the library has started CHARGING for reservations now??? wtf????

and not even a token amount like £3 builds up fast if you want to read a lot???

i remember they used to have 10p reservations and that seemed ridiculous + I was so glad they ditched them 😭 wtf is THIS

@taznovembercelebration - Day 21 - College/school

BUT ALSO this is the first chapter of that blupjeans college fic i mentioned yesterday. i’ll probably post it to ao3 or something later, but yea :O!

Being in college and opening a bakery at the same time was not the smartest choice, but Lup couldn’t really stop doing one or the other. There was no way in hell she was going to waste the scholarship she had been given, but the idea of leaving her brother to open and manage a bakery by himself was ridiculous in its own rights. Still, they were only three weeks into the semester and Lup’s schedule was overbooked and crumbling apart.

And now, on top of it all, her math professor had told her to go to tutoring to make sure she was able to do the work. If he listened to one goddamn thing she said, then he’d know that she could do math perfectly fine, she just needed a little extra time to fit it in with the rest of her schedule.

Also who the fuck needed to do college-level math while getting a goddamn music degree?

Lup made her way into the campus library, already ten minutes late. She spotted a library volunteer and made her way over, putting on her best smile to hide how frazzled she was.

“Hey,” Lup said and they looked up at her. “Do you know where the uh, student-led intro to algebra study group is? We were supposed to be meeting here at three.”

“Should be in the corner over there,” the person said kindly, sitting up a little to point towards the back of the library. “Behind the whole non-fiction section.”

“Thank you so much,” Lup said, adjusting her bag and turning away. Just as the volunteer said, the study group collected back there, spread out over two tables. It only had about six people, two of whom were obviously in charge. Lup dropped herself into a chair and put her stuff down. One of the tutors looked up. Lup couldn’t help but notice how obnoxiously thick his glasses were.

“You here for the study group?” he asked and Lup nodded.

“I don’t need help,” she said before he could get another word in. “I just haven’t had time to do my assignments and my professor told me to come. I can do it by myself, thanks.”

“Oh,” the man said. “I- alright. Well, I’m here if you need anything, okay? My name’s Barry.”

“Charmed,” Lup said, not feeling charmed at all as she pulled her book out of her bag. She didn’t tell him her name. He didn’t need to know it. There was always the chance that if she did tell him her name, word would get out that she needed to come here for help. Lup knew it wasn’t high school anymore. She knew gossip didn’t travel like that and that probably no one would care if she came here, but she couldn’t shake the habit quite yet.

She tried to ignore the group as they talked. The other tutor was named Lucas and he had a nasally voice and bandaids on all his fingers. Lucas wasn’t particularly trying to hide the fact that he thought he was better than everyone here. Maybe because of that, the other students flocked towards Barry. From what Lup could tell, though, Barry wasn’t the greatest either. Don’t get her wrong, he seemed like a decent guy, tutor, whatever. But he kept asking her if she needed help. She’d always say no. Then she’d go back to work and ten minutes later, he’d be asking again.

“Hey so-” Barry started, but Lup cut in again.

“I don’t need help,” Lup said, looking up at him. That’s when she realized there was no one else besides them here. The chairs were all empty. Barry was cleaning up the table.

“I… wasn’t gonna ask,” Barry said uncomfortably. Okay, Lup felt kind of bad for that. “Everyone else went home. I was gonna go home. Just wanted to make sure you, uh, you realized.”

“Oh,” Lup said blankly. And then, “Yeah, okay. I’ll pack up, too, I guess.”

“Alright,” Barry said. The silence was terribly awkward as they both gathered their things. Even more awkward when Lup remembered that the library only had one exit and they both were heading that way. She sped up and got ahead of him, reaching the door before he said anything else.

“Uh, hey!” Barry called out and Lup cringed, pausing at the doorway. “You coming Thursday?”

“Maybe,” Lup said, which meant yes because her professor wanted her to go to at least three groups. “I’ll check my schedule and see.”

“Cool,” Barry said. “Um, see you then. Maybe, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Lup said offhandedly. “See ya, Bluejeans.”

“I- what?”

“Blue jeans,” Lup said, waving a hand at his pants. “You wear ‘em. Like… the mom-type too. Don’t expect me not to say anything about it.”

She walked away. Calling him Bluejeans was better than calling him Thick Glasses, so she didn’t feel to bad about his flustered look.

The bus ride home was okay. Well, not okay because it was a bus ride, but, still, she was used to it. Plus side was that there were fewer people than usual. She got off at the stop closest to her apartment and climbed up the stairs until reaching her door. There was a slight moment of panic where Lup couldn’t find her keys, but it was fine because they had just fallen off her keychain and into her bag.

The apartment was… still a mess. Not that she expected any different. She flicked on the lights and set her bag down near the door. She heard movement and talking from the kitchen and went to check it out.

Taako was there, hunched over some papers, talking to someone on speakerphone. His hair was a mess and he was still in pajamas, which probably meant he hadn’t left the apartment all day. There was a bowl of baby carrots near him, a half-eaten one sitting next to his papers.

“...just got home, so I gotta go,” Taako said saying. “I’ll call soon, yeah? You’re a fuckin’ miracle worker, Steven.”

“Eh, it’s all in a day’s work,” Steven’s voice said from the phone. “We’re on your side here, kiddo.”

“Not a kiddo,” Taako said, like he always did.

“Uh-huh,” Steven said, in his the same doubtful tone he always replied in. “Talk to ya soon. And get some rest, huh? Bye.”

“Bye,” Taako said, hanging up. He turned to face Lup, looking tired but happy. “How’d your study sesh go?”

“Fine, I guess,” Lup said, sitting next to him. She grabbed a few of the baby carrots from the bowl and he scowled at her. She grinned. “It was just a buncha nerds doing nerd things.”

“Bet Luce would love it,” Taako said and Lup shook her head.

“Nah, Luce is better than these nerds. Get this- one of the tutors claims that his grandfather made millions off inventing stuff. And he’s just bragging about it. He’s a fuckin’ prick, Koko.”

“Ouch,” Taako said.

“Yeah,” Lup said. “And the other dude kept asking me if I needed help every three seconds and I was like, pssh do I look like I need help? I’m only here because my professor fuckin’ made me come. Lemme work in peace.”

“Double ouch,” Taako said. “I’m sorry, Lu. I can help you if you want. Or maybe we can call up Dav and he can-”

“No,” Lup said. “I- no. You’ve got the bakery to work on, right? We need to get that set up. And Dav is probably on a business trip, who knows.”

“He’s not, actually,” Taako said, which surprised Lup. “Luce texted me earlier to tell me he came back early. There was a situation.”

“A bad situation?” Lup asked.

“Maybe,” Taako shrugged. “Luce said he hasn’t talked since he got back so I’m guessing something happened and he’s gone non-verbal for a while again.”

“Damn,” Lup said, leaning back in her chair. She took a bite of one of the baby carrots. “That sucks.”

“Yeah,” Taako said. “Brighter news, though? Steven’s helpin’ me with the business shit now.”

“For what price?” Lup asked.

“We gotta let Julia work there,” Taako said. “For experience, you know? But Maggie’s already wormed his way into our staff, so no doubt Julia was gonna end up with us anyway.”

“That’s true,” Lup said. “But hey, more hands can’t be bad, right?”

“Right,” Taako said. He shuffled through a few papers. “We’re still going with ‘For Goodness Bakes” for the name, right?”

“As long as ‘let’s bake the world a better place’ is still our tagline, for sure,” Lup said, snorting. They had come up with the name on the fly, after a night of no sleep and then never fulfilled their promise to choose something better. She shoved another baby carrot in her mouth. “What are we doing for dinner? Have you even eaten today? Besides baby carrots.”

“Baby carrots are food, Lup,” Taako said, snatching the bowl away from her. “And I have work to do.”

“Let’s get some takeout or something, then,” Lup said. “Put on a movie.”

“Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2,” Taako said. “And maybe some good takeout rather than the shitty burger place down the street. We’ve fuckin’ earned it, Lulu.”

She stole the carrots back with a scowl.

someday | seven

college!au spidey x fem!reader

← previous | series masterlist | next → (coming soon)

word count: 4427

summary: finally some good fucking food spidey content. ned is a love guru. (not my gif)

warnings: see masterlist some vintage spidey-style crime stoppin’

read it on ao3

add yourself to my taglist!

like my work? consider buying me a coffee!

━━━━━━━━

   It was far, far too cold out to be swinging through the bone-chilling air in nothing but a skin tight superhero suit and the boxers Peter had on underneath.

   If the snow that fell in faint flurries around him wasn’t bad enough, then the bite of the wind against his body as he zipped through the air was a bit overkill in his opinion. His fingers were going numb around the webbing he gripped in his fist and his thighs were doing that weird tingly thing that happens when they’ve been cold for too long. It felt like they were falling asleep but it also kind of hurt. It was far from pleasant. This was yet another instance in which he was eternally grateful for Mr. Stark putting that heater in his suit, because without it he was pretty sure he’d already have developed a bad case of hypothermia.

   Coming down from the arch of his last swing, he perched himself carefully on the top of a flagpole that came diagonally out from a building, his adhesive feet allowing him to grip the softball sized metal ball on the top of it with ease. Shaking his arms out and flexing his fingers, he eased the cramping of the muscles that often occurred after he’d been gripping a web for too long. As he sat there switching out his web cartridges, he watched as a child on the street below him caught one of the empty ones as it fell.

   He looked up at Peter with a pleased shriek of happiness, the boy’s giggle coming through his words as he shouted, “Hi, Spider-Man!”

   Peter grinned in the mask, holding up a hand and waving at the young boy below him. The boy’s mother crouched beside him, saying something in his ear and holding his hand as they both waved back.

   If anyone asked him, he would definitely have said that that was the best part of the whole ‘being a superhero’ thing; the happiness he brought people. The comfort that they could live in knowing he was keeping them safe. It was incomparable.

   Peter saluted the pair below them, before shooting a web at the building across from him and launching himself into the air once again. He could hear the boy’s laugh behind him as he swung away. He smiled to himself.

   “That was nice,” Karen said. “I’ve archived it with the rest.”

   “Awesome,” he grinned.

   A few months back, he’d decided to make use of the fact that Karen could record the things he saw, and asked her to save his favourite moments for when he was feeling upset. It definitely helped to cheer him up. Those few days when he was sick, he sat in bed with a box of pizza with his mask on (pulled up over his mouth though—he still needed to eat) and watching a few selected clips. His favourite was when a little girl had spotted him in Central Park, scurrying up to him while her mother tried to stop her, and presented Peter with a small flower she’d picked on the way over to him. He’d sat there on his bed, watching on his suit’s display as she grinned between missing teeth all over again, and he took the flower from her and thanked her. He hadn’t been expecting for her to throw herself into his arms and cling to him, her pigtails tickling his neck through the suit, but he laughed happily as he carried her back to her mother and handed her off. The woman apologized for disturbing him, but he waved it off, giving the little girl a high five before he swung off again.

   That little encounter had been all over Twitter for the next week. Sometimes he forgot just how many, uh… fans he had.

   But it was all worth it.

   He still had the flower pressed into one of his chemistry textbooks.

   It had been a pretty uneventful day so far, apart from the fact that it had started snowing again and he’d almost slipped off multiple rooftops. For someone with sticky limbs, he was really doing a bad job at using them. Well, as uneventful as it could be for Peter when he was doing his rounds.

   He’d stopped a couple robberies already, saved a man from being mugged, and even pulled a frightened cat out of where it’d gotten stuck on a fire escape. You know, normal Spidey things. But he was really hoping for something fun to come his way, something that would make being out on that incredibly cold day worth his suffering. He had no classes on that day, Y/N was busy in the library so they couldn’t meet up to study, Ned was either in a lab or busy working on his assignments, and MJ was working on her biggest painting yet that she was supposed to submit in place of her midterm exam… basically, everyone had a life. So Peter decided it would be a perfect moment to do his rounds.

   Except for the fact that the day had turned out to be incredibly boring. And cold. Very boring and cold.

   As he swung by a few buildings, the receivers on his suit were able to pick up voices coming from a secluded area behind them. As curious as ever, he pulled himself up and over the roof of the building, free falling down on the other side. He caught himself on the fire escape, careful not to alert the men below him of his presence. In the alley-like area where the back sides of three buildings faced each other, Peter peered down at the group of five men standing around a black sedan, another identical one parked a few feet away.

   If that didn’t scream ‘suspicious’, he didn’t know what would.

   The snow drifted down softly around them as they huddled near the trunk, the flakes still too small and thin to stick properly. They all wore thick, heavy jackets to protect themselves from the cold, a few even with black toques on their presumably bald heads. They were, essentially, the poster children for ‘dangerous thugs’. Karen took the liberty of running facial recognition on all of the men facing toward him.

   “They’re all convicted felons,” she informed him. A collection of file icons gathered in the top right corner of the display, names popping up next to the boxes around their faces as Karen pulled their records. “Would you like me to scan their persons?”

   “Please,” Peter muttered, still worried they might spot him.

   He watched as the outlines of handguns appeared in blue along their waistlines, almost every single one of the men there armed, bar one or two. Well. There was nothing better than the threat of getting shot.

   With his mind already made up to intercept whatever obviously illegal activity this gang of goons were up to, he latched a web onto the railing of the fire escape and gripped it with both hands and feet as he descended slowly behind them upside down. They still hadn’t noticed him (which was surprising because his suit colours tended to stand out; maybe they were just that dumb). Just as he was about to reach their level, still about six feet off the ground, one of the thugs opened the trunk of the car.

   “Vinny was supposed to be here ten minutes ago,” a gruff voice muttered in a thick, almost too stereotypical ‘New Yorker’ drawl. “If he doesn’t show up, I swear I’ll kill him. Does he know how risky it is to just be out here with all this shit? We’re like sitting ducks.”

   “I told him, Frankie. Three-thirty, I told him.”

   “Well, he’s late. And that makes us late, so you do the math, dipshit.”

   Peter almost laughed out loud.

   Inside the trunk (oh, this was just too good), were perfectly packaged bricks of white powder wrapped in plastic. Drug deals were his absolute favourite bust. There had to be at least fifty of those bricks, and whoever put them there clearly crammed as many of them into the boot of the car as they could. They looked like they were about to burst.

   Lowering himself until he was just about eye-level with the shortest one, still upside down, Peter cleared his throat.

   “You know,” he said, watching as the men whirled around in surprise. “When people say they’re dreaming of a ‘white Christmas’, I don’t think that’s exactly what they mean.”

   “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” one of them (Frankie, if his memory served him correctly) shouted. “Do something! Kill him!”

   Peter allowed himself to drop to the ground, landing in a crouch on the balls of his feet. As a particularly burly thug charged at him, he dodged the oncoming collision by moving to his right. The assailant whirled past him, and he pivoted on his feet and used one of the many gadgets embedded into his web shooters (thank you, Ned) to plaster the guy to the wall of the building behind him with a large net of webbing. Peter’s nerves began firing rapidly, the back of his neck tingling, alerting him of someone approaching from behind him. He jumped into the air, flipping over top of the second thug, before allowing him to meet the same fate as his buddy.

   “Don’t let him get in the air!” came a shout.

   He turned quickly, spotting the other three men with their pistols drawn and pointed directly at him. Peter, acting quickly, used both web shooters to latch onto two of the guns, disarming his opponents. He flung them over his head like a lasso, tossing the weapons to the other end of the alley.

   The offenders growled in frustration, and began barreling toward him.

   “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” Peter said, the sarcastic tone prevalent in his voice. “Can’t we resolve this by using our words? You know, like normal, law abiding citizens?”

   Peter felt a tickle on his neck, his ear twitching in warning. He jerked his head to the left, watching as the bullet he narrowly dodged whizzed past his face before he even heard the shot go off.

   Turning to look at the only thug who still had a gun, the eyes of his mask went wide in mock surprise.

   “Oh. Right.”

   He caught one of the men running at him and threw him up into the air, shooting a web at him and pulling it down hard. He landed on top of the other one, knocking them both down like dominoes with resulting sharp groans. There was only one left, and he still had that gun.

   Peter dodged another bullet, and disarmed the man the same way he had done the others, but this time knocking the pistol against his nose for good measure. He caught the gun in the opposite hand, clicking the magazine out in one swift movement.

   “I’ve always hated guns,” he sighed, tossing both pieces in opposite directions. “There’s so many more elegant ways to go about things. Like this.”

   With a quick push, Peter turned and hit the man in the chin with his foot as he bicycle kicked him, flipping and landing in a crouch with his fingers to the floor.

   “Now I’m just showing off,” he laughed.

   He quickly went about webbing the disoriented assailants to various surfaces, laying a couple on the ground, and the other stuck to a wall. He clapped his hands together, admiring his handiwork, and turned to the car they’d all busied themselves with earlier.

   “Now then,” he said to himself. “What’s all this about?”

   He approached cautiously, fully knowing it might have been rigged, and used the scanner in his suit to determine the substance in the packages. Although, he didn’t really need to. Everyone and their dog knew that those were bricks of pure cocaine. But better safe than sorry, he always said.

   As the display in his suit confirmed his suspicions, one of the thugs that he’d left conscious started to yell.

   “You just fuckin’ wait, you spider asshole!” he shouted. “Once the boss finds out, you’re as good as dead! He’s gonna tear you to shre—”

   “Oh, shut up,” Peter groaned, extending an arm behind him and webbing the man’s mouth shut without even turning around.

   Circling around the car slowly, he peered into the windows. In the backseat, obscured by the tinted glass, were two metal crates. He scanned its contents, eyes widening in surprise when he saw them chock full of military grade weapons. He was more than confused now.

   Peter stepped over to the felon whose mouth he’d just webbed over, still squirming on the ground in his web cocoon like a caterpillar, and crouched down before him, resting on the balls of his feet.

   “Frankie, right?” he asked, recalling the conversation he’d had with the other earlier. “I’m gonna take this off now but you gotta be good for Spidey, okay?”

   The man did nothing more than grunt.

   Tilting his palm toward Frankie’s mouth, Peter used the solvent spray he kept for emergencies on the patch of white on his face, softening the webs until he was able to peel them back.

   Immediately, the thug went to spit in his face. Or mask, he supposed.

   “Hey now, what’d I say?” Peter asked, turning slightly so the projectile missed him. “That’s not very nice.”

   “Fuck you,” Frankie said through gritted teeth.

   Peter gripped Frankie’s chin between his fingers, tilting his face side to side and observing his features. He was rough and rugged, his five o’clock shadow scratching against Peter’s fingers through the suit, and his short dark hair was cropped military style. His dark eyes, hooded by equally dark, angry eyebrows, gleamed with malice and his teeth were bared fiercely, the off white colour smeared red with blood from his busted lip. He looked almost too much like a criminal. It was kind of funny.

   Peter smirked, one eye of his mask widening as he raised an eyebrow.

   “Maybe if you weren’t a criminal,” he said, releasing Frankie’s chin and letting his head hit the ground. “But I’m afraid we’re just too incompatible.”

   Frankie cursed loudly, his eyes shutting as his head smacked the pavement loudly.

   “You were using some pretty brave words, earlier,” Peter went on, tilting his head curiously as his eyes narrowed and he rested his elbows on his knees, hands balled into fists under his chin. “Who exactly do you work for, anyway? I’d like to know what I’m in for when your boss comes after me.”

   “Heh,” Frankie laughed mirthlessly. “I thought Spider-Man would be smarter than to mess with Nefaria’s guys.”

   Peter’s eyes widened, recognizing the familiar name of one of the Maggia crime families, though more importantly, the name of a man he’d fought before on multiple occasions.

   “As if I’m scared of The Count,” Peter scoffed. “I already told him to go back to Sesame Street. Many times. But you’ve piqued my interest now; I’ve heard the Maggia’s had a little trouble lately. Your pal Hammerhead’s all worked up over it. That why you guys moving your goodies?”

   Frankie leaned to the left, spitting out blood mixed with saliva on the ground next to him. Peter grimaced.

   “What’s it to you?” he asked, voiced grating. “Ain’t you trying to take us down, too? Thought you’d be on the same side as that freak.”

   “You wound me,” Peter said sarcastically, holding a hand to his chest. “Actually no, you don’t; pretty sure I’m doing all the wounding here. But you should know, killing’s not really my… thing. Especially not like that.”

   “Doesn’t matter anyway,” Frankie smiled. “Hammerhead’s comin’ after you as soon as he’s done with that freak show who’s been fuckin’ up our business. He’s got a special place on his mantel just for your head.”

   “I really hate it when the families work together,” Peter groaned, standing from his crouching position. “More trouble for me.”

   “I’ve alerted the nearest police precinct of our whereabouts,” Karen informed him. “Officers are en route.”

   “Good news, though,” Peter told Frankie, turning and walking away from him. “Your ride’s on its way. It’ll be the one with the flashing red and blue lights.”

   As he jumped from the ground, bracing himself against the outer wall of the building, he heard Frankie call after him, shouting from below.

   “You’re gonna regret goin’ after him!” he yelled. “He’s like nothin’ you’ve ever seen before!”

   Peter turned, trying to mask the concern in his voice as he replied.

   “Oh, I don’t doubt it.”

━━━━━━━━

   In Y/N’s opinion, there was nothing better than curling onto the small window seat in her dorm in her softest sweater, watching the snowfall and coat the park her room face in its sugary flakes as she read her favourite book and sipped some tea. Her copy of The Shining had been given to her by her mother twelve years prior, and she’d read it about a hundred times since then. The cover was bent in multiple places, the binding wearing thin from all the folding, but she thought it gave the novel character.

   It was already dark outside, but the snow reflected the orange glow of the city lights like nothing else, so she still had enough reading light provided she was right next to the window. That and the lights that lit up Washington Square Park only a couple blocks away gave washed her in a warm glow to counteract the chill of the snow.

   There was just one small thing wrong with that particular situation.

   “Are you fucking kidding me?!”

   Y/N squeezed her eyes shut, closing the book and pressing it to her forehead before she took a breath. She loved Ned—really, she did—but that didn’t mean she couldn’t get annoyed at him for being very vocal about his opinions on the plot of whatever comic he was reading.

   “Ned,” she sighed. “Could you keep it down? I’m trying to read.”

   “Oh, shit, yeah sorry,” he muttered. She heard him adjust his position on her bed, probably wrap the blanket her grandmother had made for her before she went off to university that he loved so much (“It’s just so soft, Y/N,” he’d said. “Feels like I’m wrapped in a cloud. Or cuddling a sheep. I love sheep.”), and cleared his throat. “What’cha reading, anyways?”

   Turning to him, she came to terms with the fact that she probably wasn’t going to get any more reading done that evening and closed the book, setting it down next to her. She’d been right—Ned was wrapped from head to toe in the blue blanket. He held it tightly around his chin with one hand, and his open comic book in the other. She smiled fondly at him.

   “Guess.”

   “Oh, come on,” he groaned. “You know I’m bad at that.”

   “Okay, I’ll give you a hint,” she smiled. “I’ve already read it.”

   “That gives me absolutely nothing. Just tell me.”

   Y/N laughed. “I’m reading The Shining.”

   “Again?” he asked. Ned slipped the blanket off his head but still held it around his shoulders, revealing his ruined bed hair. Y/N had seen pictures of him in high school when it had been longer, but she felt the shorter style suited him more. It was still fluffy on the top, just shorter on the sides, and she liked mussing it up with her hands to mess with him. “What is this, like, the three millionth time?”

   “What? It’s my favourite for a reason.”

   “If you say so.”

   They sat in silence for a moment, Y/N taking the interruption as an opportunity to stretch her limbs out, her shoulders popping deliciously as her cramped up joints were given room to breathe. When she looked back at Ned, he was looking at her curiously, brows furrowed and with an expression that made him look like he was deep in thought.

   “Okay,” she said, raising her mug of tea to her lips. “What is it? Come on, spit it out.”

   “How do you feel about Peter asking you out?”

   Turns out she’d be the one who’d end up spitting.

   Her nasal cavity stung, eyes watering as the tea she was in the middle of taking a sip of traveled up the wrong canal and almost came out her nose. She coughed and sputtered furiously, trying to get the remnants of liquid out of places they were not supposed to be as she set her mug down on the windowsill.

   “What?”

   “You know, I almost couldn’t believe he actually got the guts to do it,” Ned went on, as if nothing had happened. He stood and stretched as well, absentmindedly picking up one of the stuffed bears Y/N kept on her bed and bending its ears between his fingers. “Peter’s like a child when it comes to girls. He still uses the word crush, can you believe that? He’s a literal baby.”

   “Ned, what are you talking about?” she asked, still trying to catch her breath. “Peter didn’t- he never… look, what gives you that idea?”

   “Ohhh,” he smirked. “Oh, I see.”

   Y/N furrowed her brows, not liking how cryptic Ned was being one bit. She watched as he opened her mini-fridge, identical to the one in every other dorm room, and took out an apple juice box.

   “Dude, I love you, but you’re fucking oblivious,” he laughed. “For an English major who’s supposed to be observant or whatever, anyway.”

   “Okay, I’m lost.” She laughed, but it sounded more like a noise of confusion, as she shook her head. “You still haven’t told me what you’re talking about.”

   “Thanksgiving.”

   “Okay… what about it?”

   Ned stuck the small straw into the juice box and took a sip, not break eye contact with Y/N as he wiggled his eyebrows at her.

   At this, her eyes widened.

   Oh. Oh, shit.

   “Ned, that wasn’t- listen he- he didn’t-”

   “Oh, but he did,” he said, taking a seat on the end of her bed and poking her softly with his sock clad foot. “When he told me he asked you to come, I was shocked. Don’t look at me like that, that’s not what I mean. I mean I was shocked that he’s the one that asked you. Believe me, I was planning on it, but Pete beat me to the punch.”

   “So why is that a big deal?”

   “I’ve known the kid since we were ten, and in all my years of putting up with his shit, I’ve never once seen him open up to someone or accept them as a friend as quickly as he did with you.” He furrowed his brows then, tilting his head. “Actually, nevermind that’s a lie. There was one other person, but… that’s not the point. My point is he totally likes you.”

   “Yeah,” Y/N said. “Likes me as a tutor. I’m helping him not get kicked out of school, of course he’d like me for that.”

   “Not only are you oblivious, but you’re dense, too. I thought you were smart.”

   “Thank you, I try.”

   Ned shook his head, getting up from her bed and tossing the now empty juice box into the little recycling bin next to her door. “Whatever, dude. You’re both hopeless.”

   Just as he was about to sit back down onto her bed and pick up where he left off in his comic, his phone chimed loudly in his back pocket. As he reached for it and read the notification, Y/N watch the progression of his facial expression as it went from happy, then confused, and finally rested on deep concern. He scrambled to put his shoes back on, hopping around on one foot and reaching for his backpack at the same time.

   “Uh,” Y/N asked. “What’s up?”

   “It’s Peter,” Ned replied, throwing his hoodie over a shoulder. “I gotta go.”

   Y/N almost physically felt the blood drain from her face as her skin took on a ghostly pallor at the news. What if he was in trouble? He could have gotten hurt again doing God knows what. Maybe Ned did know about what Peter liked to do after hours.

   “I-is he okay?”

   Ned must have heard the concern in her voice before he met her eyes, because he gave her a soft smile and a sigh.

   “Yeah, yeah I’m sure he’s fine,” he reassured her. “But he needs me, like, right now. I’m sorry to bail like this.”

   “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “Just… text me, yeah? Let me know if anything’s wrong?”

   If she hadn’t been paying close attention to Ned as he stuck half his body out of her door, she would have missed the knowing smile that crossed his expression before he replied.

   “Of course. See ya later, Y/N.”

   And with that he was gone.

   Y/N turned to her tea, now going cold as it sat in the chill of the wind that seeped in through the window. She brought the mug to her lips, looking through the glass and watching the people on the street below her, but quickly set it back down as she found herself unable to stomach anything. She was lucky to have gotten a room with a view of the streets and the park rather than the alley that lay behind the building. But even the sugar frosted trees and the lights that made them sparkle like diamonds were not enough to brighten her mood.

   She felt her gut fall heavy with the familiar feeling of dread.

   It was a feeling that she was getting more and more accustomed to as the days went on. That night about three days prior, when she’d been waiting for Peter to return before he’d taken her to see the aforementioned lights, she’d spent the evening worrying about him. She didn’t think it was weird, something like being worried about a friend, but then again, she didn’t even know if he considered her a friend.

   Sure, they had a mutual friend. But that was about it.

   It wasn’t weird to worry about his safety when she barely knew him… right?

   Tucking her earbuds in, she turned back to the book she’d previously abandoned to try to take her mind off of things.

   And it definitely was not because she didn’t want even the slightest chance of missing Ned’s text when or if he decided to update her.

   Of course not. And she’d continue to tell herself that for the rest of the night.

━━━━━━━━

A/N: peter is a bisexual disaster (as am i, but anywho)... the plot thickens. also i love the comic villains a lot so expect a few surprise appearances from some nasty guys and gals wink wink

and please support my love for longer fluffy haired pete cuz you’re gonna get a lot of it. picture peter with longer, fluffier hair bc i definitely feel like he’d forget to cut it while in college bc may’s not there to remind him. i’m talking like edge of winter fluff, but it sticks up all over the place okay let me live i love messy curly hair.

read it on ao3

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you may be full up on prompts... but if not, i've been thinking about akira getting back to his hometown and just... not adjusting. he's a completely different person from who he used to be before the trauma of the arrest, before being uprooted, before the phantom thieves. his old friends abandoned him over a year ago. his parents can't even begin to understand. he's probably got more than a bit of PTSD. idk, i just want angsty "akira can't handle normalcy any more", lol

(a quick note–akira is a Scorpio and his birthday is the 21st of November and you’ll never take this headcanon away from me)

Everyone who knew Kurusu Akira before his parents transferred him out of town for the year agrees that he’s changed.

He was a charismatic child, a dreamer and a dancer, an ace on their tiny gymnastics team, a drama enthusiast in the school plays. No one would have thought he’d be the sort of person to assault someone; no one would have recognized him when he returned if he hadn’t had the same name.

He doesn’t look any different, except for the way he does; the Kurusu that left, all his teachers agree, moved light on his feet, faster than he should, a recipient of banged elbows and skinned knees from the time he could walk. The Kurusu that comes back…slinks. He places every foot with deliberation, with almost unnatural grace, his eyes cataloguing everything that moves behind a mask as still as stone. “A resting bitch face,” Nakayama-san might be heard to mutter, “that Kashiwagi should learn to emulate.”

He might look the same, but his demeanor has changed completely. There’s no sign of the cheerful boy that left them before the end of their first year; the one that comes back for the start of the third might as well just be wearing his face. He’s silent verging on sullen; his attention is perpetually fixed on the window instead of the chalkboard. He has a cat. The cat sits in his school bag and watches everything with unnaturally attentive eyes, and no one can figure out how to bring it up to him so that he leaves it at home instead.

The students are unnerved. The faculty are unnerved. The only one who isn’t unnerved is Kurusu himself, who parts the students in the halls like a knife wherever he goes, leaving whispers in his wake.

Rumor has it, and time proves it, that he spends every lunch on the roof, tucked over in the furthest corner rain or snow or shine. He’s always on his phone— no one ever is brave enough to eavesdrop, but a pair of eagle-eyed second years peek around the corner with a pair of binoculars and report back that, whoever he’s talking to and whatever it’s about, he’s smiling. It’s downright creepy to watch his face transform from that expressionless mask to something mobile and animated; sometimes his teachers catch flashes of it on his face when he looks down at his phone during lessons.

There’s another thing; no matter how little attention he pays during class, if you ask Kurusu a question he’ll always know the answer. That’s the only thing he’ll say, and he’ll only participate if you forcefully call him out. His grades are top-notch— top of the class, in fact, to the dismay and rabid jealousy of the former valedictorian, who now is known to spend hours after school in the library cramming.

Kurusu never spends time in the library. Kurusu spends as little time at school as humanly possible, and once the bell rings he’s out of there, come hell or high water.

As the spring turns towards summer Kurusu gets jumpy; his resting bitch face never changes, but his foot taps sometimes during class, and occasionally someone will catch him whittling his pencils down into something sharp and deadly, or fiddling under his desk with paperclips and string. He looks out the door more often, is out of class first and soonest; once he just leaves class in the middle of a lecture, and Kashiwagi is too stunned to call him back.

The weirdest thing about the new Kurusu, though, is the out-of-towners.

No one knows how many of them there are; they come in a big old beat-up van at any given holiday. For Golden Week there were only three; during the summer there are six.

The first time anyone sees them is the first time they see Kurusu emote since his return— there’s a slim brunette and a bombshell blonde waiting by the school gates, and those lucky few who were there say that Kurusu actually dropped his school bag in shock, right before he was tackled clean off his feet by another blond and sent tumbling across the grass.

Kurusu’s laugh is unexpectedly lovely, for someone who never uses it. Kurusu’s smile is the same. Kurusu with dirt on his palms and grass in his hair,  looking happy like it’s going out of style? That Kurusu is a heartbreaker, and sets several girls from every year scheming. They’re all in for disappointment; any letter that goes into Kurusu’s shoe locker never sees the light of day. He doesn’t even touch them.

During the summer no one sees Kurusu for a month or more; he disappears right out of the school yard, though one third-year says that she saw him getting into the van with several other people their age, and then popping out of a hole in the roof and yelling, arms up, as they peeled out of town. It’s an audacious claim, but she has blurry picture evidence. He shows up again at the very end of the summer, and this time the out-of-towners are all with him— several ladies, lovely in yukata of every pattern and color, a tall thin boy also in a yukata, and the blond that tackled Kurusu across the grass that one time.

Those who see him say Kurusu looks more alive than he has since he came back, suffused with vitality— they say he wins every carnival game he tries his hand at, offloading plushes onto each of the girls with him in turn, that he poses in front of the shrine for the boy in the yukata to sketch him, that he roams through the stalls and up the hill to the observatory hand-in-hand with the blond boy looking utterly at peace.

Fall begins; several official-looking cars park in front of the Kurusu household, one of them containing up-and-coming politician Yoshida-san, who’s come to Inaba to tout his platform. To everyone’s surprise, Kurusu is his assistant at the schoolwide assembly Yasogami High holds for Yoshida-san, standing up on stage like it doesn’t bother him, his neutral face giving away nothing.

But Yoshida-san speaks to him warmly, and Kurusu speaks back just as warmly— they’ve met before, clearly, and when someone in the audience asks Yoshida-san just laughs and says that Kurusu helped him quite a bit during his year in Tokyo.

Helped Yoshida-san?? With what?!

The further the fall progresses, however, the weirder Kurusu gets. In gym they do a couple lessons of self-defense; the guy partnered with Kurusu can’t so much as lay a finger on him. Kurusu moves like he’s water, like he’s dancing, like he’s weightless; when his partner gets frustrated and charges at him yelling, Kurusu barks a laugh and backflips away, parkour-ing around the gym like a goddamn bouncy ball. He ends up on top of the basketball hoop somehow, his feet planted on the rim as he sits square on the backboard, and the smile on his face as he looks down on all of them is a wild, godless slash across his mouth.

The day they learn how to disarm is the day things go south; Kurusu gets the rubber knife away from his opponent with laughable ease and turns to walk away. The teacher is out of the room for a moment, talking to Kashiwagi about something or other, which is probably why the embarrassed opponent makes a move.

He rushes Kurusu from behind, and Kurusu flips the knife in his hand and stabs backward in a single, vicious strike. He impacts the guy square in the solar plexus, sending him sprawling, gasping for breath; the entire gym goes silent, aside from his breaths.

Kurusu spins the knife across his fingers and spins on his heel, taking in the onlookers; he raises his hands as if to say “any other takers?”

There are. There have been a lot of tensions since Kurusu started dominating the room, a lot of people who don’t like the change in the pecking order. Those people step forward; anyone who doesn’t want a hand flees to the edges. No one goes to get the teacher or Kashiwagi, not until Kurusu has a pile of bodies at his feet and his hand in a boy’s hair, dragging his head back, the rubber knife pressed to his throat.

He’s not even breathing hard.

He’s suspended for three days.

The group of defeated boys get their chance for some petty revenge in late november; Kurusu’d had something delivered to the office, and comes back with a box of cupcakes that he doesn’t so much as pretend like he’s going to share; no, the bastard sits there and eats them one by one in front of everyone. They look goddamn delicious, and expensive— they’ve got the logo of a famous Tokyo bakery on them, it must have cost tons to get them shipped fresh to Inaba.

They’re doing timed races in gym that day, and the gym teacher lets everyone get a chance to fire the starting gun. When he’s out of the room, someone hollers “Hey, Kurusu!”

When Kurusu looks over, seemingly on autopilot, they point it directly at him and fire.

Kurusu…bluescreens.

That’s it— he just stands there, hands clenched, eyes empty. His breath picks up; tremors rack up and down his body, seemingly without his notice. It’s really fucking creepy, and he doesn’t respond even when the one who fired tries to brush it off as a joke.

He only really responds when someone— one of the girls— comes up and pats his shoulder to ask if he’s okay.

He flinches violently away from her touch, staggers back, and barely makes it to a trashcan before he pukes.

He’s not in class for the rest of the day. He’s not in class the day after, either. The day after that, a light-haired, dark-eyed defense attorney visits the school to talk to both the principal and the boy who fired the racing gun. The boy who fired the gun is given a three-day suspension, and the rest of the gym class is treated to an impromptu lesson on PTSD, and why you don’t fire a gun at a person who you don’t want to kill.

Which, for the savvier third years, raises a question— who pointed a gun at Kurusu? Who tried to kill Kurusu?!

Kurusu comes back after a few days, but he’s pale and wan, and makes absolutely no attempt to pay attention in class. He’s on his phone constantly, to the point where he often carries it around attached to a portable charger to bolster the battery; the teachers allow it, if only because his grades are still top of the class and he does it silently. He’s probably the least-disruptive person in class at this point. No one has heard him talk since the incident.

Two days before the winter holidays, the blond is back outside the school gates. There’s no tackling this time; Kurusu’s cat jumps out of his bag, and Kurusu just walks forward into the blond’s arms, clinging back tight enough that his knuckles are white.

They don’t move; his classmates walk by rubbernecking in clumps, but it doesn’t look like either of them notice. Kurusu’s face is buried in the blond boy’s neck, and the blond rubs his hand up and down Kurusu’s back like he’s soothing him. Kurusu’s cat winds around both their ankles, talking in its weird purry chirps.

A few of the stealthier second-years decide to trail them from a distance; the blond wraps an arm around Kurusu’s shoulder and walks him right to the train station. They don’t stop by his house or anything; Kurusu gets on in his school uniform and everything and vanishes.

He doesn’t come to class for the rest of the semester.

No one sees him over the winter break.

He’s not in class on the first day after break, either, and eventually word comes down from on high that Kurusu Akira has transferred out of Yasogami High back to his prestigious Tokyo school.

There’s a weird mood through the third-years after that. No one knows if it’s because of the guy who fired the gun— not even the guy himself, who carries some vague aura of guilt for the rest of the semester. Nobody misses him— well, nobody misses him for who he was. He wasn’t a very friendly boy, after all. Who knows how he got all of those weird out-of-towners to follow him around?

No, the only thing Kurusu Akira is missed for is the breath of fresh air he brought to Inaba when he came back, the sheer mystery of his presence. After a few weeks, few even speak his name.

Link Building 101: Techniques for Successful Link Building

If you are not targeting the third party referencing strategy, it's an ideal opportunity to change that. Procuring legitimate, applicable backlinks is perhaps the most perfect approach to help your catchphrase rankings and drive natural traffic. Link building strategy is one of the common practices for ranking  SEO Wolcott - NY

If you've known about third party referencing previously yet don't think a lot about it, you're in good company. Third-party referencing has changed essentially throughout the long term, and there is an assortment of techniques organizations can use to obtain backlinks. This post will cover what you have to think about third party referencing and feature the business' most ordinarily utilized strategies. 

What is third party referencing, and for what reason does it make a difference? 

Third-party referencing is the way toward gaining backlinks from outsider sites to your own to expand your space's essence in web index result pages (SERPs). 

Web crawlers utilize complex calculations that are persistently being refreshed to give their clients the best-indexed lists. While various elements decide Google's positioning framework, backlinks have consistently been one of the most significant. In Google's eyes, joins act like a "demonstration of approval" from Site A to Site B. The more backlinks you have, the more probable Google will consider you to be a reliable wellspring of data. 

Website design enhancement is consistently developing and adjusting to calculation refreshes as an industry; however, late contextual analyses demonstrate a stable relationship between's connections and search rankings. A 2020 information study distributed by Backlinko and Ahrefs found that pages with more backlinks would, in general, position higher than pages with fewer backlinks. Additionally, the examination found that the quantity of exceptional alluding areas substantially affected rankings. This demonstrates that the assortment of locales connecting back to you is maybe more significant than the vast number of backlinks, as there is lessening an incentive for procuring different connections from a similar area. 

The SEO people group everywhere concurs that connections keep on being similarly as significant as could be expected. A report from SparkToro, studying 1,500+ experts in the SEO field, found that the "nature of connecting destinations and pages" was one of the main variables for Google's positioning framework, second just to its pertinence page's substance. 

Improving SERP rankings is the essential objective of third party referencing; however, captivating in this cycle can likewise help develop your advanced exhibition in different manners. One of the most remarkable advantages is expanded traffic. At last, improved rankings will help create more natural traffic to your site. The building joins on profoundly visited sites can likewise acquire unusual reference traffic from guests who, in any case, would not have discovered your page. Third-party referencing efforts can also be valuable for building associations with industry sites and expanding brand acknowledgment. 

Go for quality over amount. 

Previously, third party referencing was related to nasty, "dark cap" strategies that exploited provisos in internet searcher calculations. However, as Google's analysis has developed, it is has gotten better at distinguishing third party referencing plans and punishing sites that disregard its rules. Third-party referencing strategies have likewise moved throughout the long term. Rather than procuring however many connections as would be prudent, accepted procedures currently ponder making backlinks applicable pages and zeroing in on the nature of the links connected to you. 

Figuring out how to measure a site's quality is critical expertise for anybody attempting to fabricate joins. Here are a few factors our group mulls over whenever qualifying potential connecting open doors for our customers: 

Significance. The importance is essential for fruitful third party referencing. Inquire whether a connection back to your site would bode well on the website page you have found. Is it a coherent fit? If you can't clarify why a website admin should connect back to you, you will probably not procure the connection. 

Area Authority and Page Authority. Moz's Domain Authority and Page Authority rankings utilize a 1-100 logarithmic scale to foresee how well a site will rank in internet searcher result pages. This is an excellent method to get a thought of a site's overall position—remember that these scores are just a gauge and are not related to Google. These measurements can be checked with Moz's Link Explorer apparatus. 

Trust Flow and Citation Flow. Trust Flow is a measurement created by Majestic that predicts how dependable a site depends on backlinks' quality highlighting the site. Likewise, Citation Flow demonstrates how persuasive a page is found on the number of locales connect to it. These scores range from 1-100. 

Traffic. Quality sites ought to have reliable traffic across most site pages with no critical drops over the previous year. Be careful about places that have less than 100 month to month guests. 

Look and feel of the site. While a portion of this accompanies insight, follow your gut impulse while assessing a site. Do the web composition and design look obsolete? Is there an over the top measure of external connections on the page, including a not many that don't appear to be pertinent to the page's subject? This could show that the site participates in malicious strategies, and you ought to do some further examination before approaching them for a connection. 

Methods for Acquiring High-Quality Backlinks 

We've covered why backlinks are significant and how to decide the nature of a potential connecting accomplice. Presently, where do you start as far as really acquiring these connections? How would you discover sites ready to interface back to you in any case? What's more, what pages on your site have the absolute best of acquiring joins? 

A magnificent spot to begin is utilizing an apparatus like Ahrefs or Majestic to perceive what's working for you as of now. You may have acquired a few connections naturally through brand notices or substance distributed on your site. 

Also, take a gander at your opposition to see which techniques or catchphrases are working for them. It assists with auditing your actual rivals and organizations who are destined to share your objective watchwords. 

Taking a gander at your current connections and your rivals' links can give you a few thoughts regarding the systems that may function admirably for your industry. Beneath, we've included clarifications of the most mainstream third party referencing procedures, alongside a couple of tips that make certain to get your mission looking great so far. 

The unlinked brand refers to 

Regularly, distributions will specify a business inside an article without connecting out to that organization's site. This presents a snappy success for third party referencing. In cases where your image is referenced, however, there is no connection present, you can send a solicitation to the site's supervisor to inquire as to whether they can refresh the article with a connection back to your site. Discovering unlinked is one of the most well known and best external link establishment strategies, particularly for enormous brands. 

You can look for notices of your image with a short progressed search order: 

"your image name" - site:yoursite.com 

The Google search page will populate with a rundown of sites that notice that your organization name someplace inside the page's content. You can additionally limit your inquiry by restricting it to pages distributed inside a particular period or exploring the "News" segment of the hunt pages on the off chance that you are explicitly searching for news stories. 

Whenever you've discovered a page that specifies your organization, you can twofold check whether they're as of now connecting back to you by right-clicking anyplace on the page, choosing "View page source," and entering your site's URL. 

You can likewise set up Google cautions to get informed at whatever point your image name is referenced in the information. 

Neighborhood third party referencing 

Neighborhood third party referencing is the act of getting different sites in your general vicinity to connect back to your site. While this is a magnificent path for more modest associations to increase natural permeability, this third party referencing strategy can likewise be one of the most testings since neighborhood openings might be restricted. Regularly, neighborhood third party referencing includes arriving at more modest, less definitive associations situated in your organization's locale. Remember that it is worthy of following destinations with appropriately low Domain Authority scores, as long as these locales are essential and real. If you have organizations with a couple of different organizations in your general vicinity, check whether you can use any of these current connections for third party referencing openings. 

Different strategies for neighborhood third party referencing incorporate making newsworthy substance to pitch to nearby news sites and get your organization recorded in nearby indexes. Find sites explicit to your urban areas, for example, nearby libraries, government sites, or school sites—to check whether they have any website pages featuring neighborhood organizations in your industry. Explicit professional resources (for example, those found on Chamber of Commerce destinations) will require an enrollment expense to be recorded. However, you will increase critical brand introduction in return for this charge. 

Note: When presenting your site to indexes, take additional consideration to guarantee the guide is genuine—zero in on specialty registries that are explicit either to your industry or your area. Look at a portion of different organizations recorded and jump into the registry's examination to guarantee no indications of spam. 

Visitor contributing to a blog 

If you have the opportunity and assets to make composed substance for industry sites, you might need to fuse visitor writing for a blog into your third party referencing system. 

Visitor writing for a blog typically involves connecting with outsider distributions and offering to make content for them. As a trade-off for furnishing them with an excellent article for their webpage, the site will regularly allow you to interface back to your area inside the report. 

Since this strategy requires making another bit of substance for each connecting opportunity, it can take significantly additional time and exertion than a portion of the other third party referencing methods we've referenced. It stays one of the most well known third party referencing strategies, particularly for organizations attempting to manufacture

Coming Home to You

Sooo work has been pretty tiring and has been draining my time and is giving me the worst case of writer’s block.

So then I thought, Diana probably has days like that too? And well...

Yeeeah. 

Oh right, I’ve also eagerly accepted Diana and Akko using the Japanese phrases for them leaving (though in this case, coming back) home from Ticcy’s Dianakko week comic for the Domestic AU. 

Dianakko fluff, of course.

ff.net link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12697276/1/Coming-Home-to-You

Summary: Diana comes home after a long day as Luna Nova’s youngest professor. Luckily, today, just like every day, she has someone waiting for her back at home.

Word Count: ~3124 words

Walking up to the wooden door of her quaint little cottage just a ways away from Luna Nova, Diana was all too aware of the fatigue that had set in far earlier in the day.

Naturally, as one of the newer professors of the school, Diana had often been given the more physically taxing errands and tasks, usually along with other colleagues like Professor du Nord and Professor Croix.

Diana's shoulders tensed remembering the heavy load of books she had assisted the couple with bringing up to the newest wing of the Luna Nova library. Of course magic made the task infinitely easier, but the sheer number of books still caused a strain on her shoulders and back.

Then, of course, her position as professor often led her to take the responsibility of keeping the most rowdy of students in check.

Considering her year housed possibly the two biggest troublemakers in Luna Nova history, Diana had assumed the task would be simple. After all, there was no possible way any young witch could come to match what would happen when those two witches decided to wreak havoc upon the school order, and Diana had always been able to keep up with their antics.

In more ways than one, when it came to one particular troublemaker.

And in a way, she was correct. No one witch ever came to match the havoc either troublemaker caused.

The only problem was that it was never just one witch. On rare occasions, there were only two witches… Today just happened to be a rarity on the opposite end of the spectrum, where all six troublemakers decided to come out and try to pull one over on the prodigious professor.

Diana had never felt as much appreciation and regard for her professors keeping her classmates in check than she did now that these professors were her colleagues.

Of course Diana showed no weakness in public. She had dealt with all six witches as swiftly as she could, successfully apprehending them and sending them off to separate detention halls, each watched over by her most trusted co-workers.

The moment she was free from any scrutiny, however, she had slumped in her chair and collapsed onto her desk, where she fell asleep until just ten minutes ago, when she had left work to come back home.

As she fumbled to fish out her keys to then unlock her door, Diana could not help but feel as though the decision to sleep was a mistake.

Her neck felt stiff. Her back was many times more sore than it had felt before she had worked to capture the sextet of witches, to the point where making even the slightest move to fix her posture was met with screaming protests from her muscles. Sitting down for so long also made her knees feel stiff. She could swear that she heard a pop from her joints upon every step.

Despite all of this, she did love her job. Getting to teach a generation of witches was truly rewarding in itself. The shine in their eyes when she teaches them a new spell or tells them the inspiring story that encouraged them to become witches in the first place was usually enough to energize her for the rest of the day.

And it was not like this happened every day… Today just happened to be an extraordinarily trying one.

Luckily for Diana, on days like this… and on any other day in general… there was always something waiting at home to soothe her weary body.

"Tadaima," Diana said as she opened the door and walked inside.

"Diana?"

Or rather, someone was waiting for her.

Hearing the sweet voice call out for her never failed to do wonders for the tired professor. As the bright timbre reached her ears, Diana could feel the soreness and strain wash away.

It had not necessarily disappeared completely, but it was close.

When she caught sight of those bright red eyes and that long chestnut brown hair worn down behind her lover's back and over petite shoulders already covered in pink pajamas, the fatigue had been all but forgotten, overwhelmed by the growing warmth in Diana's chest.

"Diana! Okaeri!" Akko called out, rushing towards the door to greet Diana with a tight embrace.

Oh heavens, the sound of Akko's voice could always bring a smile onto Diana's face. And of course what would be a nearly bone-crushing embrace for anyone else would be nothing but the world's greatest comfort for Diana.

"Good evening Akko." Diana said, smiling as she slowly brought her arms up her lover's back and wrapped them around Akko's arms and waist. "I missed you dearly."

"I missed you too!" Akko smiled, though it was short-lived, being quickly replaced with a frustrated pout. "You're late! You said you'd be back forty minutes ago."

Diana stiffened in Akko's hold.

Forty minutes ago?

Diana slowly turned to the clock on the leftmost wall hanging above their fireplace.

Sure enough, the clock read eight forty.

"I-I apologize… I was so exhausted earlier that I… fell asleep and seemed to have lost track of time…" Diana muttered guiltily.

That nap was truly the gravest error of judgment Diana had made in years. After all, it had delayed the precious time she had with her girlfriend of six years by an agonizing forty minutes.

"Fell asleep? Lost track of time? … Was it those kids again?" Akko asked.

Diana let out an exasperated breath, a memory of her chasing one student across the entire campus flashing in her mind.

"There would be no other reason, I assure you."

Akko giggled. "Sounds like Luna Nova's really got a new group of troublemakers! Maybe I should call Amanda and teach them a thing or two."

"… I would truly appreciate it if you did not." Diana quickly said, shuddering at the thought of having to fend off those hooligans… while also having to keep up with Akko and Amanda, both witches who have greatly improved their own talents.

… Considering Akko's current profession, Diana was unsure if she would even be able to keep up with the havoc Akko could cause by herself at this point.

"Awww, I think it would be a great idea!" Akko joked. "I needa show those kids just how it's done~"

Diana knew Akko was joking.

Akko would never purposely do anything to make Diana's life any more difficult. Being both a professor at Luna Nova and taking charge of the Cavendish family, although rewarding, made for quite the strenuous lifestyle. Akko knew this and always worked hard to make sure Diana's life was as easy as it would permit.

… Despite that, Diana was not about to allow even the tiniest inkling of doubt rest in her mind. The smallest iota of risk that Akko would ever consider doing such a thing was a possibility that no one would wish to leave unaddressed.

After all, Akko could be unpredictable enough that such a risk would almost be considered a certainty.

As such, Diana changed the subject in the only way she knew would always work on the haphazard witch.

Diana released her hold around Akko, cupped the brunette's round cheeks, and swiftly pressed their lips together.  

And just.

This was just one of the probably tens of thousands kisses the both of them had shared over the years… and yet the moment their lips made even the slightest bit of contact was always intensely electrifying, jolting awake any tired nerves. Sparks flew as Diana felt heat rise up in the back of her neck and up into her face.

It was utter bliss… and the squeak she heard from the back of Akko's throat the moment their lips touched just made the moment all the sweeter.

Just as suddenly as Diana had initiated the kiss, Akko had deepened it. Diana's blue eyes closed shut, and she melted the moment she felt Akko press their lips closer together.

Akko's hug tightened as Diana pulled Akko's face closer to hers.

This was a common thing. A normal push and pull, a fight for control.

Akko never did lose that competitive spirit she felt in regards to Diana… it just manifested itself in different ways, and, luckily, it was in a way Diana had wholeheartedly encouraged.

Every kiss was like a dance, one where they both fought to lead.

Unfortunately for Diana… she was running rather low on energy, and as much as she wished to continue… the burning in her lungs forced her to separate and end the kiss to take a deep breath.

Despite her… "loss", however, it seemed the action had its originally intended effect… at least judging by Akko's flushed cheeks, the glazed over look in her red eyes, and the dreamy smile on her face.

"Wow… uh… what… what was I talking about again?" Akko airily sighed, the silliest giggle escaping her lips.

Diana chuckled as she lazily dropped her arms to her sides, though she did lean forward to rest her head on top of Akko's.  

"I am unsure," Diana lied, hoping to never veer back onto the earlier topic. "Disregarding that… as much as I love our hugs, I would really appreciate if I could change into my nightdress and rest in bed."

"Oh right, be- wait. Diana!" Akko yelled, now broken out of her trance. "You just got home! Did you even eat dinner yet?"

Diana sighed.

"I was… rather hoping I could skip dinner and go rest in bed?" Diana offered, though she knew it would be unacceptable to the witch who had made it her mission to make sure Diana was well taken care of. "Today was very long, and I believe it would be very beneficial if I were to lay down as soon as possible."

Diana hoped that referencing her fatigue would be enough for Akko to allow her to head straight to bed.

"Nope!"

Clearly, her hopes had been in vain.

"You're still eating dinner!" Akko said. "Buuut, if you would rather lay down though… I think that can be arranged."

Five minutes and a cacophony of glass and metal coming from the kitchen later, and Diana had somehow found herself lying on the couch, her head atop what could only be described as one of the five most heavenly places in the known world: Akko's lap.

The brunette rested a steady hand on the side of the blonde's head. Her thumb caressed a pale cheek, each little touch sending nervous butterflies to flutter in Diana's chest. Though, as soft and gentle as the hand on the side of her head was, Diana knew it was there to keep her in place.

Akko smiled as she brought a spoon of stew to Diana's mouth.

"Now say ahhh~" Akko cooed.

Despite all the things the brunette had made her do over the years, this was the one thing Diana had never gotten used to. Akko seemed to love feeding her. While she did not quite understand the appeal, Akko said she found it cute… and each time Diana always found herself wriggling as she tried and failed to bite back the blush that always arose as Akko presented her with an offering of food.

It wasn't as if Diana did not appreciate the gesture. She knew it was just another manifestation of Akko's desire to make her feel at ease and relaxed... a way to grant Diana the spoiling Akko felt Diana deserved. And Diana loved Akko for that.

It was just that the act, itself, was rather embarrassing. The light, cutesy, tone of voice Akko always took as she tried to coax Diana into eating the food presented to her only added on to the heat she felt bubbling into her face.

Though… if what Akko said about how much she loved seeing Diana all flustered for her was true… she couldn't help but feel like this was only encouraging such behavior and actions.

That being said, at this moment, if just a bit of embarrassment would allow her to continue resting on Akko's lap…

Diana opened her mouth and accepted the offering.

It was delicious.

The moment Diana had finished her meal, Akko finally let her go upstairs and get ready for bed. She took a quick shower and changed immediately into a light blue, cotton nightdress. With a wave of her wand, platinum blonde tresses dried up instantly, leaving her hair as fluffy and wavy as it always was.

She soon took her place seated on the bed, her back against the headboard. It wasn't long until Akko joined her.

In fact, the woman had practically run upstairs and jumped into bed, eager to keep the blonde company.

Diana smiled as she felt Akko's arms wrap around her stomach, a round cheek nuzzling against her side.

With the sound of Akko's sighs and giggles providing the perfect background noise, Diana put on a set of reading glasses and began reviewing the upcoming school schedule… which reminded her.

"Akko, how has your day been?"

"Oh! You know, the same as usual. Practicing spells for my next big show~" Akko said proudly. "After all… I think my next show is going to be the most important one yet!"

Diana chuckled as she took note of the date of the Samhain Festival. Ever since Akko and her team’s performance all those years ago, ending the barbaric sacrificial duty, the final act had been something of a wild card performance.

Much like Akko herself really… so it was only fitting that Akko would be this year's act.

"Will I get the chance to see a sneak preview? " Diana asked sweetly, praying that Akko would show her just a little bit of what was to come. After all, she was the brunette's biggest fan.

"Nope!" Akko denied. She noted the slight drop in her lover's smile and quickly began justifying herself. "Dianaaaa, you know it wouldn't be good if I just let you see my act before everyone else… besides, I want this one to be a big surprise!"

Diana sighed. It was worth a shot.

"Aww, don't give me that." Akko pouted. "I'm just trying to be faiir."

"I know Akko." Diana mumbled.

"Besiides…"

Diana snuck a glance at the performer, who had since stopped her nuzzling in favor of lazily resting against her side. She could see the faintest dust of pink on Akko's face, piquing her own curiosity.

"Besides?" Diana asked, encouraging Akko to continue.

"I… like seeing how excited you look when you see a new act for the first time," Akko shyly admitted. "Especially after how tired I feel after a show."

Akko's words lit a soft ember in Diana's chest, and she gently placed a kiss atop chestnut hair.

"Very well." Diana mumbled against Akko's scalp. "I expect to be dazzled if that is to be the case."

"Oh, I'm going to do soooo much more than dazzle!" Akko declared. "When I'm done with this performance, you're not going to be able to stay in your seat! Heck, I'm going to totally sweep you out of your seat, and then you'll be so proud you'll probably even kiss me in front of the entire school." Akko grinned.

Diana laughed softly, taking a peek at the picture framed on their nightstand. A picture of her holding onto Akko, who was dressed in white witch's robes adorned with intricate patterns of blue and red.

"Just like your first show."

"Exactly!" Akko said proudly.

The two soon slipped into a comfortable silence. Diana took the moment to verify her lesson plans for the coming week and… a little less than subtly, draw a heart around the anticipated date. Akko took this chance to resume her nuzzling against Diana's side.

In between sitting on the soft cushions of the bed, her long winding day, and the warmth emanating off of Akko, it wasn't long before Diana began to nod off to sleep, though she was just barely able to catch herself before truly drifting off.

Seeing as she did not yet want to fall asleep, preferring to savor Akko's hold on her like this for just moments longer, Diana quickly tried to cover it up, pretending like it never happened, but Akko was having absolutely none of it.

"AHA! I saw that!" Akko said, swiftly pointing her face up at Diana's. "You know that that means~ It's time for you to go to bed!"

Diana shook her head and sighed in amusement.

"Very well," Diana said as she closed her journal and placed it atop the nightstand. She then slipped further down into bed until her head was rested on her pillow.

Once she had stilled, Akko quickly got to work, covering Diana in their blanket and doing the one thing she had waited all day for… ever since the moment Diana had to get up in the morning.

Cuddle.

And thus Diana found herself in what was undeniably the number one most comfortable spot in both the known and unknown world: wrapped in Akko's arms atop their bed.

And when Diana felt Akko's head snuggle into the crook of her neck, she couldn't help but return the favor, lacing an arm around Akko's shoulder and nuzzling against Akko's head.

As Diana began to drift off to sleep, she began thinking about how absolutely, astoundingly fortunate she was to have this woman be the first thing she saw when waking up and the last thing she saw before falling asleep.

Knowing that, no matter what, Akko would be how she ended off her day was, without any doubt, the greatest motivator to get through any struggle Diana had ever had. It was something that she would be eternally grateful for. The thoughts and knowledge that Akko would be here with her filled her heart with such a fuzzy warmth that Diana knew she would have to let some of these feelings out.

"Akko?" Diana whispered.

"Yeah Diana?"

"I love you."

Akko giggled and tightened her embrace.

"Ehehe, I love you too~ But what brought that on?"

"Nothing at all. I just… thought I would let you know." Diana mumbled slowly, her speech beginning to slur. "I… also j-just wanted… to s-say it aloud… "

Akko rolled her eyes and tightened her hold on the sleepy professor, knowing that would the final piece to the puzzle that was getting Diana to let go and relax completely.

"Good night Diana~" Akko sang before placing a quick kiss onto Diana's fair face.

"Good night A…kko"

And at last Diana fell asleep… but not before anticipating, once again, the coming morning, when she would wake up to see Akko sleeping right beside her.

I hope you enjoyed reading~

I'm in the mood for some royalty!au these days ^^ how about bodyguard/knight/butler!iwachan with princess!reader? a bit of angst and fluff would be awesome! i already know I'm gonna love it because I always love your writing, so could you maybe also do this scenario with reversed roles in the future?

i finished this like 11 days ago but i had to save it so i could ensure there was a post going up for iwa-chan’s birthday today :^) so remember when i said i had five ideas for the first half of this request? this…. wasn’t any of those ideas lmao. i came up with this one and another idea which i think i’m going to use for the prince!iwaizumi scenario. i think this one is  going to be a multi-part. there won’t be a need to request the next parts because i’ll consider them as part of the original request

if you like what i do and want to show your support, consider supporting me on ko-fi!

- admin rachel lauren

“I’m not telling you as the king nor as _____’s older brother with some weird sister complex. I’m telling you as your best friend, and I’m telling this to you for your sake: you need to stop what’s going on between you and my sister.”

Oikawa lowered his shoulders. It wasn’t an easy feat to look at the man sitting before him and not take pity. Iwaizumi hands were gripping the arms of his chair, tightly, his head lowered enough so his eyes couldn’t meet Oikawa’s. “I know what I’m asking you to do is easier said than done, but _____ has known for a long time she can’t choose you as her suitor no matter how much she wants to. There’s laws even I can’t overturn, Iwa-chan.”

If the air in the room hadn’t been so thick with tension, Iwaizumi would have scoffed at the way Oikawa childishly muttered that last part. He remembered distinctly how much Oikawa enjoyed dressing up in commoner’s clothing, heading into a nearby town, and trying to woo some of the local girls when they were reached their teen years. Iwaizumi was always charged to go along with him, so he was an unfortunate witness to the eventual-king’s antics. Instead, he lowered his head a little more as his sole response.

It was late in the evening, but Iwaizumi was used to standing watch at all hours of the night at this point. Years of training for knighthood prepared him for that. 

It hadn’t quite prepared him for a situation like this one.

Oikawa had tried: Iwaizumi knew that much. His friend was silly, but even so, the king firmly believed that merit was inherently worth more than birth or class. The young king doted on you—his only sibling—and would do anything to ensure your happiness. And even though he rarely tolerated Oikawa’s teasing, the knight was still his best friend, his confidante, and the source of the princess’s joy. But there were some laws that a king’s order couldn’t change without a vote. Making sure the princess could marry a knight was not reason enough for a group of council members who were very much fond of their classist system.

“I…I understand, Your Majesty,” Iwaizumi murmured. Oikawa would normally boast in the most obnoxious fashion whenever Iwaizumi referred to him so formally. He only used your titles in public, opting for your names (or insults, in the king’s case) while in private.

Now, the king couldn’t find it in himself to poke fun at Iwaizumi, not when he seemed so defeated and certainly not when he knew that you would have to have your heart broken soon.

“That’s all,” Oikawa said after a long silence. His gaze was cast to the corner of his desk, unable to look his friend in the eye. “You’re dismissed.”

With a deep breath, Iwaizumi rose from his seat and made his way towards the study’s door. As he gripped the door handle, Oikawa called out his name. Iwaizumi turned just enough to look in his direction.

“If _____ wasn’t bound by some archaic laws about only marrying another noble or royal, I would give you my blessing without hesitation. There’s no one aside from you who’s better-suited to be her husband.”

Without another word, Iwaizumi turned back again and exited the study. Words like that couldn’t console him, despite the deep sincerity in his friend’s voice. But at that point, Iwaizumi didn’t need to hear it. Once he shut the door behind him, he let out a single, bitter laugh. He hated lying, and it was treason to lie in the face of the king.

You had already made your beloved knight your husband that very evening.

He assumed his being summoned at such a late hour meant that Oikawa had found out—that the unknowing civil servant or the band of wanderers you ran into that had become your witnesses (and helped you celebrate briefly after) snitched. As perceptive as the king was, he failed to realize that his plea had come too late.

It hadn’t been composed on a whim: while it was a supposed to be a small ceremony from the beginning, you painstakingly planned it for months. As princess, you were already privy to important knowledge meant only for the monarch’s eyes. You had to be prepared to take the throne at a moment’s notice in case of emergency. Perhaps you were abusing that knowledge to make it easier to be wed in secrecy. However, knowing where kingdom spies wouldn’t be on a certain night was more innocent when knowing that information would be used to carry out a wedding as opposed to other things.

If anyone knew how severe the consequences would be if you two were to be found out aside from Iwaizumi, it was you. But you were confident and set firm in your ways, and loved him too much to be convinced otherwise. You’d rather die a childless, old maid than marry anyone else, although anyone would believe that half the reason for that was pure spite. If neither your brother nor you produced an heir, then there would be scramble to find someone to fill in the line of succession. The fact that you were willing to sabotage the future kingdom like that was selfish, reckless. However, Iwaizumi couldn’t find it in himself to urge you to act more responsibly. He understood your frustration all too well.

But he also understood how much he was risking if this all went awry: his knighthood, his life if a jury saw this as enough treason to warrant it, Oikawa’s trust in him, and more importantly, you. You constantly had to assure him that you’d find a way to protect the both of you, that you could find a loophole somewhere in the laws that would prevent either of you from facing punishment: you had only just skimmed the surface of the palace library in search of that information.

They say people do crazy things when they’re in love and Iwaizumi now understood that they were absolutely correct.

He hadn’t realized how lost in thought he was until he was already in front of the door to your chambers. He knocked three times as per usual, waited three seconds, and gave two more knocks: a little code you made up years ago so you knew it was him at the door.

From behind the heavy wood, he heard your stifled giggle and your feet pad towards the door.

“Yes? What is it?” you called out.

“I’d like a word with you, Your Majesty. I have something important to say,” Iwaizumi replied, taking on the formal tone he had perfected over the years. It was only for show: a precaution for anyone who might walk by while this went on if they didn’t happen to catch the faint smirk on his face. Once inside, he’d be able to drop the act and speak to you as he normally did.

If you even gave him a chance to speak, that is. The door opened with a creak and you ushered him in. As soon as the door was shut and locked, you threw your arms around his neck and kissed him fervently. It was second nature the way his hands grabbed your waist and pulled you even closer to him. You already shed your dress from the ceremony, the silk slip you currently donned felt cool against his fingers. Your hands were already working at the buttons of his uniform.

“You’re too impatient, ____,” he murmured after parting from your kiss. His lips still hovered before yours. “I still have something important to say.”

“Hajime, can it wait? We have one thing left to do before it’s official,” you said. Another few buttons on his top came undone thanks to your quick work. You stood up just enough of your toes for your lips to reach his ear. “It’s the fun part, after all.”

The words in combination with how you said it sent a shiver down his spine. He captured you in a kiss this time, lips still locked while spurred on to scramble the short distance to your bed. Iwaizumi thought this could only happen in a dream. Now this had become his reality: hovering above you–the woman he loved, now his wife, and having her stare at him so needy. He wanted to soak this in and never forget it.

“Did you get lost in my eyes again?” you giggled, snapping him out of his stupor. How long had he been lingering over you like that?  “It’s just like when we had our first kiss. Do you remember that? I kept asking you questions and you kept spacing out.”

He clicked his tongue and unbuttoned the last of his top, carelessly tossing to the side. “And then you ordered me to kiss you.” He kissed you again, perhaps to be a bit ironic. His lips trailed from yours down to your jaw and to your neck.

“Not quite true. I ordered you to act on your very obvious desire to kiss me if you wanted to.”

“Semantics.”

“You knew I was teasing.”

“Well, at least something good came out of all that.”

“Hajime. One last order.”

“Mmm?”

“Take your shoes off.”

He pulled away from your neck at your words. It didn’t take much contorting for him to see that his boots were still on. Not that he doubted it, but rather, he had been distracted.

“They would have come off eventually,” he grumbled. “You didn’t give me much a chance back there, _____.”

Iwaizumi’s face was now flushed a little more for a very different reason. Your laughter wasn’t helping much. Though, it did abate the question lingering in the back of his mind: should he have brought up the conversation with your brother sooner? It was too late now. He would never forgive himself for already interrupting the evening you had planned by leaving your side for that short while in the first place. He didn’t want to see that pretty, wanton look you were giving him to go away with the mention of anything else either.

For all intents and purposes, this was a honeymoon period. It would have to wait.

Using 7 Mysql Strategies Like The Pros

MySQL gives you Let to host lots of databases and it is named by you. Using MySQL and PHPMyAdmin ( my favorite management GUI ) has enabled me to insource numerous solutions we used to cover.

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MariaDB is a general - purpose DBMS engineered with extensible Structure to support a wide group of use cases through pluggable storage engines.MySQL users may get tens of thousands of metrics in the database, and so this guide we will concentrate on a small number of important metrics that will let you obtain real-time insight into your database wellbeing and functionality.

Users have a number of options for monitoring Latency, by taking advantage of MySQL's both built-in metrics and from querying the operation schema. The default storage engine, InnoDB of MySQL, utilizes an area of memory known as the buffer pool to indexes and tables.

Since program databases -- and information warehouses -- are Constructed on SQL databases, also because MySQL is among the most well-known flavors of SQL, we compiled a listing of the highest MySQL ETL tools that will assist you to transfer data in and from MySQL database programs. KETL is XML - based and operates with MySQL to develop and deploy complex ETL conversion projects which require scheduling.

Blendo's ETL - as - a - service product makes it Simple to get data From several data sources such as S3 buckets, CSVs, and also a massive selection of third - party information sources such as Google Analytics, MailChimp, Salesforce and many others.

In we, Seravo Migrated all our databases from MySQL into MariaDB in late 2013 and through 2014 we also migrated our client's systems to utilize MariaDB. Dynamic column service ( MariaDB just ) is interesting since it allows for NoSQL form performance, and thus a single database port may offer both SQL and" not just SQL" for varied software project requirements.

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MySQL is a relational database - Standard information schema also is composed of columns, tables, views, procedures, triggers, cursors, etc. MariaDB, therefore, has exactly the database structure and indicator and, on the other hand, is a branch of MySQL. Everything -- from the information, table definitions, constructions, and APIs -- stays identical when updating from MySQL into MariaDB.

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In MySQL single question runs as only ribbon ( with exception Of MySQL Cluster ) and MySQL problems IO requests one for question implementation, so if only query execution time is the concern many hard drives and the large variety of CPUs won't help.

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Even though it's Booted up to 8 TB, MySQL can't operate effectively with a large database. Mysql continues to be my favorite database because I started programming, so it's simple to install, it is easy to obtain an application that links to the database and perform the management in a graphical manner, many articles supervisors and e-commerce stores utilize MySQL by default, and it has let me execute many projects, I enjoy that many hosting providers have MySQL tutorial service at no extra price.

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For program, Example Hosts ( even though they need to be okay with attaining MySQL via proxies ), the proxy layer, and perhaps a management host. You ought to check of the logs and settings files and confirm that they're not readable by others.

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Among those enterprise qualities, Informix relational Databases, recently launched a new variant ( v12.10. XC2 ) which supports JSON / BSON info as a native from inside the relational database frame and fully supports each the MongoDB APIs so that any program is composed to the MongoDB, protocol may just be pointed in the Informix server and it'll just work.

On top of the IBM Engineers ( Informix Is currently an IBM product ) extended the JSON kind to encourage files Up to 2 GB in size ( MongoDB limitations files to 16 MB). In MySQL and Oracle, working memory Is shared links because links Are serviced by a single procedure.

Noted Also :⇒ Use Of Quit SEO In 5 Days

Mama

Anonymous requested: Can I request Soul Eater song fanfiction on MCR's "Mama", SoMa on sonata arctica's "The Misery" or same but "Tallulah"? Pretty please? With a cherry on top?

Even though this is 3 years late, I wrote this and didn’t want you to continue waiting. *sweat drops*

I’m extremely sorry for being so late.

Mama, we all go to hell.

Mama, we all go to hell.

I’m writing this letter and wishing you well,

Mama, we all go to hell.

If there was one word that Soul could use to describe the situation, it was insane.

His meister could also be described as the same word. Insane. Perhaps she had looked like just an innocent scrawny girl their first meeting, but she proved that her strength had actually been as good as her fiery personality shown on the fateful day near that damned piano.

Although, her fiery personality was also one of her downfalls as it would lead to them in some sort of reckless situation caused by her, she was one of the greatest meisters in the academy.

When their so-called friend Death the Kid had made the announcement that they were going to the moon, everyone believed he was more than insane. (The United States already went to the moon, why the hell did they have to go back up there?) However, when Maka confirmed that they should because the kishin Asura had taken a liking to living up there, they had no choice but to go. (NASA must’ve been freaking that day he had arrived there.)

“DODGE!” he yelled as one of the kishin’s scarves bolted out from under him to hit his meister.

The ash-blonde had no problem dodging it by flying to the right but frowned down at her weapon. “I know what I’m doing!”

“You’re gonna get both of us killed!” ‘Please don’t get killed…’ The unsaid statement hung in the air.

“I’m not, I’m just testing the waters to see what he’s capable of.” ‘I promise not to let either of us die.’

A glare came onto the blade of the scythe, the white-haired boy appearing. He looked at his meister, saw the determined arch of her brow and purse of her lips, and he knew that she was sure of not killing either of them.

She shifted her feet, a smirk on her lips as she stared at the kishin. “I’ve got an idea. You’re going to have to trust me on this.”

“I’d follow you to the end of the earth, you know this,” Soul answered without hesitation.

As if expecting such an answer, she smiled down at him before looking back up and charging towards Asura.

Soul was fairly sure that his existence in this world was not unfortunate nor a mistake. It couldn’t be because he had been able to befriend someone as amazing as Maka. Although it had only been a few years since they knew each other, he felt as if he had known her all his life. He had begun to panic when all three meisters were getting even more beat up by the second. He had to do something.

“There’s always the room, Soul. Come in, it’s been a while,” the little red demon smiled creepily at him.

He frowned but couldn’t help following it. It would be a losing battle without the help of the black blood. As he stepped in the room, the pinstripe suit and red undershirt and tie materialized onto him. With a sigh, he walked over the piano. Caressing the top and lightly gliding his fingers on the keys, he smirked. ‘Hello, sweetie.’ He took a seat and poised his fingers above the black and white keys.

As soon as the music started, the three meisters let the music guide their bodies. Like every time they group resonated, they worked well together. Black Star hit him from the right, Kid from the left, and Maka from below, giving the Kishin no time to even blink.

With an angry growl, Asura stretched out his scarves and went for all of them. “You brats!”

They all dodged but had missed seeing the Kishin throwing out his weapon from his mouth and aiming it right at them. Their backs hit the wall behind them, blood coming from all of their mouths.

The girls screamed their meister’s names in worry but Soul had no time to do so, as he let the music becoming more fast paced.

Black Star was the first to peel himself from the wall and charge with a battle cry. Death the Kid soon followed after him and it took no longer for Maka to join them. They went in with the same position as before, however, Kid and Black Star moved forward to hit him with their weapons. They ended up back on the wall and Maka had no time to react as it approached her quickly.

The Kishin grinned as his hand stabbed through his meister’s abdomen.

Asura was not someone to be messed with and he had learned that the very first meeting (not really meeting as it was more of his meister grabbing onto the guy’s scarf and then falling thousands of feet from the sky). But the last meeting with Asura wasn’t something that he liked to think about as he had stayed in the infirmary for a few days and the insane face the guy made didn’t make him all that likeable (he didn’t want to know how his red eyes and white hair made him look when he was insane).

He smirked as his meister’s attire turned into one of the Black Room, letting the blood consume both of them. His meister squeezed the Kishin’s upper arm, making him his and pull his hand out of her abdomen.

With a growl, the Kishin made to grab at her again with his scarves only to have her swing the scythe around and hit him upside the head and stagger.

Maka giggled with a manic smile. Soul’s own insane smile appearing on his face. The scythe had turned from its red and black color to a white and black scheme, even going so far as becoming a piano at the blade.

The Kishin would make to advance at Maka, but she would only dodge it with a creepy smile. It would soon go downhill if they remained like that, allowing the madness to fill them like Asura let the madness fill him.

‘Get a grip on yourself, Soul! Stay sane! You’re just using the black blood to keep your meister alive!’ As if a madness switch turned off, Soul could feel his real self again.

“Maka! Are you okay?!” he called out worriedly, focused intensely on the keys in front of him.

“She’s dandy, thanks to that Black Blood of yours,” Black Star replied as he appeared next to the ash-blonde meister.

“Good,” Soul replied. ‘I didn’t know if that was really going to work.’

Maka sighed in relief, a smile on her face as she glanced at her weapon. “I knew I could trust my weapon.”

“Of course,” he replied. “What kind of weapon lets their meister die?”

“I thought you were too cool for me,” she teased.

“Doesn’t mean I want you dead, Angel,” he teased back, fingers poised above the black and white keys. “You ready?”

With a firm nod, she got into battle stance.

His fingers crashed onto the keys, resonating through both of their souls. The melody was quick and chaotic, Maka matching her steps to the irregular beat of the music. With a battle cry and the climax of the song, the blade of the scythe grew larger to create ‘Kishin Hunter’. She brought it through the stomach of the kishin, whom looked amused at her attempt.

“Useless.”

Suddenly, the kishin gasped as Black Star and Kid held onto him to keep him still and the ash-blonde in front of him stuck her hand into his wound.

“What do you plan to do once you enter me?”

Ignoring the kishin’s words, Maka took a deep breath and dived into him.

“Gross.”

“Shut up, let’s go get Crona.”

Even in a crisis, her partner was quite annoying.

They had been able to appear inside of the Kishin, who was filled with Black Blood. It was as if they were floating in actual space, nothing around them. However, it wasn’t quiet. An insane scream ripped through the void, Maka and Soul quickly clutching at their ears and closing their eyes at its tone.

When the screeching didn’t stop, Maka grabbed onto Soul’s hand.

“Focus! We just need to focus on getting Crona! We can’t let the madness get to us!”

Soul nodded at her before closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, squeezing his partner’s hand as she looked for Crona.

“Found Crona.”

With that they were floating towards Crona’s direction, Soul leaving music behind him.

The ash-blonde rose an eyebrow at him in question.

“Hansel and Gretel,” was his answer.

She continued to stare at him.

“Leaving some bread crumbs so we can find out way back home,” he grunted, “Is this another ‘mundane’ thing you don’t know about?”

“Seems so. I’ve never heard the term before.”

“I thought you were a bookworm.”

“The library didn’t have mundane books. They held stories about things like kishins, witches, werewolves, zombies, real things.”

Soul grinned at her. “That’s called story books and fairy tales in the ‘mundane’ world, Angel.”

She blushed at the pet name, pursing her lips and focusing back on their task at hand. “Crona’s here somewhere…”

“Lead the way, I’m always gonna be behind you.”

With a nod, she continued. In the distance, she could see a thin figure. Her face lit up as she went towards the figure. “Crona!” she called out.

The figure turned towards the pair. Eyes filled with madness as they greeted them with an insane smile. “Maka. Soul. What’re you guys doing here? Has the kishin eaten you up too?”

The ash-blonde meister grimaced at Crona’s tone as they neared them. “Crona, let’s get out of here.”

“I can’t. No one leaves from inside the kishin,” they said, the underlying tone of their inevitable death bringing shivers to their spine.

“Snap out of it Crona!” Soul growled, grabbing their collar. “We came in here to save you! We’re getting you out!”

Crona frowned, grabbing Soul’s wrists. “Even if we wanted to, we can’t. I can’t. I’m trapped here.” Crona turned to Maka, eyes filled with sadness. “I want to come with you, but the only way to kill the kishin is if I stay here.”

Her eyes widened and it was suddenly her hands grabbing Crona’s collar. “No! We came in here so we can save you and defeat the kishin!”

“Maka…”

“We aren’t leaving without you!”

“Maka, listen please,” their voice turned soft, as if they were back in the days where everything between them was fine. “I can kill him. But I’ll have to stay here to do that. You guys can be safe. Everyone can be safe.”

The scythe meister didn’t know what to say. It felt like everything she had done was all for nothing.

“By saving all these people, I’ll be able to live with myself. I’ll be alright, Maka.”

“I came all the way here… I can’t just leave you now, Crona…”

With a firm look, they grabbed her hands that were still at her collar and stated, “I need to save all of you. This is the only way. Please, Maka…”

She would not cry. “Okay…” she managed to choke out.

Crona smiled, letting her go and hugging her. “Thank you. For being my friends. I’m happy I met you guys.”

She wouldn’t cry. “I’m happy we met you too.”

“Stop crying please, I want you to be happy when you leave…”

She sniffled, wiping away her tears. “Thank you Crona, for everything.”

They squeezed each other’s hands before releasing each other.

“Get out safely,” Crona waved as Ragnarok came out from his back and transformed into his weapon to get ready for a battle.

“C’mon, let’s go,” Soul sighed, grabbing Maka’s hand and following the music notes back to where they had started.

The trip back was faster than the trip in, but much more bloody as they had escaped from the same wound Maka had inflicted on the kishin before.

“Where’s Crona?!” Kid yelled, shooting at one of the scarves that tried to attack him.

“He’s not coming,” Maka answered with a frown.

“Why not?!” Black Star yelled, seemingly angry. “Did we come here for no reason?!”

As if answering the blue-haired meister’s question, Asura suddenly screeched as he keeled over on all fours.

The trio stared as black blood came up and out of Asura’s mouth. His sounds of pain filled the air, curses lacing between the intervals of throw-ups. “I’m-!” he coughed out, eyes wide with anger. “I’ll kill you all!”

Suddenly, black spots formed in the space around them. The spots seemed to start growing larger and started to connect. Realization hit Maka quickly.

“He’s trying to trap us with him with his black blood!”

The kishin smirked as his body ejected more of the black blood.

As soon as Maka had announced the news, the kishin’s scarves flew out at them.

They all dodged, quickly running away from the kishin and heading to the open space that would lead them away from the moon.

“We need to go! Quickly!” Kid ordered as they tried to outrun the wall of black blood that would trap the kishin onto the moon.

The three meisters flew towards the opening that was starting to close.

‘Faster!’

Maka’s heart raced as the wall drew closer to them. Just a few inches…

“Maka!” She heard her father cry. Warm arms wrapped around her midsection and she pried them off her with a face void of emotion. When she turned around to look at him, her heart softened. “I’m so glad you’re okay, Maka!”

“Yeah, okay, papa.” She patted his head before being tackled in a hug by Marie.

“I’m so glad all of you got back safely!”

“Safely is hardly the word,” Stein commented and shrugged after his significant other gave him a glare, Maka laughed at the exchange.

Soul rolled his shoulders tiredly, sitting on the grass. He watched as the older death scythes tended to his wounded friends, grimacing when he heard a crack while stretching out his arms. Being transformed for too long always made his body too stiff, no matter how many times he’s done it.

“I told you to stop doing that.” Maka sat beside him with a frown, leaning over to rub his shoulders. She smiled when he let out a sigh of relief.

“Yeah, sorry. Forgot that you have magical hands,” he let out another sigh of relief before his cheeks turned red.

His meister was red-faced as well but hadn’t stopped massaging his shoulders.

To cover up the embarrassment he felt, Soul coughed behind his hand. “Um, so, how are you feeling though? I should be the one massaging your shoulders. You were the one out in the battle field.”

She let go of him and waved her hands. “No, it’s fine. Ms. Marie checked on me, but I guess the black blood helped.”

“It better have, you almost died up there.” Soul couldn’t help but frown at the memory of a few minutes ago.

“But I knew I wouldn’t because you’re my weapon. You always have my back, right?”

‘Yes, quite literally sometimes,’ was what Soul wanted to say. “Of course, you know I do.”

She smiled at him in a way that made his heart clench. “Good, because our job’s not done.” She stood, dusting her skirt off.

“It’s never over,” he muttered as he got up and watched as his meister frowned up at their new version of the moon.

“It’s not over. The madness is spread all over the world…”

He sighed and patted her on the head. “There’s nothing you can do, Maka. We’re all going to hell anyway.”

“SOUL!”

“What?” he looked up to the moon, lips turned down in a grimace. “After all that? You think heaven’s a thing for us?”

“You don’t have to be such a downer though!”

Soul smirked, wrapping an arm around her shoulders as they walked back to their apartment. “I’m not a downer, my grandma told me I’m just realistic.”

“Says the boy who couldn’t believe he was a weapon.”

“Hey, I didn’t even know people like me existed.”

“Oh, right. You were a mundane.”

As the two argued on the way home, a figure from a nearby building watched them. Eyes crazed and lips pulled upwards until their ear, it giggled. “Toys, toys, toys…” It bit on its fingertips as it watched the meister-weapon duo push each other. “They’ll be in my personally made hell soon… My toys…”

Mama, we’re all gonna die

Mama, we’re all gonna die

Campaign Diary- TOD083017

“We aren’t done here.” Osborne folded his arms across his chest. Inside the library, the party took a moment to collect themselves while Waldorf plundered the books of any wizardly knowledge he could find.

“I agree. We have not much more than what we came in with.” Barton stepped forward, having his own concerns of leaving with empty hands.

Skydancer nodded her head and turned to look at Dain. “Can you have the Speak with Dead ready for tomorrow?”

“Uh-huh, remember, we can only ask five questions though.” Simple Dane sat at the table drawing in the dust that collected on the surface. 

Waldorf climbed down from the librarian’s ladder joined Lotus and the others in the careful selection of their questions. Another night in the dark temple, not the most comfortable of places, and certainly not the safest but it was the only way they were getting any information it seemed. So be it.

The group stood around Dane as he began the spell, the holy light radiating from him. As he chanted, small particles of light floated in the air, slowly drifting down to the crumpled form of the Varam. Suddenly, the chanting stopped, and Dane’s furrowed brow relaxed as the connection was made. Softly, as if in a whisper, the one sided conversation became the only sound within the cavern.

“Did you find the Mask of the White Dragon before you died? ...mmm, yup.”

Skydancer leaned over to Osborne, “Well, that’s something. Since he didn’t have it on him we can only assume whoever killed him has it. If anything, at least we know it’s not the cult.”

Osborne nodded half heartedly, a small blessing, but still it would have been better if they had it in their own hands.

“Where are the cult attacking next?” Dane’s second question was an important one for the group. If they could prevent the next siege, a lot of innocent lives could be saved. “...hmmm. Everywhere.”

“Well, that’s just lovely.” Osborne spat.

“Where is the Dragon Cult holding up? ...The Well of Dragons.”

Skydancer perked up at the name. “I know of the Well of Dragons, it was a citadel that’s in the Canyonlands near the northern peaks of the Sunset Mountains. Legends say it was a graveyard of dragons where they traveled to die. Which of course attracted the attention of the original Dragon Cult and their work in creating Draco-Liches.”

“Who killed you? ...The Snake Priestess?” Dain peeked an eye open for a moment. “Did we kill a Snake Lady?”

“There were a few in the pit with that monsterous...thing.” Lotus shook his head while thinking back, “but none had the appearance of of a Priestess.”

“Where is the Snake Priestess lady?” Dain took it upon himself to make the final inquiry instead of the group’s selection. “...I don’t know.”

And with that, the holy light faded and the sparks of light dissipated from the body, and once again all was in darkness. Dain opened his eyes and again his brow furrowed in confusion.

“If we didn’t kill the Snake Lady, where did she go?”

“He’s got a point. There’s just the one entrance that we know of, and anyone left if the temple would have had to get by us to escape.” Skydancer looked down at Osborne knowingly and he nodded in agreement.

“There’s a secret door around here somewhere.” The halfling heaved a sigh. “This place is too big for me to give it the once over myself. We should split up into teams, cover more ground that way.”

Everyone seemed to be in agreement, and after a brief crash course in locating errant drafts, watching for slivers of light, and the finer art of inspecting color shifts in stone, the party split into three groups and scoured the entire winding temple for undiscovered secrets.

It was Dain and Waldorf who found the second exit behind the alter of the very chamber they all began in. At the second pass, nearly an hour in, a faint tickle of cool air brushed up against Dain’s hand. The passage beyond opened up into the hills, further back from the town where the entrance on the cliffs was located. As Waldorf stood, scanning the area he couldn’t help but sense a strange feeling in the air, almost like it was charged.

Much to the group’s dismay, not a single track could be found. Whether through their own cunning or some magical effect, the Yuan-Ti had managed a clean getaway with their prize. 

“Fear not friends, Waldorf the Wonders has just the spell for this situation, Locate Creature!”

“Excellent, Waldorf.” Skydancer mounted the alter and began making her way up the tunnel.

“Er...tomorrow, that is. I uh...don’t have it prepared at the moment I’m afraid.”

Osborne’s shoulders fell and without a word he let his backpack slide off his shoulders and began looking for somewhere to lay his bedroll for the night.

---

“Where’s Lotus and Skydancer?” Dain woke up late to find Barton thumbing through his tome from the Dragon’s Lair and Osborne poking at some sausages in the camp stove.

“They went to Scout the area ahead. They’ll be back soon.” Waldorf looked up from his scrolls just long enough to give the dwarf a reassuring smile.

The morning was quiet and lazy...well, relatively. It was a nice change of pace from the last few days. They had some solid information, and the means to follow up on it. For once, Osborne wasn’t feeling too apprehensive about what came next. The hot sausage in his certainly didn’t hurt either. It was at that point that Waldorf heard the screams for help.

“DRAGONS!! AMBUSH!!” Lotus came skidding down and out of the tunnel, panting and sweating profusely. 

“WAIT, WHAT??? WHERE’S SKYDANCER?” Osborne immediately jumped to his feet, as if by reflex, grabbing his bow and slipping the quiver over his shoulder.

“She’s still out there. She sent me to get help.”

“SHIT!”

Little more was set between anyone. Without hesitation, the party moved up through the tunnel and out into the sunlight. Once their eyes adjusted to the light, the daunting sight of 8 Wyvern riders and a Young Blue dragon filled the skies above them. The Wyverns were already making their way towards the hidden exit, the dragon however seemed to be attacking some unseen target within a bubble of magical darkness on the top of a distant hill.

The Wyverns attacked with their rider’s command, fang and poisoned tail became a blur with each swoop. Arrows flew through the air on both sides, mounted cultists firing their crossbows, and Osborne’s shots struck true from his hiding place among the tall grass. A Wyvern roard and nearly bucked it’s rider as arrows buried themselves deep into it’s neck. 

As if in a calculated response lightning orbs came soaring down from the sky and shattering upon the ground, sending bolts of static charge through the plains and knocking Waldorf unconscious just as he found his way into the fray. Dain moved forward to help but was stopped dead in his tracks by the buffeting of Wyvern wings. With a loud thud, it’s rider dropped to the ground and stared down the dwarf before him. The blue half-dragon sneered and moved in swinging.

One of the cultists smiled as he surveyed the scene, behind him he heard the bolt of lighting and tingle of static as the young dragon breathed lightning into the orb of darkness. The wizard was already down, the half dragon would make quick work of the dwarf, the half-elf was still a question mark but didn’t seem to be much of a threat...where was the hooded one?

His mass shifted as Lotus landed in the saddle behind the him and a flurry of fists struck in quick succession, unbalancing him and sending him falling to the ground below. The Wyvern bucked and Lotus helf firmly onto the saddle with one hand, taking the reigns in the other and yanking hard.

“None of that now. That’s a good girl. Alright then, let’s see what what we can do about your dragon friend.” Lifting a hand, Lotus muttered some incantations and within a moment, the Blue Dragon circling the hill began to glow...and suddenly, with a “pop” shrunk to fit inside a magical prison the size and shape of an Ostrich egg.

Skydancer dropped her darkness spell and frowned at the egg. Despite the odds against her friends, she was looking forward to slaying another dragon. Well, there was always time for that later. Tucking the egg under her arm, she slid down the side of the hill and ran toward her compatriots.

On the other side of the battle, Barton saw himself surrounded by four Wyverns and their riders, beside him the slumped form of Waldorf lay in the grass. Feeling the magical force flowing through him, he began channeling a new spell he had only recently obtained. He wasn’t entirely sure how well it would work, but he had to try it.

With his eyes burning, Barton’s voice boomed out with undertones of magical enchantment. “Oh great warriors of the Dragon Cult. Surely pitiful fools such as us are not worthy of your time. The day is won, let the Yuan-Ti put us out of our misery.

Barton watched as all four riders swayed just slightly in their saddle. While two of them shook their heads and stared him down with renewed bloodlust, the others’ eyes glazed over and laughed to themselves.

“Yeah, let the snake creatures finish them off. Come, let’s go drink to today’s victory.” And leaving their fellow cultists rather confused, the two turned their Wyverns away and flew off towards the horizon.

Quickly, before anyone had a chance to react, Barton fell down to his knees and thrust a potion past Waldorf’s lips. “Come on now old man. We still have some fighting to do.”

Lotus’s Wyvern snarled and struck out at the mounted cultist with it’s tail, just barely missing the target. Once recovered the hulking man in the saddle rose and leaped off his steed and onto Lotus, hands at his throat. Freeing a single hand, he found his knife and slashed at the monk before him.

Skydancer reached the battle just in time to see Lotus’s unconscious form fall to the ground before her. Kneeling down and fumbling for a potion she took a quick glance around her. Dain was trading blows with the Half-Dragon warrior, bellowing and heaving his warhammer in deadly arcs. Waldorf was now a hulking Tyrannosaurus Rex, desperately swinging his tail at a riderless Wyvern. And though she could not see Osborne, his arrows continued to fly through the air, striking their targets with deadly accuracy.

“Come on Lotus. You can rest when we’ve won.”

When the sun set that day, Skydancer did receive her chance to slay another dragon. With the Wyvern riders forced to retreat, she waited patiently as Lotus dropped the spell and the Dragon burst forth from the egg. And as she plunged her sword into it’s flesh all was silent.

It remained quiet for a few moments. Each member taking stock of each other. Osborne seemed to be the only one walking away unscathed for a change. Every one else had their wounds to tend to, two of them were exhausted and haggered from revival of the potion’s magic. Eventually, it was Lotus who broke the silence.

“I can’t believe we survived that...”

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Alexander Acosta, Twitter, Rip Torn: Your Wednesday Briefing

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Good morning.

We’re covering the Jeffrey Epstein case and its consequences for the Trump administration, Twitter’s new guidelines on offensive speech, and the death of the maverick presidential candidate Ross Perot.

Breaking

Britain’s ambassador to the U.S., Kim Darroch, is stepping down. A leak of his memos had elicited a furious reaction from President Trump.

Pressure builds on Trump’s labor chief

Alexander Acosta, the labor secretary, is facing growing calls to resign over a plea deal he cut as a U.S. attorney in Florida in 2008 that allowed the financier Jeffrey Epstein to bring an end to a sex crimes case and to serve only 13 months in jail. Mr. Epstein was newly indicted this week on charges of child sex trafficking.

The 2008 deal was seen by many as far too lenient, and, while Mr. Acosta cited new evidence and testimony in welcoming Mr. Epstein’s latest indictment, his critics are unlikely to be satisfied.

Voices: In a series of meticulously researched articles for The Miami Herald, Julie Brown, an investigative journalist, identified about 80 of Mr. Epstein’s alleged victims and revealed the secret negotiations behind the 2008 plea deal. She spoke to The Times on Tuesday about the latest developments in the case.

Go deeper: The Times has profiled Mr. Epstein, a money manager who once socialized with princes and celebrities while remaining an enigma.

Notable: Mr. Epstein’s influential friends included former President Bill Clinton. President Trump once called the financier a “terrific guy” but now says he is “not a fan.”

New Twitter rules for a president (and for everyone else)

A federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday that President Trump had violated the Constitution by blocking Twitter users who criticized or mocked him. Because he uses Twitter to conduct government business, the court said, he could not exclude Americans from reading or engaging with his posts because he did not like their opinions.

The ruling was one of the highest-profile decisions yet in a growing constellation of cases addressing what the First Amendment means in a time when political expression increasingly takes place online.

Related: Twitter unveiled its first official guidelines on Tuesday on what constitutes “dehumanizing” speech, starting with language it considers unacceptable when directed toward religious groups.

Ross Perot, gadfly who shook up politics, dies at 89

Mr. Perot was a Texas businessman who ran for president twice in the 1990s on a third-party platform that idealized small-town life and tarred Washington as a hotbed of corruption. He died on Tuesday.

French bosses are accused of driving employees to suicide

A decade ago, top executives at France Télécom wanted to shrink the company by thousands of workers. But most of those workers were state employees with jobs guaranteed for life.

The executives, prosecutors say, resolved to make life so unbearable that workers would leave. Instead, at least 35 — feeling trapped and betrayed — took their own lives. The former executives now face charges of “moral harassment.”

Big picture: The trial has riveted a country that is deeply conflicted about capitalism and corporate culture, and raises questions about how far companies should go in search of profit and efficiency.

If you have 8 minutes, this is worth it

A legendary newspaper stops the presses

A newsboy selling The Chicago Defender in 1942.CreditJack Delano/Farm Security Administration, via Library of Congress

For generations, The Chicago Defender was a voice for African-American communities and an essential outlet for any politician who hoped to win black voters.

The Defender — which first went to press in 1905 — will cease printing after today, though its digital operation will continue.

Here’s what else is happening

Court blocks census moves: A federal judge in New York rejected the Justice Department’s request to switch its legal team midway through a case that challenges the Trump administration’s effort to add a citizenship question to next year’s count.

Democrats bicker: Tensions between Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, and three liberal freshmen have reinvigorated an argument within the Democratic Party about how best to stand up to the president.

Obamacare under fire: A panel of federal judges heard oral arguments on Tuesday in an appeals case that challenges the Affordable Care Act’s constitutionality — and they sounded skeptical of the arguments in its defense.

Border arrests drop: Arrests at the southwestern border dropped by 28 percent in June, to 104,344. In May, they had reached the highest monthly total in 13 years. (Border crossings typically increase in the spring and slip in June and July.)

Snapshot: Above, floods inundated Washington on Monday, demonstrating the vulnerability of an aging storm-water system in the era of climate change.

Late-night comedy: Most shows are in reruns, so our column is taking the week off.

In memoriam: Rip Torn, who starred on “The Larry Sanders Show” in the 1990s, died on Tuesday in Connecticut. He was 88.

Ex-champion advances at Wimbledon: Serena Williams beat Barbora Strycova to reach the semifinals. If Ms. Williams wins the tournament, she would match Margaret Court’s record of 24 Grand Slam singles titles.

A new “fish” for sale: Impossible Foods, creator of a meatless burger, is introducing a (fish-less) fish product. The company has promised to design replacements for every animal-based food on the market by 2035.

What we’re reading: This first-person essay in Harper’s Bazaar by Serena Williams about her heated U.S. Open match last year, accompanied by unretouched photos. Alisha Haridasani Gupta, on the briefings team, says, “It’s the tennis star at her most raw, unfiltered self.”

Now, a break from the news

Cook: They’re s’mores without the campfire, but these blondies are still great.

Listen: The video to Miley Cyrus’s “Mother’s Daughter” offers assorted fetish wear, a determinedly inclusive cast of extras, and slogans. It’s an anthem to share.

Watch: The writer and director Ari Aster narrates a scene from his film “Midsommar” featuring Florence Pugh and some powerful mushroom tea.

Smarter Living: Don’t struggle for perfection. Two strategies can help you just get a job done. First, break the task into small, achievable steps. Second, focus on the process rather than the outcome so you can enjoy the progress you’re making.

And here’s how you can make small changes in your behavior, surroundings and relationships for a happier life.

And now for the Back Story on …

Modern manners

For a psychoactive substance that’s still nominally illegal in most of the world, cannabis has never been more popular — and that means it’s time to mind our manners beyond “don’t bogart that joint.”

Lizzie Post, the great-great-granddaughter of the American etiquette doyenne Emily Post, delves into the finer points with a new book called “Higher Etiquette,” which Dwight Garner, a Times book critic, calls “helpful and inquisitive.”

Among her recommendations: Thoughtful hosts should provide finger bowls so a guest can dampen a joint that’s burning unevenly, and should place vape pens “to the right of the setting or across the top of the setting either between the place card and dessertware or behind the place card.”

As for bogarting — that’s wastefully hanging on to a joint without smoking it — Ms. Post notes that the term is “derived from the way Humphrey Bogart would just let a cigarette hang out of his mouth, not seeming to actually smoke it.”

That’s it for this briefing. See you next time.

— Mike

Thank you To Mark Josephson and Eleanor Stanford for the break from the news. Adam Pasick, on the briefings team, wrote today’s Back Story. You can reach the team at [email protected].

P.S. • We’re listening to “The Daily.” Today’s episode is on the plan to elect Republican women. • Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Site of a recent Trump/Kim meeting, for short (3 letters). You can find all our puzzles here. • The travel editor for The New York Times, Amy Virshup, announced that her desk would buy carbon offsets for airplane travel by staff members on assignment, including our 52 Places Traveler.

Sahred From Source link World News

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“Frontline: The Resurrection of Rev. Moon”

Frontline starts at 40 seconds

Broadcast January 21, 1992

Eric Nadler, reporter. Written and produced by Rory O’Connor. Rory O’Connor is CEO of Globalvision New Media, producers of MediaChannel.

Report on the Unification Church – now known as The Family Federation for World Peace and Unification. The organization was founded the Reverend Sun Myung Moon. Since his death in 2012 it has been led by his widow, Hak Ja Han.

___________________________________________

Transcript

Introduction

00:50 Reverend Sun Myung Moon has been spending vast sums of money lately, investing in tourism and industry in North Korea, and trying to buy a university in Bridgeport, Connecticut for $50million. But Moon’s objectives have remained a mystery. Now Frontline has completed a revealing year-long investigation of Moon. “Excuse me” [says a man as he closes a door on a cameraman.] According to a highly placed source in the Unification Church, a top priority mission was to stop this report from airing. Tonight the story of Reverend Moon. Fifteen years ago Moon was best known as a cult leader, but today Moon presides over a financial, political and media empire. Frontline investigates the extent of his power and the ultimate sources of his funding. Paul Weyrich: “Here is what disturbs me; it is the lack of knowledge of who is behind it, where the funding is coming from, and what are their ultimate objectives.

Tonight, The Resurrection Of Reverend Moon

02:20 (Soundtrack) Rally: “USA, USA, USA!” Narrator: On February 9, 1991, in Rapid City, South Dakota, more than a thousand people rallied in support of U.S. troops fighting in the Persian Gulf. Narrator: The rally was sponsored in part by a group of local veterans. Dianne Petersen was the rally’s principal organizer. Petersen: “I’m a vet myself and I have, I had a sister over there and I really just wanted to do something in support of the troops…So I organized what I called the Little Yellow Ribbon Walk… Petersen walking in parade: “It’s great, many more than I expected.” Petersen: “And I was approached by the American Freedom Coalition, who told me they had a rally planned for the same day and wanted to merge with me.” Narrator: The American Freedom Coalition was a group few people in Rapid City had heard of – and one citizen, Marv Kammerer, was curious. Kammerer: “About the same time I noticed a billboard on the east side of Rapid City that said Support Our Troops, Join the Freedom March, and on that same sign was the American Freedom Coalition…You know when people buy billboards, it takes money, and local groups, don’t spend that kind of money … I get to thinking, ‘What is this?’ I ask my Congressmen and Senators and they don’t tell me. They don’t give me the information. So I go to the library and I find some interesting things. The American Freedom Coalition is an extension of the Unification Church Moonies for short.” Mazzio: “And to find out the Unification Church is behind it, that sort of, you know, sort of threw me. Um, I say to myself, ‘What are they trying to gain from this?’ Because everybody’s heard of the Unification Church. We’ve all heard of the Reverend Moon. What’s he got behind it?” Petersen: “I felt a little bit abused because…. I felt I was used, my influence with the veteran’s organizations was probably a little bit used.” Kammerer: “The vets did not know who they were associated with and that is their own damn fault. One has to be very careful when people start waving the flag, finding out really what is behind it and what are their motives. We have a weakness in this country to almost give away the bank, if someone waves a flag high enough and long enough. Especially if he packs a Bible.”

Narrator: The day before the Rapid City rally, the 18th annual Conservative Political Action Conference was underway in Washington. Part cocktail party, part political bazaar, part serious examination of the issues, its sponsors included pillars of the American right, such as the Heritage Foundation and the American Conservative Union. There was also the American Freedom Coalition. Narrator: Robert Grant, president of the American Freedom Coalition, spoke at a conference banquet. In his remarks, Grant announced that the AFC was sponsoring pro-Desert Storm rallies not just in South Dakota, but in all fifty states. Grant: “With Governors and Congressmen and Senators and veterans organizations working together to send a message across the seas to Saddam Hussein and the men and women of Desert Storm.” Rev. Jackie Roberts: “Once again, let’s say God bless America! (People answer ‘God Bless America’) C’mon God bless America!” Narrator: The American Freedom Coalition’s Desert Storm rallies are only the latest effort by Sun Myung Moon to influence American public opinion. Moon’s Unification Movement has long supported the projection of American military power overseas. (Soundtrack) Song: “With a mission to fly and a job to be done. He’s missing his wife, and his children.” Narrator: Moon has also consistently promoted a conservative political agenda in the United States. His efforts have not gone unnoticed at the White House. Douglas Wead was a Special Assistant to President Bush responsible for liaison with conservative groups. Wead: “I’d say right now there are probably two groups among conservative organizations that really have an infrastructure, that have grassroots clout Concerned Women of America would and the American Freedom Coalition would.” Narrator: During the 1988 election, the AFC printed and distributed 30 million pieces of political literature, including these glossy voter scorecards. Wead: “I think the scorecards and some of the independent literature published had an enormous effect. In fact, we had huge notebooks filled with published materials from a wide variety of organizations. The best was probably the AFC’s. It was by far the slickest and the finest produced material. And when that doesn’t cost you anything, and it is not charged against the campaign and is widely distributed to mailing lists across the country, that has a very important impact.” Narrator: The AFC’s activities have prompted renewed questions about Sun Myung Moon’s involvement in American politics. The AFC calls itself a grassroots organization committed to supporting conservative causes. AFC leaders deny that their group is an “appendage” of Moon’s movement, and they are sensitive about the issue. When we asked Robert Grant to discuss AFC ties to Moon, he refused. In a letter to FRONTLINE, Grant stated “I see no point in speaking with you either on camera or off camera.” And when Frontline reporter Eric Nadler visited AFC headquarters, no one would talk. Nadler: We were just hoping that someone could speak to us. Receptionist: Not at this time Nadler: Not at any time, apparently. Receptionist: Thank you. Nadler: Have a nice day Narrator: We had hoped to ask Robert Grant about allegations that the AFC is violating federal law; namely, the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Just before World War Two, Congress passed the act, concerned that Japanese and German interests in the U.S. were influencing American public opinion. The act states that any organization involved in political activities and controlled or directed by a foreign principal must register with the Justice Department. It must also report on its activities and provide detailed accounts of its foreign sources of funding. Narrator: Is the American Freedom Coalition a foreign agent? In 1989, Robert Grant wrote in the Washington Post that more than $5 million one third of the AFC’s money came from “business interests of the Unification Church.” Church officials say that their money comes from overseas primarily from Japan. Narrator: Media analyst Brent Bozell is a member of the AFC national policy board. Bozell: “If it were to come out that what the AFC is doing is being done at the direction of Reverend Moon, it would lose its fifty chapters overnight. That allegation has been out there since the day that AFC was formed and it hasn’t stuck because nobody has come up with the smoking gun that he’s done it.” Narrator: But Moon’s influence over the AFC is underscored by this 1988 letter FRONTLINE obtained from a source who once worked within the Moon Organization. AFC President Robert Grant, writing to Reverend Moon, thanks him for investing heavily and “helping to bring the AFC into being.” Grant concludes by telling Moon, “Without your leadership, vision and the support of your devoted followers, the AFC would not exist.” Narrator: The last time most Americans paid attention to Sun Myung Moon was nearly a decade ago. These are the images many still retain of Moon and the “Moonies,” as his followers once called themselves: mass weddings of complete strangers chosen as mates by Moon; flower-peddling in the street; and repeated allegations of mind control and brainwashing. Parent before Congress: “Who can parents turn to when they realize their children have been innocently enslaved by Moon?” Young woman at press conference: “Within one weekend I was totally, my mind was totally coerced into leaving home, into leaving my parents, into dropping out of school, into being, thinking that I was working for God.” Narrator: A federal investigation into Moon’s finances led to a 1982 trial on charges of conspiracy and filing false tax returns. Moon/Pak: “I must tell you that I am innocent.” Narrator: As a convicted felon, Moon was sent to the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut. During his 13 months in prison, he faded from public consciousness. (Soundtrack) Moon: “Distinguished leaders, religious leaders…” Narrator: But Moon has been quietly gaining strength in the United States ever since. He still hints that he is the Messiah – most recently before five hundred religious leaders in San Francisco in August,1990. Narrator: While Moon remains a controversial spiritual leader, his Church in America has a surprisingly small following, estimated to be no more than five thousand members. Narrator: His Movement, once labelled a cult, is now more accurately described as a conglomerate. From media operations in the nation’s capital… To substantial real estate holdings throughout the United States… And from large commercial fishing operations… To advanced high-tech and computer industries, a Fifth Avenue publishing house, and literally dozens of other businesses, foundations, associations, institutes, and political and cultural groups… Moon and his money have become a force to be reckoned with. Whelan: “All we know is they are spending a great, great deal in this country.” Narrator: James Whelan was the editor and publisher of a Moon-financed newspaper, The Washington Times. Whelan: “Probably more on influence and the obtaining of influence, of power, than of any organization I know of in this country, and that includes the AFL-CIO, that includes the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, that includes General Motors, that includes anybody.” Narrator: How and why did Sun Myung Moon amass such power and influence? The search for answers begins here in Korea, nearly six thousand miles from America’s shores… (Soundtrack) CONGREGATION SINGING Narrator: The Unification faith is a new religion. It traces its origins back to Easter Sunday, 1936, when Jesus Christ supposedly appeared and asked the sixteen-year-old Moon to complete God’s work on Earth. Moon’s evangelical mission eventually landed him in a North Korean labor camp, where he claims he was tortured repeatedly. Moon escaped, and according to Church lore, he marched south for weeks, carrying a wounded follower on his back. In 1951, in this shack made of U.S. Army ration boxes, Moon established his first church. Narrator: After the Korean War ended, several young military officers, including one named Bo Hi Pak, converted to the new Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity. As the fifties ended, Moon and his missionaries left Korea to spread their faith. Their earliest success came in Japan. Narrator: There the Church made political alliances and quickly established itself as much more than a religious movement. Junas: “1960 really represents the founding moment of the Moon organization as a political entity…” Narrator: Daniel Junas is the author of Moon Rising, a forthcoming history of the Unification Movement. Junas: “But now grafted onto that you began to have a whole set of political operations, and this is where Moon really developed his theocratic ideology, where politics would be married to religion.” Narrator: 1960 was a pivotal moment in U.S.-Asian relations. The Japanese and American governments signed a treaty allowing the Americans to maintain military bases in Japan and providing the Japanese access to America’s capital and technology. Eisenhower: “The signing today of the treaty of mutual cooperation and security between Japan and the United States is truly a historic occasion.” Narrator: The pact also allowed American forces in Japan to be equipped with nuclear weapons. (Soundtrack) Newsreel Track: “In Japan, left-wing political and labor organizations step up the tempo of their protests against the Japanese-American security pact.” Narrator: Thousands stormed the gates of the Japanese Parliament, enraged at the military concessions to the Americans. Narrator: Japanese business and political leaders moved to quell the unrest, as brigades of right-wing students staged counter-demonstrations. Sun Myung Moon’s Japanese followers soon took to the streets as political activities on behalf of conservative business interests became central to the Unification Movement. Narrator: When Moon’s missionaries came to America in the Sixties, their activities centered on Capitol Hill and college campuses. Junas: “When Moon came to the United States, his organization would play much the same role in American society that it was already playing in Japan and South Korea. During the Vietnam war, Moon worked to build a right-wing student movement as a counterweight to the left-wing student movement that was objecting to American military involvement in Vietnam.” Narrator: And in America, as he had in Japan, Moon began to move among the political elite: From Dwight Eisenhower… to Strom Thurmond… to Richard Nixon… Moon has glad-handed and corresponded with an astonishing array of political figures. Narrator: Moon sought to influence the American political agenda by pouring more than a billion dollars into media. Warder: “Moon looked on the media as almost the nervous system for a global empire.” Narrator: In the 1970’s, Michael Warder became one of the most important Americans in the Unification movement. Warder says he had close contact with Moon for six years. Warder: “Moon was the brain, and the media are to be, or were to be, the communications vehicle for his body politic surrounding the globe.” Narrator: Warder was responsible for managing “News World,” Moon’s daily newspaper in New York City. Warder: “Moon wanted total control of the media, so there would be no independent media with journalistic integrity. It would be a media totally loyal to Moon.” Narrator: In 1977, Minnesota Democrat Donald Fraser launched the so-called “Koreagate” investigation, in part a probe into Moon’s relationship to the Korean CIA and the buying of political influence on Capitol Hill. Using its own media, Moon’s organization struck back, in an all-out effort to discredit Fraser. “Truth Is My Sword” film track: “Mr. Fraser follows a far-leftist political line and is a well-known opponent of the Korean government. For him, Koreagate was a golden opportunity.” Narrator: One of Moon’s media weapons was this film, Truth Is My Sword. Moon’s aide Bo Hi Pak led the charge. (Film Track) Bo Hi Pak: “What if you are an agent of influence for Moscow here on the Hill? If these things are true, then the government of the United States itself is in grave danger. America’s very survival and the security of the free world are at stake.” Warder: “Moon wanted a whole series of articles going after poor Congressman Fraser, who was heading up the congressional investigations there. And so we would assign reporters to try and dig up all the dirt we could find on Congressman Fraser, and of course I would say to Moon, I said, ‘On one hand, we’re supposed to be doing this but on the other hand, we’re competing with the New York Times. And so there’s matters of credibility here.’ And he would, you know, bluster and get angry at these kinds of things and say, ‘Just do what I’m ordering you to do and don’t ask so many questions,’ and that sort of thing. And of course Colonel Pak would reinforce these messages from Moon.” (Film track) Bo Hi Pak: “I can not help but believe that you are being used as instrument of the devil. You, yes you, an instrument of the devil. I said it. Who else would want to destroy man of God but the Devil?” Fraser: “I didn’t appreciate the accusations they were making against me. They were absolutely false. I think they knew they were false.” Narrator: Donald Fraser is now the Mayor of Minneapolis. Fraser: “…and the fact they would make them in a public forum like that I was really totally turned off and disgusted.” (Film track) Pak: “So history might remember Donald Fraser, if it remembers him at all…” Warder: “The Fraser subcommittee investigation in fact in a strange way helped the Movement, because for members it became this cosmic struggle of good against evil, of God against Satan.” (Film track) Pak: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thank you Mister Chairman.” Warder: “From the standpoint of the members, it was Jesus taking on the Roman empire. It was big. It was cosmic.” Narrator: The Fraser Committee’s final report said Moon was the “key figure” in an “international network of organizations engaged in economic and political” activities. The Committee uncovered evidence that the Moon Organization “had systematically violated U.S. tax, immigration, banking, currency, and Foreign Agents Registration Act laws.” It also detailed how the Korean CIA paid Moon to stage demonstrations at the United Nations and run a pro-South Korean propaganda effort. Narrator: Michael Hershman was the Fraser Committee’s chief investigator. Hershman: “We determined that their primary interest, at least in the United States at that time, was not religious at all, but was political. It was an attempt to gain power and influence and authority.” Narrator: The Fraser Committee recommended that the White House form a task force to continue to investigate Moon. That never happened. By the time Ronald Reagan was inaugurated, the idea of investigating Sun Myung Moon’s political activities was a dead issue. Narrator: Ronald Reagan’s Presidency was hailed as the beginning of a conservative revolution. Activists from all over the United States came to the nation’s capitol. Narrator: Ironically, with the revolution seemingly won, traditional sources of money for conservative politics such as direct mail fundraising began to dry up. But Moon, a VIP guest at the inauguration, soon became a major funder of Washington’s new conservative establishment. Narrator: Brent Bozell was one of the young Reagan Revolutionaries. Bozell: “When the Moonies entered the political scene in the early Nineteen Eighties…one school of thought said that they were a good organization, and that because of their anti-communist commitment, conservatives ought to work with them. ” Narrator: David Finzer was another conservative activist who came to Washington in the early eighties. Finzer says he took more than four hundred thousand dollars from the Moon organization. He recalls one project the money paid for. Finzer: “When the Left would run an anti-South Africa campaign, we’d run an anti-Soviet campaign. We’d say, ‘Okay, you want to disinvest from South Africa? Fine. Let’s also disinvest from the Soviet Union.’ And it was, it was a successful, it was a pretty successful campaign. We did some neat stuff they’d build shanty towns, we’d build gulags around them…” Narrator: Moon’s most expensive political project was a newspaper, The Washington Times. Whelan: “Washington is the most important single city in the world. If you can achieve influence, if you can achieve visibility, if you can achieve a measure of respect in Washington, then you fairly automatically are going to achieve these things in the rest of the world. There is no better agency, or entity or instrument that I know of for achieving power here or almost anywhere else than a newspaper.” Narrator: The Washington Times had an immediate impact. The President of the United States, seen here with Times President Bo Hi Pak, said it was the first paper he read in the morning. Weyrich: “Moon had money and he was willing to spend it.” Narrator: Paul Weyrich, a co-founder of the Moral Majority, refuses to take Moon’s money. But he hails Moon’s newspaper as an antidote to its liberal competitor, The Washington Post. Weyrich: “The Washington Post became very arrogant and they just decided that they would determine what was news and what wasn’t news and they wouldn’t cover a lot of things that went on. And The Washington Times has forced The Post to cover a lot of things that they wouldn’t cover if The Times wasn’t in existence.” CNN Crossfire Open: “From Washington…” Narrator: Soon Washington Times columnists found even greater exposure on television. CNN Crossfire Open: “On the right, Pat Buchanan…” Bozell: “If The Washington Times did not carry the conservative columnists that they carry like a Pat Buchanan, like a Bill Rusher, like a Mona Charen I wonder if the television community would be aware of them and would tap them to use them in television.” Narrator: By 1984, despite his paper’s growing influence, James Whelan was unhappy. Whelan: “When we started the paper there was never any question that it would in any fashion project the views or the agenda of Sun Myung Moon or the Unification Church all to the contrary. We said, ‘Look, we are going to put a high wall in place. It is going to be a sturdy wall. And it will divide us from you.'” Narrator: But Whelan’s wall of editorial independence was often breached. Whelan: “Moon himself gave direct instructions to the editors…Who in fact calls the shots? Ultimately Moon calls the shots…. Whelan (at press conference): “The Washington Times has become a Moonie newspaper.” Narrator: Whelan resigned. Times spokesmen said the dispute was really over money. Whelan was later replaced by former Newsweek editor Arnaud de Borchgrave, seen here in a Moon-sponsored film. De Borchgrave: “When I was in Europe recently, I was delighted to hear The Washington Times quoted every hour on the hour on the Voice of America and on the BBC two worldwide radio networks that happen to reach hundreds of millions of people.” Narrator: De Borchgrave has consistently denied taking orders from Moon. But the man who ran the editorial pages under de Borchgrave tells a different story William Cheshire. Chesire: “I protested to de Borchgrave. I went up to his office when I saw this happening, I told him this was unethical, improper, unprofessional, and it ought to stop. Also, it was dumb.” Narrator: Cheshire and four others resigned after de Borchgrave ordered an about face on an editorial critical of the South Korean government. Chesire: “I said, ‘Arnaud, we have a problem.’ He said, ‘What’s the problem?’ I said. ‘The problem is you’ve conferred with the owners of this newspaper, come back downstairs and demanded a reversal of editorial policy on their say so.” Narrator: Questions about foreign control of The Washington Times have persisted for years. Other journalists, including Lars Erik Nelson of the New York Daily News, have called for a Justice Department investigation to determine if the Times violates the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Nelson: “The Justice Department doesn’t seem to want to know, and I’ve never gotten a clear answer from them as to why they don’t want to know.” Nadler: “What have they told you?” Nelson: “They’ve said, ‘Hmmm, that’s an interesting point.’ They say, ‘Hmmm, we’ll think about that.’ And they never get back to me.” Chesire: “The real question is why the Justice Department has such an absence of curiosity.” Narrator: Washington Times officials repeatedly refused to comment to Frontline even when we showed up with our camera to press for some answers. Nadler: “I’ve got a film crew here and I’m looking to see if there’s anyone that I can interview at The Washington Times for this story we’re doing.” Narrator: The answer was no, and when we visited another Moon-funded publication, The World and I, the reception grew even colder. Security Guard #1: “Yes sir, you all are on private property, you’ve been told that, you will wait here, the Metropolitan Police will come here.” Security Guard #2: “I’m going to ask you to leave the property.” Nadler: “OK, who are you, sir? Are you with the Metropolitan Police Department or with the security?” SG #2: “I’m with the security department.” Nadler: “Of The Washington Times Corporation?” SG #2: “Of The Washington Times, that’s correct, and I’d like you to leave right now please.” Nadler: “OK, I’ll leave. Why are the police here, by the way?” Narrator: Later, the Times sent this statement, which said that “the complete editorial independence of The Washington Times is well-known, and envied, throughout the newspaper industry.” Narrator: The Times gained respect and influence throughout the Reagan years, lending editorial support to causes favored by the Administration. Reagan: “Freedom fighters will huddle close to their radios hoping to catch word that the administration in America will remain their friend.” Narrator: The contra forces battling the Sandinista government in Nicaragua received editorial support and money from The Washington Times. Here’s how it worked: Narrator: In March 1985, Oliver North wrote this top secret memo proposing the formation of a private foundation called the Nicaraguan Freedom Fund. Narrator: Its purpose was to circumvent a Congressional ban on aid to the Contras. Less than two months later, The Washington Times announced the birth of the Nicaraguan Freedom Fund in a front-page editorial. Narrator: Times editor Arnaud de Borchgrave insisted he was “surprised” at the coincidence between his paper’s initiative and North’s secret project. The Washington Times contributed the first $100,000 to the Freedom Fund. (Soundtrack) Oliver North: “The worst outcome we could have would be the consolidation of a communist client state in Nicaragua.” Narrator: When Oliver North was questioned by Congress about his role in funding the contras, The American Freedom Coalition rushed to his defense. The AFC produced this video, “Oliver North: Fight for Freedom,” which it broadcast more than 600 times on over 100 television stations. Narrator: The program asked for donations. Tax records reveal that the video raised more than $3.2 million for the AFC. Heston: “It only takes 30 minutes for a missile to get here from the Soviet Union. How far do you think you can get in 30 minutes? Narrator: Another project of the Reagan Administration was the Strategic Defense Initiative SDI, or “Star Wars.” It also received support from The Washington Times and the American Freedom Coalition. “If you really value life, if you want your children and your grandchildren to get out from under the threat of nuclear annihilation, then please, please demonstrate your support for SDI.” Narrator: This pro-Star Wars video was paid for and distributed by the AFC. (Soundtrack) “We can’t stop it? We can’t stop one damn missile? All I can do is watch a million people die, or start blowing up the whole world? They are my only choices?” Graham: “Reverend Moon’s organization has been very supportive of the Strategic Defense Initiative.” Narrator: Former Defense and Central Intelligence official Daniel Graham, who sits on the AFC national policy board, co-produced the video. Graham: “It’s called ‘One Incoming,’ and it includes a scenario that I got Tom Clancy to write for us, and I got Charlton Heston to do the voiceover.” (Soundtrack) Heston: “And for America, our choice will remain nuclear vengeance or nothing until SDI is deployed.” Graham: “It cost a lot of money to produce it $200,000 and Grant said he could raise the $200,000. Now Grant is supported substantially by the Reverend Moon and I’m sure that’s where the money came from to produce that movie.” Narrator: According to Graham, the film has been seen on four hundred television stations. Narrator: Besides paying for his own media, Moon sought to influence other press outlets. One vehicle was the World Media Association. Pak: ” And the founder is Reverend Moon, who is deeply concerned for the world media, particularly in the battle against communism all over the world; who sees that the role of the media is so vital and so important for the salvation of our civilization.” Narrator: The World Media Association sponsors all-expense-paid conferences and junkets for journalists all over the world. As Bo Hi Pak told public station KQED in 1984, the Unification Movement used the association as a weapon for a larger crusade. Pak: “But is a total war. Basically war of ideas. War of mind, the battlefield is the human mind. This is where the battle is fought. So in this war the entire thing will be mobilized, political means, social means, economical means and propagandistic means, and basically trying to take over the other person’s mind. That is what the third world war is all about the war of ideology.” Narrator: While waging its global war of ideas, the Unification Movement was also fighting another battle to overcome the stigma of Moon’s 1982 conviction for tax evasion. To clear his name, Moon launched a campaign termed the “New Birth Project.” Its strategy was to show that Moon’s prosecution was really racial and religious persecution. (Soundtrack) Moon/Pak: “I am here today only because my skin is yellow and my religion is Unification Church.” Durst: “It’s a powerful state trying to break one religion-and what happens to Rev. Moon watch out will happen to many other religious figures.” Pak: “For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, forever and ever, amen!” Narrator: Church leaders charged the media were part of the problem. Durst: “We don’t like it. We don’t like to be abused by any newspaper, we don’t like to be abused by the media and we’re not going to take it.” Narrator: But an adroit use of the media was part of the Unification plan. Moon bought full-page ads in leading newspapers, and sent videotapes explaining his theology to other religious leaders at a cost of more than four million dollars. Press conferences outside Moon’s prison helped spread the word. Rev. Don Sills: “Today we have witnessed a travesty of the judicial system of our United States. The Reverend Sun Myung Moon has been unjustly convicted.” Rev. Joseph Paige: “Reverend Moon, like myself, is a minority here in this country. And we don’t have the popular views of the mainline churches, we are about liberation.” Narrator: The New Birth Project worked, and Moon was “born again” as a martyr to bigotry. After he left prison, he was celebrated by more than 1700 clergy at this “God and Freedom Banquet” in Washington. Durst: “Ironically and perhaps historically there is something similar here to other religious movements from this persecution has come the greatest support and acceptance of the Unification movement. ” Narrator: Part of the New Birth Project employed familiar Moon tactics. In July, 1985, a front organization was formed called the Committee to Defend the United States Constitution. Moon insider David Finzer was asked to join the board. Finzer: “We executed all of the documents, and I understand the corporation was incorporated the very next day. Now that was the last I heard of the Committee to Defend the United States Constitution for about two years.” Narrator: Finzer now claims that he didn’t learn until much later that the Committee to Defend the United States Constitution was a front group. Finzer: “All of the money was spent for publications or advertising or events that supported Reverend Moon. We found a magazine that was put out under the Committee’s name. There was my name listed as one of the directors that I had never seen before. We found a check to the printer for $174,000, printed for that…The real purpose was not, I can tell you what it was not. It was not to support religious liberty. What it was, was to support and sanitize Reverend Moon’s name, to give the appearance of independent support instead of wholly-owned, bought support, to make him some kind of a First Amendment hero.” Narrator: Moon ultimately went to the top in his effort to clear his name seeking a presidential pardon for his crimes. Narrator: The point man was Max Hugel, a former Reagan campaign official and one-time deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency in charge of covert operations. Hugel: “It is so important to have a superb intelligence agency.” Narrator: Hugel was forced to leave the agency in the wake of a stock scandal. (Soundtrack) PRESS CONFERENCE: Reporter off camera: “Can you tell us why you’re not choosing to stay on and fight?” Narrator: Hugel later went into business with Jonathan Park, the son of Bo Hi Pak. ATLANTIC VIDEO DEMO REEL: Announcer: “Through two huge sound locks are the best outfitted teleproduction studios in the region.” Narrator: Hugel worked with Park to expand Moon’s electronic media empire, while also brokering contacts between Bo Hi Pak and Vice President George Bush. Narrator: In this April, 1988 memo to Unification Church member Marc Lee, Hugel offers to arrange for Pak to have his picture taken with the Vice President at a cost of $50,000. Hugel also promises to try to get Bush to write to Pak. Two months later, Bush did write to Pak, and told him, “I hope we can meet again soon.” Did they discuss a pardon during their meeting? Neither President Bush nor Bo Hi Pak would comment to FRONTLINE. Narrator: Later in 1988, Hugel also recruited the law firm of one of Ronald Reagan’s best friends to assist in Moon’s pardon effort former Senator Paul Laxalt. (Soundtrack) Ronald Reagan: “The friend who understands you creates you, a wise man once said. Paul created because he always understood and for that I am and shall always be grateful.” Narrator: Laxalt’s law firm was paid $100,000 up front and $50,000 a month to obtain a presidential pardon for Moon. According to billings submitted by the lawyers, Laxalt was directly involved in the pardon effort. This petition for executive clemency was delivered to the Justice Department, accompanied by letters from Senator Orrin Hatch, publisher William Rusher, civil rights leader Ralph Abernathy endorsing the pardon. Narrator: The Washington Times also became involved in the pardon campaign. First, Editor Arnaud de Borchgrave wrote a “letter from the editor.” Cheshire: “It was not really a letter to the editor, it was a letter to President Reagan urging President Reagan to grant Reverend Moon a presidential pardon.” Narrator: Later, the Times ran this article examining Reagan’s record on pardons. After it appeared, Laxalt’s partner, Paul Perito, became alarmed. Perito warned Bo Hi Pak that “if a case can be made…that the Church allegedly controls and dictates the activities of organizations such as The Washington Times…this will affect our credibility and could materially damage our prodigious efforts.” (Soundtrack) Off-Camera Female Reporter: “Any last thoughts for us, President and Mrs. Reagan, on your way out?” Narrator: Ronald Reagan never pardoned Sun Myung Moon. Moon’s pardon application is still pending before the Bush Administration. Max Hugel, Paul Laxalt, and Paul Perito all refused to comment. Ronald Reagan also declined to comment. Narrator: Is the New Birth Project continuing? In June,1991, Inquisition, a new, purportedly independent investigation of Moon’s 1982 tax fraud prosecution, was released by a Washington publisher, Regnery-Gateway. Its author, Carlton Sherwood, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter who once worked for The Washington Times. Narrator: Inquisition has a curious history. It was printed once before, by an obscure publishing house called Andromeda. The phone number listed for Andromeda in a leading publishing directory is the home phone of former Reagan National Security Council official Roger Fontaine an ex-reporter at The Washington Times. When we called, Fontaine’s wife Judy answered and said she knew nothing about Andromeda. Then she told us that the company was bankrupt and that Inquisition was published by Regnery-Gateway. Narrator: Alfred Regnery is the head of Regnery-Gateway. Regnery: “It is not unlike a lot of other books we have published. It is a story that deals with the First Amendment, which is something that is very dear to publishers, of course.” Narrator: Alfred Regnery was told by Carlton Sherwood that the Moon Organization would purchase one hundred thousand copies of Inquisition at least according to former Washington Times editor James Whelan, another Regnery-Gateway author. But Alfred Regnery denies it. Regnery: “I never said that to Jim, and I’ve never had any conversation with what’s his name-Bo?” Narrator: “Bo Hi Pak.” Regnery: “I’m not even sure who he is.” Narrator: One week after talking to Regnery, FRONTLINE obtained a copy of a letter addressed to Sun Myung Moon. The letter was written by James Gavin, a Moon aide. Gavin tells Moon he reviewed the “overall tone and factual contents” of Inquisition before publication and suggested revisions. Gavin adds that the author “Mr. Sherwood has assured me that all this will be done when the manuscript is sent to the publisher.” Gavin concludes by telling Moon, “When all of our suggestions have been incorporated, the book will be complete and in my opinion will make a significant impact…. In addition to silencing our critics now, the book should be invaluable in persuading others of our legitimacy for many years to come.” Narrator: Although he refused an on-camera interview, Carlton Sherwood told Frontline that the Unification Movement exerted no editorial control over his book. Narrator: When we visited Gavin’s office in McLean, Virginia, our request for an interview was refused. Narrator: Many questions about the Unification Movement remain unanswered. But none is more pressing or perplexing than this: Where does all the money come from? The Moon Organization has spent an astonishing amount in the United States: -more than $800 million on the Washington Times; -hundreds of millions on national periodicals; -tens of millions on electronic media; -at least $40 million on New York newspapers; -more than $10 million on a New York publishing house; -millions on World Media Association junkets and conferences; -millions more on New Right organizations, including the American Freedom Coalition; -well over $100 million on real estate, including the New Yorker Hotel in midtown Manhattan; -at least $40 million on commercial fishing operations; -and at least $75 million on the New Birth Project… It all adds up to more than a billion dollars. Narrator: But most of Moon’s operations in America are losing money. Virginia Commonwealth University professor David Bromley: Bromley: “Most of the Unificationist Movement’s businesses, as far as I can tell, have lost substantial sums of money. Again, the best example is the Washington Times, which may have lost as much as fifty million dollars a year a major loser.” Narrator: So where does the money come from? Moon himself told the Senate Judiciary Committee in June, 1984: the money comes from overseas. Moon: “Several hundred million dollars have been poured into America, because this nation will decide the destiny of the world, these contributions are primarily coming from overseas.” Narrator: But from where overseas? Not from Korea. According to The Far Eastern Economic Review, many of the Church’s businesses in Korea “are performing poorly or need to make major new investments.” . Narrator: For nearly two decades, it has been reported that one major Moon patron is Ryoichi Sasakawa, one of the richest men in Japan. Narrator: Sasakawa’s money comes from his monopoly on the motorboat racing industry. Legalized gambling on the sport is a $14 billion a year industry in Japan. Choate: “For more than a half century, Ryoichi Sasakawa has been one of the primary political brokers inside Japan.” Narrator: Author Pat Choate, whose book, Agents of Influence, examines Japan’s campaign to shape America’s policy and politics… Choate: “When Reverend Moon expanded his operations inside Japan, he asked Sasakawa to be one of the principal advisers to his Church inside Japan. Many of their operations the Sasakawa operations, the Moon operations seem to parallel each other. They operate in many of the same ways giving away money, a great deal of attention to media and media organizations, the establishment of think tanks and other policy organizations that operate across national borders, and the maintenance of a very right wing conservative focus.” (Soundtrack) NEWSREEL – MUSSOLINI ADDRESSING CROWD Narrator: Sasakawa’s right-wing associations go back more than fifty years. In 1939, he flew to Italy to meet Benito Mussolini, whom he called “the perfect fascist.” Choate: “He formed one of the most radical of the fascist parties inside Japan. He was one of those individual business leaders that was calling for war with the United States.” Narrator: Immediately after the war, Sasakawa was arrested and imprisoned by the U.S. Army as a war criminal. Sasakawa was sent to prison with two other suspected war criminals—Yoshio Kodama and Nobusuke Kishi. Kodama went on to become a leader of the “yakuza”, or organized crime syndicate of Japan. Kishi went on to become Japan’s Prime Minister. All three men reportedly played key roles in the early days of the Moon organization. Junas: “Kishi had emerged as the front man for the Moon Organization in Japan. And Sasakawa served as an adviser… He was a behind-the-scenes powerbroker who was manipulating the Moon organization. Moon, in his own speeches, refers to his Japanese friend who is quite wealthy Mr. Sasakawa.” Narrator: In 1967, Moon and Sasakawa are reported to have formed the Japanese chapter of the World Anti-Communist League, which funded anti-Communist insurgencies worldwide. Thousands cheered Moon at this 1970 rally in Tokyo. Narrator: Today Sasakawa denies providing any financial or political assistance to Moon. Sasakawa told Frontline that he only met Moon once 25 years ago. Yet Moon in a 1973 speech claimed he was “very close” to Sasakawa and Bo Hi Pak called Sasakawa, Moon’s “chief ally in the battle against communism.” Choate: “If they are using substantial amounts of the Japanese money, they are not only running a Korean agenda, but they’re also serving as political mercenaries for the Japanese. And it should be a matter of great concern.” DESERT STORM RALLY FOOTAGE: “Support our troops, support our troops, support our troops!” Narrator: Moon has been operating in the United States for thirty years. Whether Americans know it or not, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon is a force in their political lives. Woman sings: “God bless America, my home, sweet home.” Narrator: But some Americans are suspicious of Moon and question whether his political activities are in the interest of America. Weyrich: “Here is what disturbs me. It is the lack of knowledge of the people who are being taken in by this activity of who is behind it, where the funding is coming from, and what are their ultimate objectives.” Choate: “This should be the ultimate congressional investigation to lay all of this out before the American people and bring it into the sunshine and stop it.” Narrator: Since 1978, Congress has demonstrated little interest in investigating Moon. And when we visited the Justice Department, officials there had nothing to say. Scene – Eric Nadler at Justice Department. “We’d like you to come down and answer the question, ‘Why the Justice Department isn’t investigating the Washington Times under the Foreign Agents Registration Act… No comment is your answer.'” Narrator: We asked the White House to comment on the Unification Movement’s activities in America. We asked specifically about Bo Hi Pak’s 1988 meeting with Mr. Bush at his home, about the President’s knowledge of the campaign to obtain a pardon for Sun Myung Moon, about the help that the American Freedom Coalition gave his election campaign, and whether the President thought his Justice Department should investigate the Washington Times for possible violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The White House declined to comment. Narrator: Finally, Reverend Moon also refused to talk to FRONTLINE. But in this Church-sponsored film, Reverend Moon in America, he had this to say: “Now whether positively or negatively, America knows me and it happened quickly. At least I have America’s attention. Because of that, I will be able to tell the people the truth of God, the new revelation. The worst treatment America could give me is to ignore me. Now I can preach the truth.” THE END

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Moon’s Japanese Profits Bolster Efforts in U.S. – Top leader, Yoshikazu Soejima, was interviewed by The Washington Post in 1984

Sun Myung Moon: The Emperor of the Universe

Sun Myung Moon and the United Nations

How Moon bought protection in Japan

United States Congressional investigation of Moon’s organization

Gifts of Deceit – Robert Boettcher

Politics and religion interwoven

Sun Myung Moon organization activities in South America

Tragedy of the Six Marys translated video transcript

A huge Unification Church / FFWPU scam in Japan is revealed

Moon extracted $500 million from Japanese female members

Christmas at Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC

Get a glimpse into life as the Vanderbilts this holiday season The sprawling Biltmore mansion in Asheville, North Carolina, built by George Vanderbilt in the 1890s, is as close to a castle as we have in the United States. It is mind-bogglingly huge: 250 rooms over more than 178,000 square feet — that’s over four acres of floor space in the house alone.

With 101 bedrooms and 45 bathrooms, the French Renaissance chateau-style mansion took six years to build. It boasts an indoor swimming pool, bowling alley, massive library with more than 10,000 volumes, and many riches in antiques and artwork. It’s also part of a much larger estate that sprawls across 8,000 acres and includes a village with shops, restaurants and a winery. Tis the Season

While Biltmore makes for an incredible visit at any time, it’s especially enchanting during the Christmas holiday season. After winding down two miles of drive from the estate’s main entrance, the first glimpse that you get of the three-story manse is jaw-dropping always — and between early November and early January it’s pure magic, with the soft glow of luminaries along the drive, twinkling lights on the huge Norway spruce tree on the front lawn, and dozens of Christmas trees throughout the home. My daytime tour through Biltmore House in November gave me not only the incredible story behind its creation, and the look inside such an incredible home (the largest in America), but it also felt even more special with flickering candles and crackling fires in the hearth in almost every room. In the massive banquet hall, one of the first that you encounter on a self-guided tour, a docent with a group of schoolchildren explained the process, and excitement, that staff members have decorating the home for the holidays. The towering Christmas tree at one end of the dining room is laden with wrapped gift boxes not only under its boughs, but placed on its branches throughout the tree. The guide explained that this is exactly the way the tree would have been done during George Vanderbilt’s residence here with his family. In that Gilded Age of the late 1800s and early 1900s, presents were placed throughout the tree.  

The 35-foot Fraser fir arrives on a horse-drawn carriage. Photo Credit: The Biltmore Company.

The towering Christmas tree in the banquet hall of Biltmore House. Photo credit: Shelley Seale Christmas Visit Itinerary It’s only fitting that Christmas be highly celebrated at Biltmore — George Vanderbilt opened the home to family and friends on Christmas Day in 1895. As decked out as the house and grounds were during the daytime, a Candlelight Christmas Evening package is the optimal way to visit Biltmore during the season.

Those tickets include a special evening reservation to tour the home, as well as daytime admission to the gardens, Antler Hill Village & Winery, and the rest of the estate. The best plan of action is to come out early to drive the estate, stopping along the way to walk the gardens and other trails and pathways. The daytime admission is good for the day after your Christmas Evening reservation, as well, so you can visit the rest of the estate either the day of or day after. Don’t miss the Conservatory in the gardens — it’s decked out with hundreds of red, pink and white poinsettia plants, along with its usual amazing array of hothouse flowers such as exotic orchids. One room also has a fun toy train that makes its way along the tracks, delighting children and adults alike. The Conservatory is a great place to snap some gorgeous holiday family photos.

After the gardens and grounds, make your way to Antler Village for lunch, to stroll the village lit with glittering cascades of light and a glowing fountain, and check out some of the shops there.

Antler Hill Winery also gets decked out for the holidays. Photo credit: Biltmore Company Later in the afternoon, take a tour of the winery and enjoy a free tasting in the tasting room (it’s the most-visited winery in the U.S.). Then, Biltmore House awaits in all its nighttime glory for your evening tour reservation. During these special evenings, choirs and soloists provide live music inside the house, lending a real holiday spirit to the visit. Interesting Facts about Biltmore There are many fascinating and surprising things to learn in a visit to Biltmore Estate. Before my visit, I was mostly thinking about the vast wealth, over the top opulence, and to be honest, perhaps a sense of waste and arrogance that must have gone into the undertaking of such a place for personal pleasure. But I was surprised by many aspects of the home’s history, and the Vanderbilt family itself.

One of the main halls in Biltmore House, with three fireplaces and priceless tapestries lining the walls. First, the home is still privately owned by the descendants of George Vanderbilt. The current family members to own the estate and oversee the Biltmore Company are siblings Dini Pickering and Bill Cecil, great-grandchildren of George and Edith Vanderbilt. While I was touring the home, another guide was telling guests how Pickering and Cecil still live on the property and often come to the house to check things out, dressed in blue jeans and mingling with day visitors who have no idea that the family members are in their midst.

On the website, Bill Cecil says, “Since 1895, Biltmore has had the natural beauty of the mountains and the majestic house and gardens to beguile us, inspire us, and allow us to escape from the everyday. Biltmore is still family owned, and we are still passionate about our mission of preservation through self-sufficiency – a philosophy embraced before the first stone was ever placed. We remain self-sustaining through innovation, creative thinking, and listening to guests who continue to tell us they want more ways to connect with Biltmore.” Biltmore has also been recognized in many ways for environmental stewardship. In 2012, the Asheville GreenWorks Hall of Fame Award was presented to Biltmore for its sustainability initiatives, including a new solar array and a tree protection project. It has been a century-old model for forest conservation, and it has a model precedent for that: the gardens were designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, the man behind New York City’s Central Park. The Music Room at Biltmore House was a secret storage place for some of the country’s most valuable art during World War II. For their safekeeping, priceless works from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. were kept hidden there; Edith Vanderbilt never charged a penny for it, saying it was her civil and patriotic duty. You can stay overnight at Biltmore Estate. Two options are available: The Inn on Biltmore Estate, a four-star hotel; Village Hotel for more casual three-star accommodations; and the Cottage on Biltmore Estate, a historic two-bedroom/two-bathroom home offering personalized service for a truly unique experience. Other Upcoming Special Events After the winter holiday season, Biltmore offers several other upcoming experiences:

This colorized version of a photograph from the Vanderbilt archives depicts afternoon tea on the Loggia of Biltmore House, September 1900. Photo: Biltmore Company A Vanderbilt House Party — The Gilded Age. Experience America’s Largest Home® in an entirely new way: by imagining yourself a Vanderbilt houseguest at a turn-of-the-century house party. This new exhibition brings this festive celebration to life through vivid audio storytelling and displays of elegant clothing recreated from archival Vanderbilt photos and portraits. An integral part of this experience, a new premium Audio Guide (free with online ticket purchase) immerses you in another place and time. Innovative 360° sound techniques combine with stories told by characters based on people who lived and worked at Biltmore in the early 1900s. Seasonal Themes. Winter at Biltmore (January 7-March 31) offers the lowest admission rates of the year, during the slowest time. Biltmore Blooms (April 1-May 23) is the period when the estate comes alive, and you can marvel at acres of ever-changing blossoms in the historic gardens. Summer at Biltmore (May 24-September 2) offers such fun family-friendly outdoor activities as hiking, biking, river float trips, and fly-fishing.

Guided trail ride behind Biltmore House. Photo credit: The Biltmore Company Regular Ongoing Activities. Year-round, a host of tours and activities are available at Biltmore. These include equestrian rides, primitive camping, bicycle and electric trike tours, guided hikes, falconry, sporting clay lessons, rafting, Segway tours, Land Rover tours and more. There is also a calendar of regular live music at the hotels and Antler Hill Village. Details for Visiting: Biltmore One Lodge Street Asheville, NC 28803 800-411-3812 www.biltmore.com Read the full article

iOS 12: new features and the iOS 12.1 release date

iOS 12 features are already popular among iPhone and iPad users, according to new data that shows high usage of Apple's fresh take on its mobile operating system.

But the changes don't stop there. Apple is already testing iOS 12.1 beta. We outlined all of the major iOS 12 features below, include Grouped Notifications, Memojis, Screen Time, and better performance for older iPhones. But later this month, the iOS 12.1 release date will add new emoji and Group FaceTime and more than 70 new emoji among other perks, maybe when the iPhone XR launches on October 26.

Apple has made its mobile operating system competitive in the wake of Google's Android Pie update and next week's Google Pixel 3 launch.

Here's everything you need to know about iOS 12, whether you're upgrading an older iPhone (that will be faster), or getting it out of the box with iPhone XS Max.

Read more: 5 Ways to Import Music to iPhone XS

Here's what is in the iOS 12.1 update

70+ new emoji – good news for redheads, curly-haired and bald folks

Group FaceTime for up to 32 users is part of the iOS 12.1 beta

Adjust photo background blur (bokeh) in real time (not just afterward)

eSIM support menus are live in the beta – but carrier support is needed

References 'iPadfall2018' – a big iPad Pro 2018 hint

The iOS 12.1 release date is expected to be in October, and it could very well launch at the same time as the iPhone XR on October 23. Until, then iOS 12.1 beta is out for both developers and the general public, and we recommend downloading it.

There are five important iOS 12.1 changes:

70+ new emoji On October 2, Apple announced that more than 70 new emoji were launching with the iOS 12.1 developer beta 2. Get ready for red, gray and curly hair options, as well as bald people, according to Apple's official press release. Softballs, skateboards, and frisbees are here for alternative sports, while new animal and food emojis include kangaroos, lobsters (sometimes a food, always an animal) bagels, and cupcakes.

Group FaceTime First, Group FaceTime for up to 32 users is here. To test it out, however, you're going to have to pair up with people who have iOS 12.1 beta, so its use cases are limited right now.

Portrait Mode bokeh effects Second, Apple has improved the bokeh (background blur) feature in portrait mode on the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max. Before you could only adjust the blur after a picture was taken. Now, with iOS 12.1, you can also adjust the blur in real time, as you're snapping a photo. This helps you better frame your portrait photos.

eSIM support – kind of Third, eSIM iPhone support is live with the proper setup menus. But there's a catch for setting up the simulated dual-SIM – you'll have to wait for your carrier to start supporting the feature, which may happen on the official iOS 12.1 release date.

iOS 12.1 fixes bugs Fourth, the iOS 12.1 release notes indicate that you're in for some bug fixes. That's very good news if you're experiencing problems. Apple's updates usually remedy the issue, however, you may have to wait until iOS 12.2 in order to fix the iPhone XS and XS Max charging issues.

iPadfall2018 reference Fifth, although not a feature, the iOS 12.1 code references 'iPad2018fall' and that's interesting to us. We're likely to see the iPad Pro 2018 launch in October. New iPad Pro rumors point to a bezel-reduced iPad, one with a TrueDepth camera for Face ID and Memoji. There are plenty of hints in iOS 12.1 that Animoji and Memoji are going to be supersized on Apple's tablet soon.

Read more: How to Transfer Data from iPad/iPad Pro/iPad Mini to iPhone XS Max

The top iOS 12 featuresImage 1 of 4

1. iOS 12 makes your old iPhone and iPad faster

Older iPhones are 40% to 70% faster at certain tasks

Apple's looking to put the problematic iOS 11 behind it

iOS 12 focuses on reliability and performance with this update, and it supports all of the same iPhones and iPads that iOS 11 worked with.

Apple highlights the iPhone 6 Plus, specifically, saying iOS 12 makes this phone 40% faster at launching apps, 70% faster at launching the camera app, and 50% faster at displaying the keyboard. Keyboard typing and other routine features on older iPhones can slow down with every new iOS update, and Apple is looking to change these pain points with iOS 12.

This makes your existing iPhone and iPad more reliable, and your older devices can be used by family members, or will be more sellable – they don't have to sit in a drawer because they're too slow.

Read more: How to Backup iPhone/iPad before upgrading to iOS 12

2. Grouped notifications

Grouped notification on iOS 12 clean up individual notifications mess

Smartly grouped by app, topic, thread

You can clear a whole group of notifications with a single swipe

Grouped notifications are a part of iOS 12. This is a small, but very important tweak (maybe the most important in the iOS 12 update) because it changes the lock screen alerts you see each and every day.

It binds together notifications by message threads and topics, making it easier to see everything at a glance. Right now, individual notifications in the morning are a big pain to check as they pile up.

Read more:

How to Recover Deleted iPhone/iPad Data on iOS 12

3. Memoji and changes to Animoji

Personalized 'Memoji' to look like you or 'the real you'

Four new Animoji masks: Ghost, Koala, Tiger and T-Rex

Animoji and Memoji clips last 30 seconds (up to 10 seconds)

Tongue and wink detection for iOS 12 masks

Memoji is a customizable mask that can look like you – or the real you, according to Apple. It still resides in Messages. You can select hairstyles, eye color and accessories like earrings and sunglasses.

Like Animoji, this is a feature for newer iPhones in the X lineup as it requires Apple's TrueDepth front-facing camera.

Animoji is expanded, not just with new masks, but with tongue detection and wink detection. Ghost, Koala, Tiger, and T-Rex will be joining the cast of Animoji masks.

4. Automatically enter those pesky security codes

Two-factor authentication is great, except the annoying task of entering six-digital security codes sent to you via text feels like a chore. iOS 12 fixes this issue.

As soon as a security code is sent to your device as a text, it'll automatically pop up within the suggested words in the keyboard interface. All you have to do is tap it. It makes life just a little easier when you're locked out of Dropbox.

5. iOS 12 allows for more than one Face ID face

Face ID on iOS 12 supports more than one face within the Setting menu labeled 'Face ID & Passcode.' Look for the 'Set up an Alternative Appearance' sub-menu to add a second look.

This is helpful for two reasons: You can either allow a partner to have access to your iPhone or iPad with Face ID, or you can add your alter ego to make sure Face ID unlocks your phone no matter what you look like today, tomorrow or the next day.

6. Siri Shortcuts can find your lost keys, more

Siri Shortcuts allows you to assign phrases to tasks

'I lost my keys' can ring your Tile tracker to find keys

'Heading home' sends ETA notification to roommate, sets thermostat and fan, and brings up the fastest route via Apple Maps

Gallery and library full of pre-configured Siri Shortcuts

Siri is smarter. If you set up Siri Shortcuts, a brand new app, It‘ll know that “I lost my keys” means to ring your Tile tracker.

Sure, Tile is a handy gadget, but getting to the slow app is a pain when you've lost your keys. An integrated Siri is a game-changer for both Tile and our peace of mind.

Siri Shortcuts go far beyond this example. Apple allows for all sorts of formulas. The app can suggests coffee orders from the place you always order from, and nudge you to message contacts to tell them you're running late.

There's also Kayak-based flight information you can call up via voice. By pressing the add to Siri button, you can then say “Travel plans” and Siri will read back information such as your hotel address.

Apple's IFTTT-like Siri Shortcuts app launched alongside the final iOS 12 software. However, not all shortcuts will be found in the new app. Some companies, like the aforementioned Tile, will host shortcuts within their own app, so look out for that.

7. Group FaceTime (now launching later)

Group FaceTime for up to 32 people with dynamic UI

Can use Animoji and Memoji in FaceTime

Won't launch with the final software on day one

Group FaceTime is coming to iOS 12 with up to 32 participants, and you go directly from a group chat to a group FaceTime in the Messages app.

Update: Apple has delayed the launch of iOS 12 Group Notifications, according to release notes indicating that it'll come out this 'fall'. To us, that sounds like an iOS 12.1 launch – like Apple Pay, Apple Cash, AirPlay 2 and other features didn't make it live on day one in previous operating system updates.

People can drop in and drop out at any time. The interface is filled with tiles that can expand, and 'the roster' along the bottom for everyone else in the Group FaceTime chat. When people start to speak, their window gets bigger, even if they're in the bottom roster of participants. It works on iPhone, iPad and Mac, and you can even answer on the Apple Watch and HomePod with just audio.

Animoji is coming to FaceTime and Group FaceTime. You'll of course need to update to iOS 12 and an iPhone X, iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max or an iPhone XR to make that magic happen.

Read more: How to downgrade iOS 12 to iOS 11

8. Screen time – using your iPhone less

Reports give a weekly activity summary on how you use iOS 12

Breakdown: ranks app usage, highest phone pick up times (and what app draws you in first), and apps that send you the most notifications

Set self-imposed time limits via reminders and temporary app blocking

Limit kids time in apps by category or individual apps via Family Sharing

Screen time is Apple's way of limiting your iPhone usage – calculating how much time you're spending on apps, which apps you use the most, and which apps are sending you the most notifications. Screen time doesn't lie.

For those without self-control, Apple has created app limits. You can set your own limit, with a notification letting you know when time is almost up. A 'Time is up' message will display when you've reached your self-imposed-Siri-assisted limit.

Parents can create limits for kids with Allowances, time-of-day-based downtime controls, and category controls. Education and essential message apps can also be greenlit thanks to an always-allowed settings.

The best part? Setting limits for your kids uses Family Sharing, so you can manage it all remotely from your parental device – no need to get hold of your 12-year-old kid's phone to execute on these new iOS 12 controls.

9. Do Not Disturb goes visual in iOS 12

Do Not Disturb during bedtime to hide visual display of notifications

It offers a clean lock screen with only a reminder than DND mode is on

Apple has expanding its Do Not Disturb capabilities with a cleaner 'Do Not Disturb During Bedtime' mode. It'll silence not just the notification delivery sounds, but also the visual notifications clutter that can distract you when you're trying to sleep.

The lock screen remains clear until you unlock your iPhone in the morning. You can allow certain apps to break through, just like with DND mode right now. Apple refers to these as critical alerts, and they're opt-in.

We really like the solo DND notification hanging out on the lock screen. It's peaceful without distracting visual clutter at night and it reminds us that DND mode is on. All notched iPhones don't have the DND icon at the top, so it was always hard to tell before iOS 12.

10. Instant Tuning for axing notifications

Instant Tuning to send future notifications silently or turn them off

Siri can suggest which notifications to silence based on usage

Instant Tuning is an iOS 12 feature you'll love if you've ever gotten a notification from an app you always seem to dismiss (HQ trivia, breaking news alerts, etc), but don't have time to turn off future notifications in the many submenus of Settings. Apple is allowing you to control individual app notification profiles right from the lockscreen, without making you leave what you're doing.

Deliver Quietly is an option within Instant Tuning, and it'll allow you to choose to have notifications delivered silently Notification Center by default so you’re not interrupted by alerts on the lockscreen. It's a nice in between option.

Siri helps clean up your messy lock screen with notification delivery suggestions based on how you interact with notifications. Siri will understand which notifications it should deliver prominently and which ones to send to Notification Center. It's like iOS 12's version of 'clean up your desktop' system nudges.

11. New 'Measure' app and USDZ file format

New USDZ file type dedicated at augmented reality

Measure app replaces your old-fashioned measuring tape

'Measure' is getting its own AR app. It uses the iPhone's and iPad's sensors to measure objects in front of you, including suitcases, as shown in the first iOS 12 demo. All it takes it just tap-and-drag along the edges of the object on the screen.

It also automatically detects the approximate dimensions of a photo – we've used it to buy a photo frame when we couldn't find the old-fashioned tape measure. iOS 12 to the rescue.

For AR developers, Apple has created a new file type called 'USDZ.' The company worked on USDZ with Pixar, and Adobe is supporting it, too. The file format can be shared across FIles, Mail, Messages and Safari. This is an important step forward for developers working on AR apps.

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12. Apple News, Stocks, Voice Memos and CarPlay

Apple News: new Browse tab and sidebar navigation

Stocks: robust chart design and stock news integration

Voice memos: easier menus, iCloud support, on iPad (finally)

CarPlay: third-party app support, like Google News and Waze

Apps are indeed getting updates with iOS 12, starting with Apple News. There’s a new Browse tab and a sidebar for better navigation. Stocks is finally being rebuilt with a helpful news design, complete with charts and Apple news headline integrated into into stocks. The top stories will be business news curated by Apple News editors.

Voice Memos has come to iPad (as well as macOS), and it’ll get iCloud support, long overdue changes. Now you won't have to AirDrop conversations between devices in order to listen back. It'll also be easier to assign names to voice clips thanks to an overhauled Voice Memos redesign.

Apple Books is the new name for iBooks, allowing you to pick up reading where you left off and a new store interface to browse buy ebooks and audio books.

CarPlay now support third-party applications, with Waze and Google Maps appearing on-screen. Apple didn’t call out the Google-owned apps by name, but they were there on the screen. This was a major highlight of iOS 12.

13. Some NFC features work even with a dead battery

Apple delivers a clever trick with NFC, allowing you to use a metro pass or student ID in the Wallet app, even if your iPhone has a depleted battery.

Express Cards with power reserve ensures you're not stranded outside of a train station or a dorm room because there's still some low-level power in your phone. This is one of our biggest fears for users who routinely rly on NFC.

Apple solves this, and though there's not enough power to give you visual feedback, when you touch your dead iPhone to an NFC-equipped terminal and you'll get a haptic response. And like magic, it works.

Just don't expect this new feature to work with Apple Pay. That requires Face ID, so you're going to have to possess a powered-on smartphone for that to work.

14. Closing apps in multitasking mode is easier

For 12 and 13, iOS 12 fixes some irksome features we hated about iOS 11. They're the kind of problems only first-year iPhone X users will know about.

Closing open app windows in iOS 12 is easier. All you have to do is slide up on an open app to dismiss it from the multitasking menu. iOS 11 had us press down on the app until a bunch of red close icons appeared over top of each app, and then to tap those little red icons to dismiss the app. That was unpleasant.

15. Accidental screenshots are less common

Whenever we picked up our iPhone X, we'd always press the volume up and power button accidentally, which is the new 'take a screenshot' button combination on iPhone X. Apple has disabled this action whenever the phone screen is off. Our iOS 12 Photos app is no longer going to be filled with errant screenshots on the daily.

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16. ARKit 2 and multiplayer gaming

ARKit 2 allows for 'shared experiences' for AR multiplayer

Lego, Fender, Adobe and Pixar are all working on AR with Apple

iOS 12 cements Apple as a leader in augmented reality (AR) with the arrival of groundbreaking multiplayer capabilities it calls Shared Experiences in ARKit 2.

These multi-user virtual environments allow for multiplayer gaming and experiences through iPhones and iPads. iOS 12 creates a more collaborative (and competitive) way of experiencing AR.

Lego demoed a four-player game at WWDC in June, pledging that it was in when it came to Apple's “creative play possibilities.” Players were involved in building up an AR town. It was like The Sims was reimagined for the future.

ARKit 2 opens up AR to hundreds of millions of users, according to Apple, and that makes iOS 12 the broadest AR platform in the world. We got a taste of AR last year, but multi-user virtual environments bring more advanced tools and gameplay.

17. Camera app changes

Smart DHR is reserved for the A12 chip-equipped iPhone XS and iPhone XR phones, but iOS 12 also tweaks the default camera app on older devices with new tricks.

First, the Portrait Lighting mode (on newer iPhones with dual-lens cameras) looks more natural. The software will be able to define crisper edges by more effectively separating a person from a background scene. Apple is also allowing third-party apps to use the software to separate the foreground and background.

Second, it's the end of an era for our how to scan a QR code from your iPhone and iPad guide. The default camera in iOS 12 makes QR code reading automatic.

Third, while not part of the camera app, RAW photos can be imported and managed on an iPhone and iPad, with the bonus ability of editing RAW photos on an iPad Pro.

18. Photos app is now smarter with iOS 12

Betters search and a new 'For you' tab

Suggestions on who to share photo collections with

Share back suggestions nudge friends to send their photos

The Photos app expands its search capabilities in an effort to compete with Google Photos. It recognizes photos by event now and indexes them accordingly. Apple says it takes into account over four million events, citing the Aspen Ideas Festival as a very niche example.

This lets you search by event without any thankless manual tagging. Searching by event joins other smart suggestions, including filtering by people, places, and relative dates (searching via Siri works with all of these and is quite handy in our experience).

The iOS 12 Photos search capabilities have also been broadened to let you use multiple search terms at once. Seeking "dog, animal" should weed out all of your gourmet hotdog results (this is a real problem we just tested at TechRadar).

A new tab 'For you' is a part of the iOS 12 Photos app, and it's filled with personalized suggestions on how to improve and share your pictures. Sharing has gotten smarter, letting you share at full-resolution and suggesting who to share these photos with.

Share back suggestions is a neat feature that lets you send photos to a friend, and it uses machine learning to poke them to send photos they took to you. Bonus: iOS 12’s photo sharing features uses iMessage's end-to-end encryption.

Read more: Two Ways to Transfer Photos between iPhone XS and PC

19. iPad switches to iPhone-like gestures

It's confusing owning both an iPad and a new iPhone X right now because returning to the home screen and opening Control Center are executed by different gestures.

The iPad takes cues from the iPhone X with the iOS 12 update: swipe up from the bottom to return home and check Control Center by pulling down from the top right-hand corner.

This may be a prelude to the iPad Pro 2018 that's rumored to include Apple's TrueDepth camera for Face ID, Animoji, and Memoji.

20. Siri translates new languages, learns motorsport scores

Siri can now translate over 40 language pairs

Motorsports scores, schedules and stats knowledge

Food and celebrity facts knowledge expanded upon

Password search now part of Siri's duties in iOS 12

Try asking Siri to translate something into Spanish. It works, and with iOS 12 it'll be even more robust with over 40 language pairs to aid your international travels.

So far, Siri will translate English (US) into Brazilian Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Russian and Spanish. We really hope Siri will be able to translate foreign words into English. That may have to wait for iOS 13.

Siri will also learn the language of motorsports, per se. Asking for Formula One and NASCAR information will have Siri recite live standings, schedule, roster and stat info.

Food knowledge and celebrity facts are also part the Siri update. Right now, asking "How healthy is fish" gives a smatter of search results and requires opening up Siri. In the future, a specific answers about food will come from the USDA database, citing calories, vitamins, and how healthy the food is overall.

Password hunting is now within Siri's grasp, letting you search any saved passwords, according to Apple. This applies to both apps and websites.

21. Pinpoints 911 calls in the US

You won't have to worry about reciting your exact location when calling 911 in the US thanks to iOS 12. It'll pinpoint your whereabouts during emergency calls.

Apple says it'll "automatically and securely" share your iPhone location with first responders, but only with them and only during such emergencies. It's an effort to reduce response time, yet maintain your privacy.

22. iOS 12 compatibility

Compatible with iPhone 5S, iPad mini 2 and iPad Air and newer

11 iPhones, 10 iPads, 1 iPod touch – the broadest iOS update yet

iOS 12 will run on all devices that have its 64-bit chipset. It'll work on the iPhone 5S and newer, while the iPad Air and iPad mini 2 are the oldest iPads that are compatible with iOS 12.

That's means this update is supporting 11 different iPhones, 10 different iPads, and the sole iPod touch 6th generation, still clinging to life. It’s the broadest support for a software update Apple has ever offered, and this is one of the biggest advantages Apple has over Android phones.

23. Weather app warns unhealthy air quality

Apple's official weather app contains new messaging that indicates air quality in cities. This is where Sunny, Cloudy, and Partly Cloudy messaging usually sits. iOS 12 puts it in a spot where you'll see it more regularly, as opposed to a separate air quality app.

The forecast New York City as of writing this, for example, tells us that the area has 'Unhealthy Air Quality for Sensitive Groups'. People with asthma therefore may want to stay indoors.

When did iOS 12 launch?

June 4 – Developer beta launched (to paid Apple Developers)

June 25 – iOS 12 public beta launched (it's free)

September 17 – the final iOS 12 software (still free)

iOS 12 released on Monday, September 17 following the iPhone XS launch event, where Apple announced the official launch date. You can now download it.

There were actually three phases to the iOS 12 launch: one for developers, one for public beta testers, and one final version launching in mid-September.

First, the developer beta launched at WWDC and got more frequent refreshes, but it was early software. You have to be a registered Apple developer, which costs $99 for the annual membership. It's for people who like to tinker with Xcode and make apps.

Second, iOS 12 public beta launched on June 25 and was completely free. It was less problematic than the developer beta. The downside? It was always one step behind what the developers have access to.

Third, the final software, meant for everyone, launched on September 17. There's no need to jump through hoops to enroll in a beta. iOS 12 is now here in its final form, right in time for the iPhone XS release date.

That's a wrap for new iOS 12 features.

The two biggest highlights were Grouped notifications and Group FaceTime with Memoji. Of course, Group FaceTime is not due to launch just yet, which means an inevitable iOS 12.1 and more updates for us to write about.

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Our fantasy library: Unlimited ebooks for under $10 a month The new application Oyster is proclaimed as the "Netflix for books." Let's test-drive.

Oyster has effectively settled a convincing lift pitch: "Netflix for books." Pay a month to month expense, access a boundless number of 100,000 titles accessible in Oyster's application. The application is perfectly planned and unquestionably equals that of Amazon's Kindle and Apple's iBooks adaptation. In any case, regardless of whether its plan of action is as quite a bit of a danger, and whether it satisfies the Netflix legacy it's brought on itself, is another matter.Right now, the Oyster application is constrained to an iPhone-arranged rendition, however iPad and Android forms are in progress. The application as of now receives the iOS 7 configuration touches, with level, gently drawn symbols and a lot of void area. At the point when clients first open the application, it requests that they pick five books to drive the main group of suggestions.

The home screen comprises of columns of sorted suggestions, altogether like Netflix. There's space for books that are "new and imperative" or "prevalent on Oyster" and also extraordinary subjects: "sports stories," "business basics," and "book to blockbuster" (books that moved toward becoming motion pictures) are some of mine.

An individual book's screen demonstrates the cover, title, writer, and any evaluating you've given it, assuming any. Without a rating, Oyster will fill in an all inclusive star rating for the book, yet it doesn't gather any more subjective data like client surveys. Clam has no reported arrangements for such an element, however Eric Stromberg, one of Oyster's authors, disclosed to Ars that the group would like to "keep building up the social side."

Looking down the page gives you a short outline of the book, and additionally a slate of "related" titles. On the off chance that the book looks fascinating, a menu will give you a chance to add it to your perusing list. On the off chance that it's something you've as of now read, you can likewise keep up a different read rundown and give it your very own positioning out of five stars.This is the place Oyster's heuristic proposal calculation seems to kick in. When I included 1984 and The Handmaid's Tale to my read list and positioned them five stars, the home screen brought forth another proposal push called "tragic science fiction."

"We concentrate on three things to guarantee perusers find extraordinary books: article sets, algorithmic suggestions, and social movement," Stromberg said. "As we pick up understanding into the inclinations and action of perusers and also the similitudes among books, suggestions will turn out to be all the more exceedingly customized."

The proposals can be truly far away still. While taking a gander at A Sport and a Pastime, a romance book, the vast majority of the related peruses were books about games and baseball.

Clients can get to their own read and perusing records from a tab in their own profile. This data is all accessible to your "devotees" on the administration, who drive a moment wellspring of suggestions: your interpersonal organization. Clam has no endorsement choice for adherents, so for the present, you're perusing and read records are pretty much public.You can conceal books on a book-by-book premise by opening the chapter by chapter list and flipping a change to "peruse secretly," yet you should download the book first. Books are downloaded to your gadget just once you open them to peruse, yet Oyster will hold down the last 10 books you have associated with so you will have the capacity to peruse disconnected, on the metro, exploring the Appalachian trail, thus forth.The next tab over from Oyster's heuristic suggestions is "action," which is as of now a scramble of books that unspecified individuals from your circle are either perusing or have added to their rundowns. A few titles likewise appear as "top of the line," likely when a modest bunch of your companions have associated with them.

With regards to real perusing, Oyster separates itself from other well known book perusing applications by utilizing vertical looking over. A list of chapters menu gives you a chance to hop between part titles. The best some portion of the interface, by a wide margin, is some minor content in the base right corner of the screen that reveals to you what number of pages and minutes of perusing are left in the section, hindering the need to page into the book to see where you can stop. As God is my witness, I should never flip forward again!

Brilliance and sort estimate conformities are accessible inside the application. There are likewise a modest bunch of shading plans and text styles, however they are connected together as subjects. "Proclaim," for example, is dim on light dim with a serif textual style, while "Migrant" is dark, thin, sans-serif sort on a finely-designed Swiss dab background.Scrolling is not constant, so perusers still need to swipe between pages. A tap on the screen raises an advance bar that will demonstrate the peruser's rate of the path into the book.

Shellfish is at present welcome just, and it offers its administrations at $9.95 a month ($2 more than a Netflix spilling membership). I plunk down $8 consistently in light of the fact that the heaps of substance accessible on Netflix appears like a take at that cost, however Oyster's charge gives me somewhat more delay.

The esteem you escape a month to month benefit has principally to do with the amount you utilize it. On the off chance that you read 10 books a month and never touch them again, Oyster is enormous for you. In any case, there is additionally the issue of the genuine estimation of what you're getting with respect to the membership cost.

There are contentions to be made about the subjective incentivized offers of books versus Television versus Motion pictures, however it's all diversion time for me. Separated to a proportion of cost-to-time, nothing beats TV.

In spite of how costly periods of TV shows are, at $20 for 13 one-hour scenes, they turn out to about $15 for 10 hours. Books are somewhat more costly: at $10 for a 300-page book, that is about $20 for 10 hours. Motion pictures are over the top at $10-15 for every two-hour motion picture; that works out to $50-75 for 10 hours.This makes Netflix's boundless gushing a gigantic incentive for even easygoing film watchers: one motion picture a month and you're doing fine, yet I'd wander that most clients get a considerable amount more in. I myself watch a humiliating measure of TV, so despite the fact that TV as an item is really modest to drop by, I'm making out like an outlaw.

At present, I tend not to peruse the same number of books. I've generally been an energetic peruser, however since I now do as such a lot of it for work, I tend not to get past more than a book or two a month. Thus, I would come significantly more nearer to earning back the original investment on the incentivized offer of Oyster.

All things considered, I've never had admittance to an administration that makes finding new books to peruse simple and takes the weight off choosing to burn through cash on one, which is the thing that Netflix accomplishes for motion pictures and TV. (You say, "shouldn't something be said about libraries?" I say, "the library beyond any doubt is a great deal more remote than one matrix space far from Twitter on my telephone.") Hopelessly optimistic as this seems to be, perhaps I can really fulfill more book perusing thusly.

As we've found with most advanced inventories in late history, 100,000 sounds greater than it is. Numerous things you search out likely won't be accessible. All things considered, just from perusing the produced proposals and two quests, I have a perusing list 19 books in length. At long last, I may have nobody to fault for not perusing but rather myself.