#I could have like a survey or something for people to suggest prompts or vote so I can see what everyone wants

[multishipper-baby]

Thinking about it more deeply, I think maybe it would be best to attempt a general FHS event first and then maybe see if there's an audience for a more specific one later.

[rosiehunterwolf]

There's Sand Everywhere!

(quick shoutout to @fires-of-ninjago for the title idea and inspiration for this- you remember that ask game where people suggested titles for fics and you had to come up with a story to go along with it? Well, he sent in this title, and I came up with this, and liked it so much that I screenshotted it and- here we are!)

Prompts: Summer and Heist

Word Count: 7,922

Characters: The whole gang (including Pixal) :)

Timeline: Between seasons 12 and 13

Trigger Warnings: none (holy shit that's never happened before-)

Summary: It was just supposed to be a day off. A simple beach day. But when your family consists of six ninja and a samurai, including a nindroid convinced he’s a detective, his reluctant sidekick, an aquaphobe, a girl who can command the sea, an unassuming teen who seems to attract every animal he crosses paths with, and a bunch of argumentative idiots, nothing is ever that easy.

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Read on Ao3

Tumblr work under the cut

“We,” Kai proclaimed, surveying the room, “Need a day off.”

Lloyd shrieked at the fire ninja’s sudden outburst, falling out of his chair. Jay broke into snickers, and Lloyd shot him a glare.

“Kai,” Zane sighed, “get off the table.”

Kai stuck his tongue out at the nindroid, but hopped down, anyway. “Look at you guys!” Kai waved his hands at the group for emphasis. Papers fluttered to the ground where Lloyd had knocked them in his fall, Jay and Nya were sitting on the ground, surrounded by stacks of books tall enough to be mistaken for some kind of fort, Pixal was gathering some of the papers that had gone everywhere, while Cole and Zane had only just paused in their task of boxing up and carrying crates to the far side of the room. “Filing documents and organizing? Boooring.”

“Tasks which you’ve been a big help with, by the way,” Lloyd grumbled, as Cole offered him a hand and pulled him to his feet. He turned back to the desk, shuffling papers off of the keyboard of his laptop, the screen filled with lines of script and dozens of files that made Kai's brain hurt just to look at.

Nya pushed her reading glasses up her nose. “Jay and I technically aren’t working. We chose to do this of our own free will.”

Kai rolled his eyes at her. “What kind of psychopaths read for fun?”

Jay kicked his leg out, aiming for Kai’s ankle, but Cole quickly stepped between them, stopping the conflict before it could escalate into anything worse.

“We’re not reading them, we’re sorting them in order from most potentially useful to least so. They’re mechanics and engineering books. You never know when they might come in handy in a pinch.”

“Oh, because that’s so much more interesting. If you guys wanna spend all your free time geeking out, fine, what do I care. But what about the rest of you? C’mon, Lloydster. You don’t really wanna spend your entire day doing this,” he gestured at the laptop and paper-strewn desk- “do you?”

“It’s not about whether or not I want to. This stuff is important, Kai.”

“Lloyd’s right,” Zane agreed. “With all the crazy missions we’ve been on lately, we’ve neglected all our paperwork, and taking care of the Monastery.”

“It’s because we’ve been gone so long that we need a break!” Kai argued. “We just got done saving the entire city from an evil video game AI! If that’s not worth celebrating, I don’t know what is.”

“Technically,” Nya remarked, not even glancing up from the book she was skimming, “That was Jay who did that.”

Kai spluttered, ignoring the smug look on Jay’s face. “Okay, yeah, but we helped! And what about Aspheera? Or the Never Realm? That was all of us. And we didn’t have time to properly recuperate from that before we got launched right into Prime Empire!”

Pixal’s brow furrowed. “Y’know, he has a point…”

A frown flitted across Zane’s face. “I suppose we have been working for a long time…”

“That’s what I’ve been saying! Come on, let’s do something fun.”

“Not video games,” Cole groaned. “Jay and I spent the last three days playing a Lava Zombies tournament, and I’m all gamed-out.”

“No, let’s actually go somewhere. Like the-”

“The library!” Jay pitched.

“Or the museum!” Zane suggested.

“No!” Kai snapped. “Man, you guys are so lame. I meant somewhere fun. We should go to-”

“The beach!” Nya cried suddenly, standing up so quickly that she sent a pile of books toppling over. “Brilliant idea, Kai!”

“Wait, no,” he yelped. “That’s not what I was going to-”

But no one heard him. They were already scrambling to their feet, murmuring excitedly to one another.

“Guys, wait!” he cried. “Why would you want to go to the beach? It’s all sandy, and wet, and-”

“Don’t worry, Kai,” Nya giggled, “we won’t let the ocean hurt you.”

“That’s not-” he felt himself turning red as the others laughed. “That’s not what I meant! I just thought… wouldn’t laser tag or something be a lot more fun?”

The others glanced at each other, uncertain. Zane stepped forward. “Let’s take a vote. All in favor of laser tag, raise your hands.”

Kai lifted his hand, but no one else did. He scowled at them.

“And all in favor of the beach?”

Six hands went up.

“Seems like we have a clear winner. Let’s get going, shall we?”

---

“Do you have the towels?”

“All here!”

“What about the sunscreen?”

“Hold on- Jay, did you grab the sunscreen?”

“What?”

Lloyd cupped his hands around his mouth, yelling louder. “Did you grab the sunscreen?”

“Oh yeah, it’s here! Wait, do you have my-”

“Your what?” Lloyd called, walking over to him, passing Pixal and Zane as they came out of the kitchen. The female nindroid sighed.

“Can’t anything get done around here without everyone making such a racket?”

“Nope,” Nya elbowed her playfully. “When you’ve been with these idiots as long as I have, you get used to it.”

Pixal’s eyes widened. “I can’t imagine ever being used to all this.”

Nya smiled. “Did I mention I’m slightly deaf?”

“We finished making the picnic,” Zane told her, holding out the basket he was carrying. “Is everyone ready to go?”

Nya eyed the guys, who were running around the Monastery, barely avoiding tripping over one another. “‘Ready’ is an overstatement.”

“Hold your horses, we’re almost done,” Cole grunted, heaving the large beach bag over to them. “Have a little faith in us, Nya.”

Nya put her hand on her hip, waiting- and a second later, there was a crashing sound followed by an angry chorus of yells from Kai, Lloyd, and Jay.

Cole grimaced, rubbing the back of his head. “Okay, maybe you’re right to not have any faith in us.”

---

After an intense, fifteen-minute argument about what mode of transportation they would take, they ended up deciding on the city bus, and finally, finally got out the door. The bus ride went off without a hitch, for once, (except for a brief panic about not having the proper change for the bus fare, but luckily Zane had a few extra dollars on him), and before Nya knew it, they were staking out an area on Ninjago City beach. She was beginning to think this could actually work out.

Maybe.

“Check out my abs, dude.”

“They’re the same as last time.”

“Are not! I’m way more shredded than last time we went swimming.”

“Okay, that’s just a straight-up lie. I saw you sneak that extra piece of pie last night.”

“You better not be disrespecting my muscles, Flat Stanley.”

“Hey! I’m way more muscly than I used to be.”

“Are you kidding? We call you ‘green bean’ for a reason, and it’s not just because you’re the green ninja. You’re a twig!”

“I’m a twig? Have you seen Jay?”

“Hey, don’t rope me into this, green machine, and, for your information, I weigh a whole fifteen pounds more than you!”

“Yeah, well, you’re also two years older than me!”

“I think the lesson we need to learn here is that neither of you have abs anywhere near as pronounced as mine-”

Zane sighed, rolling his eyes. “Here, guys,” he held out a pouch to the group, “this is a waterproof pouch, you can store all your valuables in here.”

They quickly filled the pouch with phones, watches, and wallets. However, as Lloyd pulled back, he tripped over Jay’s foot, and half the guys collapsed into a pile, groaning.

“Jay! Get your foot out of my face!”

“Right after you get your elbow out of my ribs!”

Nya turned away from them, shaking her head. Glancing at Pixal, she asked, “Wanna help me get set up?”

The nindroid nodded, and they pulled the large picnic blanket out of the bag, unfolding it to lay it across the sand.

“Lloyd Montgomery Garmadon,” Kai cried, “You get back here right this instant!”

Nya looked up from the blanket to see Kai running through the sand after Lloyd, his feet sinking into the sand with each step, making it difficult for him to retain his balance. He waved a bottle of sunscreen at the green ninja. “It’s sunny out today! And you know how easily you burn!”

“No way!” Lloyd whined. “You always make me stay out of the water for at least twenty minutes to let it set, and it’s way too hot for me to wait that long! I wanna go swimming now.”

Kai lunged for him, and Lloyd yelped, barely dodging out of the way.

“Over here, Lloyd!” Jay cried, already wading into the shallows of the ocean. “He won’t follow you into the water!”

Lloyd hurried after him, splashing up water as he went, accidentally splattering Kai and causing the red ninja to flinch back with a yelp. Sure enough, he froze at the water’s edge, glaring at Jay and Lloyd, where they stood, only about ten feet away, laughing at him.

Zane rubbed a hand over his face, sighing. “They’re both going to get skin cancer, aren’t they?”

“At the very least, they’re going to be bright red tomatoes,” Cole laughed. “Oh, it’s going to be a blast when they take showers.”

Zane stared at him, horrified. “Please don’t let Jay do that again. He had the worst blisters, last time-”

Cole held up his hands. “It was a joke, Zane! A joke!”

Zane narrowed his eyes and didn’t reply.

Nya laughed, grabbing Pixal’s hand. “Come on. Wanna go bodyboarding with me?”

Pixal glanced at her. “I don’t know how.”

“That’s fine.” Nya stepped on the board, flipping it up into her hand and handing it to Pixal, before grabbing a second one for herself. “I can teach you!”

“Thanks, Nya.”

As they walked down towards the shore, they passed Kai and Cole, who had finally managed to get Jay and Lloyd out of the water. Cole had his arms locked around Jay, preventing him from running away as Kai slathered sunscreen across his face. Lloyd was sitting in the sand beside him, pouting, his face already smeared in white.

Nya grinned at him. “Can you guys handle yourselves for twenty minutes if Pix and I go out bodyboarding?”

Lloyd stuck his tongue out at her, and Kai rolled his eyes. “We’ll be fine, Nya. I think you’re forgetting we save the city on a regular basis? We’re perfectly capable.”

Nya put a hand near Pixal’s ear, whispering loudly into it. “Betcha anything the beach will be on fire by the time we get back.”

The two ran off, giggling at the sight of Kai’s smoldering glare, before he could set them on fire.

---

To Kai’s credit, he did not set the beach on fire, or anything, for that matter, but when Nya and Pixal returned, they found him and Cole shoveling sand onto Zane, who was chest-deep by this point.

“Zane!” Pixal exclaimed. “Are you alright?”

“When Kai told me he had something fun to show me, this wasn’t quite what I had imagined.”

“Aww, come on Zane!” Kai grinned. “I’m having a great time.”

Pixal shook her head, and stepped forward, grabbing Zane’s hand and pulling him up, sending sand cascading down everywhere. Cole and Kai groaned.

“Aww, come on, Pix, that took forever!” Cole muttered.

“Yeah, we were gonna shape it into a mermaid tail. Don’t you know how funny that would’ve been?”

“Humor is subjective.” Zane rubbed at his wrists. “Augh, now I’m going to have sand in my gears for weeks.” Shooting a glare at Kai, he added, “I’ll remember this the next time you ditch your swimming lessons.”

“Hey!” Kai yelped. “That’s totally different! Sand is warm, and solid, and most importantly, not dangerous!”

“You could suffocate,” Zane pointed out.

Kai scowled. “You’re a nindroid, you wouldn’t have suffocated.”

“You’re related to an elemental master of water. You won’t drown.”

“Being related to a master of water and being a master of water are two very different things! I control fire, not water, I can’t do anything to protect myself.”

Cole rolled his eyes. “You’re so lame. Remind me again why we brought our friend with aquaphobia to the beach?”

“Technically,” Zane said, raising a finger, “the word you’re looking for is thalassophobia. Kai doesn’t fear water in general, only large bodies, such as-”

“It was his idea,” Nya interrupted. “If it weren’t for him, we’d still be at the Monastery, filing papers.”

“I never suggested the beach!” Kai snapped. “That was your idea!”

“Yeah, well, your suggestions were lame. The beach was the obvious choice.”

“Hey,” Pixal interjected, suddenly realizing they were missing a couple of people. “Where are Jay and Lloyd?”

Cole sighed, pointing up towards their stuff, where Jay and Lloyd were struggling with a large, yellow duck inflatable that was very much not inflated at the moment. Jay had his lips around the mouthpiece, his face red.

“Blow harder, Jay,” Lloyd insisted, hovering by his side. “You’re hardly doing anything!”

Jay pulled his head back, breathing out heavily as the redness faded from his cheeks. “I’d like to see you do better! You’d probably pass out after a minute.”

“Would not!” Lloyd snatched the floaty away from him, blowing hard into the mouthpiece, putting even less air into the floaty than Jay had. His face reddened as he huffed desperately, although he still wasn’t making much progress. After a few moments, Jay pulled it away from him.

“Okay, that’s enough. I don’t want you to actually pass out.”

Lloyd glared at him, panting. “I wasn’t… going to… pass out.”

Jay sighed, grabbing the inflatable and staring at what looked to be the eyes and a very flat, crumpled-looking beak. “At this rate, we’re never going to get Mr. Quackington blown up.”

Lloyd’s nose wrinkled. “Mr. Quackington?”

Jay blinked at him. “Yeah, that’s his name.”

“No, it’s not! His name is Mr. Waddles!”

“Mr. Waddles? What kind of juvenile name is that?”

“Oh, like Mr. Quackington is any better!”

“It is! It’s loads better!”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Is so!”

“It’s not!” Lloyd snapped, green energy sparking between his fingers. Jay glanced down at them thoughtfully. “Hey, what if…”

Lloyd was evidently catching on to Jay’s train of thought, his eyes lighting up. “We can use my powers to inflate Mr. Waddles!”

Jay narrowed his eyes. “Quackington.”

Lloyd bared his teeth, the small fangs glinting. “Waddles.”

Jay sighed. “Okay, whatever. We can use your powers to inflate Mr. Waddles.”

Lloyd grinned widely, whether about the promise of getting his inflated duck or having won the name debate with Jay, Pixal couldn’t tell. He held up a hand and formed a basketball-sized sphere of green energy. Jay’s eyes widened, and he held the mouthpiece up to the energy. Lloyd channeled it inside, watching with glee as the duck puffed up, the yellow plastic slowly tinging green, making the duck look like he was about to be sick.

Zane took a step forward, holding his hand out. “Lloyd, wait-”

There was a sharp snapping noise as the floaty popped, and Lloyd and Jay cried out in horror as the yellow pieces of plastic fluttered to the ground. Lloyd fell to his knees, gripping the busted plastic and wailing, and Jay landed next to him, crying, “No! Mr. Waddles, you were so young!”

“I can’t believe he’s really gone,” Lloyd sniffed. “He was my best friend in the whole world.”

Kai threw up his hands. “Great. You spend the last several years of your life looking out for him only to get replaced by his inflatable plastic duck.”

“Oookay,” Nya said, walking over to Jay and Lloyd and ushering them towards the picnic blanket. “Someone’s obviously been out in the sun too long. Go sit under the umbrella and let’s have something to eat.”

“Good idea,” Zane agreed. “I’m sure we’re all getting hungry. Jay, could you grab the picnic basket? It’s right behind you.”

The lightning ninja grabbed the basket, peering inside briefly as he carried it towards them. “I hope you brought the Pringles. I could really go for some of those right now- augh!”

Before anyone could stop him, Jay was falling to the ground, the basket flying out of his hands and landing sideways in the sand.

“Jay!” Kai cried. “Look what you’ve done to our picnic!”

“Hey! That was totally your fault! Why did you leave your shoes right in the middle of the sand, perfectly positioned for someone to trip over?”

“Why were you clumsy enough to get in the way of my shoes?”

“Guys, guys, it’s okay,” Zane assured. Walking over, he carefully lifted the basket out of the sand. “I’m sure it’s still salvageable.”

“Yeah, but now all our food is going to taste like sand,” Lloyd moaned.

“Lloyd, the food barely touched the sand,” Nya pointed out.

“Doesn’t matter. Every time you go to the beach, if the food gets even remotely close to the sand, it always gets sand in it. Every time. It’s one of the great mysteries of the universe.”

“Well, I think you’ll survive,” she said, passing Lloyd a sandwich and a bag of pretzels. Lloyd took them, but narrowed his eyes.

“Brings a whole new meaning to the word ‘sandwich.’”

“Just eat your food, mister.”

Lloyd shot her a glare, but grudgingly obliged. As Pixal bit into her own sandwich, she realized Lloyd was right, she could feel granules of sand between her teeth as she chewed.

“Hey… at least it adds a little crunch, right?” Cole grinned.

Kai grimaced. “Next time, I elect we don’t let Jay anywhere near the picnic basket.”

Jay chucked a grape at him, but Kai turned at the last second, catching it in his mouth. “Ha!” His gleeful expression faded as he caught sight of something behind Jay. “Um, Lloyd, you have someone you wanna introduce us to?”

The group turned to see a seagull had approached them, tilting its head where it stood only a couple feet away from Lloyd. The green ninja was staring at the bird with wide eyes, an awed expression on his face.

“Lloyd,” Nya sighed, “please don’t tell me you fed it.”

“He’s not an it,” Lloyd snapped. “His name is Scully.”

“Great.” Nya rubbed her hands over her face. “We’re already into name territory.”

“Scully?” Kai’s nose wrinkled. “Isn’t that the name of the seagull from The Little Mermaid?”

“No, that’s Scuttle,” Lloyd sniffed. “They’re completely different.”

“Lloyd,” Pixal scolded, reaching for Lloyd’s wrist just as he tossed another chunk of his sandwich at the seagull, “Feeding wildlife is not a good idea, it can be dangerous-”

Lloyd shrieked suddenly as the bird launched itself at Lloyd’s face. He scrambled to his feet, screaming, and Kai lunged forward, pushing the others out of the way. “Move, move!”

“Get it off me, get it off me!” Lloyd shrieked as the bird’s wings flapped in his face, sending feathers everywhere.

“Blast it with your powers!” Kai called, looking worried but keeping a respectable distance.

“I can’t! He’s on my face!”

“Well, I can’t do it, I’ll set you on fire! Nya, you do it!”

“I’m trying, I’m trying,” the water ninja spat through gritted teeth, globes of water already forming in her hands. “I just need to get a clear shot! For the love of… Lloyd, stop moving so much!”

Lloyd hardly seemed to hear her. “He’s going to claw my eyes out,” he wailed, batting weakly at the creature.

“Nya!”

Nya quickly thrust her hands forward, sending a large ball of water at Lloyd’s head, drenching him and the seagull. The bird squawked angrily, falling to the ground.

“Oh my gosh, are you okay?” Nya and Kai darted over to him, Nya taking his face in her hands as Kai peered over her shoulder. A small red scratch stretched across his left cheek, but apart from that, he appeared unharmed, just frazzled.

“Dude!” Kai cried. “You just got attacked. By a seagull!”

“It owned you!”

Lloyd shot Jay a glare. “Did not.”

“You should have seen your face!” Jay laughed. “Oh wait, you couldn’t- there was a bird in the way!”

Lloyd crossed his arms. “I’d like to remind you how you reacted that time when my uncle set that berserk chicken on us.”

“The chicken had lightning powers. Hardly comparable to a simple seafowl, bud.”

“Ugh, I hope this doesn’t get infected,” Nya muttered, running her finger along the scratch. “We should probably get you checked for rabies when we get home.”

“Nya, I’m fine,” Lloyd groaned, pushing her off. “A seagull isn’t going to give me rabies.”

Nya shrugged. “With your luck, I can never be sure.”

“This is why you don’t give food to wild animals, Lloyd, it makes them bolder-”

“Watch out, Lloyd!” Jay shrieked suddenly, and they whipped around to see the seagull had caught its second wind, squawking as it charged at Lloyd.

Lloyd shrieked, taking off down the beach with the seagull in pursuit. Nya sighed, putting a hand on her head. Kai grinned, walking over to her and putting a hand on her shoulder. “Do you think he’ll learn his lesson?”

“No,” Nya said without hesitation. “Absolutely not. That’s the sad part.”

“Hey,” Cole said, pointing a finger down the beach. “The volleyball court’s just opened up. You guys wanna play?”

“Sure. Tell Lloyd he can join us when he gets that seagull taken care of.”

Nya glanced towards the green ninja, who was currently lobbing balls of energy at the bird and missing by an embarrassingly wide berth. “Looks like it could be a while.”

---

“Great job, team!” Nya cheered, high-fiving Pixal and shooting a grin at Cole. “Although, if I’m being honest, the rest of you didn’t put up much of a competition.”

“Hey, don’t look at me!” Kai snapped. “I was carrying the team! Jay, Lloyd, were you planning on helping me anytime soon?”

“I was trying!” Jay insisted. “But you kept getting in my way!”

“Because every time I let you get the ball, you dropped it!”

“Hey! I never said I was good at volleyball, okay? Why are you attacking me, Lloyd sucked too!”

“It’s not like I ever had time to fit in volleyball practice between all my green ninja training! It wasn’t exactly a top priority!” “Are you telling me you’ve never played before?” Kai spluttered.

“I’ve played!” Lloyd insisted. “Uh… once or twice.”

Kai facepalmed. “Why did I let you come on my team?”

Lloyd grinned widely. “‘Cause you love me.”

Cole elbowed him. “It’s because he lost the coin toss and Nya got to pick first.”

“Hey!” Jay yelped. “Are you telling me you would have picked me last?”

“After I saw you play, yeah,” Cole snorted.

“I’m still not convinced on some of those calls, Zane,” Kai said, walking over to the nindriod. “I don’t think that one play near the third point was a foul.”

“Hey, the ref’s call is law,” Nya smirked. “Stop trying to cheat your way to victory, Kai.”

“I’m not cheating! Zane’s girlfriend is on your team! He’s obviously biased!”

“I’m a nindriod, Kai. I cannot be biased.”

“Stop being a sore loser, Kai.” Behind her, a wave swelled up. She raised her hand- then pointed it forward at Kai.

Her brother shrieked as the seawater drenched him.

“Nya! What’d you do that for?”

“You deserved it, with all the whining you were doing. Besides, you looked hot. I was just doing you a favor.”

“It’s alright,” Lloyd laughed. “You can share my towel, don’t worry.” As he handed Kai the towel, the fire ninja eyed it shrewdly.

“It’s got ducks on it. Of course it does.”

“Hey, you want the towel or not?”

“No, I’m taking the towel.” Kai wrapped the towel around himself, shivering, unfurling the ducks for all to see. Cole snickered, and Kai shot him a glare.

“Should we pack up, then?”

Zane nodded. “If we want to be back in time for dinner, probably.”

The team trudged back to their blanket, wet and sandy, but chatting amiably. They had nearly packed up all their things when Lloyd cried out suddenly.

“Where’s my wallet?”

Zane frowned. “Didn’t you put it in the valuables pouch?”

“I thought I did, but…” he paused. “Oh, wait. I tripped over Jay. I must’ve forgotten to put it in after that.”

“Well, then, it’s gotta be around here somewhere. What color is it, Lloyd?”

“What do you think? Green.”

They spent a good ten minutes searching through their entire bag and the surrounding sand, to no avail. It quickly became clear that if Lloyd’s wallet had ever fallen around here in the first place, it wasn’t here now.

Kai shrugged. “Oh well. It’s not that big of a deal. You don’t have any cards, and I don’t think you were carrying any of the cash. We can get you a new one.”

“No, but I had the things in there!”

Cole frowned. “The things?”

“You know.” Lloyd lowered his voice. “The things. That the mayor gave us?”

“What?!” Jay yelped. “Those were in there?” “You lost them?” Kai cried. “Lloyd, how could you?”

“It’s not like I did it on purpose!” Kai groaned, rubbing his face. “We should’ve never trusted you with them. Or at least split them up, so they weren’t all together.”

“I still do not understand.” Pixal frowned. “What are these things that are so important?”

“They’re a top-secret gift from the mayor,” Jay whispered. “We’re not supposed to tell anyone we have them. Not that telling anyone now would matter anyway, because we don’t have them anymore.”

“It’s not my fault!” Lloyd insisted. “It’s that stupid seagull’s, he’s the one who distracted me-” Lloyd paused, his eyes widening. “That’s it! The seagull must’ve swiped my wallet when it was chasing me!”

“Looks like we have a lead,” Kai growled.

“Wait a minute, does anyone else hear that mysterious music-”

“Oh no,” Pixal muttered, putting a hand on her forehead. “Zane, please don’t tell me you’re going to do this again.”

“It seemed that, after only a few weeks, it was time for me to crack yet another case.” The odd, deep voice rang out, and they turned to see Zane slipping on a fedora.

“Where did that even come from,” Pixal despaired. “I’m positive you didn’t bring that with you. Positive.”

“Again, I was to be accompanied by my trusty assistant, but this time, my highly trained ninja associates would also be coming along, all determined to reclaim what someone had stolen in the heist.”

Jay glanced between Pixal and Zane. “What is happening right now? Am I supposed to know what’s happening?”

Pixal shook her head. “It’s a long story. Just go with it.”

Zane tipped his hat down. “Already, we were off with a very promising lead. I suspected the culprit to be the feathered fiend that had been spotted lurking around at the scene of the crime only an hour prior.”

Kai snorted, placing a hand on Jay’s shoulder. “Oh, this is gold! Did you mess with his voice again, Jay?”

“No, I didn’t touch him! Pixal, you didn’t…”

She shook her head. “Believe me, I wouldn’t do this if you paid me. It was all him.”

Jay grinned. “What do we do next… detective Zane?” He and Kai simultaneously burst into laughter, leaning against each other for support.

Zane side-eyed them. “The primary suspect was as clear as a black bear in a snowstorm, yet the whereabouts of the creature were still unknown. It had vanished into thin air, without leaving so much as a trace in its stead.”

“Hey,” Lloyd said suddenly, leaning down to pick something up off of the sand, “What about this?”

“It appeared to be part of the plumage of a species of avian native to these shores. Could it belong to the specimen we were looking for?”

Kai plucked the feather from Lloyd’s fingers, examining it. “The feather was white with a dark tip, definitely having originated from a seagull- although the spiked, disturbed edges implied that this was from no ordinary gull- it was from one who had recently been in a fight.”

Jay grinned. “It seemed like we had hit the jackpot. Already, we were one step closer to tracking down this culprit.”

Pixal groaned. “Don’t you two start, too. It was bad enough with just Zane.”

Nya grimaced. “Yeah, this is already getting annoying.”

“How is a feather going to tell us where the seagull is now?” Cole asked.

“I could sense the wind was blowing in from the northwest,” Zane narrated. “If we wanted to find the culprit of the caper, we would have to walk upwind, hopefully leading us to the source of the feather.”

“Alright,” Pixal sighed, “let’s get this over with.”

“And so,” Zane grinned, “The Great Gull Caper began.”

The team trudged up the beach for about twenty minutes, to no avail. They passed many other beachgoers, pointing and staring as the ninja passed, but no seagulls were in sight.

“Are you sure about this, Zane?” Pixal asked.

“The feathered suspect had gained an hour’s head start in its escape from the scene, meaning we would have to hasten our pace if we ever hoped to catch up.”

“Oh, I am not walking an hour just to find this thing. Are we sure it’s that important?”

“Yes!” the guys yelped in unison.

“It’s a very important gift from the mayor! It would be rude to lose it,” Jay said. “We have to get it back!”

“Couldn’t you just ask for another… whatever they are?”

“No! They’re one of a kind!” “Well, can we at least hurry this up? Frankly, I’m getting quite tired of Zane’s shenanigans.”

Zane grinned at her. “Although she voiced her disapproval, my assistant knew the efficiency of my methods, as they had gotten us out of a pinch the last time things had been amok.”

“First of all, I was the one who successfully found Dyer last time. You just ended up getting caught.”

“Perhaps, but you used my techniques.”

Pixal huffed. “Second, I don’t appreciate that you keep calling me your assistant. If anything, we’re partners!”

Zane adjusted his fedora. “So it was a promotion she was after, eh? Well, if my assistant could prove her worth by properly complying with my techniques in this case, she may find herself with a loftier position in the future.”

Pixal sighed. “Whatever. Let’s just find the stupid bird, and go.”

The group trekked after Zane again, and Pixal wondered how long they would be here, when Zane suddenly stopped, causing half of the gang to crash into him.

“What?” Jay yelped. “What’s wrong? Why’d we stop?”

Zane pointed near his feet. “It seemed like the culprit had been careless enough to leave behind tracks in the sand.”

Pixal peered over his shoulder. Sure enough, the tracks of some avian species left a trail in the sand- and after consulting her database, it appeared to match the foot of a seagull.

“We’re getting closer!” Cole said. “It has to be around here somewhere.”

Nya’s eyes went wide, and she pointed towards something in the distance. “Look!”

Down the beach, a large group of seagulls was flocking around a half-eaten pretzel, flapping their wings and squawking as they tried to push past each other.

“It could be any of them,” Lloyd despaired. “How are we going to know which one was the one who stole my wallet?”

Jay smirked. “There’s only one way to find out.”

Lloyd eyed him nervously. “How?”

“One seagull, in particular, has come to associate you with food. One seagull has been known to chase you down.”

“Oh,” Lloyd paled, taking a step back and waving his hands. “Oh, no, I do not like where this is heading…”

“Come on, Lloyd, do it for the team,” Cole pleaded.

“You are the one who lost them in the first place,” Kai agreed. “It’s only fair.”

Lloyd groaned. “Why do I let you bully me into these things?”

“Go on,” Nya gave him a gentle shove. “We don’t have all day!”

Sticking his tongue out at her, Lloyd stepped forward, towards the seagulls. Several of them looked his way, a few flapping their wings anxiously and squawking in warning. Lloyd stopped, swallowing.

“Um. Hey. I don’t suppose any of you have seen a green wallet around here?”

Jay rolled his eyes. “They can’t understand you. Get closer!”

“Okay! I’m going, jeez-” he broke off with a yelp as a seagull darted in front of him, nearly tripping him as he stepped on its tail.

The seagull shrieked, and, in a flurry of feathers, the flock broke into a frenzied panic. Lloyd’s eyes widened, and he cried out, running away and frantically ducking swooping seagulls.

He darted behind Kai as a last nervy seagull hopped after him. Kai held up a fist, which burst into flame, scaring the bird off. Kai glanced back at Lloyd, amusement sparkling in his dark eyes. “You okay, bud?”

Lloyd glared. “Don’t look at me like that. These birds are vicious!”

“Look!” Pixal pointed at a gull that had remained behind. With the others out of the way, she could see the small, green wallet between its beak.

“That’s the one!” Cole cried. “After it!”

For ninja, the group was embarrassingly unstealthy as they clamored after the bird, shooting elemental powers at it and screaming as they narrowly avoided each other’s blasts, so that by the time the seagull reached the water, the beach was a mess of crystalized sand, crevices in the ground, and various burn marks from fire, lightning, and energy.

“It’s a seagull!” Nya cried. “We’ve faced giant snakes, lords of darkness, elemental masters, Oni, more criminals and gangsters than I can count, and an evil video game AI, yet we can’t catch one measly seagull? It shouldn’t be this hard, you guys!”

“It’s getting away,” Jay cried, pointing at the bird, who had finally taken flight and was heading out over the ocean.

“No!” Lloyd moaned. “Now we’re never going to get it back!”

“Not on my watch,” Nya growled, racing past them towards the docks. “Come on!” “Oh no,” Kai groaned. “Nya Smith, whatever you are thinking, stop it right now, because I’m not doing it.” “Come on, Kai,” Lloyd insisted, grabbing his wrist and yanking him along. “We have to hurry!”

They raced after Nya, who was running down the dock towards a man who was examining the boats. Kai followed them more slowly, taking careful steps.

“Sir, we need to use a boat, right away! We’ll pay for it, we promise!”

The man shook his head. “Sorry, ma’am, but these are all private boats. The only one we have is that one,” he pointed to a small, worn-looking fishing boat, “and the motor’s broken, so it’s of no use to anyone.”

“It doesn’t matter, I can take care of that. Everyone, get in!”

“W-wait,” the man stuttered, looking flustered.

“We’ll bring it right back, I promise! Now, come on, we don’t have much time!”

“No!” Kai insisted, as everyone else piled in. “Nuh-uh. No way. Not in a million years. You are not bringing me out into the middle of the ocean in a tiny, crowded boat with a busted engine!”

“You don’t need an engine when you’ve got me!” Nya raised her hand, and the water swirled under the boat, rocking it slightly. “Now, come on, we don’t have time for this!” “Y’know what.” Kai took a couple of steps back from the boat. “I’m good. I’ll stay here. You guys have fun finding the wallet. I’ll cheer you on from the beach. The dry, dry beach.”

“Nope.” Cole reached forward, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him in. “This is your gift we’re saving, too. If you want to get part of it, you’re coming with.”

“Finally!” Nya huffed. The water rippled beneath them, and suddenly, it was propelling their boat, and they were off.

“Where’s the bird?” Nya asked. “Does anyone see it?” “Over there!” Cole pointed slightly towards their left, where the seagull was gliding away with surprising speed. Getting into the boat had slowed them down, and it had gotten a large head start.

Nya gritted her teeth. “Hold on.”

“Don’t go faster!” Kai yelped from where he huddled near the middle of the boat, protectively sandwiched between Lloyd and Cole. “If you tip this boat, I will never forgive you.”

“I know what I’m doing,” Nya growled, although the boat slowed slightly as they continued.

“Our team continued to chase the thief, determined to put an end to the Great Gull Caper and put the culprit to justice. Even when our path took us across the raging waters of the ocean, with nothing but a rusty, broken old boat, and deep, swirling waters around us, filled with the dark abyss and the creatures that lurked there…”

“You mean like sharks?” Lloyd perked, peering over the edge. “Did you see any? I wanna see one!”

“Nope,” Kai yelped, pulling himself into a ball as he sat down on the floor of the boat. “Nopety nope nope nope. I’m done. I’m outta here.”

“The prospect of sharks was a dire one, but one we were willing to take. We would get that wallet back, no matter the cost- even if it meant competition from this fierce predator of the sea.”

Kai screamed into his hands. “Just end me now!”

“What Zane means to say,” Pixal said, elbowing Zane sharply, “is that sharks are actually very off-put by the taste of human flesh, and do not go after humans on purpose.”

Kai stared at her. “Oh joy, now a shark can devour my flesh by accident, what a relief.”

“Do not worry, Kai,” she told him. “There is only one estimated death by shark per year in the greater Ninjago City area.”

“Knowing my luck,” Kai grumbled, “I’ll be that one.”

“Did anyone bring their phone with?” Lloyd asked. “I wanna get a good picture when the sharks come for Kai.”

“I call dibs on his katana,” Jay exclaimed. “Y’know, the super flashy one with the flaming dragon carved into the handle?”

Lloyd wrinkled his nose at him. “Why would you want a fire dragon on your katana? You’re the lightning ninja!”

“Hey, just because my element is lightning, doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate a super dope fire design when I see one-”

“Guys,” Cole sighed, pushing his way between the two arguing boys. “No one is getting eaten. We’re perfectly safe here, on this boat.”

“Cole’s right,” Pixal agreed. “The sharks around this area are smaller, reef dwellers, and won’t come after us. They may, however, come after our seagull friend if he gets too close to the water.”

Kai made a noise in the back of his throat, and Cole scowled at her. “Thanks for the help, Pix.”

“Nya,” Jay whined, “the seagull’s getting further away! We have to go faster!”

“Don’t!” Pixal cried. “This boat has not been manufactured to withstand a lot of weight. With seven people, especially when two of them are titanium, going too fast would be sure to capsize us.”

“I told you I should’ve stayed behind on the shore,” Kai wailed.

Lloyd leaned further over the edge, raising a hand to his forehead to keep the glare off of his face as he peered intently into the water. “Is… is that a shark?”

Kai stared at him. “Shut up. You’re just baiting.”

Lloyd shook his head, his eyes lighting up in a way that was not reassuring in the slightest. “I’m not! It’s a shark! It’s a real, live shark! I’ve never seen one this close before! Except at like, an aquarium!”

Kai closed his eyes, rocking himself gently. “You’re lying. You stupid liar, I hate you.”

Cole peered over, following Lloyd’s gaze, and promptly bit his lip. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“This is a dumb prank, you guys!” Kai was half-yelling by this point.

“Stop being so loud,” Lloyd hissed. “You’ll scare it!”

Kai blinked at him. “I’ll scare it?”

Lloyd crossed his arms. “A scared shark is an aggressive shark.”

Kai’s mouth snapped shut.

“I can’t believe this,” Cole muttered. “Did we really not bring any weapons?”

“No!” Lloyd yelped. “Cole, you wouldn’t!”

“I would if it kept us from being eaten.”

“For the last time, sharks don’t eat humans!”

Cole ignored him. “Well? Did we?”

Nya snorted. “Why would we bring weapons to the beach?”

“Hey, with how often this city gets attacked, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

Nya rolled her eyes. “It was supposed to be our day off.”

“It’s fine,” Pixal reported, keeping a careful eye on the shark. “It’s swimming away now. As long as we leave it alone, we’re safe.”

Kai frowned. “Looks like the gull isn’t so convinced, though.”

Pixal glanced up. Sure enough, the seagull was eyeing the shark nervously, pumping its wings as it flew higher and higher above the surface of the water.

“Do something!” Jay shrieked. “If we don’t stop it now, it’s going to get away for good!”

“Lloyd!” Nya cried. “Is your wallet waterproof?”

“What?”

“Just answer the question!” “Yes! Yes, it is!”

Nya gritted her teeth. “Hold on, everyone!”

Suddenly, a vast wave rose out of the water, looming over the seagull.

Kai’s eyes widened. “Nya, be careful, you’ll hit us too-”

But it was already too late, the wave crashing down, downing the seagull, and soaking them in saltwater. The team cried out, and Kai screamed, throwing his arms over his head in a futile attempt to protect himself. As they all tried to lurch away from the spray, the boat rocked precariously, and, for a horrifying moment, they were suspended there, on the point between balance and capsize.

And then that moment was over, and they were all falling into the ocean.

Pixal’s world immediately dimmed as she plunged into the water, quietness enveloping her like a blanket. For a moment, she was too shocked to do anything, until a foot thrashed past her face, snapping her out of her trance as she swam towards the surface.

A couple of feet before she reached it, a metal hand snatched her wrist and pulled her the rest of the way up.

“Pixal!” Zane cried, his detective voice dropped. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine. What about everyone else? Are we all here?”

Zane nodded his head behind her, and she turned to see the others all within a couple of feet. Cole had his hands on the now upside-down boat, trying to use his strength to push it over, but it was hard for him to get a good grip and stay afloat at the same time. Just behind him, Jay was spitting out a mouthful of seawater, sending ripples across the surface of the ocean as he treaded water. Lloyd was doing the same a couple of feet away, only the green ninja was struggling a lot more because of the arms wrapped tightly around his neck.

“Don’t let me go, Lloyd!” Kai yelped, although the feat would’ve been impossible even if Lloyd had wanted to- the fire ninja was clinging to him like a barnacle. “I can’t swim!”

Lloyd sighed. “I know that, Kai. It’s the only reason I’m letting you hold on to me like this.”

“I can’t believe this happened,” Kai cried. “We’re going to die out here. This is the worst day off ever.”

“Hey!” Lloyd snapped. “It’s not my fault this happened!”

Nya shot them all a sharp glare from where she was drifting alongside the boat. She didn’t even bother to tread water like the rest of them, instead using her powers to keep herself afloat. “It was going to work until you guys made such a big fuss about getting a little wet and tipped the boat.”

Cole sighed. “We’re not going to die. As soon as I get this right side up again, we’ll climb up and get out of here. Can you give me a hand, Zane?”

As the nindriod moved to help him, Kai suddenly went rigid.

“Lloyd,” he whispered.

“What, Kai?”

“Something just bumped my foot.”

“It’s probably just seaweed, Kai,” Lloyd sighed, looking down- and promptly froze.

“No one. Move.”

Jay squeezed his eyes shut. “Oh no, oh gosh, don’t tell me that’s what I think it is, this is not happening-”

“Jay, shut up,” Nya whispered, her face pale as she watched the dark shape lurking below them in the water.

“Everyone, stay calm,” Pixal murmured. “Don’t make any sudden movements and try to look it in the eyes.”

“Please, the last thing I’m gonna do is look at it,” Kai breathed, burying his face in Lloyd’s hair.

After a moment, the shark slowly swam past, losing interest.

“It doesn’t care about us,” Zane realized. “It wants the seagull.”

Several yards away, the gull was floating on the water, still trying to shake off the moisture from Nya’s wave. Suddenly realizing the danger it was in, the bird raised its wings- and launched itself into the air, just as fierce jaws snapped against empty air where the seagull had been less than a second ago.

Kai’s fingers dug tighter into Lloyd’s shoulders, and Pixal caught Jay biting his lip as he swallowed back a scream, but, its prey lost, the shark was already swimming away.

“Gotcha,” Nya murmured, reaching a hand out and snatching up the wallet, which the seagull had dropped in all the commotion, before it could sink to the bottom of the ocean.

“Okay. That’s great. We got it. Now can we get out of here?” Kai pleaded.

After a minute, they finally got the boat flipped over, and Cole hauled himself aboard before helping to lift the others. Ten minutes later, they were all safely out of the water and on their way back to the dock, and Pixal had never felt more relieved by the fact.

“So,” Jay asked, as the boat glided through the water, leaning closer to Nya. “Did they survive all that?”

“Let’s see,” Nya murmured, opening up Lloyd’s wallet. Pixal leaned forward, anxious to see what all the fuss had been about.

“Yes!” Jay cried, pulling out seven slips of paper. “They’re all here!”

“Wait.” Pixal snatched one from his hand, quickly scanning it. “A summer pass for free all-you-can-eat ice cream from the Dairy Dragon?”

“Yup,” Jay smiled, passing them out to the others. “The mayor gave them to us as a gift after we saved the city from Prime Empire. That’s what we were going to do today, after the beach, actually.”

“You’re telling me,” Pixal deadpanned. “That we just risked our lives. For free ice cream.”

“Free ice cream is free ice cream, Pix.”

“You’ll understand once you’ve tried their butter pecan,” Nya told her. “It’s to die for.”

“Butter pecan?” Jay spluttered. “No way, the Ninjapolitan is best.”

“You heathen, chocolate fudge is obviously the best flavor-”

“What are you guys talking about, mint chocolate chip is superior!”

“You just like it because it’s green.”

“Do not!”

“Do so!” Nya sighed, putting her head in her hands. “Here we go again.”

“Calm down, all of you,” Pixal said. “You can get whatever flavor of ice cream you want. Just do me a favor and try not to end up capsizing us in the middle of the ocean this time.”

Jay hummed. “No promises.”

[mi6-cafe]

WEEK 2 DRABBLES ARE HERE!

Now, let’s refresh your memory.

For the second week of LDWS, our true l- our writers were asked to write a drabble between 150 and 200 words, based on the word deck from the point of view of an outsider.

THEY DID SUCH A GREAT JOB!

(this is a purely illustrative gif of an outside observer of the goings on at Q’s flat, not a prompt)

READ THE DRABBLES AND VOTE!

hOW?

Read the drabbles & Pick three favourites!

Vote for them on this form!

Add some feedback for the writers!

That’s it! You have done your civic duty and voted!

Vote!

Read the drabbles below the line.

#1

Title: Eulogy for the Aston Martin Author: Misha / artsytarts Warnings: Canon Typical Violence (mainly directed at vehicles) Summary: Around 007, life and death go hand in hand.

The moment I leave solid ground and fly, pointed directly at the deck of the ship, I know my life is forfeit.

I realize now why the other machines pitied me after I was assigned to the man they call 007. I see his blue eyes blazing as he concentrates, gripping my steering wheel. They say he’s careless, but judging from the few days I’ve carried him, I know different. He’s not careless. His destruction is calculated. Only once I was obsolete, once he depleted my ammunition, blew my doors off, and pushed my motor to breaking point did he make his decision: To use me as his missile.

I count the milliseconds as the deck rushes towards me. Without a word, 007 pushes the ejector button and I fling him out into the open air, out into safety and freedom.

I am to be his sacrifice.

Before I hit the ship to perish in a blaze, I decide: I have no use for resentment. Like so many machines before me, I have granted him life.

That must count for something.

#2

Title: All In Author: sorion Warnings: none Summary: Bond is handy with cards, and Felix likes to watch.

There are few things as satisfying as watching James Bond clean a table in poker. Felix has learned that pretty much the moment he's met Bond, and the entertainment value hasn't changed in the years that have passed.  

On the contrary: Felix has learned some of Bond's tells. Not the kind of tells that would let him win against the insufferably unbeatable agent, but Felix recognises the spark that lights up in Bond's eyes, only seconds before he wipes the confident smirk off an opponent's face with a winning hand.  

Another thing he can see is whether Bond enjoys the game for its own sake or just really hates one of the other players. He knows it's the latter when the opponent asks for a rematch and offers the deed to a hotel in lieu of liquid funds, and Bond agrees, provided that they use a new, unopened deck of cards.  

The opponent blanches near imperceptibly, and Felix smirks into his drink. Oh, yes. Very satisfying.

#3

Title: Voyeuristic Displeasure Author: sunaddicted Warnings: none Summary: seeing everything is not so fun

Bond's hands were big and rough, stronger than they had any right to be.

He had been observing them with varying degrees of interest over the years, stuck behind his computers or out in the field - air straining in his lungs with the knowledge that the other's life depended on how fast and how smart he could be.

He watched Bond strut along the deck, hand poised low on someone's lower back, head tilted down in a way that suggested he was focusing on whatever he was being told, seemingly enraptured in them - Bond played the part well but he knew what signs to look for, to spot the seams of the almost perfect façade: he darted glances around, favoring his right side, trying to keep under the eye of the cameras that he knew to be in friendly hands.

The hand slipped lower, fingers teasingly dipping beneath the edge of the brightly colored bathing suit his companion was wearing - shameless.

Almost teasing.

He stood up with a weary sigh, empty mug held aloft: he was going to need a strongly brewed cup of tea, if he had to watch Bond flirt his way into another bed.

#4

Title: International Man Of Mystery Author: Merc / moon_of_mercury Warnings: none Summary: Some players never make it to places like Casino Royale. Others... acquire nice cars on the way.

She has encountered many interesting characters in her career, some more remarkable than others. Poker tends to attract extraordinary people. It isn’t always easily definable: something about this man arrests her attention the moment he walks up to the table, asking to join the game even though she’s already cutting the deck. 

He flashes a cocky smile at everyone, reads his opponents like a professional, and pleads with her to let the unlucky Mr. Dimitrios bet his car to win his money back. She complies, amused. Such self-sufficient arrogance would be offending if not for his friendly politeness. The way he eyes the man’s wife is not mere casual interest either. Those intense ice-blue eyes have already seen every opportunity. His body language may seem relaxed, but there’s an awareness in his movements that hints at explosive potential underneath the calm surface. 

For an exhilarating moment, she revels in being a part of this man’s story. It’s as clear as day that he’s used to playing for much higher stakes. She wonders what the real prize here is.

Dimitrios has lost again even before this stranger shows his cards. Men like him bend luck to their will. 

#5

Title: Crossroads Author: Hexiva Warnings: None Summary: James Bond visits a fortune teller.

The man’s cold blue eyes look past Serenity as he steps into her fortune-telling tent, and she shivers. His aura is like ice, a vast glacier with life frozen deep down inside it. He reminds her of a mobster from some old movie, wealthy but brutal. 

“What do you want to learn?” she asks.

“The future,” he says, distractedly. She follows his eyes to a bearded man standing at the high striker, speaking in Russian. 

She shuffles her deck. “There are two paths before everyone,” she says. “This choice is yours.” She draws two. “First path - The Lovers, the Star. Companionship and connection bringing hope. Choose the Lovers' path, and you will find a new beginning. A second chance.”

“And the other?” he asks. His tone is flat and apathetic. He doesn't believe in hope.

She draws again.  “The Emperor, the Hermit, both reversed. Rigidity and repression bringing isolation and misery. Choose the Emperor's path and you will end up alone.”

But the man is looking past her at the Russian, and he stands. “Thanks." A wry little smile. "But I think I already know what path I’m on.”

She watches him go. In his shadow, she sees the Emperor.

#6

Title: Observation Deck Author: Anyawen Warnings: none Summary: Mallory and Tanner contemplate employee relations.

Mallory surveyed the scene before him, sipping his scotch and trying, fruitlessly, to tune out the horrid rendition of 'Deck the Halls' playing overhead.

"We should do something about that," Tanner said, coming to stand beside him.

"About what?"

"That," Tanner replied, gesturing in the direction of Bond and Q. "Them."

The Quartermaster, decked out in a horrible Christmas jumper, looked exasperated. Bond, naturally, looked smug. They appeared to have entirely forgotten the holiday party happening around them as they argued. Flirted. Whatever.

"Trying to stop that from happening would be an exercise in rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic," Mallory said with a bemused smile. "Utterly futile."

"I don't want to discourage them," Tanner protested as Q cracked an unwilling smile at something Bond said.

"What, then?"

"A little push? Mistletoe? Lock them in a closet?" Tanner suggested hopefully.

"That might be construed as stacking the deck in your favor," Mallory observed mildly.

"You know about the bet?" Tanner spluttered as Q stole Bond's champagne glass and drained it to Bond's mock outrage.

"Spy," Mallory explained succinctly.

Tanner nodded wry acknowledgement.

They continued their silent observations a few minutes more, then Tanner asked, "What day did you pick?"

"April first."

#7

Title: Nighttime Invasion Author: SouffleGirl91 Warnings: vague references to blood, swearing Summary: Q’s cat is not impressed by 3am visitors

Thunk.

A crumpled heap hit the floor. She hissed, tail bushy, ready to pounce on the intruder.

“Oof!”

Gunpowder Man was invading her space.

Again.

“Q?” Gunpowder Man whisper-shouted. He sounded different. “Are you awake?”

Something dark dripped from his nose.

She sniffed cautiously. He stank of copper and salt. Still, it was better than the strong, sour reek of last time.

A light came on in Father’s bedroom.

Gunpowder Man lifted himself up and wobbled to the sofa. Walking on two legs seemed harder for him than usual.

“Bond?” Father came traipsing up behind him, making the room light up. “What the fuck? It’s 3 in the bloody morning. You couldn’t wait?”

“What, you’re not happy to see me?” Gunpowder Man used the false-happy tone Father used when he tricked her into The Basket.

Another dark drip.

“Don’t be stupid,” Father tsked, petting Gunpowder Man softly on the shoulder. That should help; Father gave the best pets. “Why don’t I put the - Christ, Bond! What happened to your nose?”

“It’s not broken. She hit me when I told her I was staying.”

“I thought psychologists were meant to keep their cool,” Father sighed. “Come on, let’s clean you up.”

#8

Title: A confession of a deck Author: scarytheory Warnings: none Summary: James Bond would be lost without me.

I'd like to think that James and I are not just colleagues, but friends.

You know, we’ve been through a lot together. Cottages in forgotten lands, first-class casinos, important fights – I’d always been with him and helped him along the way.

But this game is different.

“That’s not fair, James,” the opponent says, watching his stack of cards.

“I’m not cheating, Q.”

The opponent snorts. “You may be the best player the MI6’s ever had, but even you can’t be THAT good, 007. Aces again? That’s not very subtle.”

“You were the one who said poker is just basic math and all about the art of reading people. So stop whinging and take off your shirt.”

Beg your pardon?

There is something disturbing in the air. I don’t think I want to give the good cards to James anymore. “Happy?”

The shirt falls to the floor.

“Immensely.”

The next round, Q loses his pants. I’m starting to think that this isn’t even about poker!

“I won.”

Finally, it’s over and I can relax again. Even though I’m not sure what this young lad can have that James Bond would be interested in… oh.

#9

Title: Camouflage Author: IrishWitch58 Warnings: None Summary: A certain agent and their partner are in the field. The local perspective.

Grace's eyes were drawn to her first customers on the deck overlooking the harbor. They were as unlike as could be but Grace would have known they were together with just a glance. The subtle leaning in, the eye contact, the briefest brush of a hand. Not honeymooners but the established kind of connection that took time and patience. The younger man was dark and slender and had a tan that was honey gold. The older one was broader and blond and that one sent tingles up her spine. Her brother and his military buddies were like that, poised and watchful. She didn't see a weapon but suspected he was armed. They'd arrived three days ago in a beautifully restored vintage sailboat, walking the less traveled portions of the island.

Passing Grace, Mimi muttered “Spies posing as tourists.”

Gracie scoffed at Mimi's imagination. What were they spying on here, conch recipes? Then a new boat dropped anchor. The blond saw it first and the dark haired one checked the tablet he always seemed to have before nodding and finishing his chowder.

The pretty sailboat pulled up anchor the next dawn and the new boat was found derelict two days later.

#10

Title: Missing Him Author: Nana-chan Warnings: Summary: Austen the cat watches as her human pines for the Blond One

From her perch on the living room sofa, Austen looks disapprovingly at her bespectacled human. He is out on the deck again, smoking and no doubt pining for the Blond One. He is a relatively new addition to the household and has been gone for several days now, as is his habit. Keats—that dummy—misses him, too, as he meows and gazes forlornly at the front door.

She herself is unsure of the Blond One, but she doesn’t like it when her human is all sad and distracted, reeking of cigarette smoke and unresponsive to feline overtures of comfort. She feels powerless to help him. How did one man become so essential to her human’s happiness?

Then a key turns, the door opens, and there he is. The Blond One dumps his bag in the foyer and heads straight for the deck, pausing only to give her a brief head scritch. She watches as he folds her human into his arms and starts grooming him in that strange way humans have, with their mouths fused.

She hears her human laugh, gladness and relief evident in his tones, and finally, she makes up her mind about the Blond One.

#11

Title: Origin of a Voyeur Author: stormofsharpthings Warnings: none Summary: There was a legitimate reason to start going through all the Q Branch security footage, dammit!

After the small accidental volcano destroyed lab 7b, no one could recall who’d last checked the fire suppression system. Exasperated, R pulled up the security videos in hopes of spotting someone. The recording of Q and 007 was entirely unrelated, but she just couldn’t look away.

Q had been helping Bond dress for some formal event, tuxedo carefully tailored to conceal the equipment Q was arranging around his body. The scene resembled a squire helping his knight, except...

R bit her lip at the way Q stroked his fingertips down the front of Bond’s suit to check the drape of the fabric, evading Bond’s hungry gaze with a sly little quirk to his mouth. Then Q leaned close, reaching around to run his hands over the back of the jacket, lingering a little over Bond’s well-proportioned backside before he sank to one knee and brushed along the sides of the trousers.

“There, all decked out,” Q murmured.

Bond reached down to cradle Q’s chin in his hand and Q looked up with a provocative lick of his lips, the heat almost visibly simmering between them. Bond took a deep breath, his fingers tightening, and Q ‘s eyes widened and then slid shut as he turned to brush his lips against Bond’s thumb. When Bond made a low rough sound, both Q and Rani swallowed at the same time.

Then the outer office door slammed and she hurriedly shut her computer down, blushing. But she saved a private copy first.

#12

Title: The Bet Author: Venstar Warnings: none Summary: Bets are made, there will be blood.

Oh, yes. It was going to happen. The tension was palpable in the room, yes he said palpable in his interior monologue. Just fucking get closer. Do it already. He was going to win that bet today by fuck. He leaned forward in anticipation, eyes locked on target. Yes. Yes….Keep going...almost….

*AH-OOH-GA!! AH-OOH-GAH!! AH-OOH-GAH!!*

Fuck, goddammit. Not again! He narrowed his eyes. There was no way another attack by water was happening. Dammit. Fake or not they were going to have to clear the god damned building. He sighed heavily as he turned sad eyes back to where 007 and Q had been quietly eyeing each other. They were gone. “What the fuck?” Where? There! The orange of Q’s cardigan turned a corner.  He was not about to lose the 'THEY FINALLY MADE OUT DAY' be! He ignored the rest of Q’branch’s leads as they ordered the evacuation.

“Davis?”

Fuck. It was R.

“And just where are you going? Exit is that way.”

He turned with hunched shoulders to find R smiling at him. Her eyes flitted past him to where Q and 007 had disappeared to. “THAT bet will only be won when it’s officially my day.”

#13

Title: Specs and the Lady Author: solarmorrigan Warnings: None. Summary: Louis has been a bartender for a long time, but occasionally patrons can still surprise him.

The Friday night crowd seethes around the bar in waves, laughing and calling out their orders. Louis has been a bartender a long time, which means he can keep up with the steady roll of vodka-tonic-scotch-and-soda-bottle-bottle-pint and still keep an eye on the floor for trouble.

Trouble like the man in specs and a loud jumper bumping into an over-drunk man in a worn football jersey, spilling both their drinks.

Specs’ mouth forms the word ‘sorry,’ but Jersey isn’t having it. He grabs Specs’ jumper, but before Louis can even call for Paul—their unofficial bouncer-bartender—a lady slides in between them, curly hair and cunning eyes, and pulls Jersey’s hand away.

Jersey shoves the lady, and viper-quick, she decks him. Jersey goes down.

Louis lets out a surprised laugh. The lady looks quite pleased. Specs looks exasperated, though Louis doesn’t know why; if he had someone like that in his corner, all squared shoulders and terrifying heels, he’d be delighted. Then again, from Specs’ half-laughing attempt at chastisement that carries in the surprised lull in noise (“Really, Eve?”), this isn’t the first time it’s happened.

“Just take Jersey out,” Louis bids as Paul moves in, “Specs and the lady are fine.”

#14

Title: Eyes on You Author: oldestcharm Warnings: n/a Summary: The Quartermaster is enjoying his afternoon and Bond is far too concerned about his garden.

She's good at her job. So good, in fact, that she's currently hidden from sight with her scope right on MI6's Quartermaster himself. He's sitting on the deck of his house, enjoying the sunny weather with a girly drink in one hand and a laptop resting on his thighs. He's typing furiously, paying no attention to his surroundings. All she has to do is take one shot.  

Then, the sprinklers turn on.  

She does her best to not make a sound even as her phone buzzes.

4:27 pm:

There are over twenty cameras on the property.

4:28 pm:

I suggest you get out of my hydrangea bush. James worked rather hard on the garden and he won't be pleased to find you there.

A click behind her — probably a gun. "You've ruined my garden."

She turns around and finds herself face to face with the legendary agent. She cringes. "I'm... very sorry?"

Bond does not look amused. "You're fixing this before you leave."

"You're not going to kill me?" she asks, heart pounding.

"Q wants you for his team." Bond sighs, looking more annoyed than anything. "Either you accept or I'll shoot you."

Well, it's not exactly a choice.

#15

Title: Over It Author: MrKsan / starrboned Warnings: Canon-Typical language Summary: Tanner is nervous.

Ferrying through the maze of the Thames tunnels was often a nerve-wracking job. More so when his passengers were nervous. More so when it was the Chief of Staff who was sitting across from him, restless, tap-tap-tapping on his cardboard box.

Tanner gave Jack an awkward smile as they docked, climbing the narrow ladder just as the Quartermaster stormed into view.

“I’m going to skin the twat alive, Bill!“ he hissed, making Tanner stumble to a stop. “Didn’t even try to cover his tracks.”

Jack grinned. Only one man could piss Q off that much.

Tanner sighed, resigned. “I’ll inform M-”

“Already did,” Q huffed.

"Oh?"

"Not risking my career for him again, Bill."

Jack dared a peek at the couple; the conversation was taking an unexpected turn.

Tanner blinked, once, twice, before seeming to come to a decision. He shoved the cardboard box at Q.

“Thought we could share breakfast, since our dinner last night was interrupted? Bad timing, of course- ”

"Bill,” Q said, and Jack saw the silver of a smirk. "I would love to."

Pulling a crumpled cigarette from under his heavy coat, Jack couldn't help but grin to himself.

MI6 and their drama.

Go vote!

[diminuel]

I promised to update you on how the survey for the “Out of America” (name pending) challenge planning is going!

(You can find the survey here, it’s still open)

I received 57 surveys so far which is a respectable amount that allows me to get a good idea of what people want! I’m including the graphs of the momentary results. I also had a look at how people who said they’d like to contribute/ participate voted to see if there’s any difference I had to take into consideration.

TL;DR on what got the most votes to save you some time:

Free Creation Challenge, open to all settings (AU and Canon compliant), open to all pairings (or no pairings), open to any main characters (no TFW focus required)

You can find the results and some funny name suggestions for the challenge under the cut!

(Note: people could click more than one answer. Also I’m a historian and literary scholar. I never had to do statistics so forgive me if this isn’t how you present your survey results in respectable academia)

I asked for input on the following points:

What kind of challenge style do you want?

Most people are for a Free Creation Challenge. This would mean you don’t have to sign up, don’t have to submit drafts and once the posting window opens (once people had time to put together things) they can post whatever they have; old stories, new stories, old art, new art, head canons, twitter threads, gif sets etc. (I could also arrange for people who do want the Big Bang experience to pair up with people. And I could put together a list with prompts to spark some ideas.) To sum up: if you have something, post something, no pressure!

Free Challenge is also what potential participants have most voted for with 27 votes for it (19 for Big Bang, 14 for Challenge week)

Should it be limited to canon compliant/ divergent stories or be opened to everything?

Anything goes got the most votes, which would mean you don’t HAVE to write about saving people, hunting things, crossing borders. But you CAN, if you want to.

Potential participants were also in favor of allowing AUs (with 31 to 15 votes).

Should this challenge focus on Dean/Cas or be open to all ships?

Again, people voted to keep it open. Which means you could write about any ship you want or keep it gen.

Potential participants also voted that way (29 want to keep it open, 15 were for Dean/Cas focus)

Should the story focus on at least one member of Team Free Will or can you write about anyone?

This one is very close together, with a small majority of people voting in favor of a TFW focus.

This is the only time when potential participants had a sliiiighty different vote: they were even. So I’d suggest to not restrict it to TFW only.

So to sum up, we’re currently looking at a challenge that has very few restrictions: you can post what you like within the given window, you can write canon compliant or AU, you can write about any ship (or no ship) you want and you can make anyone your main character(s).

Also! We’ve had some name suggestions which I will either let you vote on or decide based on my personal preference *lol*

Suggestions, including my own:

Out of America

Around the World

SuperNational

SuperInternational

Supernatural, Intl

SPN: International

Supernaturally international

People of Letters International

SPN Worldwide

Foreign Affairs

Team Free Wanderlust

Team Free World

Wandering Winchesters

Supernatural Passport

Foreignatural

Saving People, Hunting Things, International Business

Super-Wide-Natural

Superuniversal

Globalnatural

Winchesters? I think you mean Worldchesters

Carry on my worldwide son 

america isn't the only place in the world KRIPKE

Apocalypses do happen outside of america, Dean.

It's a supernatural world challenge

[agentdagonet]

Still taking prompts?? Eggsy disappears every Friday night when he’s not on a mission and Harry (or Merlin) wants to know where he goes. He follows Eggsy to a pub that has dueling pianos. Turns out Eggsy is one of the pianists, and one of the favorites

So sorry for the wait! I promise that I am working on every prompt you all have sent to me. Than you for giving this chaotic and crazy time some meaning :)

So, @fandomrulesmylife fair warning, I have been to one (1) piano bar ever, and it was years ago, and I kind of just wrote whatever sounded like fun to me. I hope you like it!!

          ‘You do realise that I could have solved this mystery in minutes if you’d bother to give me the go ahead.’ Merlin grumbled, the sound of keys echoing behind.

          ‘Now where’s the fun in that?’ Harry smirked, unseen through the glasses feed, as he sat reading at a park bench.

          ‘You’re lucky I respect his privacy.’

          ‘Are you suggesting that I don’t?’

          ‘Yes.’

          ‘Well bully for you,’ Harry closed the book and placed it on the bench, ‘but I’m going to do this the old fashioned way.’

          ‘That’s a fancy way to say “I’m going to stalk my protege that I’m half in love with” Hart.’ However, Merlin continued to be on the line. He was silent for the few minutes of Harry meandering down the path before speaking up again. ‘Why didn’t you just ask him?’

          ‘Ah,’ Harry gasped, as if struck by a brilliant idea, ‘of course! Just ask him why, when he gets back to home soil, he disappears on Friday nights and comes home smelling of cigarettes and liquor. That doesn’t sound like the plot to a shitty sitcom at all, no, especially once you factor in my… affections.’

          ‘And, somehow, you believe that literally following him around would be better?’

          ‘Don’t you know,’ Harry spotted Eggsy down the way, ‘I live for the Drama.’  

          Eggsy didn’t quite run down the road, and nor did he parkour down alleys or otherwise draw attention to himself, but he did move at a fast pace and glance down at his wrist (since when did he wear a watch outside of Kingsman?) before cursing beneath his breath and continuing on. He was wearing his street clothes, black and gold and his Kingsman medal glinting in the lamplight, and Harry couldn’t help but admire the cut of him. Despite every change, and every improvement, Eggsy had managed to keep this piece of himself whole. It wasn’t a facade, or a costume, Eggsy was just as comfortable here in his element as he was on a mission in a full Kingsman suit, and of all things Harry found his confidence the most alluring.

          Harry was so distracted by watching him hurry down the kerb that he nearly missed his window to follow unseen.

          Eggsy made his way past the Prince and down a side street that Harry regularly ignored, due to being incredibly bland looking, before ducking into a door clearly marked ‘Staff Only.’ 

          Harry would claim to have waited an appropriate amount of time, but Merlin would call him a liar. The truth was that Merlin gave him the route to the front of the establishment so he could enter as an average client to-

          ‘Show, Don’t Tell? The fuck is he doing there?’ Merlin muttered, obviously knowing more about the business than Harry, as he made his way through the throng of people. At one end of the dimly-lit room sat a pair of obnoxiously coloured upright pianos, the other was dominated by a bar, and the entire space between was filled with tables obviously designed for patrons to stand at as opposed to sit. The floor seemed to be at a partial decline, as he was able to see both instruments clearly despite there being very little room to move in the first place.

          ‘You hear he’s back?’

          ‘It’s been nearly a month this time- I wonder where he goes.’

          Well that’s interesting. Harry allowed his gaze to flit about the room as he eavesdropped. Eggsy’s been in Uruguay nearly that long.

          ‘Honestly, though- he shows up, he out classes everyone they put in front of him, has a pint, and then he disappears again. He’s an enigma.’

          ‘Bloke’s allowed his secrets!’

          ‘I don’ need t’know his name or where he lives to know he’s talented as fuck and wasted wherever he’s workin’ at.’

          The lights dimmed further, and suddenly the crowd was hushing each other like children. There were still murmurs, the underlying white noise of conversation that pervaded any public space, but the vast majority of the chatter had stopped immediately.

          ‘Good evening everybody- normally we would have an introduction here, as you all know, but with the surprise return of our beloved and the presence of his arch nemesis,’ the audience chuckled, and Harry couldn’t help but wonder as to the story there, ‘we figured we’d just jump into this. You lot know the rules- jars at the front, cast your votes and your requests and you might just get lucky!’ Harry caught sight of the stacks of paper, set up almost like a silent auction, at a table near the front of the collective of tables.

          ‘Excuse me?’ Harry leant toward the nearest table, honestly confused if playing it up a bit, ‘I’m afraid I’ve never been here before- what are we supposed to do?’

          ‘You’re in for a treat, then- we’re glad to have ya,’ A man with dark hair and green eyes said, and offered his hand, ‘y’see where those people are crowded up now? You go up to the front an’ write down ‘n artist or somethin’ and you put a number next to it, an’ then put just the number on the other sheet. Any number. One of the players looks at the number sheet an’ picks, an’ the other’s got to play whatever they picked.

          ‘It’s a bit complicated- suggest watchin’ for a bit first- but there’s no real risk.’ The man shrugged, and Harry mulled it over in his head.

          ‘That sounds so convoluted- I want a dozen.’ Merlin chimed in, and Harry settled for saluting his glasses under the pretext of examining his cuticles in the nearly-nonexistent light.

          ‘Is there a goal?’ Harry asked.

          ‘Have a good time! The audience chooses who had the most fun and they get a ribbon.’  A woman with tight curls and a bright smile answered before turning back toward the stage. The last of the chatter died down, and a set of lights turned on above the pianos.

          ‘Let’s hear it for Rhys!’ Harry watched as an older gentleman did no less than swagger toward the piano on the left before standing in front of it. ‘And on our right is our beloved Giacomo!’

          Eggsy walked out, jacket swung over one shoulder like a model, and tossed it carelessly onto the bench. Harry’s mouth went dry at the smirk on his lips and the complete surety in his gaze as he looked over the audience like a king surveying his people. Harry fought not to look guilty for being in the audience, and tucked himself partially behind some seemingly regular patrons as Eggsy’s gaze neared.

          ‘Rhys has generously offered the opening number to Giacomo this evening- is he trying to curry some favour?’ The audience laughed, but Rhys raised a hand and they went silent.

          ‘It’s a welcome home present- even picked an old favourite!’ Rhys smirked, and that was certainly a code for something as people began shoving one another in seeming excitement. ‘Hope you warmed up on the way here, mate- give us your best Elton.’

          As Rhys had been speaking, Eggsy had settled himself at his piano, rolled his neck and stretched his arms in an arc Harry longed to trace with his fingertips.

          ‘Y’know, mate, let me tell you somethin’, I couldn’t’ve chosen better myself,’ Eggsy grinned, and looked straight at Harry, ‘This one’s for Haz,’ Eggsy winked, Harry flushed to the tips of his ears, and the audience went wild as Eggsy burst into motion.

It’s getting late have you seen my matesMa tell me when the boys get here 

          ‘Seems you got away with stalking this time, Galahad.’

Taking prompts!

[eyebeastposts]

Preferences/Patreon Survey Results

I want to thank you all for voicing your opinions. Rather than give detailed breakdowns of everything, I’ll be grouping each section into either a major yes, major no, or if said category was practically even.

Expansions

Yes-Weight Gain, Breast, Butt, Slob

No-Belly, Muscle Growth, Giant/Giantess Growth, Berry/Fruit Expansion, Both forms of Genital Expansion

Even-Inflation, Pregnancy

-Surprised that belly and berry were on the no list considering how often I’ve written about it.

Transformations

Yes-Male to Female Transformation,

No-Himbofication, Clown TF, Age Progression, Full Animal TF, Humanoid Inanimate Object TF, Non-humanoid Inanimate Object TF, Female to Male Transformation, Buttface TF, Fuck Plant/Succ Plant TF, Dorse TF

Even-Bimbofication, Nerd TF, Shortstack TF, Anthro Animal TF

-Out of all the categories, the only one that could get a definite positive response was MtF TF. Didn’t realize how divisive transformations can be.

I want to thank everyone who gave their feedback on this. Keep in mind, even if something isn’t highly favored, doesn’t mean I wont write about it. I might make this survey an annual thing to continuously gauge my audience as it grows and I try out new things.

Now let’s address a few expansions and transformations that you suggested I missed.

IQ Loss: Do a lot of it already and it’s more of a side effect rather than a main focus of a story.

Vagina mouths: A little weird, but not off the table.

Multi-breast: Definitely something I’ll do if the story calls for it, especially with certain animals.

Age Regression: Absolutely not. Gets way too close to that iffy territory for me.

Deflation: Considering most of the things I write are about things getting bigger, I can’t say this one has really piqued my interest.

Cultural/Racial/Social TF: The social status changes I’m all for, but making a fetish story about someone’s race changing is something I’d rather not touch with 10-foot pole.

Lip Expansion: Can sometimes be attributed to the Bimbo TF and I don’t think it would be enough to make up entire, full-length story on it’s own.

Hourglass Expansion: An excellent suggestion, which I have done in the past and seems relatively popular.

Stronfat: Double-edged sword on this one. Yes, strong fat is fun to write about, but it’s usually people’s work around for when ever I want to do pure muscle growth.

Merging: Not a big fan to be honest.

Canon TF (One character turning into another character): Highly situational.

Big Baby TF: Depends a lot on the situation, but is almost always no since it usually entails scat or piss, a.k.a. stuff I don’t have any desire to write about.

Robot TF: I like working with soft bodies over metal, considering the former lends itself to natural growth of various types. That being said, I’m not against using a little robot TF here and there.

Shrinking: Been trying for a while to figure out a good opportunity to mix this with a weight gain thing. As for vanilla shrinking, it’s not really a major interest for me outside of certain scenarios.

Patreon Stuff

My own fault for offering the answer “depends on the rewards”, but it’s to be expected that was the most popular response. As for the rewards themselves:

1. Early access to stories-55

2. Patreon Polls-50

3. Previews of stories I’m working on and Weekly writing prompt request drawings-47

4. Discounts on commissions-44

5. Discord server access/privileges- 27

6. Patreon exclusive stories-24

Again, I want to thank everyone who gave their opinion. Still haven’t set in stone the Patreon stuff, but I’ll definitely be considering this information if I choose to pursue it in the future.

Miscellaneous Comments/Questions

“Please less body hair stuff (Or more slob stuff without it).”

-That all depends on the story itself. My own personal use depends on what I’m feeling for that particular story. As for commissions, that’s based on the preferences of the commissioner.

“Just please don't make commissions patron-exclusive. So many writers do that. ): “

-If I do open a Patreon, I don’t intend to make anything exclusive to the platform. At worst, I’ll just put up stories a day or two early for Patreon supporters before releasing it publicly.

-Special thank you to the people who gave general words of encouragement or advice when it came to a Patreon.

Now for something a little less savory. I received the following suggestion over the course of the survey over TEN TIMES:

“robotization (robot/machine tf), monster tf, alien tf, costume theme tfs, perception tf/reality warping, transformation through time travel, brutification (brute tf), Upside down tf, possession tfs, toon tf, devolution tf, twinning (clone tf), weird conjoinment and cock conjoinment, molded tf (a living person's body is molded into a different form), mascot tf “

Considering the low probability this same suggestion, along with matching poll votes, were from 10 different people, that means a certain someone tried to discredit the voting. I deleted all but one of the above answers to retain some of the credibility of the survey. This survey was meant to be a fun way to gauge audience interest, but instead it’s making me question the credibility of both this survey and all the others I’ve done via this method. Might have to try something else should I attempt a mass survey in the future.

[incorrect-marauders]

THE OWLS ARE IN! IT’S TIME FOR THE SURVEY RESULTS!

So, as many of our followers are probably aware, we recently did a survey to get a feel of what people thought of our blog. We got a total of 57 results and we are grateful to each and every one of you for taking the time to let us know your thoughts. Now, we’re here to share the general consensus of what people thought and how we will accommodate these opinions.

We’ll definitely have some changes to the blog, so read on to see what those changes are!

Before we begin, we have a few things to briefly mention.

The results are pretty scattered. We didn’t want to restrict anyone, so most were free response or included “Other”. In hindsight, there were a few questions that could have easily been multiple choice without really restricting anyone. (Side eyes the first question.) Therefore, most of these will just summarize the results we got. Occasionally drop the graph for the multiple choice questions.

Because of the large amount of responses we got, not every answer will be listed here. We highlighted the things that were either most commonly mentioned or had us thinking the most.

If anyone would like to see the full results for some reason (par the names, to keep anonymity), feel free to email us at incorrectmarauders.tumblr@gmail.com and we’ll send it over!

And yes, we are making changes to accommodate these results! That’s what this survey was all about!

We’ll be opening applications for new mods within the next couple days as well.

We’ll have a tiny hiatus as all of this is going on.

Now, we begin...

How long have you been following incorrect-marauders?

The most popular answer seemed to be around 2 months or 10 months. A lot of people filling out this survey seemed to either be relatively new or here since the beginning. Kudos to you incorrect-marauders veterans, and welcome newer followers!

How did you find incorrect-marauders?

Somewhat as we expected. Keep reblogging us, lovely people!

What do you love MOST about incorrect-marauders?

"It's funny.” (x50)

No really, we got 50 variations of “It’s funny,” “It’s hilarious,” “The humour,” “The funny text posts.”

Thanks, we appreciate it!

“How weirdly in character the quotes always are.”

(Similar variations include, “How actually accurate your post are,” “That not every post is as funny, imho, but that they do keep true to the characters,” “How much they fit the characters.”)

“They offer new content to the Marauders 'franchise' as it were because some stuff within the fandom is constantly being reused.”

“How correct it actually is if Joanne made it canon.”

“McGonagall with the marauders and that the sources are listed.”

“Accurate representation, variety of ships and relationships, isnt toxic.”

“Very funny and can be great art/writing prompts.”

“The taste.”

“EVERYTHING.”

These are all very nice, thank you all. Glad we hit where we were aiming.

What do you love LEAST about incorrect-marauders?

The most common response was, “Nothing,” or a variation thereof, but that’s no fun for this question, so here are some of the legitimate criticisms we received!

“Quote sources, I think, occasionally aren't there.”

Our original quotes often don’t have sources. But if there’s one where a mod forgot to credit a source, please just message us and one of the admins will fix that!

“There isn't a particularly nice aesthetic to the blog, e.g. a matching layout and profile picture or quote.”

Yeah, we’re working to fix that. I like pretty blogs too.

“Could be updated a little more.”

(”Not much posting in my opinion,” “Long time between posts.”)

Strangely enough, we got this a few times but our later poll about how often to post were contradicting this. So, unfortunately, we will not be adjusting this.

“I mean I would say that Peter is on it, but can’t really get rid of him...”

(Got a few of these, like, ”Peter being seen as a good person.”)

Sorry!

“Some are a bit too small.”

“I don’t like the long quotes.”

Well, then.

“Seeing my #notp but that isnt rly a minus?? Its called diversity so im not gonna hate or anything.”

Thank you for appreciating the diversity. We get occasional hate over it, but we also get hate over not posting some of the other ships. I suppose that’s what happens when you have lots of different followers of different opinions.

“If I send you a text post you credit the source in # but i'd like you to include a link to my tumblr in the post itself so people would actually find my tumblr. I doent send you text posts anymore, cause it doesn't really profit me and it feels like you get credit for my work.”

We’re sorry you feel that way. We always put it in the tags, just in front of the source. We are more of a mod-based blog rather than a submission-based blog. Anyone is welcome to submit, but about 98% of our posts are created by our mods.

“Sometimes I feel like the wrong characters were chosen or not well thought out.”

We can assure you our mods put a lot of thought into what characters to use, but you are welcome to message us with your own suggestion! (But please note that we are a Marauders blog; we got a few comments about how we don’t post enough Hinny or Romione, but that’s not what our blog is about.)

What makes incorrect-marauders stand out?

Once again, we got a lot about how funny we are, so we’ll skip over those and highlight the more unique answers!

"They don't use things from other people without credit.”

“The love and attention put in to everything.”

“Don't think there are any other blogs about marauders in this style.”

(We got this a few times. ”Like the type of blog and incorrect-marauders was the first one Harry potter themed I found,” also, “Its really funny and pretty much the only blog that just does this kind of post and i LOVE it.” But alternatively... “There are a lot of textpost blogs like it, but it is one of the only ones that I have found that consistently keeps characters in character in the posts and appeals to my sense of humor.”)

“I feel the quotes are in character and from multiple sources which Is cool.“

“How open it is.”

“The continuous content.”

“The posts arent so often that my dash is spammed like other blogs of the same nature.”

“Not sure but I like you.”

Not much to comment on these except we’re happy to see people think this about us!

How satisfied are you with the blog and the posts, in all?

So, you’re telling me, we opened a public, anonymous survey and not a single hater filled it out? Am I impressed or disappointed?

Please explain your response to the previous question.

“I just love the whole blog.”

“It's not my favourite blog ever ever which is why it's not a 10 but i still love it.”

“You guys are just so awesome! But it'd also be cool to have a little, meet the creator(s).”

“Its good but I don't have or want notifications on.”

“It’s the #qualitycontent i signed up for.”

"Always room for improvement, and also there's no 9 3/4 option.”

Awesome! We definitely agree that we can always improve, which is what this survey is for!

How often should we post?

We got a lot of variety here. Some say once a day (which is how often we currently post) was ideal. Others put stuff like...

“I wouldnt mind my entire blog just being filled with your posts.”

While Once A Day is the most voted for, the rest of the options put together, which we’ll name Two or More Times a Day, do win overall. Since we have one new post followed by a reblog, we’ll compromise by posting two times a day, but with one new post a day (the second being a reblog).

In UTC, what times do you prefer us posting?

As expected, not many people cared. But two people felt very strongly and voted for 12am, 1am, and 6pm UTC. So, we’ll consider that.

What characters, relationships, universes, etc. would you like to see more represented in our posts?

We got a lot of responses here, primarily being more Wolfstar, Jily, and BFFs James and Sirius. We also got a lot saying we should post about Hinny, Romione, next gen, FBAWTFT, etc. in which I remind you that this is a Marauders blog.

We also got the hilarious response that said we should maybe post about the “merauders”. Well, we can certainly promise you that.

We also got a lot of people saying more McGonagall. That’s something we can definitely do.

Would you like to see more original quotes from us?

For the longest time, the option 50/50 was at exactly 50%. Kind of disappointed that is no longer, but the 25% option is at 25%, so that’s something. Anyway, we’ll aim for 50/50.

What else would you like to see us post?

This was one of the results that will make the biggest change to the blog. People seem to really love these ideas. So expect...

Marauder Mondays! Every Monday we’ll have Marauder Monday, where we’ll answer asks, reblog posts, and have a party! Probably when we’ll post the “extra” posts, like our GIFs, graphics, aesthetics, videos, etc.

How would you feel if we did sponsored posts?

Combined, it seems like ~75% of those who took the survey are good with sponsored posts.

These results honestly surprised us. We’ve gotten a lot of offers of sponsorships in the past but have always denied them because we didn’t know how our followers would feel. We probably won’t do this in the near future, but it’s an option.

What kind of projects would you like to see us host?

We got so many people suggesting merch. Shirts, stickers, pins, other merch... So we’ll keep that in mind! We’d love some Marauders shirts ourselves.

“Projects that other blogs can get involved with to help other accounts grow.”

Noted!

“An art challenge maybe? like, 30 day challenge where you have to draw them as characters from movies/tv shows? like, friends, clueless, avengers, dc characters etc.“

Definitely interesting. Art challenges would be a lot of fun. Hopefully there’s an interest for this!

Which of our other accounts do you follow/would like to follow?

We’ll look into bringing on people to regularly post on other sites.

What device do you use to browse our blog most often (whether through Tumblr or our site)?

Why are we bothering with a redesign again? Oh, right. Personal vain.

How often do you visit the blogsite?

Those numbers are higher than expected...

What kind of things would you like to find on our blogsite?

“Character aesthetics.”

“Fanfiction links.”

“Marauders fan art would be cool.“

We’ll be working on this! Thank you for the suggestions!

More meet the creator(s) (if not comfortable with should, maybe just telling a funny story)

We got a lot of people saying they’d like to know more about us. We are anonymous, but this particular comment had us thinking. We’ll be implementing something in the near future. We will still remain anonymous, but we will have “blog identifies”, I suppose you could say. More info to come!

Other than show, character, and ship lists, what would you like to see in our navigation?

We didn’t get many new suggestions for this, except for fanart, aesthetics, etc. which we will add as more people join the blog!

Do you have any additional suggestions for us?

"Maybe find a blog that could do fan art, but only if you’re comfortable with it. Also, you’re blog is already so amazing, and any redesign would just make it more awesome!!! Don’t let anyone get you down espically if some one puts something negative on the survey because it is so so great already.”

We got no negative feedback (just constructive criticism), but thank you for your concern!

“um. keep doing this. i like it. it helps fill the gaping void in my soul“

Mood.

“Thanks for making the survey, caring about our feedback, and being awesome overall :)”

Of course! This is not just our blog, this is the Marauders fandom blog. Your feedback means everything to us and we hope you will like the changes we’ll make in response to it.

And that covers all of it! Cookies to anyone who read all of that! Keep an eye out for those new mod applications if you’re interested in joining our team!

We’ll be taking a tiny little hiatus as we’re figuring some stuff out.

[askvenomandthekids]

Prompt: Reader/OC has been seeing Martin a while but maybe he gets really upset over something and has an outburst of energy. He thinks he kills reader/oc but they’re okay.

tagged for: @grease-queen @mintballoons @peggle2 @halfwayto-batman @cr00ked0wl @omega39-blog @plexusfiend

Martin Li was the most enigmatic man you’ve ever dated.

In fact, describing your relationship as ‘dating’ was a bit of a stretch. He’s not a huge fan of PDA - the only thing he’s comfortable doing in public with you is hand holding. In public, he doesn’t like flaunting your relationship - not that Martin was ashamed of you, but that he was simply a private person.

When he’s alone with you, it’s a different story. 

His soft smiles and polite laughter would disappear into an unmistakable melancholy. When he gets into those moods, he would gather you into his arms and hold you close to his chest for hours. 

Alone with you, Martin felt no need to speak about trivial subjects. He was the sort of man who spoke when he thinks its worthwhile. 

“Being with you is enough,” He told you once. “Forgive me if I’m not the best man for conversation.”

You didn’t mind doing all the talking in this relationship. With Martin, you could tell him anything. He always looked at you with such intense care and adoration, you felt he would never judge you. 

However, it did strike you one day that as much as Martin knew you, you hardly knew him. He talked little about his family and past. Perhaps, he wanted to keep it that way. You can respect that. 

It’s not like you expected the man to get on one knee and tell you his deepest darkest secrets. But, you can’t help but feel he’s hiding something from you. Despite how much he cared, you can sense the wall he put in between you and him.

You didn’t think this wall would’ve ever come down - until the accident.

It was supposed to be a simple date. 

You wanted to take Martin out for a break from work - a trip to a nearby art musuem followed by a lunch date can never go wrong. 

And everything was wonderful - until the rally. The crowd was so large, it easily blocked a street. And of course, you couldn’t miss Norman Osborn’s giant face plastered and printed on every perimeter imaginable. 

You rolled your eyes. Politics. Never much cared for it, and you won’t start now. You drew closer to Martin, and tugged at his arm. 

“Hey, we can go somewhere else.” You suggested. 

There was no reply. You looked at Martin, and saw that his expression was…dark. Something animalistic possessed his features, and they were twisted in such a way that struck a chord in you. In all the time you’ve known Martin, you never saw him look so - inhuman. 

Unsettled, you decided it was time to head back home. Maybe he was having a panic attack.

“C’mon love, let’s go.” You repeated, and tugged a little harder this time. 

Martin is snapped out of his intense daze. When his eyes fell on you, they immediately softened. That familiar and caring expression returned to his face. Relief deflated your heart. There was your Martin Li. He squeezed your hand. 

“…Yes. We should go.” He agreed. There was an anxiety in his gaze. You smiled at him, as reassurance, and gave him a soft kiss on his lips for good measure.

Hand in hand, you two fought your way against the crowd. You managed to worm your way through people - however, not without being bombarded by dozens of political campaign volunteers. 

“Hi! Would you like to take a political survey? Remember, Osborn cares what you think!”

“No thanks. Can you move.”

“Hello! Can I have a moment of your time to sign this petition? If you are a staunch supporter for Osborn, this is the best way to -”

“Don’t have a pen, move it.”

“Vote for Osborn! Vote for Osborn! Wear this pin to join the pledge!”

“Shove the pin down his butt for all I care.” 

You grew increasingly frustrated with the constant stream of people that got in your way. Each minute that passed, Martin’s grip on your hand became tighter. You ignored how numb your fingers felt - you two should get out as fast as possible. 

Just when the end was in sight, a black van blocked your path. You glared at the car, ready to punch it if you had to. What now?

The door opened, to reveal Osborn’s wrinkled and amicable face. The crowd behind you erupted into cheers. Osborn laughed merrily, and held up peace signs in response. Policemen appeared out of nowhere to push you and Martin away from his path. You kept your hand tight around Martin’s, and worriedly looked at him. You gasped at what you saw.

Martin’s pupils burned an electrifying white and his sclera were pitch black. A terrible snarl is curled on his lips - and the way he glared at Osborn, so full of toxic hatred, shook you to your very core. That glare meant to kill. 

He began to move for Osborn, and fast. You knew if you didn’t do anything, Martin was going to do something truly horrible.

You seized Martin from behind, and wrapped him into a desperate hug. 

“Please, don’t.” You begged. 

Martin looked at you with those hateful eyes. His face hardened.

“Let go.” He warned. God, his voice sounded so deep and demonic, what in the world was he? Dozens of questions ran through your mind, but you gripped onto Martin like vice. Then, one of the police came up to Martin. 

“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to stand back.”

A growl crawled up Martin’s throat. He raised his hand - a ball of pure black and white energy crackled in his palm. You screamed his name. You can’t let him do this. You can’t let him. So, stupidity or courage took hold of you. You grabbed Martin’s hand, and shoved him to the ground.

Something loud exploded, in a brilliant flash of white.

Then, everything went black.

author’s note: no worries i’ll write a part 2! i love me some JUICY angst!! >:D

[orbemnews]

Alibaba’s Big Fine Is a Warning Shot Beijing tightens the screws Over the weekend, Chinese officials fined Alibaba a record $2.8 billion over antitrust violations. It was the biggest penalty yet as the Chinese government scrutinizes Jack Ma’s business empire — and it served as a warning for the country’s other internet giants. The fine was linked to Alibaba’s locking of merchants into its sales platform, according to the Chinese market authority, and vastly exceeds the agency’s previous largest fine, a $975 million antitrust penalty imposed on Qualcomm in 2015. A commentary published in the state-run People’s Daily minutes after the Alibaba announcement called such regulation “a kind of love and care.” The fine will likely curb Alibaba’s ambitions. Like its American counterparts, the company argued that its sheer size and wealth of services are a net positive for consumers. But smaller rivals are now likely to find support from Beijing if they accuse Alibaba of anticompetitive practices in the future. “We accept the penalty with sincerity,” Alibaba said in a statement, and executives held a call today to say the fine, worth about 4 percent of revenue, wasn’t material to the e-commerce giant’s finances. Shareholders appeared relieved. Alibaba’s shares rose by more than 6 percent in Hong Kong trading. Beyond the fine, the company agreed to stop violating antimonopoly rules and submit compliance reports for three years. And today, the company said it would lower the fees it charges merchants and provide additional services. Alibaba’s shares are still down sharply from late last year, when the antitrust rumblings began. Alibaba suggested that rivals could be next. “The penalty issued today served to alert and catalyze companies like ours,” the company said in its statement. “It reflects the regulators’ thoughtful and normative expectations toward our industry’s development.” Unlike Alibaba, shares in Tencent and Baidu were down today, as other big internet businesses in China feared that they might be next. HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING An effort to unionize Amazon workers fails. Workers at a warehouse in Alabama overwhelmingly voted against the proposal, crushing one of the biggest drives to form a union in Amazon’s history. The lopsided result may prompt organized labor to try different tactics in the future. Jay Powell says the economy is at an “inflection point.” The Fed chair said on “60 Minutes” last night that the U.S. outlook had “brightened substantially” but warned that flare-ups in Covid-19 cases remain a risk. Speaking of virus risks: the South African variant may be able to evade some of the protection of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Microsoft may be close to striking another big acquisition. It is near a deal to buy Nuance Communications, the A.I. and speech recognition software company whose tech is tied to Apple’s Siri virtual assistant, Bloomberg reports. At a potential valuation of $16 billion, a transaction would be Microsoft’s biggest since buying LinkedIn for $26 billion. Preet Bharara is becoming a digital media executive. Vox Media agreed to buy Cafe Studios, the publisher behind “Stay Tuned With Preet,” the podcast hosted by the former Manhattan U.S. attorney. Mr. Bharara, who made his name prosecuting insider trading and terrorism cases, will join Vox as the creative director of Cafe. Two electric vehicle battery makers settle their feud. LG Energy Solution and SK Innovation reached an agreement to end their intellectual property dispute, with SK paying LG $1.8 billion in lump-sum and royalty payments. The settlement ends a fight that threatened the Biden administration’s climate agenda, as well as a big battery factory SK is building in Georgia. C.E.O.s talk politics Over the weekend, more than 100 corporate leaders held a conference call to discuss what they should do, if anything, to shape the debate around restrictive new voting laws under discussion across the U.S. Snap polls during the call suggested that most of the participants favor doing something, though what that would be isn’t yet clear. The voting-rights debate is fraught for companies, putting them at the center of an increasingly heated partisan battle. Ken Chenault, the former AmEx chief, and Ken Frazier, the current Merck C.E.O., urged the executives on the call to publicly state their support for broader ballot access, following their work gathering 70 fellow Black leaders to sign a letter calling on companies to fight bills that restrict voting rights, like the one that recently passed in Georgia. A new survey of Americans gives support for companies wading into politics. The data provided by Morning Consult was presented to the C.E.O.s on the call, which was convened by the Yale professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld. Here are some highlights: 62 percent of “avid” baseball fans support M.L.B.’s decision to move the All-Star Game from Georgia in response to the state’s new voting restrictions. Support was lower among all adults (39 percent), but if the league was worried about the effect on its most dedicated fans, this is an important finding. 57 percent of Americans think companies should cut back on donations to elected officials who are working to limit voting rights. Nearly three-quarters of respondents said that the government should ensure equitable access to voting locations. More than half of Americans said they were more likely to buy from companies that promote certain social causes, including racial equality and civil rights, although support among Democrats was stronger than among Republicans on many of these issues. Among the handful of issues that would make Republicans less likely to buy from a company were support for the Black Lives Matter movement, abortion rights, stricter gun control, transgender rights and gay rights. “However glad we are to see a new generation’s evolving perspective on investing, our goal is not to make it easier for them to pile into and rush out of speculative meme stocks.” — Ron Kruszewski, the C.E.O. of Stifel, in his annual letter to shareholders. On due diligence and flying taxis Archer, the electric aircraft company, said earlier this month that it’s facing a federal investigation over allegations of I.P. theft. That’s not just a potential problem for Archer, which denies wrongdoing, but also for the investment bank Moelis & Company, which announced in February that a blank-check firm it was backing would acquire Archer in a deal that valued the company at $3.8 billion. Questions arise about due diligence. Archer revealed the federal investigation on the day a rival, Wisk, sued the company and accused it of stealing trade secrets and infringing on its patents. According to Wisk’s suit, it informed Archer of its concerns last year, before Archer’s deal with the Moelis-linked SPAC, known as Atlas Crest Investment. “They had to be aware of this — so what did they make of it?” said Kevin LaCroix, a lawyer and author of D&O Diary. Moving too quickly? I.P. theft claims are common in nascent industries like the one for electric air taxis, and Atlas may have dismissed the matter as a competitive tactic from a rival. But Atlas’s due diligence took a little over a month, according to regulatory filings. The SPAC led by Reid Hoffman took almost three times as long to run the rule over its acquisition of another rival, Joby. What about incentives? Moelis not only backed the Atlas SPAC but also served as its financial adviser and placement agent for the additional funding alongside the merger — roles that could earn it $30 million in fees, according to filings. Moelis bankers, including the chairman Ken Moelis, own a “substantial majority” of founder shares and warrants in the SPAC, which would be worthless if a deal isn’t done. There are “huge incentives” for SPAC deals to close, Mr. LaCroix said. “Does that create its own logic which kind of creates sort of a runaway freight train so that, if problems do emerge, they kind of get glossed over? That is the risk.” Baseball on the blockchain A classic American pastime — baseball-card collecting — is getting a 21st century update. The blockchain platform Worldwide Asset Exchange (WAX) and Topps, the collectibles and candy company, are launching NFTs, or nonfungible tokens, digitizing this season’s Major League Baseball trading card series. WAX minted more than a million NFTs for 75,000 digital card packs. The series, digitizes nearly 2,000 images to be sold in packs of six or 45 cards starting next week. William Quigley, WAX’s co-founder, said he expects “millions” in direct sales and a robust secondary market. For M.L.B., the tokens essentially act as an annuity, paying the league a fraction of every resale via conditions written into their code. That is a new source of revenue that didn’t exist with old-fashioned cards. Top Shots, the National Basketball Association’s NFTs, are among the most popular assets to take off in the recent crypto craze, generating nearly $150 million in sales over the past month alone, according to DappRadar. Digital tokens solve several problems, Mr. Quigley said. With standard cards it has been difficult to establish how many cards were issued and to ensure the authenticity of a supposedly rare one. NFTs have built-in authentication and verification data, and separate ownership from possession so that owners don’t need to amass physical goods in a world with “landfills worth of junk,” he said. Mr. Quigley himself is considering giving up on buying physical art. “I’m thinking I don’t like it,” he said. A home run in a hot market? Topps is riding high as the pandemic has driven new interest in memorabilia, especially trading cards. And NFTs are not the only hot trend Topps is betting on: the company is going public via SPAC in a deal that values it at $1.3 billion, DealBook reported last week. THE SPEED READ Deals Medline Industries, a maker of medical equipment, is reportedly weighing a sale that could value it at more than $30 billion. (WSJ) Didi Chuxing, the Chinese ride-hailing giant, is said to have hired Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to lead its forthcoming I.P.O. in the U.S. (Reuters) Politics and policy David Cameron, the former British prime minister who became a top adviser to Greensill Capital, admitted to mistakes in lobbying policymakers on behalf of the recently collapsed lender. (FT) “We Asked Congress’s Freshmen to Give Up Stock Trading. Few Were Willing.” (NYT) Tech Court filings in Texas revealed that Google secretly used past bids for its digital advertising exchange to give its own ad-buying system an advantage over rivals. (WSJ) More than 500 employees of Alphabet signed an open letter demanding the tech giant change rules they say unduly protect those credibly accused of harassment. (The Verge) Best of the rest Don’t mistake a work colleague’s silent endurance for resilience. (NYT) Online schools are here to stay, even after the pandemic. (NYT) We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com. Source link Orbem News #Alibabas #Big #Fine #shot #warning

[nationalpark-rp]

Announcement: New Changes!

Hello everyone!  Your lovely mods are back at it again with some wonderful new changes for our group.  These changes will take effect immediately, and across both the National Park and National Park MORE.  Please give us a few minutes of your time as we explain further.

ON THE NATIONAL PARK HUB…

First let’s talk about some changes that are happening on the hub!  If you haven’t noticed, people are posting memes nearly every day.  And that’s because there are no meme days!  That’s right! We’ve officially removed meme days!  Now you can post and reblog memes whenever you want.  While memes do not count towards activity, we nevertheless encourage you to participate whenever you’re able.  Get to know your fellow members and their characters!  Have fun!

Please note that although we are removing meme days, this is still a preliminary trial.  We’re testing the waters to see if having no specified meme days is the best way to go.  We therefore suggest that you keep the amount of memes you reblog on any given day to a select few; you have plenty of time to participate in memes throughout the week. We’re prepared to step in if things get crazy, but we’re positive we won’t have to do that.  Don’t do anything we wouldn’t do!

The next thing we’d like to bring to your attention is our suggestion box!  We’ve had our suggestion box for a while, but let’s be real: who knows what to say on those things?  You might lean one way or another with how you feel towards what’s going on, but when actually faced with writing something?  Nope!  Your mind’s gone completely blank!

Here’s what’s different: we’ve created a survey to alleviate all that tension!  This survey is completely voluntary, so you are by no means obligated to complete it. We ask that you participate in this survey so that we the mods can better understand our members, and to pinpoint what exactly you all are looking for with this group.  The National Park is your group as well as ours.  You deserve a say in our present and future.

You can access our survey by going to this link here. It will also be available during every Activity Check from this point on.

 ON NATIONAL PARK MORE…

The hub isn’t the only thing that is getting refreshed! The MORE blog is, too!  But don’t worry, we are not getting rid of our character request—those are staying.  In fact, we encourage them.  So if you have a character you’re just dying to see, please feel free to request to your heart’s content!  We recommend that you request one (1) character at a time to give us an opportunity to process it.  You can request characters on either the hub or the MORE blog.

And do you remember our character development prompts? I sure do.  In its current iteration, we have only posted two such prompts, but they just didn’t seem to be getting as much attention as we’d hoped. We brought them into fruition so that everyone could indulge in exploring more character development with their muses, but we’ve since learned that the way we went about it was wrong. So we’re trying something different. We’re keeping these character development prompts, but this time… they’re in meme form.

You heard it here first!  I meme, you meme, we all scream for development memes!  With these character development memes, we’re going to bring all the fun of bragging about our characters with the giggling hysterics (or wailing sobs) of memery.  It’s going to be a great time.  We hope that this new format will give you a better experience when exploring your characters.

We’ve saved the most important news for last.  When we first created the MORE blog, we intended for it to be a place where we further the hub’s creations.  We started this by our positivity quotes and with our character requests, later followed up with our character development prompts.  After much deliberation, we’ve decided to remove positivity quotes from the MORE blog. While they were a good idea—as positivity and inspiration is something we all need in our lives—we feel that we can do something so much more with the blog.

Instead, we’ve decided to add something even more special in its place!  Continuing our mission to spread love and hope to our members, we’ve decided to revamp it with something fresher, something better. Something where we can brag about the people we love most.  Something like… a member of the month (MOTM) feature.

Now this is my favorite part.  These features will highlight one member, and we the group will talk about how great they are.  We’ll discuss how they write their characters, and everything that makes them fun and unique.  We’ll be using these features to appreciate all of our members and what they do for our group.  It truly is you guys who make our group so great.

How this will work is simple: you’ll submit the name(s) of the people you feel best deserve to be nominated for the month’s MOTM feature.  Tell us why you think they should be selected, and everything about what makes them wonderful.  We want to hear it all, because that’s what we’ll use in our feature. The member with the most votes will win that month’s feature.

There isn’t any criteria for someone to be nominated as MOTM.  Everyone is eligible right from the get-go.  Should there be no names submitted, we the mods will choose the member who receives that month’s MOTM feature.  And even if you don’t happen to get it, that doesn’t mean you’re any less special or important to us.  Everyone is fantastic in their own way.  We should celebrate our fellow group members rather than be jealous of them.

AND SO…

And that’s it!  Meowth-mod and myself have been working diligently to keep the National Park running smoothly.  We’re going to try new ideas and events to encourage you all, too.  Branch out a little.  Get outside of the stereotypical roleplay group box.  We don’t want our group to be just like all the others.  We want to stand out.  We want to be remembered.  And you, my dear, sweet, beloved members, are a huge part of that.  Every minute we spend with you is such a blessing. We truly are humbled that we can write with you all.

That’s all for now.  We’ll see you next month for another MOTM feature and the brand-new Winter Event.

~ from your loving mods  ❤

[wendip-week]

I'm interested in making my own ship week. Any advice on how to make one?

Ah. Hmm, that is a difficult question. And not 100% Wendip related, so I’m gonna add a keep reading

Wendip Week begun its life quite spontaneously (x), with @oxsugarxcoatedxo making the tumblr after we (myself, nautiscarader and @brunetta6 agreed), if i remember correctly, after noticing the lack of Wendip content, and any “hub” for it. Even since then I am mostly taking care (if you can call it that way) of the tumblr’s layout. CSS is not difficult if you have an unlimited supply of your favourite beverage and access to StackExchange. 

If you have more than one person, you can make them co-admins as well, so they can accept and edit submissions, and whatnot. 

For last two or so years I have been watching @secretsecrettunnel‘s Kataang Week (@kataang-week), and when we got the opportunity to spread the word of Wendip, I (sub)consciously based some of the logistics from it. (for example, this year’s edition also includes a Wildcard, eight day).

Voting is done via SurveyMonkey, a web service which allows making internet polls for free (though they have paid plans, but a free account is more than enough). They offer nifty things like randomising list of options, or applying logic to the answers. As a survey maker, you will be able to look up some of the statistics, like how many users voted each day, as well as seeing individual answers. I’m sure there are other services like that, but this is the one I stick with.

Of course you can force prompts yourself, but from what I have seen, voting is a preferred method. 

Last year we made a bit of a mistake with the short time we gave our watchers, so this is something you should into consideration - again, a week per prompt is something I might have borrowed from kataang-week. 

Create an FAQ page on the tumblr, make sure people can see it well from the main site, so that they don’t get confused about dates and whatnot. This year we got surprisingly many asks about what “5+1” format is, after it got chosen as a prompt.

Make sure the font on your page is suitable for fics, and what happens to your blog’s layout when you scale it in browser. I hate when a font is so small I need to scale it, and then random bits of CSS starts flying around, blocking the text.  

I’m not sure right now what else could come into making a shipping week, mostly because I’m pulling an all-nighter and it’s 6 am. if anyone else has any tips, or suggestions for pc-the-unicorn here, feel free to reblog it with your help. 

[catsafarithewriter]

“It’s not worth doing something unless someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren’t doing it.”

“Muta’s been rubbing off on you,” Baron muttered when he heard Haru’s outburst. Louder, he added, “We are not turning that into the Bureau’s new motto.”

Of course, he had meant this as a side remark, a momentary blip of humour in the chaos they were about to face. If he had had any inkling as to what it would prompt, he might have thought against the innocent comment. 

Toto was the first to respond with, “If it was a safety inspector who was the ‘someone’, it’d probably apply.”

“Do we already have a motto?” Haru asked.

“Yes.” Realising the danger too late, Baron tried to shut the conversation down. 

“Is it ‘the Bureau’s doors are always open to you, be it day or night’?” Haru suggested, doing a surprisingly good impression. She even included the hat-tipping.

“No…”

“'Sticking our noses in other people’s business’ seems somewhat more relevant.”

“Toto…”

“Wait, I’ve got it. It’s ‘with a cape, anything is possible’, right?”

At Muta’s suggestion, Baron dropped his head into his hands. “You were suspended in a bowl of catnip jelly for almost the entirity of the time I had that costume, and you still feel the need the comment on it. Regardless, for future reference, the Cat Bureau’s motto is: ‘If you find yourself troubled by something mysterious, or a problem that’s hard to solve, there’s a place you can go where you’ll always find help. You just need to look for it.’”

There was a long pause in which his companions digested this new information. And then chaos broke out. 

“Baron, I believe mottos are usually significantly shorter-”

“Who’s even gonna remember that?”

“I’ve never heard that in my life.”

“Can we vote for a new one? I like mine better - it’s shorter and it definitely defines what we’re all about.”

“We’re not going with the cape motto, Muta.”

“Hey, everyone would remember it. And if you pit it into some fancy dead language like most mottos, it’d probably sound pretty decent.”

“Good point,” Haru admitted. “What is ‘with a cape, anything’s possible’ in Latin anyway?”

“Cum pallio omnia possunt,” Baron answered automatically. A moment later, his brain caught up with his mouth. “But we are not voting on a new motto!”

“It’s short, snappy, and sounds pretty neat when you don’t understand what it means,” Haru said, ignoring Baron’s outburst entirely. “It sounds like the kind of thing you’d see on an ancient family crest or something.” 

“Thank you. See, I can come up with good ideas.”

“Careful, Fleabag, otherwise you’ll use up your annual quota.”

“You know what else would be a good idea, Birdbrain? Bird stew!”

Haru sidled over to Baron, who was attempting to massage away the oncoming headache. “That got a little out of hand,” she admitted.

“What gave it away?” He dropped his hand away and surveyed the unfamiliar world before them. In the distance, a city sparkled in the twilight light. “As for the “it’s only worth doing if someone would rather you didn’t” philosophy, I have nothing against it, except when the “someone” in question is the Jade Dragon. We might need to come up with another plan.”

“Do you have another plan?”

“I have half a plan,” Baron said. “The rest should fall into place when we get there.”

There was another pause, this time as Haru considered this rather worrying admission. Then she sighed. “Sounds about normal. I just have the one question: Does it involve capes?”

(I know this was probably not what you had in mind, Chez, but this is the direction the prompt went, and when I hit “with a cape, anything is possible” I knew I could not go back. I am sorry. I seem to be turning the cape thing into a meme. (YOU CAN’T STOP ME))

[96thdayofrage]

RACIAL RECKONING

The country's first municipal reparations program is off to a rocky start

A few months into a reparations program, Evanston, Illinois, is facing pushback from community members and legal pressure from conservative nonprofits.

June 2, 2021, 5:00 AM CDT / Updated June 2, 2021, 10:15 AM CDT

By Michela Moscufo

Recently, Priscilla Giles, a retired teacher of English as a second language in Chicago Public Schools, said she has been feeling something “between sad and angry.”

Three months ago the city of Evanston, Illinois, where Giles was born and raised, approved the first local reparations program in the country. The city announced its first phase would pay Black Evanston residents who experienced housing discrimination $25,000 in the form of home improvement costs, down payment and closing cost assistance, and mortgage payments.

Since Giles is Black and lived in the city from 1919 to 1969, she is automatically eligible, but she said she is reluctant to apply. “It’s not reparations,” she said. “And that’s for sure.”

Evanston residents have been debating the details of its current reparations program for more than three years. When the legislation passed, it was deemed a “blueprint” for the rest of the country. Yet a few months into the first initiative, frustration and legal pressure have clouded the city’s pioneering vision.

Hundreds of Black residents have rallied behind the online group Evanston Rejects Racist Reparations to demand that the program be paused and re-evaluated. Meanwhile, the conservative nonprofits Judicial Watch and Project on Fair Representation have threatened legal action against the city.

The reparations program that began with great optimism has divided the small city, thrusting it into the national spotlight.

'We were very excited'

Former Alderman Lionel Jean-Baptiste first proposed a reparations plan to the City Council nearly two decades ago, as part of a resolution supporting a federal bill concerning reparations.

When Aldermen Robin Rue Simmons, Ann Rainey and Peter Braithwaite reintroduced a reparations bill to the City Council in 2019, this time, there was a new source of funding, which had been a point of contention when Jean-Baptiste made his proposal in 2002. A cannabis sales tax would go into effect in 2020, providing a source of funding for reparations. The aldermen who developed the reparations proposal suggested the city earmark $10 million of this revenue for reparations over the next 10 years.

Chicago suburb taxes marijuana sales to fund reparations program

The city gathered community input on a local reparations plan. A resolution passed in November 2019, making Evanston the first city to approve a local reparations program, prompting other cities like Amherst, Massachusetts, and Asheville, North Carolina, to consider doing the same.

“We were very excited,” local retiree Rose Cannon, 73, said.

Simmons, who recently left the City Council, said in the two years since the initial meeting of the reparations subcommittee, “there was robust community engagement.”

A celebratory town hall after the vote brought actor and political activist Danny Glover to Evanston, as well as representatives from the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America and National African American Reparations Commission. All 700 seats in the First Church of God were full, Cannon said.

“I’d never seen a turnout in Evanston that big in my whole life,” she said.

'Fake reparations'

Residents voiced their opinions on how the reparations should be distributed during monthly subcommittee meetings.

The city-led discussions quickly turned away from cash payments to a housing assistance program. Cannon said from the community’s standpoint, it seemed the program was being shaped without locals’ input.

The proposal for the first phase eventually presented to the City Council was called the Restorative Housing Program. It would have a $400,000 budget, and the aldermen insisted it would be the first of many different projects.

“This is a housing voucher program, not reparations — and calling it that does more harm than good,” A. Kirsten Mullen and William Darity Jr., authors of “From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century,” wrote in an opinion piece for The Washington Post.

Darity, an economist at Duke University, has said proper reparations would cost the federal government at least $11 trillion.

Reparations can only come from the federal government, the authors told NBC News in an email. Local reparations programs “cannot meet the bill for Black reparations,” they said. A congressional bill, H.R. 40, which calls for studying the potential of a reparations program, only advanced from the House Judiciary Committee for the first time in its 32-year existence this year.

Residents opposed to Evanston’s plan say it puts too many restrictions on how they can use the money. Renters, for example, can’t use the housing assistance because it is only for current and future homeowners. Cannon’s opposition began when she contacted her broker about potentially purchasing a home using the allocated $25,000. She learned it wouldn’t be enough to cover a standard down payment on an average-priced home in Evanston, which is currently above $400,000.

Another problem residents point out is that because banks and real estate companies would have to be involved, the program privileges institutions that have historically been the agents of discrimination.

“The beneficiaries of this program would be those who initially did the harm of redlining here in Evanston,” said community organizer Sebastian Nalls, 21.

Nalls and fellow organizers Kevin Brown, Jersey Shabazz and Cannon created the Facebook group Evanston Rejects Racist Reparations in February, which has since amassed more than 600 followers.

The organizers held demonstrations in front of a cannabis dispensary in Evanston, hosted webinars about reparations and lobbied city officials to halt the March 22 City Council vote on the Restorative Housing Program. They were unsuccessful.

Nalls said they will continue expanding their reach, educating and connecting with Black residents over reparations.

“Black Evanston residents need to be determining their own repair,” Nalls said.

‘This is just how it was’

Priscilla Giles’ grandparents, like so many other Black families, moved northward during the period known as the Great Migration in search of more economic opportunities and to escape the racist climate of the South. Yet when they finally settled in Evanston, they found the racism and discrimination was still present, just less overt.

Both sides of Giles’ family lived on Bauer Place. They shared the block with seven other Black families in a predominantly white neighborhood in northern Evanston during the 1920s. When the city began to enforce a commercial zoning ordinance, all of these families were forced to leave their homes. The entire block, filled with homes of Black families, was completely demolished.

Giles recalled that none of the white families in the neighborhood had to give up their homes. Their block is now a parking lot.

“My mother and my grandmother always said this is what they were told and this is just how it was,” she said. “There seemed to be no recourse.”

Giles grew up in the Fifth Ward, a neighborhood with vacant lots the city offered to sell to the Black residents that were being displaced. The majority of Black residents in Evanston already lived in the Fifth Ward because of formal and informal race-based zoning being practiced, according to research compiled by the city’s Shorefront Legacy Center.

Four houses on Giles’ old block had been literally picked up and moved from other parts of the city, an option for Black families that could afford the cost of moving their house.

When Giles sought houses to buy in Evanston in the 1970s, she found that real estate agents were still discriminating based on race.

They would agree to let her visit the house over the phone, she said. But when she would go to the office to sign paperwork, “they would tell me the house was sold.” This happened three or four times, she said, always with white real estate agents.

The house she finally bought, and now lives in, was sold by a Black real estate agent.

Although she is planning to apply for the $25,000 funds, Giles said she believes reparations should benefit the whole community. During the town hall meetings, residents have advocated for building affordable housing and community land trusts, in addition to cash payments. Giles talked about building a vocational school for young people in Evanston.

“I don't want to benefit personally from it,” she said. “I want the city to move in a way that future generations would benefit from it.”

According to the City Council, at least 144 out of 198 residents surveyed said they would consider applying for the Restorative Housing Program.

Legal pressure

Meanwhile, conservative activists have also zeroed in on Evanston. Project on Fair Representation, a conservative organization that was recently involved in the affirmative action lawsuit brought against Harvard University by a group of Asian American students, was the first to threaten legal challenges.

In a letter sent before the first initiative was brought to a vote, the organization’s lawyers threatened to challenge the legislation, calling it discriminatory and unconstitutional.

In mid-April, the conservative nonprofit Judicial Watch sued Evanston for public records. The group has built a reputation around filing Freedom of Information Act requests, notably targeting Hillary Clinton’s emails and most recently attempting to substantiate evidence of voter fraud in the 2020 election.

“This is a group, race-based benefit, based on a tenuous historical analysis,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. “It’s an extremist program.”

Both Judicial Watch and Project on Fair Representation cite the equal protection clause to argue the program is unconstitutional because it discriminates based on race.

Former alderman Simmons said the council expected the legal challenges. The Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center at Howard University has offered pro bono legal services.

Black Evanston residents who oppose this reparations proposal have found themselves holding the same position as political activists who would seek to stymie reparations legislation entirely.

“When I first read the letter, I thought to myself, ‘God has stepped into this,’” Cannon said.

Although the intention of these legal challenges is “not a good thing,” she said, “it might deliver to us what we want to do, which is to stop them in their tracks.”

Stopgap measures

Giles said she is concerned about how the reparations program will take shape, even beyond the housing phase.

“I don’t know where it’s going from here,” Giles said. “I don’t think it’s going anyplace. I really don’t.”

Part of the concern is related to the absence of Simmons, who left the City Council and now works with NAARC. She had announced early in her first term that she would not seek re-election to focus on local and national reparations efforts.

“I have worked about 80-hour workweeks for the last four years,” Simmons said, “and I've decided that I will work on reparative justice, specifically in the Black community focused on reparations both in Evanston and beyond.”

Meanwhile, a local branch of UpTogether, with the endorsement of the City Council, has started issuing $300 cash payments to some Evanston residents who are eligible for reparations according to the city’s criteria.

“I was surprised,” said Giles, who heard about the program through word-of-mouth. “But I can't say that I was any more angry or surprised than when I first heard that the reparations were going to be given for people to buy houses, rather than for something benefiting the whole Black community. Because whoever got the money, it did not benefit me or mine.”

[mastcomm]

Democrats, Coronavirus, the Oscars: Your Friday Briefing

(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the sign-up.)

Good morning.

We’re covering the latest developments in the Democratic presidential race and the death of the Chinese doctor who provided an early warning about the coronavirus. It’s also Friday, so there’s a new news quiz.

Democrats turn to New Hampshire

With near-final results showing Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg in a dead heat for the lead in Iowa’s troubled caucuses, seven presidential candidates are set to debate tonight in Manchester, N.H. Here’s what to watch for when the event begins at 8 p.m. Eastern.

The debate follows another turbulent day in Iowa. After initially demanding a recanvass of results in the entire state, the head of the Democratic National Committee, Tom Perez, backtracked and said that only precincts with reported problems needed to be re-examined. Here’s a county-by-county map of results.

My colleague Maggie Astor reports: “It is very easy, at this point, to imagine a situation in which we know who won New Hampshire — which holds its primary on Tuesday — before we know who won Iowa.”

Closer look: A Times analysis found that the results released by the Iowa Democratic Party were riddled with errors.

Another angle: We asked the candidates about foreign policy and national security. Our survey found a party only partially committed to the Obama era, and unified by very few issues: most prominently the containment of Russia.

Coronavirus whistle-blower succumbs to it

The Chinese doctor who was reprimanded after warning in December about the then-unidentified virus died of it today.

Li Wenliang, a 34-year-old ophthalmologist in Wuhan, warned medical school classmates about evidence of a new virus in an online forum on Dec. 30, and the authorities later forced him to declare that he had spread an unfounded rumor. His death has prompted a rare online revolt in China.

Quotable: Dr. Li spoke to The Times for an article published last week: “If the officials had disclosed information about the epidemic earlier,” he said, “I think it would have been a lot better. There should be more openness and transparency.”

Catch up: Japanese officials said today that 61 people had tested positive for the coronavirus on a quarantined cruise ship in Yokohama. Here are the latest updates.

The Times is also tracking these global developments:

The authorities in Wuhan, where the virus originated, have escalated their lockdown, ordering house-to-house searches and placing the sick in enormous quarantine centers.

There are no confirmed cases of the virus in Africa yet, but with steady traffic to and from China, experts worry that the outbreak could overrun already-strained health systems.

How Mitch McConnell delivered an acquittal

From the moment Democrats assumed power in the House in January 2018, the Senate’s Republican majority leader began preparing for President Trump’s impeachment trial.

He spoke to The Times about those preparations, which ended this week with all but one Republican senator voting to acquit.

Quotable: “If this was all about politics, and it was, at least at the moment I think it is fair to conclude that we won and they lost,” Mr. McConnell said.

Yesterday: Mr. Trump celebrated his acquittal with an hourlong address at the White House, denouncing “evil” and “crooked” lawmakers and the “top scum” at the F.B.I. for trying to take him down. Watch excerpts here.

Another angle: Bidding for a copy of the impeachment report that an auction site says was signed by Mr. Trump reached $17,000 this week. The Trump campaign is skeptical that it’s his signature, but authenticators disagree.

If you have 7 minutes, this is worth it

The Oscars tell a story of their own

“Couldn’t these nine movies just be evidence of taste? Good taste? They certainly could. They are.” But after years of threatened boycotts and diversification campaigns, he writes, “the assembly of these movies feels like a body’s allergic reaction to its own efforts at rehabilitation.”

Here’s what else is happening

Harvey Weinstein trial: The prosecution rested its case against the former Hollywood producer after graphic, first-person testimony from six women who said he had sexually assaulted them.

Utah land protection ends: The Trump administration finalized plans to allow mining and energy drilling on nearly a million acres in southern Utah that were once part of a national monument.

No help in Dutch crash inquiry: Boeing and American safety officials refused to cooperate with a new investigation of a deadly 2009 crash that had similarities to recent accidents involving the 737 Max.

Snapshot: Above, the newly crowned Miss Independence, Rosemary Anieze, in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1960. Seventeen countries in Africa declared their independence that year, which we’ve revisited with the help of The Times’s photo archive and others.

News quiz: Did you follow the headlines this week? Test yourself.

Modern Love: In this week’s column, a young woman struggling with an eating disorder tries to shift from self-loathing to self-loving.

Late-night comedy: President Trump started his political attacks on Thursday at the National Prayer Breakfast. Jimmy Kimmel said, “This is a prayer breakfast at which he’s naming people he doesn’t like. Nancy Pelosi was so upset she ripped her pancakes in half.”

What we’re reading: This deep dive by The Atlantic into disinformation and the 2020 election. “Dark,” tweeted our White House correspondent Katie Rogers.

Now, a break from the news

Cook: You need only one pan for roast chicken and mustard-glazed cabbage.

Read: “Saltwater,” a novel about a young Englishwoman questioning her place in the world, is among 10 books we recommend this week.

Watch: The final season of “Homeland” premieres on Showtime on Sunday. Its stars, Claire Danes and Mandy Patinkin, spoke to The Times about how the espionage drama has evolved.

Smarter Living: Our advice column Culture Therapist suggests ways to solve your problems using art. Today’s question is about opening oneself to romance.

And now for the Back Story on …

Covering the Oscars

The Oscars are on Sunday, so it’s crunchtime for Kyle Buchanan, The Times’s Carpetbagger columnist. He spoke to Sara Aridi of the Culture desk about what it’s like to cover the awards.

What stands out about this year’s season?

After last year, when Netflix was so ascendant, people are very excited about movies in the theater. “1917” is one of those movies that you need to see in a theater, and “Parasite” became such a huge word-of-mouth hit in the theater. Those movies provide that encapsulation of what we go to the movies for.

We go to see something on a gigantic screen that moves us in a gigantic way. We go to be transported into an experience that startles and shocks us. Streaming has its virtues and its pleasure, but I think those are testimonials to what the theatrical experience can be.

Do the Oscars still carry weight in pop culture?

Absolutely. If the Oscars reflect Hollywood in 2020, it says that we’re still going through growing pains about the streaming era and that we still have a lot of ground to make up when it comes to representation and whose stories we take seriously.

How have you been preparing for the big night?

I’m trying to get a full night’s sleep. In the campaigning phase, from November to the Oscar nominations, you can go to a brunch for a certain star, and then to a lunchtime screening with a Q. and A., and then to an afternoon performance of a song contender, and then a premiere and then an after-party.

What else have you seen that readers might not know?

Joaquin Phoenix, who’s up for best actor for “Joker,” has been a fascinating figure on this circuit. He’s trying to both play the game and stay out of it. All these awards shows have bent over backward to attract him.

I never would have thought I would miss the boiled chicken breast I usually got at these shows, but they have converted to a plant-based menu in the hopes that Joaquin will attend.

Here are Mr. Buchanan’s Oscar predictions.

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

— Chris

Thank you Mark Josephson and Eleanor Stanford provided the break from the news. You can reach the team at briefing@nytimes.com.

P.S. • We’re listening to “The Daily.” Today’s episode is about Harvey Weinstein’s trial. • Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Bird on a dollar bill (five letters). You can find all our puzzles here. • The 1619 Project is the centerpiece of a new wave of ads from “The Truth Is Worth It,” a Times campaign. Preview our latest TV commercial, which will air during the Oscars, featuring the singer, actor and producer Janelle Monáe.

from WordPress https://mastcomm.com/democrats-coronavirus-the-oscars-your-friday-briefing/

[myeclecticcollectorblazeus]

In the Oval Office, an annoyed President Donald Trump ended an argument he was having with his aides. He reached into a drawer, took out his iPhone and threw it on top of the historic Resolute Desk:"Do you want me to settle this right now?"There was no missing Trump's threat that day in early 2017, the aides recalled. With a tweet, he could fling a directive to the world, and there was nothing they could do about it.When Trump entered office, Twitter was a political tool that had helped get him elected and a digital howitzer that he relished firing. In the years since, he has fully integrated Twitter into the very fabric of his administration, reshaping the nature of the presidency and presidential power.After Turkey invaded northern Syria this past month, he crafted his response not only in White House meetings but also in a series of contradictory tweets. This summer, he announced increased tariffs on $300 billion worth of Chinese goods, using a tweet to deepen tensions between the two countries. And in March, Trump cast aside more than 50 years of U.S. policy, tweeting his recognition of Israel's sovereignty in the Golan Heights. He openly delighted in the reaction he provoked."Boom. I press it," Trump recalled months later at a White House conference attended by conservative social media personalities, "and, within two seconds, 'We have breaking news.'"Early on, top aides wanted to restrain the president's Twitter habit, even considering asking the company to impose a 15-minute delay on Trump's messages. But 11,390 presidential tweets later, many administration officials and lawmakers embrace his Twitter obsession, flocking to his social media chief with suggestions. Policy meetings are hijacked when Trump gets an idea for a tweet, drawing in cabinet members and others for wordsmithing. And as a president often at war with his own bureaucracy, he deploys Twitter to break through logjams, overrule or humiliate recalcitrant advisers and preempt his staff."He needs to tweet like we need to eat," Kellyanne Conway, his White House counselor, said in an interview.In a presidency unlike any other, where Trump wakes to Twitter, goes to bed with it and is comforted by how much it revolves around him, the person he most often singled out for praise was himself -- more than 2,000 times, according to an analysis by The New York Times.The Times examined Trump's use of Twitter since taking office, reviewing all his tweets, retweets and followers and interviewing nearly 50 current and former administration officials, lawmakers and Twitter executives and employees. What has emerged is a rich account, with new analysis, previously unreported episodes and fresh details of how the president exploits the platform to exert power.It is often by brute repetition. He has taken to Twitter to demand action 1,159 times on immigration and his border wall, a top priority, and 521 times on tariffs, another key agenda item. Twitter is an instrument of his foreign policy: He has praised dictators more than a hundred times, while complaining nearly twice as much about the U.S.' traditional allies. Twitter is the Trump administration's de facto personnel office: The chief executive has announced the departures of more than two dozen top officials, some fired by tweet.More than half of the president's posts -- 5,889 -- have been attacks; no other category even comes close. His targets include the Russia investigation, a Federal Reserve that won't bow to his whims, previous administrations, entire cities that are led by Democrats, and adversaries from outspoken athletes to chief executives who displease him. Like no other modern president, Trump has publicly harangued businesses to advance his political goals and silence criticism, often with talk of government intervention. Using Twitter, he threatened "Saturday Night Live" with an investigation by the Federal Communications Commission and accused Amazon, led by Jeff Bezos, owner of The Washington Post, of cheating the U.S. Postal Service.As much as anything, Twitter is the broadcast network for Trump's parallel political reality -- the "alternative facts" he has used to spread conspiracy theories, fake information and extremist content, including material that energizes some of his base.Trump's use of Twitter has accelerated sharply since the end of the special counsel's Russia investigation and reached a new high as Democrats opened an impeachment inquiry, the analysis shows. He tweeted more than 500 times during the first two weeks of October, a pace that put him on track to triple his monthly average. (The Times analyzed Trump's tweets through Oct. 15. The total by the end of the month reached 11,887.)His more than 66 million Twitter followers have become his private polling service, offering what he sees as validation for his performance in office. But fewer than one-fifth of his followers are voting-age Americans, according to a Times analysis of Pew Research national surveys of adults who use Twitter.The White House press office declined to comment for this article and turned down an interview request with the president. Now, as Trump anticipates a bitter reelection battle and faces an impeachment inquiry by Democrats, the stakes are higher than ever before, and Twitter even more central to his presidency.His top campaign aides are embracing the outrage that Trump stirs with his tweets to reinforce his anti-establishment brand and strengthen his bond with the fiercely loyal supporters who propelled him into office. And as public backing for impeachment grows, the president is using the platform to build a defensive echo chamber.While people around Trump acknowledge that his tweets can cause political damage, the president is confident in his mastery of Twitter.This past week, as he announced that U.S. Special Forces had killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State, Trump noted the terror group's digital prowess. "They use the internet better than almost anybody in the world," he said. "Perhaps other than Donald Trump."Policy Via TwitterWith a single tweet last fall, Trump sent his administration into a tailspin. "I must, in the strongest of terms, ask Mexico to stop this onslaught," he wrote in October 2018, angry about a caravan of migrants from Central America. "If unable to do so I will call up the U.S. Military and CLOSE OUR SOUTHERN BORDER!"Trump's aides had tried for weeks to talk him out of shutting down the border; the logistics would be impossible and the economic pain extreme. The tweet prompted an emergency meeting down the hall from the Oval Office as aides scrambled to head off Trump's impulse, according to people familiar with the frantic scene. Like others in this article, they spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of angering the president.The aides succeeded in temporarily holding him off, but the tweet crystallized for cautious bureaucrats exactly what he wanted: to stop people from coming into the country. In the months that followed, Trump's threat helped to set off an effort inside the government to find ever more restrictive ways to block immigrants. Nearly six months later, Kirstjen Nielsen, homeland security secretary, was still trying to prevent a border shutdown when the president brought her resistance to an end."Kirstjen Nielsen," he tweeted, "will be leaving her position."This is governing in the Trump era. For President Barack Obama, a tweet about a presidential proposal might mark the conclusion of a long, deliberative process. For Trump, Twitter is often the beginning of how policy is made."Suddenly there's a tweet, and everything gets upended, and you spent the week trying to defend something else," said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y. "This person thrives on chaos. What we may find disconcerting or upsetting or whatever, it is actually what keeps him going."In October 2017, Rex Tillerson, the president's first secretary of state, was in China with a team of diplomats negotiating sanctions on Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader, when Trump weighed in on Twitter. Tillerson was "wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man," he wrote. "Save your energy Rex, we'll do what has to be done!"Two months later, a Reuters headline blared that Mick Mulvaney, who then was Trump's new pick to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, had decided to put "on ice" sanctions against Wells Fargo for consumer abuses. It was little surprise: Mulvaney was an ally of the financial industry. But Trump had other ideas."Fines and penalties against Wells Fargo Bank for their bad acts against their customers and others will not be dropped, as has incorrectly been reported, but will be pursued and, if anything, substantially increased," he tweeted.Political appointees at the bureau wanted to affirm Trump's desire publicly, despite long-standing policies against commenting on active investigations, according to former officials there. A spokesman for Mulvaney issued a statement saying only that he "shares the president's firm commitment to punishing bad actors and protecting American consumers."According to two people with direct knowledge of the Wells Fargo inquiry, career bureau officials took Trump's outburst as a green light to pursue aggressive negotiations with the bank, even as Mulvaney's team prepared to dial back penalties in other cases or shelve them. Wells Fargo ultimately agreed to a billion-dollar federal settlement, the bureau's largest-ever civil penalty.Over time, Trump has turned Twitter into a means of presidential communication as vital as a statement from the White House press secretary or an Oval Office address. The press secretary has not held a daily on-camera press briefing -- a decadeslong ritual of presidential messaging -- since March. Instead, Trump's Twitter activity drives the day.And Trump has removed any doubt that his tweets carry the weight once reserved for more formal pronouncements.In summer 2018, his aides repeatedly tried to reassure Republican lawmakers that the president backed their hard-line immigration bill, despite his remarks suggesting otherwise. But privately, Trump told several senators that there was only one certain sign of his support."If I don't tweet it," he said, according to two former senior advisers, "don't listen to my staff."Adapting a PlatformWhen Trump entered office, aides were determined to rein in his itchy Twitter fingers.In a series of informal conversations in early 2017, top White House officials discussed the possibility of a 15-minute delay on the president's account, a technical change not unlike the five-second naughty-word system used by television networks. But, one former senior official said, they quickly abandoned the idea after recognizing the political peril if it leaked to the press -- or to their boss.Several weeks later, a trio of close advisers presented Trump with another idea. Gary Cohn, the top economic adviser; Hope Hicks, the president's director of strategic communications; and Rob Porter, his staff secretary, argued that they should see the tweets before he sent them out.Trump was skeptical, worrying that delayed tweets would be irrelevant, according to a former White House official. But he agreed to a weeklong trial. Within 72 hours, the president had resumed tweeting from his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.Three thousand miles away, in Silicon Valley, similar conversations were unfolding at Twitter's offices, where executives faced the same dilemma as Trump's inner circle: whether, and how, to restrain him.At the time, Twitter lagged far behind larger competitors like Facebook. While popular among politicians and journalists, it was struggling financially. But the president's incessant tweeting gave the company more currency.His Twitter account often drove more "impressions" -- a key company metric -- than any other in the world. But some of his messages seemed to violate the company's policies against abuse and incitement.On a now-defunct internal company message board known as Twitter Buzz, some left-leaning employees favored barring the president. Trump's behavior came up at almost every all-hands gathering and at many smaller meetings of executives. Some of them had set their phones to alert them whenever the president tweeted, according to a former employee who spoke on the condition of confidentiality."What I saw was a company coming to grips with an entirely new situation, a new level of scrutiny, a new level of vitriol," said Dianna Colasurdo, a former account executive on Twitter's political advertising sales team, "and working to adapt their policies in the moment to align with that."A turning point came in fall 2017, at the height of tensions with North Korea, when Trump tweeted that the rogue nation might not "be around much longer!" The country's foreign minister called that a declaration of war. On Twitter, users wondered if the company would allow Trump to tweet his way into a nuclear conflict.The response came the next day. Referring back to Trump's online declaration, Twitter announced in a tweet that it took "newsworthiness" into account when evaluating whether to remove a post that violated its policies.In an interview, Twitter executives said that newsworthiness had long figured into the company's internal enforcement guidelines and that officials there had been formulating the announcement, which applied worldwide, months before Trump's North Korea tweet. But former employees said they understood the announcement to be Trump-driven. Twitter did not want to be in the business of censoring the president.Late in summer 2018, White House insiders tried again to curb Trump's use of social media, according to two former aides. After a series of over-the-top weeks of tweeting -- including calling Omarosa Manigault Newman, his onetime aide, "wacky" and "a lowlife" -- several advisers suggested he go just two days without Twitter and see what happened. Trump nodded and then promptly discarded the advice.King, who said most of his Republican colleagues wished the president would tweet less, added that whenever he had raised the issue with White House staff members, they shrugged helplessly."It's not going to stop," he recalled their saying. "Forget it; we've all tried."Soon enough, Trump was as prolific as ever.On Sept. 13, he mocked Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, for claiming he could beat Trump in an election. "He doesn't have the aptitude or 'smarts' & is a poor public speaker & nervous mess," the president tweeted. Over the next 12 hours, Trump attacked two former FBI officials, accused The Wall Street Journal of getting a tariff story wrong and blasted former Secretary of State John Kerry for holding "illegal meetings" with Iran."BAD!" he wrote.First Things FirstTrump's Twitter habit is most intense in the morning, when he is in the White House residence, watching Fox News, scrolling through his Twitter mentions and turning the social media platform into what one aide called the "ultimate weapon of mass dissemination."Of the attack tweets identified in the Times analysis, nearly half were sent between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m., hours that Trump spends mostly without advisers present.After waking early, Trump typically watches news shows recorded the previous night on his "Super TiVo," several DVRs connected to a single remote. (The devices are set to record "Lou Dobbs Tonight" on Fox Business Network; "Hannity," "Tucker Carlson Tonight" and "The Story With Martha MacCallum" on Fox News; and "Anderson Cooper 360" on CNN.)He takes in those shows and the "Fox & Friends" morning program, then flings out comments on his iPhone. Then he watches as his tweets reverberate on cable channels and news sites.Early on Sept. 2 -- the start of a week in which he tweeted 198 times -- the president sent a few benign tweets, then lashed out at Paul Krugman as a "Failing New York Times columnist" who "never got it!" Over the next 44 minutes, he fired off 10 more tweets. He disparaged Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO ("Likes what we are doing until the cameras go on.") He called James Comey, the former FBI director, and his "dwindling group of friends" liars and traitors. He railed against The Washington Post and four women of color in Congress who called themselves "the Squad."Almost every morning that week, Trump kicked off the day with an attack on one critic or another: the "incompetent Mayor of London," or "Bad 'actress' Debra The Mess Messing" -- whom he accused of being racist -- or the "Fake News Media." He referred to conservative media outlets 45 times, berated the mainstream media 32 times and tweeted about conspiracy theories 12 times.Sometimes the president's apparent fury on Twitter is meant to troll his critics and get a rise out of them, many of his closest aides said. But they still brace themselves, knowing that they are likely to be blindsided by one of his tweets. Aides who gather for the early-morning staff meetings in the West Wing said their agenda was regularly blown up when their phones simultaneously went off with a tweet from the boss.Once Trump arrives in the West Wing -- usually after 10 a.m. -- Dan Scavino, White House social media director, takes control of the Twitter account, tweeting as @realDonaldTrump from his own phone or computer. Trump rarely tweets in front of others, those close to him said, because he does not like to wear the reading glasses he needs to see the screen.Instead, the president dictates tweets to Scavino, who sits in a closet-size room just off the Oval Office until Trump calls out "Scavino!" Often, he prints out suggested tweets in extra-large fonts for the president to sign off on. (A single-page article that Scavino recently printed out for him ran to six pages after the fonts were enlarged, according to one person who saw it.)Scavino's role in Trump's Twitter machine has made him an unlikely White House power broker and the go-to person for aides, business executives, friends and lawmakers who want the president to tweet something. Conway noted what she called the hypocrisy of many Republicans who begged her to get Trump to stop tweeting during the 2016 campaign and now come to Scavino with suggestions. Scavino declined to be interviewed for this article.He sometimes acts as a brake -- or tries to -- on the president's tweeting impulses. When Trump started angrily posting about the "Squad," Scavino told him it was a bad idea, according to an aide who witnessed the conversation. Along with Michael Dubke, who served as White House communications director for several months in 2017 and is from Buffalo, New York, home of the famous chicken wings, Scavino presented some tweets to Trump in degrees of outrageousness: "hot," "medium" or "mild." Trump, said one former official who saw the proposed messages, always picked the most incendiary ones and often wanted to make them even more provocative.And while many of Trump's tweets are shoot-from-the-hip attacks, he chews over others for days or even weeks, waiting for just the right moment to maximize the reaction, aides said.He plotted for days to tweet about Mika Brzezinski, liberal co-host of the popular MSNBC morning program, according to former White House officials, before finally posting one morning in June 2017. He called her "low I.Q. Crazy Mika" and wrote that she had been "bleeding badly from a face-lift" during a New Year's Eve party.In October of last year, the president started telling his aides that he planned to denounce Stormy Daniels, a pornographic-film actress who claimed to have had an affair with him more than a decade earlier. He said he wanted to call her a "horse face."Several current and former aides recalled telling Trump that it was a terrible idea and would renew accusations of misogyny against him. But he persisted.Finally, after watching a Fox News report days later about how a federal judge had thrown out a lawsuit by Daniels, the president tapped out the tweet."Great, now I can go after Horseface and her 3rd rate lawyer in the Great State of Texas," he wrote.A Love of 'Likes'For Trump, Twitter reinforces his instincts about his performance as president.After a rally in Dallas in mid-October, Trump's aides prepared a large-type printout of tweets gushing over his speech that day, including one from Tomi Lahren, a Fox News commentator and host of a show on the Fox Nation site. Trump scrawled a thank-you note on one copy to Lahren -- who then tweeted a picture of the letter back at the president.Aides said they often compiled positive feedback for Trump. He revels in the stream of praise from his most loyal followers on paper or as he scrolls through his phone early in the morning and late at night. He considers his following to be like the ratings on a TV show, better than any approval poll. After one weekend Twitter spree, the president told Sarah Huckabee Sanders, his press secretary at the time, he had expected a tweet he was particularly proud of to get more response than it did, according to a former administration official. Sanders said that if he tweeted 60 times, people wouldn't pay as much attention, the official said.The president is keenly aware of his number of followers and reluctant to acknowledge that any of them are not real. Trump has accused Twitter of political bias for its periodic purges of bot accounts across the platform, which have cost him -- and other prominent users -- hundreds of thousands of followers. When he met with the company's chief executive, Jack Dorsey, in April, Trump reportedly pressed him at length about the lost followers.There is plenty of evidence that Trump's Twitter following may not be a reliable proxy for what the American people think of the job he is doing.It is difficult, if not impossible, to determine with certainty how many of Trump's more than 66 million followers are fake. Some studies of his followers have estimated that a high proportion are likely to be automated bots, fake accounts or inactive. But even a conservative analysis by the Times found that nearly a third of them, about 22 million, included no biographical information and used the service's default profile image -- two signs the accounts may be rarely used or inactive. Fourteen percent have automatically generated user names, another indication that an account may not belong to a real person.Even if Trump is not shouting into the void on Twitter, he is often preaching to the converted. Data from Stirista, an analytics firm, shows that his followers tend to be the kind of users who are most likely to be his supporters -- disproportionately older, white and male compared with Twitter users overall.And they constitute just a fraction of the electorate. According to the Times analysis of Pew data, only about 4% of American adults, or about 11 million people, follow him on Twitter. Those followers represent less that one-fifth of his total, the analysis shows.According to data from YouGov, which polls about most of the president's tweets, some of the topics on which Trump got the most likes and retweets -- jabs at the NFL, posts about the special counsel's investigation, unfounded allegations of widespread voter fraud -- poll poorly with the general public.But people close to Trump said there was no dissuading him that the "likes" a tweet got were evidence that a decision or policy proposal was well received.Last December, after Trump announced plans to withdraw some troops from Syria, lawmakers came to the White House to argue against it. According to Politico, Trump responded by calling in Scavino."Tell them how popular my policy is," Trump asked Scavino, who described for the lawmakers social media postings that had praised Trump's decision. Aides said that for Trump, his Twitter "likes" were proof that he had made the right call.The reaction in the outside world was far less favorable. Within weeks, Trump's defense secretary and the special anti-ISIS envoy quit over the decision. U.S. allies were enraged. More than two-thirds of the Senate voted to rebuke Trump, who agreed under pressure to keep the troops in Syria.Almost a year later, U.S. troops in Syria became an issue again after Trump appeared to give President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey a green light to invade Kurdish-controlled areas in northern Syria.That resulted in another congressional rebuke for Trump and complaints even from loyal Republican allies. In subsequent days, Trump sought to defend himself on Twitter, alternately denying he had abandoned the Kurds and suggesting the United States had no stake in their safety, threatening Erdogan if the incursion continued and praising Turkey as an important trading partner.Many people took note of the back-and-forth, including Erdogan. "When we take a look at Mr. Trump's Twitter posts, we can no longer follow them," the Turkish president told reporters mockingly in mid-October, according to Hurriyet, a Turkish newspaper. "We cannot keep track."A Tool for ReelectionIn the months ahead, the man tasked with winning Trump a second term is hoping to focus the president's Twitter habit on its original purpose: connecting with voters.Brad Parscale, who served as Trump's digital director in 2016 and is now campaign manager, has worked closely with Scavino to shape perceptions of the president through social media. The two men speak a half-dozen times a day, according to people familiar with their interactions.Parscale criticized Twitter after it announced Wednesday that it would no longer allow paid political advertising on the platform, calling it "yet another attempt to silence conservatives." But the change may benefit Trump: He has a far larger organic Twitter following than any of his likely Democratic opponents and is therefore less reliant on paid ads to spread his message through the platform.While some campaign aides said Trump's tweets can be a distraction, they also view Twitter as an essential tool to present him as someone strong, willing to stand up to so-called political elites and what the president recently called the "unholy alliance of corrupt Democrat politicians, deep-state bureaucrats and the fake-news media."The aides seek to cultivate the image of a man who understands "regular people." Trump's team believes that his unvarnished writing, poor punctuation and increasing profanity on Twitter signals authenticity -- a contrast to the polished, vetted, often anodyne social media style of most candidates.Twitter, Conway said, is the president's most potent weapon when it comes to bypassing the powerful people he believes have controlled the flow of information too long."It's the democratization of information," she said. Everyone receives Trump's tweets at once -- the stay-at-home mom, the plumber working on the sink, the billionaire executive, the White House correspondent."They all hear 'ping,'" she said, "at the same time."----MethodologyThe New York Times reviewed every tweet and retweet sent by President Donald Trump from Jan. 20, 2017, through Oct. 15, 2019. Each one was evaluated and tagged for several factors: whether it included an attack or praise; who or what was attacked or praised; and for topics including trade, immigration, the military, the economy, the 2018 midterm elections, the Russia investigation and the House impeachment inquiry. In the Times analysis, retweets in each of those categories were counted as tweets.The Times reviewed each Twitter account that followed Trump by analyzing profile information, tweet frequency and the date the account was created. The Times also used data from Pew Research to estimate how many American adults follow Trump on Twitter. Pew Research conducted a nationally representative sample of American adults with personal, public Twitter accounts to analyze how many follow American politicians.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company

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In the Oval Office, an annoyed President Donald Trump ended an argument he was having with his aides. He reached into a drawer, took out his iPhone and threw it on top of the historic Resolute Desk:"Do you want me to settle this right now?"There was no missing Trump's threat that day in early 2017, the aides recalled. With a tweet, he could fling a directive to the world, and there was nothing they could do about it.When Trump entered office, Twitter was a political tool that had helped get him elected and a digital howitzer that he relished firing. In the years since, he has fully integrated Twitter into the very fabric of his administration, reshaping the nature of the presidency and presidential power.After Turkey invaded northern Syria this past month, he crafted his response not only in White House meetings but also in a series of contradictory tweets. This summer, he announced increased tariffs on $300 billion worth of Chinese goods, using a tweet to deepen tensions between the two countries. And in March, Trump cast aside more than 50 years of U.S. policy, tweeting his recognition of Israel's sovereignty in the Golan Heights. He openly delighted in the reaction he provoked."Boom. I press it," Trump recalled months later at a White House conference attended by conservative social media personalities, "and, within two seconds, 'We have breaking news.'"Early on, top aides wanted to restrain the president's Twitter habit, even considering asking the company to impose a 15-minute delay on Trump's messages. But 11,390 presidential tweets later, many administration officials and lawmakers embrace his Twitter obsession, flocking to his social media chief with suggestions. Policy meetings are hijacked when Trump gets an idea for a tweet, drawing in cabinet members and others for wordsmithing. And as a president often at war with his own bureaucracy, he deploys Twitter to break through logjams, overrule or humiliate recalcitrant advisers and preempt his staff."He needs to tweet like we need to eat," Kellyanne Conway, his White House counselor, said in an interview.In a presidency unlike any other, where Trump wakes to Twitter, goes to bed with it and is comforted by how much it revolves around him, the person he most often singled out for praise was himself -- more than 2,000 times, according to an analysis by The New York Times.The Times examined Trump's use of Twitter since taking office, reviewing all his tweets, retweets and followers and interviewing nearly 50 current and former administration officials, lawmakers and Twitter executives and employees. What has emerged is a rich account, with new analysis, previously unreported episodes and fresh details of how the president exploits the platform to exert power.It is often by brute repetition. He has taken to Twitter to demand action 1,159 times on immigration and his border wall, a top priority, and 521 times on tariffs, another key agenda item. Twitter is an instrument of his foreign policy: He has praised dictators more than a hundred times, while complaining nearly twice as much about the U.S.' traditional allies. Twitter is the Trump administration's de facto personnel office: The chief executive has announced the departures of more than two dozen top officials, some fired by tweet.More than half of the president's posts -- 5,889 -- have been attacks; no other category even comes close. His targets include the Russia investigation, a Federal Reserve that won't bow to his whims, previous administrations, entire cities that are led by Democrats, and adversaries from outspoken athletes to chief executives who displease him. Like no other modern president, Trump has publicly harangued businesses to advance his political goals and silence criticism, often with talk of government intervention. Using Twitter, he threatened "Saturday Night Live" with an investigation by the Federal Communications Commission and accused Amazon, led by Jeff Bezos, owner of The Washington Post, of cheating the U.S. Postal Service.As much as anything, Twitter is the broadcast network for Trump's parallel political reality -- the "alternative facts" he has used to spread conspiracy theories, fake information and extremist content, including material that energizes some of his base.Trump's use of Twitter has accelerated sharply since the end of the special counsel's Russia investigation and reached a new high as Democrats opened an impeachment inquiry, the analysis shows. He tweeted more than 500 times during the first two weeks of October, a pace that put him on track to triple his monthly average. (The Times analyzed Trump's tweets through Oct. 15. The total by the end of the month reached 11,887.)His more than 66 million Twitter followers have become his private polling service, offering what he sees as validation for his performance in office. But fewer than one-fifth of his followers are voting-age Americans, according to a Times analysis of Pew Research national surveys of adults who use Twitter.The White House press office declined to comment for this article and turned down an interview request with the president. Now, as Trump anticipates a bitter reelection battle and faces an impeachment inquiry by Democrats, the stakes are higher than ever before, and Twitter even more central to his presidency.His top campaign aides are embracing the outrage that Trump stirs with his tweets to reinforce his anti-establishment brand and strengthen his bond with the fiercely loyal supporters who propelled him into office. And as public backing for impeachment grows, the president is using the platform to build a defensive echo chamber.While people around Trump acknowledge that his tweets can cause political damage, the president is confident in his mastery of Twitter.This past week, as he announced that U.S. Special Forces had killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State, Trump noted the terror group's digital prowess. "They use the internet better than almost anybody in the world," he said. "Perhaps other than Donald Trump."Policy Via TwitterWith a single tweet last fall, Trump sent his administration into a tailspin. "I must, in the strongest of terms, ask Mexico to stop this onslaught," he wrote in October 2018, angry about a caravan of migrants from Central America. "If unable to do so I will call up the U.S. Military and CLOSE OUR SOUTHERN BORDER!"Trump's aides had tried for weeks to talk him out of shutting down the border; the logistics would be impossible and the economic pain extreme. The tweet prompted an emergency meeting down the hall from the Oval Office as aides scrambled to head off Trump's impulse, according to people familiar with the frantic scene. Like others in this article, they spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of angering the president.The aides succeeded in temporarily holding him off, but the tweet crystallized for cautious bureaucrats exactly what he wanted: to stop people from coming into the country. In the months that followed, Trump's threat helped to set off an effort inside the government to find ever more restrictive ways to block immigrants. Nearly six months later, Kirstjen Nielsen, homeland security secretary, was still trying to prevent a border shutdown when the president brought her resistance to an end."Kirstjen Nielsen," he tweeted, "will be leaving her position."This is governing in the Trump era. For President Barack Obama, a tweet about a presidential proposal might mark the conclusion of a long, deliberative process. For Trump, Twitter is often the beginning of how policy is made."Suddenly there's a tweet, and everything gets upended, and you spent the week trying to defend something else," said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y. "This person thrives on chaos. What we may find disconcerting or upsetting or whatever, it is actually what keeps him going."In October 2017, Rex Tillerson, the president's first secretary of state, was in China with a team of diplomats negotiating sanctions on Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader, when Trump weighed in on Twitter. Tillerson was "wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man," he wrote. "Save your energy Rex, we'll do what has to be done!"Two months later, a Reuters headline blared that Mick Mulvaney, who then was Trump's new pick to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, had decided to put "on ice" sanctions against Wells Fargo for consumer abuses. It was little surprise: Mulvaney was an ally of the financial industry. But Trump had other ideas."Fines and penalties against Wells Fargo Bank for their bad acts against their customers and others will not be dropped, as has incorrectly been reported, but will be pursued and, if anything, substantially increased," he tweeted.Political appointees at the bureau wanted to affirm Trump's desire publicly, despite long-standing policies against commenting on active investigations, according to former officials there. A spokesman for Mulvaney issued a statement saying only that he "shares the president's firm commitment to punishing bad actors and protecting American consumers."According to two people with direct knowledge of the Wells Fargo inquiry, career bureau officials took Trump's outburst as a green light to pursue aggressive negotiations with the bank, even as Mulvaney's team prepared to dial back penalties in other cases or shelve them. Wells Fargo ultimately agreed to a billion-dollar federal settlement, the bureau's largest-ever civil penalty.Over time, Trump has turned Twitter into a means of presidential communication as vital as a statement from the White House press secretary or an Oval Office address. The press secretary has not held a daily on-camera press briefing -- a decadeslong ritual of presidential messaging -- since March. Instead, Trump's Twitter activity drives the day.And Trump has removed any doubt that his tweets carry the weight once reserved for more formal pronouncements.In summer 2018, his aides repeatedly tried to reassure Republican lawmakers that the president backed their hard-line immigration bill, despite his remarks suggesting otherwise. But privately, Trump told several senators that there was only one certain sign of his support."If I don't tweet it," he said, according to two former senior advisers, "don't listen to my staff."Adapting a PlatformWhen Trump entered office, aides were determined to rein in his itchy Twitter fingers.In a series of informal conversations in early 2017, top White House officials discussed the possibility of a 15-minute delay on the president's account, a technical change not unlike the five-second naughty-word system used by television networks. But, one former senior official said, they quickly abandoned the idea after recognizing the political peril if it leaked to the press -- or to their boss.Several weeks later, a trio of close advisers presented Trump with another idea. Gary Cohn, the top economic adviser; Hope Hicks, the president's director of strategic communications; and Rob Porter, his staff secretary, argued that they should see the tweets before he sent them out.Trump was skeptical, worrying that delayed tweets would be irrelevant, according to a former White House official. But he agreed to a weeklong trial. Within 72 hours, the president had resumed tweeting from his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.Three thousand miles away, in Silicon Valley, similar conversations were unfolding at Twitter's offices, where executives faced the same dilemma as Trump's inner circle: whether, and how, to restrain him.At the time, Twitter lagged far behind larger competitors like Facebook. While popular among politicians and journalists, it was struggling financially. But the president's incessant tweeting gave the company more currency.His Twitter account often drove more "impressions" -- a key company metric -- than any other in the world. But some of his messages seemed to violate the company's policies against abuse and incitement.On a now-defunct internal company message board known as Twitter Buzz, some left-leaning employees favored barring the president. Trump's behavior came up at almost every all-hands gathering and at many smaller meetings of executives. Some of them had set their phones to alert them whenever the president tweeted, according to a former employee who spoke on the condition of confidentiality."What I saw was a company coming to grips with an entirely new situation, a new level of scrutiny, a new level of vitriol," said Dianna Colasurdo, a former account executive on Twitter's political advertising sales team, "and working to adapt their policies in the moment to align with that."A turning point came in fall 2017, at the height of tensions with North Korea, when Trump tweeted that the rogue nation might not "be around much longer!" The country's foreign minister called that a declaration of war. On Twitter, users wondered if the company would allow Trump to tweet his way into a nuclear conflict.The response came the next day. Referring back to Trump's online declaration, Twitter announced in a tweet that it took "newsworthiness" into account when evaluating whether to remove a post that violated its policies.In an interview, Twitter executives said that newsworthiness had long figured into the company's internal enforcement guidelines and that officials there had been formulating the announcement, which applied worldwide, months before Trump's North Korea tweet. But former employees said they understood the announcement to be Trump-driven. Twitter did not want to be in the business of censoring the president.Late in summer 2018, White House insiders tried again to curb Trump's use of social media, according to two former aides. After a series of over-the-top weeks of tweeting -- including calling Omarosa Manigault Newman, his onetime aide, "wacky" and "a lowlife" -- several advisers suggested he go just two days without Twitter and see what happened. Trump nodded and then promptly discarded the advice.King, who said most of his Republican colleagues wished the president would tweet less, added that whenever he had raised the issue with White House staff members, they shrugged helplessly."It's not going to stop," he recalled their saying. "Forget it; we've all tried."Soon enough, Trump was as prolific as ever.On Sept. 13, he mocked Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, for claiming he could beat Trump in an election. "He doesn't have the aptitude or 'smarts' & is a poor public speaker & nervous mess," the president tweeted. Over the next 12 hours, Trump attacked two former FBI officials, accused The Wall Street Journal of getting a tariff story wrong and blasted former Secretary of State John Kerry for holding "illegal meetings" with Iran."BAD!" he wrote.First Things FirstTrump's Twitter habit is most intense in the morning, when he is in the White House residence, watching Fox News, scrolling through his Twitter mentions and turning the social media platform into what one aide called the "ultimate weapon of mass dissemination."Of the attack tweets identified in the Times analysis, nearly half were sent between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m., hours that Trump spends mostly without advisers present.After waking early, Trump typically watches news shows recorded the previous night on his "Super TiVo," several DVRs connected to a single remote. (The devices are set to record "Lou Dobbs Tonight" on Fox Business Network; "Hannity," "Tucker Carlson Tonight" and "The Story With Martha MacCallum" on Fox News; and "Anderson Cooper 360" on CNN.)He takes in those shows and the "Fox & Friends" morning program, then flings out comments on his iPhone. Then he watches as his tweets reverberate on cable channels and news sites.Early on Sept. 2 -- the start of a week in which he tweeted 198 times -- the president sent a few benign tweets, then lashed out at Paul Krugman as a "Failing New York Times columnist" who "never got it!" Over the next 44 minutes, he fired off 10 more tweets. He disparaged Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO ("Likes what we are doing until the cameras go on.") He called James Comey, the former FBI director, and his "dwindling group of friends" liars and traitors. He railed against The Washington Post and four women of color in Congress who called themselves "the Squad."Almost every morning that week, Trump kicked off the day with an attack on one critic or another: the "incompetent Mayor of London," or "Bad 'actress' Debra The Mess Messing" -- whom he accused of being racist -- or the "Fake News Media." He referred to conservative media outlets 45 times, berated the mainstream media 32 times and tweeted about conspiracy theories 12 times.Sometimes the president's apparent fury on Twitter is meant to troll his critics and get a rise out of them, many of his closest aides said. But they still brace themselves, knowing that they are likely to be blindsided by one of his tweets. Aides who gather for the early-morning staff meetings in the West Wing said their agenda was regularly blown up when their phones simultaneously went off with a tweet from the boss.Once Trump arrives in the West Wing -- usually after 10 a.m. -- Dan Scavino, White House social media director, takes control of the Twitter account, tweeting as @realDonaldTrump from his own phone or computer. Trump rarely tweets in front of others, those close to him said, because he does not like to wear the reading glasses he needs to see the screen.Instead, the president dictates tweets to Scavino, who sits in a closet-size room just off the Oval Office until Trump calls out "Scavino!" Often, he prints out suggested tweets in extra-large fonts for the president to sign off on. (A single-page article that Scavino recently printed out for him ran to six pages after the fonts were enlarged, according to one person who saw it.)Scavino's role in Trump's Twitter machine has made him an unlikely White House power broker and the go-to person for aides, business executives, friends and lawmakers who want the president to tweet something. Conway noted what she called the hypocrisy of many Republicans who begged her to get Trump to stop tweeting during the 2016 campaign and now come to Scavino with suggestions. Scavino declined to be interviewed for this article.He sometimes acts as a brake -- or tries to -- on the president's tweeting impulses. When Trump started angrily posting about the "Squad," Scavino told him it was a bad idea, according to an aide who witnessed the conversation. Along with Michael Dubke, who served as White House communications director for several months in 2017 and is from Buffalo, New York, home of the famous chicken wings, Scavino presented some tweets to Trump in degrees of outrageousness: "hot," "medium" or "mild." Trump, said one former official who saw the proposed messages, always picked the most incendiary ones and often wanted to make them even more provocative.And while many of Trump's tweets are shoot-from-the-hip attacks, he chews over others for days or even weeks, waiting for just the right moment to maximize the reaction, aides said.He plotted for days to tweet about Mika Brzezinski, liberal co-host of the popular MSNBC morning program, according to former White House officials, before finally posting one morning in June 2017. He called her "low I.Q. Crazy Mika" and wrote that she had been "bleeding badly from a face-lift" during a New Year's Eve party.In October of last year, the president started telling his aides that he planned to denounce Stormy Daniels, a pornographic-film actress who claimed to have had an affair with him more than a decade earlier. He said he wanted to call her a "horse face."Several current and former aides recalled telling Trump that it was a terrible idea and would renew accusations of misogyny against him. But he persisted.Finally, after watching a Fox News report days later about how a federal judge had thrown out a lawsuit by Daniels, the president tapped out the tweet."Great, now I can go after Horseface and her 3rd rate lawyer in the Great State of Texas," he wrote.A Love of 'Likes'For Trump, Twitter reinforces his instincts about his performance as president.After a rally in Dallas in mid-October, Trump's aides prepared a large-type printout of tweets gushing over his speech that day, including one from Tomi Lahren, a Fox News commentator and host of a show on the Fox Nation site. Trump scrawled a thank-you note on one copy to Lahren -- who then tweeted a picture of the letter back at the president.Aides said they often compiled positive feedback for Trump. He revels in the stream of praise from his most loyal followers on paper or as he scrolls through his phone early in the morning and late at night. He considers his following to be like the ratings on a TV show, better than any approval poll. After one weekend Twitter spree, the president told Sarah Huckabee Sanders, his press secretary at the time, he had expected a tweet he was particularly proud of to get more response than it did, according to a former administration official. Sanders said that if he tweeted 60 times, people wouldn't pay as much attention, the official said.The president is keenly aware of his number of followers and reluctant to acknowledge that any of them are not real. Trump has accused Twitter of political bias for its periodic purges of bot accounts across the platform, which have cost him -- and other prominent users -- hundreds of thousands of followers. When he met with the company's chief executive, Jack Dorsey, in April, Trump reportedly pressed him at length about the lost followers.There is plenty of evidence that Trump's Twitter following may not be a reliable proxy for what the American people think of the job he is doing.It is difficult, if not impossible, to determine with certainty how many of Trump's more than 66 million followers are fake. Some studies of his followers have estimated that a high proportion are likely to be automated bots, fake accounts or inactive. But even a conservative analysis by the Times found that nearly a third of them, about 22 million, included no biographical information and used the service's default profile image -- two signs the accounts may be rarely used or inactive. Fourteen percent have automatically generated user names, another indication that an account may not belong to a real person.Even if Trump is not shouting into the void on Twitter, he is often preaching to the converted. Data from Stirista, an analytics firm, shows that his followers tend to be the kind of users who are most likely to be his supporters -- disproportionately older, white and male compared with Twitter users overall.And they constitute just a fraction of the electorate. According to the Times analysis of Pew data, only about 4% of American adults, or about 11 million people, follow him on Twitter. Those followers represent less that one-fifth of his total, the analysis shows.According to data from YouGov, which polls about most of the president's tweets, some of the topics on which Trump got the most likes and retweets -- jabs at the NFL, posts about the special counsel's investigation, unfounded allegations of widespread voter fraud -- poll poorly with the general public.But people close to Trump said there was no dissuading him that the "likes" a tweet got were evidence that a decision or policy proposal was well received.Last December, after Trump announced plans to withdraw some troops from Syria, lawmakers came to the White House to argue against it. According to Politico, Trump responded by calling in Scavino."Tell them how popular my policy is," Trump asked Scavino, who described for the lawmakers social media postings that had praised Trump's decision. Aides said that for Trump, his Twitter "likes" were proof that he had made the right call.The reaction in the outside world was far less favorable. Within weeks, Trump's defense secretary and the special anti-ISIS envoy quit over the decision. U.S. allies were enraged. More than two-thirds of the Senate voted to rebuke Trump, who agreed under pressure to keep the troops in Syria.Almost a year later, U.S. troops in Syria became an issue again after Trump appeared to give President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey a green light to invade Kurdish-controlled areas in northern Syria.That resulted in another congressional rebuke for Trump and complaints even from loyal Republican allies. In subsequent days, Trump sought to defend himself on Twitter, alternately denying he had abandoned the Kurds and suggesting the United States had no stake in their safety, threatening Erdogan if the incursion continued and praising Turkey as an important trading partner.Many people took note of the back-and-forth, including Erdogan. "When we take a look at Mr. Trump's Twitter posts, we can no longer follow them," the Turkish president told reporters mockingly in mid-October, according to Hurriyet, a Turkish newspaper. "We cannot keep track."A Tool for ReelectionIn the months ahead, the man tasked with winning Trump a second term is hoping to focus the president's Twitter habit on its original purpose: connecting with voters.Brad Parscale, who served as Trump's digital director in 2016 and is now campaign manager, has worked closely with Scavino to shape perceptions of the president through social media. The two men speak a half-dozen times a day, according to people familiar with their interactions.Parscale criticized Twitter after it announced Wednesday that it would no longer allow paid political advertising on the platform, calling it "yet another attempt to silence conservatives." But the change may benefit Trump: He has a far larger organic Twitter following than any of his likely Democratic opponents and is therefore less reliant on paid ads to spread his message through the platform.While some campaign aides said Trump's tweets can be a distraction, they also view Twitter as an essential tool to present him as someone strong, willing to stand up to so-called political elites and what the president recently called the "unholy alliance of corrupt Democrat politicians, deep-state bureaucrats and the fake-news media."The aides seek to cultivate the image of a man who understands "regular people." Trump's team believes that his unvarnished writing, poor punctuation and increasing profanity on Twitter signals authenticity -- a contrast to the polished, vetted, often anodyne social media style of most candidates.Twitter, Conway said, is the president's most potent weapon when it comes to bypassing the powerful people he believes have controlled the flow of information too long."It's the democratization of information," she said. Everyone receives Trump's tweets at once -- the stay-at-home mom, the plumber working on the sink, the billionaire executive, the White House correspondent."They all hear 'ping,'" she said, "at the same time."----MethodologyThe New York Times reviewed every tweet and retweet sent by President Donald Trump from Jan. 20, 2017, through Oct. 15, 2019. Each one was evaluated and tagged for several factors: whether it included an attack or praise; who or what was attacked or praised; and for topics including trade, immigration, the military, the economy, the 2018 midterm elections, the Russia investigation and the House impeachment inquiry. In the Times analysis, retweets in each of those categories were counted as tweets.The Times reviewed each Twitter account that followed Trump by analyzing profile information, tweet frequency and the date the account was created. The Times also used data from Pew Research to estimate how many American adults follow Trump on Twitter. Pew Research conducted a nationally representative sample of American adults with personal, public Twitter accounts to analyze how many follow American politicians.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company

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