#$1000+ range

[beanbagbuddies4life]

Chef Robuchon the Bear

via https://beaniebabiespriceguide.com/chef-robuchon/ and https://rarestbeans.com/2021/09/08/chef-robuchon-ty-beanie-baby-teddy/

Born September 18, 2006

If there is no love more sincere than the love of food you’ll find your soul mate in Chef Robuchon’s cuisine.

RarestBeans.com writes:

"Other sites have outlined the history of this piece. But a quick recap: Ty Warner, owner of the Four Seasons New York, hired famed Michelin Star chef Joel Robuchon to be his executive head chef at the L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon – the premier restaurant in the hotel. The restaurant was set to open on September 5th, 2006. Mr. Warner invited select food critics, journalists, and other guests/prominent foodies in NYC to attend dinner on one of three evenings (Sept 18, 19, or 20th, 2006). Exactly how these bears were distributed is unclear, but for particular journalists/reporters, the bear was sent out as an invite, with a a special red invite. Now here is the bit that is a bit less certain, and leads into a bit of the subtly of this bear. It is said Ty made about 200 examples of this piece, but we do not believe all 200 went out as “invites” to journalists. This is speculation, but stick with us for a second. The ones that did, came with a “complete” red invite, clearly prompting advanced RSPV’s ahead of the event. Other examples were given out with a “blank” red invite that omitted the date selection. We believe these were examples given out either at the event, or shortly thereafter by Ty/Chef Robuchon to guests. More examples still may have been distributed at the event itself without any invite/box at all. After all, no need for an invite once you were already at the event. And Ty typically likes to give mementoes to guests/members of his posh properties (Coral Casino bear to club members, San Ysidro Bently cat sold at the ranch gift shop, etc.).

Ty has made event-exclusive Beanies plenty of times before, but this one is substantially rarer than, for example, even the Billionaire Bears. RarestBeans.com poses a couple of theories: first of all, the foodies and journalists recieving these weren't really Beanie fanatics and might not have considered these valuable at all. Furthermore, some of the invited journalists probably had limitations on the value of gifts they could accept, and to sell these Beanies for the thousands they might have been worth would be a breach of contract. One way or another, RarestBeans.com posits that only a dozen or so have hit the collector market, ever. Whether the other ~180 are still out there we'll never know.

However, in 2018, Chef Roubuchon passed away and one more was revealed by his estate: Chef Roubuchon's personal bear. This is literally a one-of-a-kind piece, sporting curly brown fur and padded feet to differentiate itself from the rest. This may literally be the most valuable Beanie of all time.

Huge thanks as always to Becky and Karen at truebluebeans.com for much of this information.

[xysidhequeen]

The King and his Red Knight

DPxDC crossover fic

Part 1

Really sorry to everyone who suffered through the fact that I didn't know about the existence of readmore. I can't fix the thread now but the individual posts are better? Sorry I have like a very rough idea of how this site works 😭

Check the: The King and his Red Knight tag to find all the parts

"Go here, Danny. Go then, Danny. Go to a random cemetery in the middle of the night for no reason, Danny." A voice grumbled, accompanied by the sound of sneakers rhythmically tapping stone.

Danny Fenton, currently Phantom, sat on a gravestone, his white hair a beacon in the dark night. There were no stars in the sky for him to gaze upon, their light hidden behind swaths of smog and neon lights playing off the gray clouds.

Clockwork had dumped him here, with no explanation for why. Not that he ever really explained much when he sent Danny off on his tasks. He supposed he should be grateful, at least he was in the same when rather than being transported a thousand years into the past.

"Wait here King Phantom. You will understand in time." Danny mimicked his mentor's voice as he let himself float off the grave he'd been dumped on after Clockwork shoved him out of a portal. His body floated higher until he could flip around, his legs crossing. He sat upside down, his chin in his palm as he glared petulantly at the assembled gravestones surrounding him, his toxic green eyes glowing.

"So far all I've seen is a concerning amount of ecotplasm for a city without a ghost portal and some blob ghosts! How long am I supposed to wait here?" Danny asked the air, and the aforementioned blob ghosts who were hanging off his body, soaking in the ambient ecotoplasm he radiated at all times now.

Neither provided him with an answer to his question and Danny let out a frustrated groan as he lowered his still flipped body to look once more on the gravestone he'd been tasked with waiting on.

Jason Todd, the name read. The dates, too close together, made something in Danny squeeze painfully. He'd been young, barely older than Danny when he stepped into the portal. Only for this teenager there had been no ectoplasm to bind to his dying body and repair the damage of death and force him back into a semblance of life.

"Who were you and why did Clockwork send me to you?" Danny asked the gravestone, one clawed finger tracing the words before he pulled back with a sigh when the gravestone gave him no explanation. The dead didn't always speak, not even to their king.

Turning his body Danny looked over the rest of the cemetery. It was empty, as most usually were this time of night, of the living. There were a few shades wandering around, circling closer to him, drawn by his presence. No full ghosts though, but oddly enough there rarely were in cemeteries. This was where the dead came to rest. To remember, if they wanted to. Cemeteries were sacred spaces to the dead, much as a temple or a church would be for the living who were religious. Ghosts who still clung to life, to their obsessions, did not frequent cemeteries, did not dare trespass and disturb those who had already found their peace.

Danny himself was an oddity. He had never shied from cemeteries, enjoying the peace he found in them, the guarantee of safety offered. And perhaps, he mourned that he himself would never have a gravestone for the living to place their flowers and their tears at. Who would make a grave for someone who was both alive and dead? There would never be a body to bury for him. His human half would continue to live on so long as his ghost core remained and could fuel it.

Maybe that was why he found peace in cemeteries, for all his whining that Clockwork had dumped him here. Cemeteries were for the living and the dead, one of the only places both existed in harmony naturally. For someone who was as much dead as he was alive such a place held a certain degree of belonging for him.

Danny straightened out in the air, letting his body lie above the grave as he folded his arms behind his head and looked up at the covered sky. He complained and whined about this task, but he was secretly glad that Clockwork had given him something to do. Even if it was just 'hang out in a random cemetary'.

Ever since he'd graduated high-school, revealed himself to his parents and discovered how deep prejudice and hate could run, and he'd run away to the Infinite Realms for sanctuary while his friends moved forward with their lives, he'd felt unmoored. A ghost with no haunt. Bored was too light a word for the gaping emptiness he felt in his chest, for the loneliness clawing at him. Clockwork, Wulf, Pandora they could help chip at the ache inside of him but not banish it. Not now that his family, his friends, were spread so far apart and so distant from him.

Not that he resented their choices, their distance, in fact he'd fought for them to do just that, to get out of Amity Park, to go to college, to become more than overworked teen superheroes. Still he missed them, even if he could visit them whenever he wanted. It was becoming clear as time moved forward that the world they belonged to and the one he did were two different things.

Danny Fenton couldn't go to college when his parents had declared him dead. Danny Fenton didn't exist as far as the government was concerned. Danny Phantom couldn't return to Amity when those same parents were waiting to capture him and tear him apart 'molecule by molecule'. Danny Phantom couldn't go back when the GIW were crawling over the town like ants.

So neither Danny Fenton or Danny Phantom returned to Amity after that day. And he made sure they couldnt follow him when he ensured the portal that took his life to function never opened again. He didn't need the portal any longer to get in and out of the Infinite Realms, and it was safer for the ghosts, his subjects, if the temptation of the Fenton portal was gone.

The world of the living was not yet ready to accept that the dead didn't always stay dead. And Danny would keep his people safe until they were.

Danny jolted from his lazing state of reverie when a pulse of emotion rocked through him, the strength of it stealing his breath if he had any to take.

Fear/Trapped/Dark/Fear/Help/HELP pounded into him and Danny frantically flipped around, head swiveling, poisonous green eyes wide as he triedf to locate the source. The emotions, the plea for help, burned his core, his Obsession screamed at him.

Help/SomeonePlease/Dark/Trapped/CANTBREATHE/HELP another wave of messages, of emotions pushed themselves at Danny and this time underneath the onslaught he could hear a rhythmic thudding. Danny looked down, horror filling him when he realized the thudding was coming from under the ground. From the grave he'd been hovering over for an hour now.

Danny flew down, sending back a wave of I'mHere/HelpIsComing/I'mComing to the boy trapped in his own coffin, feeling the intense wave of relief and hope sent back before he dived into the earth as if it wasn't there. Danny paused for a moment when he passed the thick wooden coffin, seeing a boy in the dark with wide, panicked blue eyes and fingers tipped with shredded nails and fresh blood.

"Hey, I'm going to get you out of here, okay?" Danny told the boy, keeping his voice gentle, soft. The boy jolted, fixating on the only source of light, Danny's growing green eyes. Danny hoped his smile came off as calming instead of 'freaky AF' as Tucker liked to call it. He grabbed the boy, Jason, as carefully as he could and then let his intangibility wash over the terrified teen as he lifted them both out of the coffin.

When they emerged from the coffin and the ground Danny set the teen down, leaning him against the gravestone, his own gravestone, and pulled back a bit. The boy was gasping in air as if the fetid, polluted air was the sweetest thing he'd ever tasted.

Danny tilted his head as he watched the boy ground himself. Now that the emotions were leveling out and his Obsession was purring in contentment rather than growling in a frenzy, Danny could feel something off about the boy.

Disregarding the fact that he'd just come back from the dead, of course. But that wasn't the oddest thing Danny had seen in his afterlife. No the boy felt... not like a normal, living human. Not even like an Amity Park resident, who all felt more than slightly liminal. No this boy, this Jason Todd, felt closer to liminal than even Jazz, Tucker or Sam, who were three of the most liminal humans Danny had ever been around.

Jason felt almost...like a ghost. But not. Danny could feel the tickle in his throat that proceeded his ghost sense but the tell-tale mist never emerged. It was as if Jason was...like him. But Danny couldn't sense a core either. Even halfas had cores.

"Who are you?" Jason spoke, breaking Danny from his thoughts and examination. Jason was looking at him with a mix of gratitude and suspicion. Which, fair. Danny had just pulled him from his own coffin and there were so many questions that could stem from all of this, disregarding all the weirdness that was just Danny himself.

"I'm Danny, Danny Phantom. Or just Phantom. I go by either. And you're Jason, right?" Danny asked, smiling at the teen and oops, yeah that was definitely his scary smile based on the slight flinch there. It wasn't his fault his teeth were too sharp now and his lips split a bit too wide.

"How did you know that?" Jason asked, blue eyes narrowing. Danny nodded at the gravestone the boy was leaning against with a raised brow. Jason turned and almost toppled over from the movement. Danny frowned as the boy caught himself on his gravestone. His skin was still pale, too pale, and as Danny watched Jason swayed again.

"Shit. You're fading. You didn't form a core and your body isn't stabilizing." Danny cursed, moving towards the boy who scrambled back, only to be stopped by his grave.

"What the hell are you doing?" Jason asked, hands fisting as he tried to rise only to fall back to the ground when his legs refused to hold his weight.

"Saving your life. The dead aren't supposed to come back. There's always a price to pay, a balance that is struck. Currently, as you are, if I don't get enough ectoplasm in you to form your core, you'll fade and turn into a brain-dead husk." Danny told Jason, tone stern and no nonsense as he grabbed him. Jason made an effort to break free, but it was weak, and even at full strength, he wouldn’t have been able to break Danny's hold. Few in this realm could.

If they had the time, Danny would've approached this situation in a far different manner, but this close he could hear Jason's heartbeat, a weak flutter in his chest, skipping beats as it tried to fuel a body that was past saving. Jason didn't have the time for Danny to approach this gently and kindly, to coax trust out of the teen like he would a feral cat.

Jason had minutes left before his ectoplasm starved body consumed itself trying to make a core and failed because while wherever they were had more ambient ectoplasm than most places, it was far from enough to sustain the birth of a halfa. Maybe if Jason had stayed dead for another year, he'd have naturally formed a core and risen as a proper ghost. But that wasn't what happened, somehow he'd gathered enough to fix his body of whatever wounds or illness had put him in that coffin to begin with and come back to 'life' but without a core to sustain his body he'd be dead, again, in minutes. And Danny was not about to watch while a teenager, another teenager, died.

"How do I know I can trust you?" Jason hissed as Danny pushed his arms down and laid his clawed hands on Jason's chest.

"You don't. But you don't have another choice." Danny said with a shrug. "Now are you going to let me save your life or not?" Danny asked, not moving his hands. He'd save Jason either way but this would be easier if Jason worked with him.

"Fine." Jason spat and Danny smirked as his hands began to glow a toxic green that matched his eyes.

Ectoplasm pooled out of his hands and rushed into Jason, filling him until the boy glowed bright enough to rival the neon lights of the city around them. The green light flared around him like an aura, slowly shrinking but getting impossibly brighter as the glow centralized around his chest until a small glowing ball of green, like a trapped star, blazed from his chest.

Jason gasped, back arching as Danny pulled his hands away and the light vanished under Jason's skin. For a moment Jason's blue eyes burned green and his hair flashed snow white before returning to black, with one single lock of unearthly white left above his forehead. Jason collapsed back against his grave, chest heaving. Danny watched, eyes full of a sad understanding.

"What the fuck was that?" Jason panted out.

"Welcome to the world of the half alive, half dead." Danny said with a smile. "Want to get a burger and talk about it?" He asked, standing up and dusting off his hands.

"Make it a chili dog and you've got a deal."

~~~~~

Fixed some typos added some lines

Maybe I'll continue this AU. Maybe not. This scene was in my head for days and I wanted to share

[coochiequeens]

Another demonstration against Femicide and barely any media attention

Activists denounce 900 femicides under Macron presidency in Paris protest

Mared Gwyn Jones Fri, February 9, 2024

French feminist group #NousToutes took to the streets of Paris on Thursday evening to honour the 900 women murdered in France since Emmanuel Macron came to power.

Holding signs saying "guilty state, justice accomplice," they denounced Macron for failing to protect women and girls from violence.

Some 900 candles representing every woman killed were lit near the city's iconic Eiffel tour, and a 15-metre-long banner with the names and ages of the women was displayed.

It included the names of the 20 women, aged between 16 and 75, the group say have been killed since the beginning of this year.

#NousToutes say the frighteningly high numbers highlight an "absence of real political will" from the French government to tackle gender-based violence.

"Since President Emmanuel Macron took office, more than 900 femicides have been recorded and more than 1,000 children have been orphaned," they said in a statement.

They also say that the "great cause" of Macron's five-year term is conspicuous in its absence.

In November 2017, months after taking office at the Élysée Palace, Macron declared that equality between men and women would become the "grand cause" of his term, vowing to prioritise the crackdown on violence against women.

But Macron sparked fierce condemnation in 2020, when he appointed Gérald Darmanin to the post of Minister of the Interior.

Darmanin at the time faced allegations of rape.

Macron came under further fire earlier this year when he defended French actor Gérard Depardieu's right to be presumed innocent after he was accused of sexual assault.

In a further blow to his "grand cause", Macron has been blasted for blocking the inclusion of rape as an EU-wide crime in new EU laws to fight violence against women.

"Nothing has changed since 2016 and the start of our count, we have been at the same rate for eight years, with a woman killed every three days by her partner or ex-partner," Julia, not her real name, told the AFP news agency on Thursday.

The group say their femicide count helps raise public awareness of the gravity of the problem and put pressure on Macron's government to take action.

Macron became France's President in May 2017 and is currently serving his second term.

[frenchcurious]

Ronnie Peterson SEFAC - Ferrari 312 PB double la Porsche 911 S de Klaus Rang / Eberhard Sindel aux 1000 km de Spa-Francorchamps 1972. © Rainer Schlegelmilch / Motorsport - source Carros e Pilotos.

[incorrect-jojolands-quotes]

For this lunar new year, I demand to see Dragona Joestar wearing an Ao Dai bc I've decided to make them an honorary Vietnamese girlie. Here are a few I think they would choose to wear.

[feluka]

the esims for the MENA region being in USD currency is so difficult 😢 i went to look at how much once costs and that's 280 EGP per ONE GB!! please please circulate the links among yourselves in the west, that's the only hope

[todayisafridaynight]

reminiscing on the period where i didnt know sawashiro was modeled after ttm and the second i learned and embraced that it 1000% altered the way i drew him These Are Not The Same Bitch

[dallonwrites]

okay silliness over we are going to edit these flash pieces

[vampyrsm]

i need to fuck that old man!

[pepsinister]

dropped the suburban off for safety inspection I’m so scared 🫣

[shimdta]

URL song spelling game! Thank you @bunlux for tagging me!

Setting Sail, Coming Home - Darren Korb

Heir of Grief - Seth Peelle, Toby Fox, Malcolm Brown, and Joren De Bruin

Into the Unkown - The Blasting Company

Metamorphosis - Penny Parker

Data & Picard - Pogo

Tot Musica - Ado

Answers - Nobou Uematsu

let me see if i can find anyone to tag @pinkglitteringdemondildos, @isayoldbean, @tangyaura, @banana-babies, @hollis-exe feel free to do it or not if i saw you on my activity recently i targeted you

[juniperhillpatient]

u guys don’t understand how often I start house of 1000 corpses trilogy rewatches with the full intent to rewatch all 3 movies but I have adhd & also have seen the first 2 so many times I have them practically memorized lol

[finalgirl420]

I’m in the sunken place guys

[wordybee]

It's messed up that mixed breed dogs are now considered "designer breeds" instead of what they actually are, which are adorable mutts.

[zemnarihah]

gun to my head i could not tell you what grade i have in this class

[ellcrys]

tagged by @lordsardine~! thank you for the tag~! <3

rules: shuffle your 'on repeat' playlist & post the first ten tracks, then tag ten people 🎶

[my ‘jams’ playlist on spotify is what I listen to most but when I’m hyperfixating on anime and nerdy shit I’m on youtube bc it just has more stuff. I don’t have any playlists on youtube tho; I just search for whatever I’m in the mood for. I promise I’m not this basic lmfao]

Diamonds - Sam Smith

Rumors - Lizzo ft. Cardi B

Chances - Backstreet Boys

Fade Away - Morgan Page & VIVID

Close Your Eyes - KSHMR & Martin Tungevaag

Tattoo - Loreen

Physical - Dua Lipa

Feeling You - Harrison Storm

Tempo - Lizzo ft. Missy Elliott

If We Have Each Other - Alec Benjamin

tagging: @akechikurusus, @stella-azurite, @itstimetodrew, @goldshitter, @aroceu, @witchplays, @xxminisamxx, @trustmy-rage, @vaniccio, and @popflythesky if you want! and anyone else who I missed who wants to - treat me to your music tastes!