#/i left it open to whether you

[witchoflegends]

@desmuerte​ sent: “You have a lot of bite for someone so small.” (for rose??? )

“Well, not everyone can just wait for some bat to come swooping in to save the day.” Rose made sure to check her surroundings one more time before turning on the safety of her gun and returning it to her bag. It was nights like these she regretted returning to the city. “And just because I’m not a body builder, doesn’t mean I’m small. I’m 5′7″ for crying out loud.”

[uncriticalbunny]

sydney and carmy have such a deranged dynamic so it's very funny when people try to put them in a "professional coworkers" box like bffr nothing about their relationship is professional

[rahabs]

the fact that you would defend the israeli government after they’ve murdered 30,000 innocents in the largest bombing campaign in modern history is literally despicable and borderline evil. if a genocide documented ad nauseam cannot make you cognizant of israel’s colonial and deeply racist regime, then literally nothing can and you are beyond reasoning with. actually incredible how multiple history degrees have clearly taught you nothing about how a genocide works — or perhaps more concerningly, they have, and you simply don’t care because the victims are palestinian. the fact that you would use those very history degrees to excuse israel’s genocide of palestinians is deeply disturbing and indicative of the rancid hypocrisy within western academia. history will exonerate the indigenous palestinians, and it will be unkind to those like you who defended and cheered on their annihilation.

It‘s so amazing to me that you actually believe this, and that you‘ve so wholeheartedly swallowed the propaganda Hamas (known for using their own civilians as human shields, known for paying their citizens extra for killing Jews) has been peddling. So I am going to paste here some points others have already made that I‘ve saved over the course of information-gathering, though I doubt you‘ll bother to read or learn, judging from your asinine little comments here.

1) Palestine Gaza is a genocidal nation. The goal of the Palestinian government in Gaza is literally to destroy and commit genocide against Israel and kill every Jew by every means possible. This is literally written in their founding charter. "The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors. The Palestinian people know better than to consent to having their future, rights and fate toyed with.

2) Palestine is an apartheid nation that has ethnically cleansed 100% of their Jews and stole their territory after 1948. There used to be tens of thousands of Jews living in the areas of Judea and Samaria, which was renamed to the West Bank by Jordan. However they've all been ethnically after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and 0 Jews are allowed to live in Palestine today. 3) Palestine is an authoritarian dictatorship both in Gaza and the West Bank. Hamas won majority of the votes during an election in 2006, but the Palestinian president simply refused to recognize the results of the election and refused to hand power over to them. This resulted in Hamas siezing power in Gaza, executing hundreds of their political rivals, and they never held another election. Likewise, the leadership in the West Bank also refused to hold any elections and still continue to illegitimately cling to power. Abbas, the president of Palestine had a 4 year term which was supposed to end in 2009. He's still the leader today and has continued to postpone election after election. 4) Palestine supports the outright open murder of innocent civilians. I've already mentioned the charter of the Palestinian government in Gaza above where their goal is to eradicate Israel and genocide Israelis, but the Palestinian government in West Bank is just as horrible. There's the Palestinian Authority Matry Fund where they literally pay a salary / pension to any Palestinians who commmit terrorist attacks against Israelis, be it through stabbings, shootings or suicide bombings, and they've paid out billions so far. The Foundation for the Care of the Families of Martyrs pays monthly cash stipends to the families of Palestinians killed, injured, or imprisoned while carrying out violence against Israel.

5) Palestine is horribly corrupt oligarchy. Palestine receives billions from the USA and Europe in aid every single year. Whatever money isn't spent on paying literal terrorists, or on rockets to shoot at Israel ends up going to corrupt Palestinian leaders. Yasser Arafat, the first Palestinian leader, died a billionaire. Abbas the current President is worth $100 million. The Palestinian leaders in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, Moussa Abu Marzuk and Khaled Mashal have an estimated combined wealth of over $10 billion. Meanwhile the combined GDP of Gaza is only about $2.5 billion, meaning these 3 leaders wealth is equal to 4 years of Gaza's GDP. 6) Palestinians have caused wars and instability in every country that they've sought refuge in. In Jordan, Palestinains assasinated the Jordanian king in 1951, then attempted a coup of a the country in 1970. After they failed, they were expelled to Lebanon where they started a civil war with the Christian Maronites. This war lasted 15 years and killed several times more people than the entire Israel-Palestine war (150k died in Lebanon civil war vs 25k in Palestinian-Israeli wars). In Kuwait, the Palestinians supported Saddam as Iraq invaded Kuwait. In Egypt, they've been hit by several bombings by Palestinians. 7) There is no freedom of speech or equality in Palestine Gaza. No equality of sexes, no equality of races, and definitely no queer rights in the entirety of Palestine where you could be killed for the crime of being openly queer. [If you identify as a liberal, there is literally] no reason to support a country where majority of [your] friends would either have severely restricted rights, be treated like objects, or be thrown off a building just for existing.

Let me reiterate: Jews are indigenous to Israel. Jews have existed and lived in what we now call the Israel-Palestine region for thousands of years before the foundation of Islam, and even before the foundation of Christianity. In the game of “which Abrahamic religion came first?” Islam ranks dead last.

Israel as an identity as a people has existed for thousands of years and has been recorded as far back as the Iron Age on:

i) The Mesha Stele;

ii) The Tel Dan Stele;

iii) The Kurkh Monoliths; and (potentially)

iv) The Merneptah Stele.

While scholars have argued over the translations on the Merneptah Stele, the general consensus among historians, classicists, archaeologist, etc, is that it refers to the existence of Israel at the very least as a collective identity that existed at the time, and was called Israel.

They were eventually repeatedly forced out by other powers such as the Romans and many others, but that doesn’t change the fact that Jews had a continuous existence in Israel before being forced out by what people like you would normally call “colonising powers” were it not so contrary to your own ill-supported arguments. It also doesn’t change the fact that Jews, and Israel, existed before both Christianity and Islam, and long, long before Palestine.

So if your entire argument boils down to "who was here first" and the ideas of "colonialism" and "anti-colonialism" and "decolonisation", then I am telling you, Jews were there first. You could argue Canaanite groups like Moabites and Ammonites were there too, but Moabites and Ammonites don't exist as a continuous group anymore. No matter how you look at it, you are wrong, so let me parrot your horrible argument right back at you:

The fact that you would defend Hamas, a known organisation whose founding Charter literally calls for the annihilation of Jews, who have systematically purged Jews for years, who launched multiple attacks against innocent Jewish people (the music festival, the babies and the woman and the children slaughtered), the fact that there's a Palestinian Authority Matry Fund where they literally pay a salary / pension to any Palestinians who commit terrorist attacks against Israelis, be it through stabbings, shootings or suicide bombings, and they've paid out billions so far; the fact that you defend the existence of the Foundation for the Care of the Families of Martyrs which pays monthly cash stipends to the families of Palestinians killed, injured, or imprisoned while carrying out violence against Israel, etc... that you would defend this is "literally despicable" and not only outright evil, but ignorant to the nth degree.

If the continuous genocidal nature of Hamas against Israel cannot make you cognizant of Hamas' deeply racist, violence, and terrorist regime (to the point where none of the Muslim countries around them will take Palestinians in; even their fellow Muslim countries want nothing to do with them), then I'm not sure what to tell you. You say I am beyond reasoning, but from where I'm standing, your head is so far up your own ass that I don't even know if you're aware of anything that isn't the smell of your own shit.

It's actually incredible to me how you can ignore what multiple historians and scholars are saying because you want to cling to your idea that Hamas are just a bunch of "poor innocent brown people" who need help from the "evil white Israeli regime". Or perhaps, more "concerningly," that is just it: you hate Israel because you erroneously perceive them as white, and so therefore they must be evil. I don't know, but that is what a lot of anti-Israel sentiment seems to boil down to in the world of people like you.

The fact that you would excuse and ignore Hamas' outright horrific acts and ignore history is deeply disturbing and indicative of the rancid hypocrisy within the west, but particularly within western circles that claim to be "progressive", "liberal", and "leftist."

Hamas has said no to every ceasefire. Hamas has said no to every compromise Israel has offered even before October. If Hamas stops fighting, the war ends. If Israel stops, then Israel is annihilated.

History has already shown that Palestinians are not indigenous if we are playing the "who was there first" game with Israel and Palestine, you're just so ignorant that you will refuse to see the evidence right in front of you. You are the one cheering for the annihilation of an indigenous group, and the one history will frown upon is you.

[tswwwit]

Wait, does the cheating thing on the bond always works? bcs that would be kinda freaky for R!Dipper like imagine you get pinned down by someone in the corner of a br or smthng and then said person kissed you and proceeded to explode into red mist and you literally have no idea what happened.

Also, would the constellation mark be a "cursed" Mark over the years, like you would give birth to a baby and the doctor says "😟 I am so sorry ma'am,,, I'm afraid your baby has the Cipher Companion mark. ( could also be something equally as science-y like Ursa Major, Constellation Calamation, etc idk)" And you just burst into tears.

Would that mean that dipper would get into a special program(demon wrangling program or smthng, demonologist? Maybe)? Or would the parents hide it away hoping that Bill would never take their child away?

(Sorry this au is just very interesting to me,,,, I hope u get more motivation, keep writing author 💪)

These are all options! The fun part of reincarnation AU being left ambiguous is that technically any of them could happen.

[fisheito]

how would you eat/cook each nukani character

oh noooooooooo (holds my face in great contemplative agony) u can't do this to me

Eiden: oh mein gotTtTtt getting my hands on eiden would be like receiving an entire cart of summer fresh-from-farm produce. or an entire cow carcass . i would have SO MANY PARTS and SO MANY WAYS to prepare him and every part of him would taste delicious in its own way. there's no way i can ONLY cook eiden one way. i'd have to put him thru every process possible (true to his versatility). i thought about spitroasting him (for the joke) but that's too much eiden for one method. i need to covet him like the king tuna at the fish market as i take him apart piece by piece look. i am frying him like egg for a fast breakfast. i am meticulously grinding him to a paste in a traditional mortar and pestle. i am using him as pesto AND as dipping sauce. i will dehydrate him and drink him as tea. he will be roasted . braised. devoured raw in ceviche. i'll infuse him with vinegars! syrups! oils!! is there a way to make a sourdough starter but it's eidough starter so i can just keep him on my shelf and feed him every day and pass him down for generations? i want eiden for every meal of the day prepared 1000 ways

Aster: would aster taste like blood or the absence of it? hmmmm..... i guess it depends on when he feeds! maybe if i bite into him after a feeding session, he'll burst like a cherry tomato. but otherwise i feel like giving aster the sashimi treatment. put him all fancy on the plate with some garnishes after i treat him with a light citrus wash or smth. a fresh cool flavour!! i'm tempted to make some sort of beverage out of him. dilute him into a fancy mocktail of strange spirits and woody spices. aster juice?!?! looks like pink wine???! i have to treat this one like i'm spoiling him with gifts. he'll probably end up on the artisanal charcuterie board with the fusion jams and marmalades...

Morvay: i feel like he would have a very...particular aroma. he eats a very specialised diet so of everyone in the clan, he has to follow "you are what you eat", right?? my first instinct for some reason is to cure him. like, turn him into prosciutto. if he's gonna have a funky smell, might as well turn up the salt and cure him. tie him up and lock him in the carefully controlled environment of the curing basement. dark... surrounded by other meatbags... slap him around every now and then. slice him up thin and put him on that fancy cheese board with a bunch of other strong smelling foods. slurp him down him with a glass of astringent aster juice to balance out the richness of the morv

Yakumo: soup. he's getting souped. it's only right. might split him half and half into one soup and one stew. maybe the soup will just be a concentrated essence of snek-style broth. like a clear, warming bowl of pho that is DISTILLED YAKUMO and doesn't need much else besides some fave spices to accompany the flavour. as for the stew? i just straight up like stew and it can be so nutritionally complete. so he's going in the classic comfort stew. chunks of yakumo and seasonal vegetables simmered to make a thick hearty pot of glorp. maybe add some alcohol to it if i want to live dangerously. he will sustain me for days to come. anything that i do not turn into soup? i'm going to steam him. a mild little parcel of wrapped yakumo, gently steamed for a hot minute. yakumo tastes best to me when a little wet.

Edmond: to honour his thick sugary ass, i have to turn edmond into some sorta dessert. turn the defrosted ice queen into ice cream? now i could just put edmond in a pot and reduce him until he turns into a syrup but then i would waste all the extra good bits that make up edomon. u need the tsun with the dere and reducing him to pure dere is NOT balanced. he can withstand quite a bit of punishment so maybe i'll whip him up like a custard (by hand FIRST. if that's not strong enough, i'll use an electric hand mixer). turn him into an earl grey creme brulee where u can set him on fire then smack that caramelised crust before spooning out the goopy insides.

Olivine: i feel like i'd wanna enjoy olivine in his least processed form. just enjoy the pure marbled goodness of well-exercised, tender oli. so why not a steak? medium rare to rare? just a little pan-sear and we can chew on him all we want. (i considered searing on a grill, but it's easier around here to get a pan instead of a grill. and oli is all about being accessible to the greatest number of people.) on the other hand, that might not honour oli's nature. he, too, can stand up to a lot of punishment. he might even like it. so part of him can be the relatively unprocessed slab and the other can be a cutlet. that way i can beat him with a hammer, dredge and bread him, then toss him into the deep fryer. to be served with a variety of heavy or creamy sauces.

Quincy: this man is OLD and TOUGH and he probably tastes like every bit of wildlife in the forest combined. then again, he's also always sleeping so does that mean his meat is quite relaxed and i don't have to tenderise forever to be able to chew it? quincy probably eats the simplest diet (no processed microwave preservative type cocktails in here) so he'd be best appreciated in an equally simple dish?? i'd like to skewer him. make him bite-size and cook him over a campfire. alternating with simple salt vs. intricate dry rubs bc i'm not sure which i'd prefer. if he ends up being tough, i'll let him hang out in a savoury marinade for however many days he needs (do NOT make me put a pineapple in there, mister).

Kuya: i lied. **THIS** man is OLD and TOUGH and SINEWY and A BITCHASS to deal with and i bet if i cut him at *just slightly near the wrong spot* then some mystery sac of foul gunk will explode all over me like a punk'd prank. i will take any excuse during the cooking process to abuse this one. grate his rind to infuse in the sauce. mince him for the physical satisfaction then throw him into the blender anyway. toss him violently into a fiery wok and start saute-ing him with every other ingredient ever. i hope you get stabbed by a bunch of pointy carrots. i'll broil him as if he's not already crispy. and I BET at the end of all this work, i'll have somehow have messed up and made him inedible. skill issue. at this point i give up, toss the entire kuya into the pressure cooker, and turn him into stew.

G/Karu: i wanna toss them like a salad (i think they'll have fun with that). i could go the traditional way and make wolf jerky. bring it on the road for a durable snack! if i could somehow chop these two up and turn them into furikake, they could become my convenient, reliable flavour injector for a quick bowl of rice. it's tricky because there are two distinct flavours and they gotta be treated differently to bring out their full potential. but they're also inseparable. what do i do??? i might just put them into my party-type foods where flavours are supposed to mix and it's the wildness of the combos that make it all fun. he's going on the 12-topping pizza!! he's being melted onto the giant tray of nachos!!!

Blade: CAN I EAT THIS? WILL I DIE? WILL MY TEETH BREAK OFF? i have to debone him. i bet there are pointy bits hiding everywhere. get my special tools out and pluck at him for over an hour (i must be thorough). might just put him in the microwave (he'd probably enjoy that). i feel like essence of Blade would also do well as a bubbly drink. mix a simple edroid syrup with some club soda and some edible flowers to look pretty (low calories too!). if the legends are true and blade can adapt to any flavour, i might just turn him into a condiment or special spice mix. grind him to dust and put him in a nice glass container near my stove so i can add him to various foods (the weirder the combo, the better). keep the spirit of experimentation alive with Blade popcorn seasoning!!

Dante: i am gonna make him fragrant as hell. gonna smoke him over intricate spice combos or tea leaves and impart him with the most alluring lung-punchiest sniffs. i don't wanna be too harsh with him but i trust that he'll at least stand up to heat well. he'd probably complain about wasting time, but i'm not rushing the process. u will sit in the smoker and steadily break down over time. maybe after the smoke, i can tuck the odds and ends into a savoury saucy pie. bake him for an hour surrounded by a flaky buttery crust? i might also experiment with some fermentation, like a dante kimchi. i'm curious as to how he'd change flavours given time to age (and just relax for a bit, really).

Rei: i am pickling him. he's gonna become that sour salty lil accompaniment to every meal i have. he'll last forever and somehow never mould and no matter how long i leave him chillin in the fridge, when the time comes to put him on a bun, i know i can rely on him to not suddenly go limp. i still gotta be careful with him tho. can't just stick my fingers in the jar and introduce contaminants all the day because it IS possible to Spoil the Goods idk i just feel like i'd have to let him sit in SOME sort of marinade or brine. if i try to eat him raw i might turn 14 shades of purple before dissolving into radioactive bile

[coquelicoq]

me: how about...natori contracting some kind of youkai illness & matoba finding out about it & showing up to his set & natori dragging him off to his trailer bc it would be bad for his sparkly reputation to make the angry faces he feels coming on in front of his coworkers & matoba offering to help but in that smarmy condescending way that raises natori's hackles so he refuses but unfortunately he doesn't know how to cure it so matoba just keeps showing up every day & natori keeps carting him off to the trailer every time & being suuuuper cagey when people ask him who his visitor is & what if his coworkers get the wrong idea & matoba is fully aware of this & what if one day in the trailer natori reluctantly agrees to let matoba help him & matoba's like okay fine off with your shirt i gotta paint this spell circle on your bare chest & what if he's in the middle of doing that when they hear somebody opening the door to the trailer & obviously they don't want anyone to know what they're actually doing in there bc youkai-exorcist confidentiality so matoba's like no worries i got this & he KISSES NATORI omg classic kiss-as-misdirection trope & the person at the door is like whoops my b carry on gentlemen & after they've left natori is like wtf matoba????? & matoba's like well it's what they all thought we were doing anyway & your mouth was right there & it allowed me to cover the writing on your chest with my body & also you kiss people for a living so i figured it wouldn't be too complex for you & your part-time exorcist training to handle & natori recovers admirably quickly & is like WELL for your information that was a TERRIBLE kiss & no one is gonna buy that i professional makeout artist natori shuuichi would be swapping saliva with somebody on the reg without any of my considerable skill rubbing off on them & matoba's like so what do you propose we do about it & natori's like obviously i have to teach you how to kiss in case they come back -

the bedtime story fairy who thought this was gonna be an easy assignment: please just go to sleep im begging u have mercy ur brain cells are dying

[lesbianspeedy]

thoughts on the brain thoughts on the mind

[countlessrealities]

Discussed starter for @angeliclute - Evil Rick & Lute

Rick was used to trouble and potentially deadly situations. They had been a constant in his life since his youngest years, no matter if he had tried to avoid them...At least for a while. By the time he had turned sixteen, he had become so jaded not to care enough to do so anymore.

That, however, didn't mean that he didn't find such occurrences extremely annoying to deal with. Even more when he had other, more important plans on the way.

That was hardly his first time in a Hell dimension. He visited them almost on a regular basis, both as an observer and as an active participant. He had even captured and dragged away a few specimens in some occasions.

That particular visit, though, should have been a swift one. He had come to recover a very interesting sort of weapon he had by chance seen used. An alien metal alloy, which seemed to have special properties, definitely worth a closer look and some experimenting.

Unfortunately, choosing a time of chaos in the city to go unnoticed had turned out to be a double-edged sword. While, on one hand, most of the residents were too busy with their petty turf wars to notice him, the few who did necessarily needed to be terminated before they went screaming that a live human being was walking around their streets.

The demon's blood splashed on the bottom of his lab coat as he shot the latest nuisance that had step in his way in the skull, their blood joining the rest of the stains that already covered his skin and clothes. Not that he noticed. He was more than used to be covered in blood, his own and others' alike. What mattered was that he had finally reached his destination. He just had to find the right room and then he could have left to never return.

Yet, he barely had the time to cross the atrium, when he felt a presence close behind him. Rick jumped on the side, much more quickly than a human should have been capable off, avoiding the sword that had been aimed at his back.

The creature he found himself facing was more humanoid than most of the beings he had encountered so far and with less animal traits, aside from the wings on her back. Under other circumstances, those differences would have piqued his interest, but right now he was single-mindedly following his aim.

"L-Let me go." Cold, emotionless gray blue eyes locked on her weapon. "Or I'll take what I've come for off your corpse."

[labyrynth]

there’s this one blog that i see. a lot. who is a blatant tankie.

like. not even trying to hide it.

“hong kong and taiwan have always been part of china. the soviet union was a very nice place for everyone to live. mao’s leadership was amazing. you’ve been brainwashed by capitalism to think otherwise. they were wonderful and the fascists are lying to you” type shit.

i would really, really like to see them less bc every time i see them it leaves a bad taste in my mouth

[prodigiumamare]

♡ @wh0safra1d

𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒎𝒆𝒍𝒍 𝒐𝒇 𝒐𝒇𝒇𝒂𝒍 𝒊𝒔 𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒊𝒏 𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒏𝒐𝒔𝒕𝒓𝒊𝒍𝒔 , 𝒔𝒖𝒃𝒕𝒍𝒆 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒆𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒓 .   serena licks her lips as she goes through all the preliminary questions ⸻ have you had any surgeries , have you ever had a myocardial infarction , do you have a history of angina , are you having sudden vision problems ⸻ while she delightfully thinks back to her last night's meal . he had been cute in a ' edgy alcoholic who still dressed like a grunge singer in the 2020s ' kind of way , even if she'd had to slowly cook down his fatty liver for hours . it'd made a nice  𝚙â𝚝é  , one she was excited to spread on the crackers she'd brought to snack on throughout the workday . she finishes taking the blood pressure of the other woman , noting the results into her computer , and turns to face the patient .

❛ so ! ❜ she smiles falsely , putting on her persona of a  𝚌𝚑𝚎𝚎𝚛𝚏𝚞𝚕  and  𝚌𝚑𝚒𝚙𝚙𝚎𝚛  nurse that loved her job above anything . ❛ what are you here for ? ❜

[faggotwalkwithme]

dude 2days french class is so funny.

[r0semultiverse]

I think that YouTube was better when only views & likes/dislikes were measured rather than how long people watch through a video in one sitting. This is partially what killed off rick rolling and mostly killed off creativity and long-form content as well as variety on the platform. They measure video analytics a similar way to how Netflix measures if a show deserves more seasons or not, how much of the entire season (or in this case, video) was watched in one sitting within those 24-48 initial release hours. Absolute worse content analytics change to be normalized on the internet.

I also miss when liked videos didn’t have a cap on how many likes you could have, but I’m not sure if that was always a thing or only a change implemented in recent years to cut back on data storage costs.

[unopenablebox]

does the fact that maybe.... 25-50% of the time, i seem to be much, much better at rhetoric and message-crafting than anyone else in the room [union meeting] i am in, indicate that i have a moral duty to go full-time union organizer and be really all-in on Comms and Messaging

[basuralindo]

there are some things about entomology you learn through research and some that you learn from practical experience such as the ability to differentiate spider species or at least ballpark genus by their webs mostly from walking into them every fucking day and night of your life.

[quietwingsinthesky]

i cant decide what would be better tbh: either 11089 volunteers to stay behind to keep watch over donna post-memory wipe but they’re still human — even if from far in the future — and get Master-fied with everyone else and have to afterwards deal with the fact that they couldn’t help at all <3 OR. something Horrible happened along their travels with the doctor that means that they don’t really count as human anymore.

[dreampedia]

WHERE: anywhere you'd like, just a place with a lot of footfall! WHEN: midday (no specific date, just current) WHO: anyone! ( @anchoragestarters ) CAP: 4/4 (FULLY CAPPED!)

The first two months of the year hadn't been easy on anybody. The Valentine's week in particular had taken quite the toll on poor Mio but, as always, she was quick to bounce back and she'd returned to her ever-peppy self before the next week was out. Enough time had passed since then that all she could think about was helping everyone else to get back on their feet. Her work at the day care meant that she'd been able to cheer up the children left distressed and confused by the blackouts but there were no doubt still adults out there who'd been unable, or perhaps as yet unwilling, to get their minds off things.

That was why she was stood in the middle of a busy (relatively speaking, for a place like Anchorage) street, gripping a thick stack of fliers and trying to wave to attention anybody who passed by. It had been going on like this for a short while now and, while she'd gotten a few people to accept a flier, she wasn't convinced she'd really gotten through to anybody. Eye contact was made with someone walking by and she knew, as she had known the past umpteenth times, that she had to take her chance now.

"Hi!" she beamed, hopping in front of her target with a gleaming grin on her face, "We're doing dance classes to lift spirits. Take a look! I designed these myself!" She produced a flier from the pile and thrust it into their hands. It was a bright pink and flashy affair and covered big, blocky text. Not a single hint of the sleek sheen often associated with dance studios. But that had been by design, she wasn't looking to scare people off. "You don't have to be a good dancer. You don't even have to be very confident," said Mio, sincerely, "You just have to be ready and willing to participate! And it's a great way to meet new people." She cupped her mouth with one hand and then, in a conspiratorial stage-whisper, she added, "Sometimes hot people, if you're on the lookout for that."