but precisely to exacerbate it. He’d like to devote his life to reciting banalities about sportsmanship to bored 12-year-olds, and he’d like to do it at a lavish suburban sports complex with a zip line and a climbing wall—for which his for-profit LLC, Big Sports Properties, will serve as property manager.

Cardinals Care has chipped in with a $500,000 contribution, but the largest donors to date have been the Sinquefield family, who have become notorious figures in Missouri politics over the last decade by spending heavily to promote right-wing economic causes. Matheny is a close friend of Rex Sinquefield, having lent his support to another of Sinquefield’s pet causes, the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St. Louis. In honor of the family’s $6 million donation to the POWERplex, young athletes who play at the facility will be taught at the “Sinquefield Center for Human Development.”

If his views on Section 8 housing weren’t enough of a clue, Buck’s political leanings came across quite clearly in a call-in appearance on a local radio show in late 2015, as flagged by the Riverfront Times last year. In voicing his opposition to allowing Syrian refugees to enter the country, Buck called the Koran “frightening” and Islam “an entire religious doctrine that promotes jihad against the founding religion of our nation.”

And as the donors at Ballpark Village bid on big-ticket items in a charity auction—“The IRS always believes a thousand dollars,” Buck cajoled the crowd—there was little doubt what kind of room the speakers were playing to.

“In the words of our president, this is going to be huge,” said Harder—one of the County Council’s two Republican members—as he wrapped up his remarks, prompting laughter and applause. “Let’s go POWERplex!”

I don’t have kids and have never coached youth sports; my only prolonged exposure to that world came as a young player, years ago. So maybe I’m wrong to doubt that the “culture of youth sports in America” is in crisis. Maybe I’m wrong to think that kids are still kids, and parents are still parents; that people love their kids, and sports are a competitive environment, and sometimes that can lead to friction and drama and angst; that the way to deal with this is for adults to be adults, and to communicate with each other, and to try to be good parents to their kids; and that slideshows full of ham-fisted acronyms and trite platitudes about sportsmanship are neither necessary to address this nor capable of making much difference.

Maybe I’m wrong, also, to see the BASE Foundation’s worldview as not merely ancillary to but thoroughly the product of the reactionary politics of its backers. Maybe I’m wrong to think that J.D. Vance-style moralizing about “culture” and “character” isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on; that the best way to make a positive impact on young people’s lives is to provide material aid to the kids most in need of it; that if you want to “change the world,” you should do that; and that if you want to build and run a fancy sports complex in an affluent white suburb, you should just say so.

The clock is running on the POWERplex, with proof of the initial $23 million in donations due to the city of Chesterfield by June 1st. There’s the matter of the County infrastructure funding, and the Army Corps of Engineers study, and then, if all goes well, the hard work of turning big promises and glitzy architectural renderings into reality. But I don’t doubt Dan Buck can pull it off, if for no other reason than that in the world we live in, those who are in a position to ask favors of men like Rex Sinquefield and Mike Matheny and Dave Peacock rarely fail. One way or another, I think, Buck will get a chance to prove me wrong on all of this. Then again, maybe I’m wrong about that, too.

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