#Mobile fire group

[demiurgeua]

На Київщині воїни ЗСУ вогнем з кулемета Browning M2 знищили крилату ракету рашистів

21 березня 2024 року, під час масованого ракетного обстрілу російськими нацистами території України, мобільна вогнева група Сухопутних військ Збройних Сил України вогнем з кулемета Browning M2 знищила крилату ракету рашистів. _________ On March 21, 2024, with help of the Browning M2 machine gun, soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine shot down a russian cruise missile in the Kyiv…

[geekpopnews]

Snapdragon Pro Series traz grande evento presencial para o Brasil

Snapgragon Pro Series anuncia sua estreia presencial no Brasil: as finais do Garena Free Fire Mobile Challeng. #GarenaFreeFira #SnapgragonProSeries #SamsungGalaxy

A maior liga de jogos mobile, o Snapgragon Pro Series Powered by Samsung Galaxy, anuncia sua estreia presencial no Brasil: as finais do Garena Free Fire Mobile Challenge. Nos dias 24 a 25 de fevereiro, a Alfra Estúdios, em São Paulo, será palco de uma batalha épica entre 12 times de toda América Latina, que competirão por uma premiação total de US$35 mil. Foto: ESL FACEIT Snapgragon Pro…

[malasquid]

So. I've Cracked The Code On The Appearance Changes in Side Order.

Wall of photos and such incoming.

After a lot of testing, I've discovered there are 7 different little lights and doodads that are added to Agent 8 via upgrading certain chips, each with a basic 1st tier and and upgraded 2nd tier. The 1st tier of upgrades appear after picking up two of the same chips in that changes pool (ex: 2 Homing Shots chips), with the 2nd tier appearing after picking up five of them (ex: 5 Homing Shot chips). There is no further visual indicators added for maxing chips that go beyond 5, such as Splash Damage or Rush Attack.

Full disclaimer: This is the result of researching a LOT of my own runs, so I can say this is true with about 95% certainty. If I labeled an ability chip in the wrong visual pool, please let me know!

Let's start with the basics - our control group. No Teal upgrades provide any visible changes to Agent 8 (or Pearl-bot for that matter), so I ran an all-teal palette to demonstrate.

First is likely one of the more requested visual changes - the Headset. The 1st tier sports a basic metallic earpiece, with the 2nd adding an antenna and eyepiece that match your primary ink color.

Maxing Splash Damage, Sound Wave Damage, Splash Radius, Special Charge Up, Turf Lucky Chain, Rush Knockback, and Homing Shots all provide the headset!

Next up is Ink Bubbles. The 1st tier shows transparent, slower bubbles flowing in 8's ink tank, with the bubbles being faster and more opaque in the 2nd tier.

Nabbing Poison Ink, Splat Ink Recovery, Ink Saver Sub, Ink Recovery Rate, Sticky Ink, and Explosion Knockback all provide Ink Bubbles.

Following that is the Fins. The 1st tier shows the base shackles being added to 8's boots, with the fins themselves being added for the 2nd tier.

Picking up Run Speed, Swim Speed, Rush Attack, Mobile Ink Recovery, Mobile Special Charge, and Mobile Drone Gauge all provide the Fins.

Now, moving on to the weapon upgrades!

First we have the Muzzle Lights, which appear at the muzzle of most weapons, and the sides of the brush and roller nearest the base. The 1st tier shows a circle and squares circling around the muzzle, with the 2nd tier being more exaggerated, with alternating squares and rectangles forming a hexagon pattern in the center.

These are exclusive to the Ink Damage, Main Damage (Close), and Main Damage (Distant) chips.

Next up is likely the most common visual one can see on their run - the Arrows. The 1st tier shows a circle with three arrows pointing down the weapon, with the 2nd tier adding some blowback markers behind the circle.

These are on a whopping TEN upgrades, being Splatling Barrage, Main Firing Speed, Horizontal Slash Speed, Main Range, Main Piercing, Main Ink Coverage, Rush Ink Coverage, Quick Charge, Shot Spread Reduction, and Ink Saver Main.

Last of the weapon upgrades are the Dots. The 1st tier is 3 large dots and a circle spinning at the bottom of your weapon or around your wrist, with the 2nd tier adding another circle around the dots.

These can be found on the Hindrance Damage, Ink Attack Size, Charge Storage, Moving Ink Speed, Extra Dodge Roll, Brella Cooldown, and Knockback upgrades.

And finally, my favorite little knick-knack, the Shrimp Hook. This little guy appears on your ink tank after picking up 2 matching Luck upgrades (ex: Lucky Bomb Drop, Canned Special Drop, etc), and begins to glow after picking up 5. However, the glowing effect is not visible in the post-game screen. 😔 (I would totally buy one of these if someone made one, btw)

By the way, 7 visual upgrades * 5 chips needed to max each visual is 35 chips, which is just shy of the 36 total chips you can have on one palette, which means, in theory, you could. Have every maxed visual indicator on in one run.

Just a thought. : )

[reasonsforhope]

"Seven federal agencies are partnering to implement President Biden’s American Climate Corps, announcing this week they would work together to recruit 20,000 young Americans and fulfill the administration's vision for the new program. 

The goals spelled out in the memorandum of understanding include comprehensively tackling climate change, creating partnerships throughout various levels of government and the private sector, building a diverse corps and serving all American communities.

The agencies—which included the departments of Commerce, Interior, Agriculture, Labor and Energy, as well the Environmental Protection Agency and AmeriCorps—also vowed to ensure a “range of compensation and benefits” that open the positions up to a wider array of individuals and to create pathways to “high-quality employment.”  

Leaders from each of the seven agencies will form an executive committee for the Climate Corps, which Biden established in September, that will coordinate efforts with an accompanying working group. They will create the standards for ACC programs, set compensation guidelines and minimum terms of service, develop recruitment strategies, launch a centralized website and establish performance goals and objectives. The ACC groups will, beginning in January, hold listening sessions with potential applicants, labor unions, state and local governments, educational institutions and other stakeholders. 

The working group will also review all federal statutes and hiring authorities to remove any barriers to onboarding for the corps and standardize the practices across all participating agencies. Benefits for corps members will include housing, transportation, health care, child care, educational credit, scholarships and student loan forgiveness, stipends and non-financial services.

As part of the goal of the ACC, agencies will develop the corps so they can transition to “high-quality, family-sustaining careers with mobility potential” in the federal or other sectors. AmeriCorps CEO Michael Smith said the initiative would prepare young people for “good-paying union jobs.” 

Within three weeks of rolling out the ACC, EPA said more than 40,000 people—mostly in the 18-35 age range—expressed interest in joining the corps. The administration set an ambitious goal for getting the program underway, aiming to establish the corps’ first cohort in the summer of 2024. 

The corps members will work in roles related to ecosystem restoration and conservation, reforestation, waterway protection, recycling, energy conservation, clean energy deployment, disaster preparedness and recovery, fire resilience, resilient recreation infrastructure, research and outreach. The administration will look to ensure 40% of the climate-related investments flow to disadvantaged communities as part of its Justice40 initiative.  

EPA Administrator Michael Regan said the MOU would allow the ACC to “work across the federal family” to push public projects focused on environmental justice and clean energy. 

“The Climate Corps represents a significant step forward in engaging and nurturing young leaders who are passionate about climate action, furthering our journey towards a sustainable and equitable future,” Regan said. 

The ACC’s executive committee will hold its first meeting within the next 30 days. It will draw support from a new climate hub within AmeriCorps, as well as any staffing the agency heads designate."

-via Government Executive, December 20, 2023

-

This news comes with your regularly scheduled reminder that WE GOT THE AMERICAN CLIMATE CORPS ESTABLISHED LAST YEAR and basically no one know about/remembers it!!! Also if you want more info about the Climate Corps, inc. how to join, you can sign up to get updates here.

[anyab]

Via NasAlSudan

Learn about the Sudanese revolution, the significance of December 19, and a legacy of resistance and resilience.

Join our call to action today and everyday during Sudan Action Week.

December 19 2023

Transcript:

Breaking it down

What is the Sudanese Revolution?

The Sudanese Revolution refers to the popular uprising in Sudan that began on December 19, 2018 and eventually deposed 30-year dictator of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, on April 11 of 2019.

How did the Revolution begin?

Protests first began in Atbara, a city with historical significance to the labor movement in Sudan, in response to the rising costs of basic supplies such as bread and fuel.

Protestors set fire to the national party headquarters, and the news of their revolt quickly spread, inspiring protestors first in other cities, and then in the capital of Khartoum itself.

Online, the caption #TasgutBas, translating to #JustFall, grew in popularity and helped connect the diaspora to those in Sudan.

Was it really just bread?

No. The rising cost of bread in developing nations is an indicator of how badly the economy is strained, to the point where it impacts members of every social class.

At this point in time in Sudan, subsidies on essential goods had been rolled back, funding for social and state services such as healthcare and education was nearly nonexistent, and it is estimated that nearly 90% of economic activity took place in the informal sector, all while the military budget continually increased.

Transcript:

Who led the charge? Creating a revolution

Group: Sudanese Professional's association (SPA)

Who they are:

Group of labor and trade organizations formed in secret in 2012 and publicly declared in 2016

Backbone of grassroots organizing in Sudan

Role played:

Led action on the street, organized national protests, like the initial march on Khartoum for increased wages before the transition to calls for regime change, and worker strikes.

Group: Local Resistance Committees (LRCS)

Who they are:

Initially formed as groups of students and youth organized together on the more local, neighbourhood basis during the Bashir era

Membership is extremely diverse across socio-economic, ethnic, tribal, religious, and political lines

Role played:

Considered the lifeblood of the revolution, with youth organizing local protests and ensuring safety against governmental repression by standing on the front lines + providing security, food, water, and medication to people

Group: Forces for freedom and change (FFC)

Who they are:

Coalition comprising the SPA, LRCS, the Sudan Revolutionary Front (group of anti-governmental Darfur militias), political parties, and civil society groups

Role played:

Essentially became the political mouthpiece of the revolution and signed onto the transitional government with the military on behalf of Sudanese civilians

It is also crucial to note that from a demographic perspective, it is youth and women that largely led and comprised the Sudanese Revolution.

Trabscript:

How did the revolution succeed?

01. Learning from the Past

Following the Arab Spring wave, Sudan also attempted a revolution in September of 2013

Civilians faced violent crackdowns within the first three days of protest. 200 killed, 800+ arrested

Activists were deterred from mobilization + felt a lot of guilt at the massive loss of life and spent the next 5 years grounding themselves in the study of nonviolent theory and action

02. Building a Movement

Coalition Building and People Power

Diversification of the reach of the movement to make sure all sectors of Sudani society were represented

Decentralization of Activism

Past revolutions in 1964 and 1985 were concentrated in the labor movement and educational elites in Khartoum

This time, experienced nonviolent activists trained those in the capital and ensured ethnic, religious, and tribal diversity

Newly trained activists then taught others locally across the Sudanese states

Transcript:

Why december 19?

On December 19, 1955, the Sudanese parliament unanimously adopted a declaration of independence from the Anglo-Egyptian colonial power.

The declaration went into effect on January 1, 1956, which is why Independence Day is officially January 1, but December 19 is when the Sudanese people were truly liberated from colonial rule.

The flag shown is Sudan's independence flag. The blue is for the Nile, the yellow for the Sahara, and the green for the farmlands.

The current Sudanese flag was adopted in 1970, with the colors used being the Pan-Arab ones.

During the 2019 revolution, protestors often carried the independence flag instead as a form of resistance to the narrative of an exclusive Pan-Arab Sudanese identity.

December 19 is ultimately a tribute to Sudanese strength and resilience. It honors our independence and revolutionary martyrs - not just those of the 2019 revolution, but the democratic revolutions of 1964 and 1985 as well.

Transcript:

Why is the revolution ongoing?

The goal was never just the fall of a dictator. The goal was, and is, to build a better Sudan, one free from military rule. One with equal opportunities for everyone, with economic prosperity and safety and security - the key principles of freedom, peace, and justice that the revolution called for.

Today, though, before we rebuild Sudan, before we free it from foreign interests and military rule and sectarianism, we need to save it. Each day that passes by with war waging on is one where more civilians are killed. More people are displaced. More women are raped. More children go hungry. To live in the conflict zones in Sudan right now - whether that be Khartoum, Darfur, Kordofan, or now, Al Gezira, is to be trapped in a never-ending nightmare, a fight for survival. And to live elsewhere in Sudan is to wonder whether you're next.

Sudan Action Week calls on you to educate yourself and others about Sudan, and then to help the Sudanese people save it, because we can no longer do it alone.

Transcript:

What can you do? Uniting for Al Gezira and North Darfur

As we witness the unfolding events in Al Gezira and North Darfur, the communities of Abu Haraz, Hantoub, Medani, El Fasher, and many others are reaching out for assistance. Sudanese resilience persists to this day, with individuals on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok seeking and providing guidance on transportation services, medical care, food, shelter, protection, safe zones, operational markets, and more. This isn't new for the Sudanese community. A legacy of unity emerged, notably during the 2019 revolutions, where nas al Sudan [the people of Sudan], both within the nation and in the diaspora, rallied together to support each other online. Beyond merely sharing stories on social media, this was about strengthening collective action, enhancing mobilizations, and building a resilient community rooted in solidarity. The essence of the Sudanese community lies in people supporting people, notably during the uprising in 2018 and following the events of April 15th, 2023

Swipe to see how you can help.

Transcript:

What can you do?

This week, on a day nearly mirroring Sudanese Independence and the popular 2018 uprising, Sudanese resilience endures as war follows nas al Sudan to Al Gezira and again in North Darfur. Our call to action this week is not just to share; it's a collective effort to uplift one another.

Share Resources:

If you have access to resources that can help such as transportation services, medical assistance, food, shelter, etc., please comment below.

Community Requests:

If you are in Al Gezira or North Darfur and require specific support, please comment on your needs

Connect Individuals:

For those unable to share resources directly, help amplify requests by sharing this information within your personal networks. Your connection may lead to support from individuals who can assist.

Spread the Word:

Share this call to action on your social media platforms to broaden the reach and encourage more people to contribute.

Transcript:

Hanabniho

حنبنيهوا

[We will rebuild]

#keepEyesOnSudan

#SudanActionWeek

[mobilecommandpost]

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[ns-imagines]

Nikto никто

Nikto Character Introduction

If you find yourself drooling over possessive and obsessive!Ghost or König lemme introduce you to Nikto…

SFW [ all cannon information ]

Word Count: TBA its a lot

Warnings: Disorder mention; Torture mention; dissociative disorder mentioned;

A/N: Lemme talk to you for a moment…

My new masked crush. Heart and coochie go brrrrrrrrrrrrr

Post has not been checked for grammar corrections / Not requested :D

Cannon Information:

Nikto (Neeek-toe) is a Operator in Spetsnaz for the Allegiance faction which is within the KorTac Organization. Basically hes a contractor for the contractors. Its cannon that he has facial scarring which is why he wears a mask. Not a turn off for me ah ha ha

So he isn’t necessarily a good guy like the 141 guys (even though now they’re considered war criminals I suppose) but he’s also not a bad guy. In summary, man does what he gets hired to do.

Anyways, after going AWOL in October 2022 from the Russian contracting military group he resurfaced in June 2023 (also the introduction of his character in the game). He resurfaced being the leader of a military group which was overtaking the Dutch city of Vondel.

On the Official Wiki he is only given two paragraphs of biography. You can read it here -> https://callofduty.fandom.com/wiki/Nikto

Also mentioned on the page [ for the COD Mobile universe ] is that theres cannon beef between Ghost and Nikto!! Yes, you heard me right. So on the wiki it is mentioned that Nikto was working for a guy named Templar. Whom is betrayed and killed by Ghost. Then when Ghost went after everyone else in the helicopter he shot Nikto. It was thought that Nikto died from the shot but he didnt….

Nikto reappears when he takes a group of people hostage and records a video explaining that the world has failed them and has left people like (Nikto) to beg and then fight over the scraps. Price (yes Price) tries to convince Nikto to let the hostages go and to basically chill out but Nikto wins by blowing up the building. With the hostages inside.

Okay maybe he has beef with all of 141… and is kinda a bad guy I can change him

SO then time passes and Nikto reappears again seeking a gun deal with a dude named Gunzo. Gunzo asks Nikto “why a man wanted on every continent, doesnt have guns” this pisses Nikto off. Nikto replies with “i dont need guns” then proceeds to buy the guns from Gunzo. Then Nikto gasses the fuck out of Gunzo and his men with Nova Gas. Nikto explains to Gunzo that the world is failing blah blah. He then goes on to brag about how he doesnt need a gas mask to breath like everyone else because hes that edgy and then he just executes Gunzo. We can fix him

Nikto disappears again only to reappear flying a F-85B Bullshark and leading a military riot. He then orders a attack on Prices convoy (video below) and basically down their helicopter. In the video below you can see small arms fire, an RPG, and then a finishing shot. Which was shot by Nikto’s aircraft. Okay maybe he is bad, we can fix him ?

Which you can watch here -> https://youtu.be/dDaCTCu82t0

In game bio from MW, CODM, and MW2

It is referenced in his bio MW and CODM that he has acute dissociative disorder. Which according to WebMD

“Dissociative disorders involve problems with memory, identity, emotion, perception, behavior and sense of self. Dissociative symptoms can potentially disrupt every area of mental functioning. Dissociation is a disconnection between a person’s thoughts, memories, feelings, actions or sense of who he or she is.”

Which is explained to be from when he was tortured by Mr. Z. That event is also where he got his facial scarring from. Although he is Russian; in current MW2 timeline his nationality and language is [ REDACTED ]. I was looking around on the internet for why and Reddit believes its due to current world current events/tension. Rewording to: we can accept and love him. I dont think we can fix him.

I don’t expect this post to get a lot of attention but for those who like it my requests are fully open ❤️

i will definitely be posting more Nikto content and what I think Nikto looks like and how he acts.

Thank you for reading! -Kiv

[socialjusticeinamerica]

Republican tyranny comes with a high price. Services to the elderly, the physically handicapped, and children were cut without warning. A right-wing group funded by oligarch backed Republican political foundations swept in without warning and launched a blitz campaign against books and woke agenda. They destroyed a county library system before anyone could mobilize against them.

Attacks on libraries and school boards are still ongoing everywhere. They have the backing of Republican think tanks funded by billionaires. Once the local MAGA agitators are fired up they descend on communities and often use threats and violence to get their way. Once they get a law is changed it’s almost impossible to restore equity.

Their stated written goal is total war against the US. They want to change everything they consider woke, helpful to the poor, elderly, and marginalized and “fill every position from dog catcher to president with a Republican.” This was the Bannon-Trump plan in 2016, it’s in Project 2025, and the Republican political foundations are all openly pressing for it.

The United States will be a literal theocratic dictatorship run by corporate oligarchs through fascist Republican tyrants. It’s not speculation or hysteria. It’s their literal plan written down and published for all to see.

[weirdmageddon]

i posted this on twitter also but it’s still eating at me. i’m so fucking embarrassed to be jewish rn. i dont want to be associated with this ongoing bullshit from israel. why do we need our own state. theyre just making every jew across the globe look bad in general even though many of us are conflicted about zionism and the legitimacy of israel as a state

people have hated jews throughout history for no fuckin reason but now israel exists but now its like. GIVING people reasons to hate us as a group. note that i DON’T conflate zionism with jewishness, but a lot of people in the world don’t know the difference because theyre uninformed and been dripfed cultural antisemitic tropes their whole life and that’s the scary part is them falsely putting two and two together. like what the fuck israel stop youre just putting fuel on the fire for people around the world to hate an entire group of historically persecuted people if youre being this shitty with your insane colonialism and apartheid like……I Want No Fuckin Part Of This. you’re spelling our own doom. you cant just swoop in and go “mine now” and then oppress the people you took land from under a regime without my blood boiling at the injustice no matter WHO you are. even if my lineage is tied to you. so when news outlets support israel it doesn’t feel like they have the best interest of jews as a people in mind. it’s in the interest of a zionist ethnostate and whatever that christian zionism belief is about the jewish people returning to the holy land as prerequisite for the second coming of jesus. its not like they care about us as a dispersed ethnocultural group, it’s all for that religious narrative that a bunch of people in the US are backing.

saying you want all jews to die is antisemitic. beating someone up because they’re jewish and no other reason without knowing their views is antisemitic. criticizing human rights violations perpetrated by israel and the belief that one group deserves more rights another is not antisemitic. and the fact that israel has the ability to pull that antisemitism card in response to criticisms of the violations they commit because their state is the “jewish homeland” drives me fucking insane. take fucking accountability for your actions. and yes, there do exist full-on anti-jewish groups in the middle east that go beyond hatred of israel’s policies and existence as a state and i’m tired of people pretending there aren’t in fear of appearing to seem like they support the state of israel. on the other side of things many people overestimate this by fearmongering and saying EVERY arab is out to get jews worldwide, telling people like me “they want YOU dead”. this is not the belief every person in the middle east and it really rubs me the wrong way that people group millions of individuals into all-encompassing lumps like this. many people there do understand nuance of this political situation.

even if i have that “right of return” by israeli law or whatever, i don’t feel obliged to it; it does not register as fair. why do i have a “right of return” when i’ve never even been there in the first place while palestinians who have homes there can’t return to them? what’s the basis for that? substituting objective reality with an imaginary reality? i don’t think like that. i can hypothetically come and go whenever i please but palestinians are severely limited in mobility? what makes me more entitled to that land than the people who lived there for centuries? nothing that comes from natural law thats for sure. it’s all artificial and inflated.

but at the same time i also dont want to be the target of antisemitism and caught in the fray just for being ethnically jewish. once people start calling for the genocide of entire groups we’ve got issues (and you better believe this absolutely applies to the palestinian victims in gaza too), because people who dissent to the violence perpetrated by the loudest are caught in there with the people who are perpetrating the violence. lack of nuance. people conflating israel and its zionist apartheid policies with jewish ethnicity and culture worldwide. other people conflating being terrorist anti-jew with muslims worldwide (like that 6-year old palestinian-american boy that was just stabbed to death in chicago). scary times man. but as a jew i can’t just opt out of this if it’s how i was born as. i don’t have control over that. but i can control what i think and what my beliefs are

[iznsfw]

Day-Off

Kep1er's Shen Xiaoting x Male Reader x Male Friend Smut

10,884 words

Categories | masturbation, handjob, blowjob, facefucking, cunnilingus, anal, spitroast, thighfucking, slapping

Masterlist | Mobile Masterlist | Commission me!

First commission! :D Thanks for funding my siblings' allowances and my search for a new laptop. I'm not even being sarcastic; your tips and commissions help me out a lot. Work can be cruel.

Okay, to begin with: one could say Xiaoting’s a little pent up. Just a little is what she'd like to say, for the sake of everyone around her, but with the way things are going, she might as well be flat-out enraged. Fucking unhinged, if you will. She’s a nudge away from screaming and wrecking everything everywhere all at once, all over the place. 

The problem? Well, it's not an easy answer. But this is the short one: it's not at all fun being kept in the company building to practice more even after they've replayed the comeback song more times than she can count on her fingers. There's a one, a two, and a one, two, three—

Cue the music! 

(Yeah, that wasn't a particularly short answer.)

"So, I was thinking…" hums Yujin, sedentary beside her and with a head on her shoulder. 

Every bone in Xiaoting’s body is on fire after the rehearsals. But: "What is it?" 

See, it's been a rough day, but not too rough that she's going to take it all out on her best friend. No matter what happens, she is and always will remain an angel to Yujin. Nothing more, nothing less. They're practically sisters with how much time they've spent together. She guesses she should return the favor of friendship in her own little way.

Here's how it is with her and Yujin as of present: they're in the practice room, and it's quiet. The rest of the group have emptied the place out and the two of them are alone. This is usually the time Xiaoting and she catch up with each other; there isn't much time to do that in between packed schedules, but since then she’s formed quite a friendship with her bandmate, and she’s determined to keep it strong.

Yujin taps her chin cutely. "Are the CCTVs' audio on?"

Xiaoting raises a brow. A smile, however, settles for the first time on her face. "Choi Yujin," she says, both seriously and kiddingly, "what the hell are you planning now?"

"Language.”

“The girls—"

"—aren't here," Yujin fills the blanks in for her with her signature eye smile. "Exactly, thank you for bringing that up. They can't join us when we go there."

She blinks, not catching on. "Go where?" 

The older girl pushes two index fingers together. "I may or may not have negotiated with the manager," she says slyly, "and we may or may not have a day-off tomorrow."

Genuine and grateful shock filters into Xiaoting’s Bambi-wide eyes. The sides of her mouth twitch, and she realizes it’s a smile. It takes news like this to bring out a big, giddy one from her. It's the right news at the perfect time.

(No, it can't be merely called news—it's a blessing. The universe is finally kind to her. Maybe it doesn't deserve the endless curses she's thrown at it after rough days, when it's chosen to bear the weight of the sky on her.

Xiaoting, however, is fantastic at holding grudges.)

"You're kidding!" says Xiaoting happily. Her hands grip Yujin's shoulders, and now she's got the girl swaying to and fro driven by her own excitement. Force is something she doesn't relent, so Yujin's forced to bear the calamity of her happiness with the repeated rocking. “Yujin unnie, oh my god, you’re the best!”

"Calm down!" she chides with a giggle, but the girl's energy only goes up.

"We've got to go somewhere! Somewhere fancy, Yujin unnie, somewhere like a… a…"

What could be the perfect place to go for a day-off? The two of them have already gone to a massage therapist, as well as blown money on massive shopping sprees. That film screening’s crossed out, too. Now, with all of those boxes checked, they need a new one to add to the list. 

"A hot spring," Yujin declares rather than suggests, a cheeky grin on her face. Seems like she’s been scheming about a day-off for more than a while. "We're going to, like, a super private hot spring. It’s really exclusive, so even if people recognize us, we’ll be fine. Privacy is one of the reasons why it’s got five stars on Google reviews.”

Xiaoting leans back into the mirror and thinks about it. A private hot spring? No need to think if people would see her or not? It sounds too good to be true. She loves being an idol despite the schedules and cramped day-offs, but it definitely won’t hurt to be able to be herself where it won’t matter. It would drain the stress from her life even for just a little while.

Who knows? She might even make some new friends.

“I’m in!” 

-

Well, someone isn't, but that's how the story goes.

-

“Isn’t this kind of like nepotism?”

The creases on your clothes don’t smooth out by themselves. You guess you shouldn’t have procrastinated ironing them, especially now that you’re bringing them along for a trip. Look over at your friend's luggage and see that his clothes aren’t that perfect either, which comforts a much more unprioritized concern.

“Dude,” he sighs as he folds his clothes into organized (or at least, as organized as they can be) places inside his luggage bag, “do you even know what nepotism means?”

He got you. You make a sigh of your own, too; your main concern being the whole vacation thing is rather odd. It really shouldn’t be when it’s a promise of a good time, food served limitlessly, and the waves always there to crash on a tired soul, but it still sets you off.

What could be the reason for your gut feeling? You haven’t been able to figure out why. All you know is that if Lee weren’t your friend, you’d have refused to go. You would have fought not to go, but your circumstances are different, hence the clothes scattered along the carpeted floor of his room and the unzipped luggage carry-ons.

Your belongings sit side by side in your bag. Your earphones are tangled strings and your clothes are wrinkled; they don’t want to go either, apparently. They all yearn for home, just like you are, even if you’re just in the packing stage of the trip. 

Maybe they’ve got little introverted souls of their own.

“No,” you admit. Your back slumps. “It just… it just doesn’t seem fair, y'know."

“Who cares?” Lee says, in his usual, laid-back manner. It’s the thing that made the two of you close friends in the first place, but right now, it’s interfering with helping him understand your situation. Pity. “Lin works there, so it isn’t exactly a privilege. He works his ass off, and since he’s been a long-time employee, we get to stay there for free. Isn’t it neat?”

Lee looks at you with an expression that prods you to agree, but you don’t budge. It’s kind of funny how you refuse to enjoy a free connections-caused vacation when your morals are already fucked up as is, but when you believe in something, you don’t really back down easily.

Is that a good trait? Not exactly; it has its fair share of bad days.

“What about people who lose a booking spot because of us?” 

“Fuck them, man,” Lee says nonchalantly, waving a hand in the air. “I’m going to have fun, and nothing can ruin that for me.”

How you’re friends with someone who’s your complete opposite, you’ve no idea. But you like Lee—he’s been there for you when no one wanted to be, and you owe more to him than an agreement to a vacation. If that’s the case, why couldn’t you just go?

You say nothing. You don’t know what else to say anyway. Any more words from you might dig a deeper hole than you’ve already dug, so you choose to be silent. Sometimes it’s better to keep your mouth shut than explain yourself. 

“Hey,” he suddenly says, a softer melody to his tone now. “I’m sorry. I know you’re not too happy about going out, so if you want to back out, it’s totally fine with me. No hard feelings.”

You know he’s just trying to be kind, as anyone would, but his words tell you anything but not to go. Thing is, you don’t like being a burden on his back. On anyone’s back for that matter. Maybe it’s time to dip your toes out of your comfort zone and just dive headfirst into doing it. The whole thing would be over sooner than you’d think.

"I guess I'm in," you say. No going back now. 

"I fucking love you, man!" Lee cheers, throwing his arms around you. 

You have to admit you're smiling. Stifle it, but the creases of happiness get your cheeks unable to form a disguise. Decide not to hide it anymore (because who the fuck are you kidding anyway?) and return to packing.

In a slightly better mood, you fold one graphic shirt over the other, and ask, "What's the hype about the place anyway?"

"Well," Lee explains, "it's a hot spring. It's where celebrities, idols—all the hot people, basically—go for a vacay."

"Does that make us hot people then?" you wonder out loud. It's worth the question.

"You are a good-looking dude. I'd definitely tap that."

"Thanks." An embarrassingly lengthy beat. "Wait, what—"

"They pay really good, too," Lee goes on as if nothing happened. "That's why Lin likes working there. It has unlimited portions of dinner and a big buffet at night. The water's really warm, too, so you're not gonna shiver when you get in."

"Ah. Well,” shrug matter-of-factly, “it is a hot spring."

He smirks. "You don't get it, do you? The water there is perfect for external detoxifying. That's where Nayeon goes to get perfect skin."

There he goes again. Lee’s the type of person to be too in the know of every piece of celebrity gossip out there. That quality of his goes up when it’s about his favorite idol, Im Nayeon. 

"You're too in love with her," you scoff.

"We have a connection, is all."

"A parasocial one at that."

"One more word out of you," Lee says, voice full of warning, "and you're banned from my house and the hot spring."

You chuckle. Lee's quite sensitive when it comes to Nayeon. You wonder if there would be a point in your life wherein you'd obsess over an idol, too, just like he is. Perhaps a few months from now? 

(A day from now?)

"Oh, come on," you protest. Zip up your bag and shove it over to Lee. "It's not my fault you genuinely believe Nayeon's your girlfriend!"

"I don't, what the fuck."

"Then why do you want to go to the hot spring so badly? Think you can meet her there?" Put on a mocking voice. "Think you can marry her and have seven children with her?"

Lee glowers and gives you the finger. Gives you the finger on the other hand, too. Shoves the two raised middles into your face. "Fuck you, man."

Your heart feels lighter after teasing him. It just so happened that all it takes for you to agree is the classic ol' nagging. God knows you're good at that.

-

Your mind changed, see? It’s all going according to plan—you and Xiaoting have to meet somehow.

-

Xiaoting's happy that they're going to use the trailer. She knows it might attract attention, considering that a photo of her girl group is literally painted on the outer walls of the vehicle, but if the world sees fit, maybe people would assume it's a normal trailer with a fan-funded ad. 

Besides, it's better than her manager's tight old car. 

"We've got this place all to ourselves," Yujin says in her usual cheerful voice. She’s opted to go donning a lavender set of pajamas. Xiaoting chooses to wear a denim skirt and a t-shirt. "Which seat will it be, Ting?"

She scans the place. There are aisles and aisles of empty seats, all mantled with transparent plastic. There's a bathroom in the far end (essential after they eat some nice burgers on the road) and a television mounted at the very front of the trailer (gotta know what happens in the next episode of Running Man, after all).

Ultimately, they choose to sit near the doors. She suggests that they each occupy two seats opposite each other for comfort. Her friend agrees, thinking nothing of it. They both settle into their seats with pillows pressed to the trailer walls and the night sky watching their trip.

Would it watch if she decided to look at porn right now? Would the stars lose their shine after seeing the kinks she’s particularly into?

Oh, she knows it's risky, but she's got her headphones with her, hanging 'round her neck like an accessory. Yujin and the driver won't be disturbed that way. And she’s got mobile data, too. If they ever check the Wi-Fi router history, they’d know nothing about her secrets. At least, she doesn't think so.

She bites her lip. Yujin's still awake, so she has to hold out for a few more minutes.

"Isn't it nice getting to go out once in a while?" Yujin asks. She sighs dreamily as she looks out at the passing roads. The moon gleams in the reflection in her eyes. "It’s been a while since we went on a road trip. Not that fun when cameras are around."

Xiaoting's thighs squirm together. She's too horny for small talk with her. Her hands and eyes remain locked on her phone, where a video of a woman with spread legs between two anonymous men waits. She wants to watch it already, to imagine that it’s her body they’re using. She wants to sink her fingers deep in her own cunt and fuck herself into a quiet yet violent orgasm. She needs it more than she could say, but Yujin’s still there, waiting for a response.

“Ting-ah,” Yujin calls out, looking at her with eyes full of expectation. She’s confused; Xiaoting is quiet, but not so much that her responses are nonexistent. Something must be wrong. “You okay?”

“Y-yeah.” Does she dare…? Xiaoting hopes the dark night covers her hand, which edges down to her covered core. She bites her lip to muffle the moany sound of her breath catching on a hook. “We deserve this. Let’s hope the girls aren’t jealous.”

“They’re going to stay at Disneyland,” replies the leader. “If anything, we’re the ones who should be jealous.”

Xiaoting finds her clit and rubs at it softly with the tip of her finger. Her thighs instinctually lock her wrist in place. The heat gathers at her bundle of nerves and spreads to the rest of her body. She’s too turned on, and the thought of Yujin or the driver finding out that she’s touching herself both frightens and excites her. At times, her wrist stops its choreographed motions, hesitance riddling its veins, but goes against it with a pace even she can’t keep up with.

“Xiaoting? Earth to Shen Xiaoting?”

“Ah,” she responds, but it’s more induced by her fingers drawing number 8s on her nub rather than an apologetic answer. Xiaoting’s cheeks and ears turn red. “Yeah, Disneyland. They’re younger anyway, so I’d guess they’d like… that.”

Yujin peers at her closely. Her eyes squint but fail to catch on to her groupmate’s hand which now starts to fuck her fingers into her tight hole. “Are you okay?” 

Xiaoting is more than okay. She’s blissful, and she’s not using the term loosely, mind you; her wetness practically floods her panties. They slicken the pads of her fingers and drive them through deeper places in her needy cunt. No matter how hard she tries to relax in order for her fingers to intrude her hole more, she still desperately clenches down. It’s humiliating how hard and sensitive her nipples have become even without them being directly touched.

Her hips sway in what she prays is a subtle dance. She looks out the window and nods. She’s a little afraid to speak. What if her words end up becoming garbled moans? Would it matter if they do? How high is the possibility of her saying something like please please let me touch myself, I’ll be a good girl, don’t make me stop I’ve been so good?

Yujin eventually lets the matter rest and melts into sleepful rest herself. It’s either she has an idea of what Xiaoting is doing and doesn’t care enough to pry, or has no idea at all and decides to leave it be for both of their sakes. Her head leans on the window pane where her sleep-ridden eyelids reflect.

Once Xiaoting ensures that her eyes are completely shut, she connects her headphones to her phone. Her mind’s so addled by lust that the clicking of buttons necessary to wire the sound matches the speed of light. She hits the play button, waiting eagerly for the video with the hand between her legs.

One of the men teases the woman’s tiny slit with his cock, making the actress toss her head back and bite her lip. Xiaoting’s mouth waters at how big the rod is, and suddenly it’s not lust much anymore but wishfulness. She wants to be fucked as good as she could be, and it can’t easily be solved with watching pornography. For now, though, she settles with teasing her clit with the same rhythm one of the male pornstars is performing on the passive woman.

Her heart aches with want. As she watches him penetrate her while his partner fucks her mouth, she teases herself. Her breaths break through her nostrils while her fingers rub up and down between her drenched folds. She dips her middle digit inside her clenched hole, and she has to gather her strength not to moan unabashedly right then and there. The power of imagination reaches beyond excellence, and right now she’s imagining that she’s in the same position as the porn actress: having both her upper and downer lips fucked at the same time.

“Fuck,” she whispers. It’s a thin little word, barely creating any sound, but she still looks at Yujin out of paranoia. Upon finding that she remains asleep, she continues fucking herself. The sides of her fingers clash with her velvety walls to rub and stimulate them. Her wrist bumps her clit, increasing the pleasure of the experience.

Her pussy’s closed tightly around her fingers, as if telling them to go on or they’ll be trapped here doing it forever. Soon, she has to lift her hips too to mash them with her hand. Xiaoting’s filling herself over and over again, and her risque little self-love session is amplified with the dirtiest of thoughts. She thinks how badly she wants to be used, to be treated like the good girl she’s willing to ditch her whole persona to be. She ponders on how good it would feel if her holes were to be filled with cock and fingers and cum, and the way it would never stop even after she’s spent. She guarantees that’s the part that makes her excited the most.

Soon, she’s lost in her own dream. This isn’t exactly a dream slumber would stumble across, but it’s perfect—it’s an imaginary land where she’s given what she wants. What she wants just so happens to be fucked. That’s how simple it is. She’d appreciate nothing more than to have her body rubbed and touched, to have her holes spread to their limits and taken in a way that’s almost inconsiderate. 

It's a fantasy she has, in fact, of being screwed by two people at once. She’s read the explicit fictional stories horny fans on the internet write about her, but she’s chosen to enjoy them rather than report them to her agency. They get some parts right: she wants to be fucked, she’s constantly on edge, and would love to have her sexual dreams fulfilled. The problem here is that there’s no one to make them come true for her; she has to stick with overused words in old fanfiction site posts and her fingers.

The two men’s symphony of moas draw wetter strings of lubrication from her cunt. It’s as if the video were an actual critically acclaimed movie with how much she’s hooked onto it. She imagines the best she could that it’s her ass that fat cock is going into, her mouth that’s being ruined, her clit that’s being rubbed. She wants it all more than anything.

“Please,” she says. Her legs cross and her voice strains to be allowed to scream. “Fuck me, use me, pound me… ‘lmost there…”

Xiaoting shuts her eyes and lets the sounds get to her: the clashing of skin, the wet squelching sounds that are either coming from her pussy or the pornstar’s, the male and female moans alike. She pumps faster, and she’s chasing her high like a starved hunter for prey. She’s chasing after it, grasping it—

“Cumming!”

The shock settles in before she squirts all over the seat. The worst thing is that she’s not able to stop the stream of girl cum coming from her pussy despite her hand halting its movements. She can’t take back her words either. Someone definitely heard that.

“Ting-ah,” says a drowsy Yujin. She lifts her head off the window and squints through blurred vision to try and make out what happened. “Did someone say anything?”

“Yes… ah, no.” Xiaoting thanks goodness that her voice isn’t brittle anymore. “I think I just, uh, spilled my water.”

“Oh. Want me to help you clean it up?”

“It’s, it’s fine,” Xiaoting declines politely and waves her off. 

(Fuck, she wasn’t supposed to dismiss her with that hand! Luckily, she explained the reason for the wetness just now. She just hopes the atmosphere doesn’t stink of fluids and cum.)

Still, long after the girl drifts off to sleep again, Xiaoting discovers that it isn’t enough. She could have the most head-numbing orgasms known to woman, but they still won’t feel as good when they’re not drawn out of her by someone else. 

So, what should she do?

-

Planes are the closest thing to the Devil incarnate. Whose idea was it to throw people into the sky where they could disappear with the wrong turn? It’s bad enough on the ground, but when you’re talking about being in the sky where the weather can pull you down without effort, the danger makes your skin crawl more.

So, when Lee told you that he booked two seats on a plane to get to the infamous hot spring, (the time of the explanation conveniently being when you were already miles from home in the goddamned car), you freaked out. That’s the lightest way you can put it.

“What the fuck do you mean we’re getting on a plane?” you ask, trying to keep your voice at a level wherein the taxi driver won’t hear your toddler-like complaints.

“Are you serious?” your friend fires back, although his title as a friend would have withered instantly if not for your genuine admiration for the guy. “It’s in Seoul, what did you expect us to do? Walk like twenty-thousand miles to get there?”

You let out a little hoarse laugh and clap your hands together sarcastically. Taking theater in high school has seriously influenced your ways. “You know I hate heights, Lee! Oh, and what a great argument you have there: using that White Chicks song to defend yourself. Really mature.”

“That’s A Thousand Miles, you moron!” Lee punches your shoulder. “I already booked a flight, so you either go through or go home. Deal with it.”

You’d have chosen the latter, but you really don’t want to drag your heavy bags home. The roads have been crossed and the wheels have rolled—you can’t back out now. It would break the whole puzzle from the first jigsaw piece to the last. 

Besides, you did tell yourself that it was time to step out of your comfort zone. It would take blocking out flashbacks of when the plane made an emergency landing back when you were four years old and on a family trip, but no one promised that it would be easy. 

The driver flashes the two of you dirty looks. You and Lee immediately take the hint to calm down and save the conversation for later.

Entering the airport and discovering that the drop-off place is underground reminds you of the second closest thing to the Devil incarnate: the cursed invention that is the elevator. 

Choose any elevator out there: an office elevator, a Barbie dreamhouse rope-controlled one, or the other unholy name they take up which is “lift.” Whatever and wherever doesn’t matter. You hate all of them equally, the contempt in your heart going out for each one that exists. It doesn’t matter which form they transform into. You will always hate them with every piece of your soul.

It just turns out that perhaps your overly paranoid gut feelings were right this time, for today, you experience the worst of not one, but two hells of your worst fears.

“You know,” say out loud as you suspiciously examine every cramped corner of the elevator, “I have to start saying no sometimes. I don’t need this, man.”

Lee scoffs. “You say ‘no’ all the time.” He tracks the numbers going up on the little screen above the elevator buttons. “You should actually start doing the opposite.”

Once again, guilt runs through your blood like a drug. It definitely won’t be a recreational one; you realize through it that all your life, you’ve sheltered yourself in a bubble where no discomfort could ever pop in and welcome itself into your home. It’s carried on into adulthood and, like that of an irritating intrusive thought, won’t leave. It’s a painful discovery, and you don’t want to think about it more.

The elevator seems to shrink around you. You can only think of how there would be the plane to not look forward to as well, and you feel even sicker.

One step at a time, buddy. One step at a time.

The gray doors part and welcome you to a floor of marble, promotional tarpaulins that hang from the high ceiling, and lots of people. You release a breath of relief.

“Look, I’m sorry, man,” says Lee. He rolls his luggage out of the claustrophobia-causing nightmare and shrugs. 

It’s his second apology of the day. He tries to play it off with small smiles, but he’s obviously down. He’s never forced you to do stuff you weren’t comfortable with until now, and because of that, it’s ruining the trip. You’re ruining the trip. It hasn’t even fully begun yet.

“You don’t have to say that all the time, you know.” 

“I know, but I…” He shakes his head. “I just want to have a nice vacation with my closest friend. I’m sorry if I keep pushing your limits—”

“My limits are anything that make me feel, like, even the slightest bit uncomfy,” you inform him with a small, lighthearted grin. “Don’t feel bad about it. You’re still a dick, though.”

“And you still don’t know what A Thousand Miles is.”

Scoff and walk faster. You and Lee meet each other’s gazes along the way and grin. It’s how you know everything’s going to work out.

Your wristwatch says that it's nearly one a.m.. Explains why your eyelids are heavy, but you keep going. If you persevere, the inevitable sleep on the flight would distract you from everything. Make your world lighter for just a few hours. Jetlag’'ll come around, though, but fending off flight anxiety is your main concern now. 

Climbing into the plane, you find your seats. Lee calls dibs on the window seat, which you have no problem giving to him. The light clouds in the dark sky and the shining city lights beneath them all may look photogenic, but it's a far cry from fascinating to you. It's a nightmare, a complete opposite from beautiful.

"Soda or coffee?" asks the flight attendant. She's pretty—she looks like she could be the Nation's Sweetheart with her youthful face and timid yet polite smile. 

(Wait…)

You don't drink either of them anyway. Soda's too carbonated, and coffee would just keep you awake. That’s the last thing you need to be. "Water, please."

"Boring," Lee says. He turns to the flight attendant. "I'll take both, if you please."

"Seat 1112, am I correct?"

"Sure are." He leans back onto the armrest and smiles.

You roll your eyes at Lee practically making heart eyes at the flight attendant. He's trying to look all cool, too. Shake your head as you drink from the water bottle the woman gave you.

"I apologize, sir, but your payment doesn't cover two drinks. May I offer you water instead?"

Water streams out of your nose. Laughs shake your chest and shoulders. The poor old lady over at the front rows looks at you curiously. A man's stifling his laughs while Lee tries to debate which party should be more embarrassed: him or you.

A fair tie?

“That was so not cool, man,” Lee grumbles. He lifts the cup full of mineral water to his lips and drinks it halfheartedly. 

“Hey, not my fault you only think with your dick.”

“Whatever. Fine.” He looks at the attendant serving other people again. “She kinda looks like IU, doesn’t she?”

You tilt your head. He could be right; you might have caught a glimpse of a camera around the corner. Maybe she was doing a variety show role? And with that face looking strikingly identical with Korea’s household name, there’s a chance that his attempt to pick the Lee Jieun up was just broadcasted on live television. 

Wipe your mouth. “You like IU, too, don’t you?” you ask.

Lee shrugs. “Her surname isn’t for nothing, ain’t it? She’s like my number two after Nayeon.”

“And you realize that you’re probably gonna get eaten up by her fans on Pannchoa if she’s really IU?”

“Yep,” your friend says with a nonchalant tilt of his head. “Who cares? Anybody in Korea would die to have IU in his life, or at least, someone who looks like her.”

You have a feeling that it foretells something that would change the trajectory of your lives forever. How and why, you don’t know. You guess you’ll just have to survive the flight to find out.

It takes a long time to get you to find out. The whole ride is a headache. Turbulence knocks the plane side to side, and you’re constantly bumped awake from your sleep. You’re thankful that you didn’t choose to get risky and choose the window seat. If you did, you’d have multiple fears of suddenly falling from the sky and into an ocean called the Middle of Nowhere. You try to get Lee to pull the small blinds of the window down to soothe your fears, but he’s too fascinated by how the clouds wisp and wane over the wings of the plane. He did give in to letting you use his blanket, though, so you decide that it’s okay.

Landing is a different story. Your palms feel numb after holding onto the armrests for so long. They lose color, stiffening upon the solid coping mechanism and persevering the best they can. While the others, especially the older men, clap politely after the plane meets earth again, you sit there breathless. 

“Wasn’t so bad now, was it?” Lee asks. He’s clapping, too, earning the approval of an old American guy to his right. 

Glower. “Fuck you."

-

You have to admit: it is quite a nice place. You'd say that to Lee, but you're still in a bad mood after the flight. 

The hot spring lifts your spirits anyway. Small well-furnished buildings reserved for the esteemed guests (a.k.a you and Lee) stand to the side while the hot spring pools are modestly curtained. Tangled lights pepper the poles, making Christmas come early. The night pairs up with it to make shadows on the grass. 

You feel like a rich man. Rich men aren’t exactly all that honest, but you’re truthful when you say that perhaps it was a good idea to join Lee on the trip.

"Now remember," Lee tells you, dressed in a pair of swimshorts like you, "the expensive places like this one separate the women from the men. So you gotta be careful."

"Sounds like my old Sunday school." Translation: easy to follow.

Sunday school also taught that greed isn’t good. That’s one thing you can’t reject because you crave for more of this place. The clear, chlorine water seeping into the grass from the brim of the pool and the large buffet set out on a long table before the hot springs all draw you closer to more than one of the seven deadly sins. You want more of this rare luxury even if you’ll bite off more than you can chew.

At least you have Lee as your partner on the highway to hell.

"All I'm saying is," he pulls back the curtain of one of the pools and gestures a welcoming hand, "be mindful 'cause—"

"Hey, what the fuck!"

You almost jump out of your flip-flops. Look around to see who screamed, then realize you have nowhere to look but forward. 

There lies (swims?) your answer: a young, red-haired woman is in the warm water, glaring as she covers up her body. There's not much to cover when her exposed tight midriff already has ample show space below the bikini, but the shock in her eyes shows that there's more to this than modesty. She was doing something she never intended to be seen.

Looks like your friend didn't live up to his words about carefulness. He just invaded the women's pool. And now you're pulled into the mess and could be fined for this and that. You're already broke enough as is, so the irritableness inside you grows again.

"Oh my god," Lee says. He looks curious despite the shock on his face. Seeing this girl is like deja vu—he swears on his life he’s seen her before.  "I'm so sorry. W-we, we didn't…we're sorry, miss—"

"It’s Xiaoting," the girl says. "Be careful, you almost gave me a heart attack!"

Her name rings a bell, but it’s only a light sound. You swear you’ve heard of her somewhere—that face belongs on magazines, and with the hot spring being the go-to for celebrities, there’s a big chance she’s a famous name. 

Lee swallows. He sees it, too. "Is it the wrong time to say that you look just like IU?"

"Don't flatter me," Xiaoting says, though the venom in her words is suddenly stranded. Those red cheeks can't be induced by the fancy lights. "You can't just disturb a girl with her me time. Fucking leave."

Me time?

Slowly, all the pieces fall into place. You realize that the shock Xiaoting showed isn’t because of the pool regulations and restrictions about the guests, but because she’s doing something far more bold. Now you understand why her fingers, still covering her top, are wrinkled even when the red locks of her head aren’t wet.

“Oh, who am I kidding?” Xiaoting rolls her eyes. “I’ve been dying to get fucked all day.” 

“What?” you ask, your voice ridden with confusion from the sudden realization.

She eyes your stomachs, quads, and faces. Her big eyes are cameras—they sweep down your body and Lee’s own with accurate focus. You suddenly feel like shrinking into a small creature just to escape the power of her stare. In one way or another, she still brings her intimidating idol persona outside of the stage.

She drops her arms from her neck and shows off the whole of her body. It’s slim yet toned, gathering the most power in her midriff lined with light abs and her thighs that look delicious even when submerged in water. The black top and bottoms hug her figure so well it’s starting to look as if she had them personally handmade and tailored to look fantastic on her. 

“And those cocks,” she continues, looking at your crotches with a lick of her lips, “look perfect. Big enough to give my insides a good rearranging, you know?”

You and Lee look at each other, then back at Xiaoting. None of you expected that, even from a woman whom you assumed just masturbated in the pool. And whose name starts to sound more and more familiar.

"Are you…" you dare to ask.

"Shen Xiaoting," she replies. She's slowly stepping out of the pool. You'd die to be the water caressing her thighs. "You know Kep1er, don't you?"

Lee nods dumbly. 

She smiles. "I thought so. I knew you'd recognize me after you said I looked like IU."

"For what it's worth," your friend says, stumbling on his words, "I like IU. A lot. I got to know you when, uh, fans on Twitter said you looked like her."

"Would you fuck me like you want to fuck her?"

Now he has no words to stumble on. "I… uh…"

"Your friend doesn’t look too sure,” Xiaoting says after she turns to you. Resting her head on one side, she adds, charmingly: “How about we show him the real deal? Make him give in?”

You can’t believe what she’s saying. It’s both too good and too bad to be true. The first factor to this that’s a pro and a con is that she’s an idol. Didn’t she just say that she’s from Kep1er? If one of the hot spring staff couldn’t keep their mouth shut, a scandal would spread on news sites and social media alike that Kep1er’s visual and main dancer just fucked a random guy. Two random guys if this escalates. 

You can’t give in.

Xiaoting massages your shoulders.

You won’t give in.

And she runs her fingers along your chest and down to the band of your swimshorts. She pulls it down.

You shan’t give in.

Afterwards. she fishes your cock out from your gray underwear. You’re hard. She’s smiling.

You’ll never give in.

She pumps it. Her hand is as soft as it looks. The added texture from the wrinkles stimulates you more in a way that’s so fucked up it shouldn’t be allowed to happen. You bite your lip to break the moan that nearly escaped your lips.

Xiaoting drops to her knees.

You give your all.

Xiaoting kisses your tip then tickles your slit with the soft edge of her tongue. You exhale too loudly for her not to grin mischievously. Her bright eyes shouldn’t look so innocent when her full lips graze along your length, sealing at the base then harshly sucking all the way backwards. But they do, and you can’t look away. 

She’s trapped you. You’re a little embarrassed at how a girl who’s only met you and knows all the risks that come with fucking you still manages to reduce you to groans because you should be the bigger person here. You should play the devil’s advocate and tell her to get away from you with her nonsense and stupidly soft lips and irritatingly beautiful face. You should push her away. Yes, she should do everything but come closer; she should—

“Fuck me,” you breathe raspily.

“‘Course I will,” Xiaoting answers with a smile that’s too pretty for her own good. She faces your friends and flashes him a quiet smile. “Jealous yet?”

“No,” Lee answers. 

“Hm. I can do something about that.”

She deepthroats you, welcoming your bulge into her tight neck and letting it thrust in and out. The closeness of her airway greets you when you push, and her slick, wet mouth begs you to come back when you exit. It leaves you in a frenzy of indecisiveness—you don’t know what to choose: keep bluntly thrusting into Xiaoting’s throat or let your cockhead glide along her lips. Again, she makes you dizzy. Helpless. Weak.

“You sure know how to suck a dick,” says Lee enviously. The tightness of his shorts can’t hide his erection. 

Xiaoting pulls back. “Oh, I do,” she says. “I can do two things at once, if you know what I mean.” She levels him with a schemeful stare. “I’m very good at it.”

“Fuck.”

“What’s wrong?” she asks meekly. Her bottom lip juts out, “Want me to show you?”

Whenever Lee watches Kep1er’s V-lives or variety shows, he takes Xiaoting as someone who’s silent but forgiving. But now that he’s actually met her, he finds out that she’s the type of girl who doesn’t take no for an answer. If it weren’t already obvious from her rubbing his cock over his bottoms and her mouth sucking you away, she always gets what she wants. She might like to play quiet and innocent, but it’s clear that she isn’t any of that.

“Oh fuck,” he gasps. Her palm’s soft and smooth over the sensitive flesh of his erection. “Xiao– Xiaoting… you’re so—”

“Oh, so now you want to fuck me?” 

“I—uh—”

“Say it.” Xiaoting replaces her mouth on your cock with a furious, pumping hand and prods your friend on. Now she’s jerking the two of you off at the same time and leaves no second for you to breathe. “Say that you want to fuck me.”

“I want to fuck you, Xiaoting,” Lee says. He closes his eyes and hisses. “We want to fuck you so bad.”

You nod in agreement. Both of your male moans fill the air, making Xiaoting’s smile grow wider. She’s finally getting what she wants, and she’s not going to stop until it blooms to something better. She can already imagine being fucked by the two of you. She bets it’ll be better than just watching an old porn video.

The cause of the thrill is recognizable. Yujin could walk into the pool at any time and scream at the boldness, and if you and Lee weren’t trustworthy, she’d end up on the news and ruin her career. It’s the risk of being caught that quickens her jerking of your cocks, that makes her smile like never before.

“You’re close, aren’t you?” she coos. “You want to cum all for me so much it’s pathetic. But I like it, so don’t you worry. And I won’t mind if you shower me with your hot cum either, so do it.”

The pace of her hand jerking you off matches the speed of the one she’s using on Lee. Your breaths and moans mix with his, and you’re driven on by the redheaded girl nodding in encouragement. Her little nods remind you of how she took your cock so effortlessly just a few minutes ago, and you’re getting worked up again. 

“Getting excited, I see,” Xiaoting remarks, noting the thrusts the two of you fire into her closed fists.  “Make sure it isn’t for nothing. Cum on my face, my body, I don’t care. Just do it.”

Her soft voice is addicting; how can it pronounce such bold, dirty words while keeping the same touch of innocence to it? You don’t know what or why, but you don’t care anyway. You’re only going after the high that’s so close you can taste it. Maybe Xiaoting can taste it. You wouldn’t want anything less than that. 

On the other hand, you could go for more.

On Xiaoting’s other hand, Lee erupts. She closes her eyes in delight as he paints her with his overflowing semen. Her delicate face is caked with the bold fluid when it shouldn’t be—Xiaoting’s face should only ever be used in sweet, nostalgic commercials, not blasted with cum. But it is, and on the first impact, she immediately lets her tongue stick out. It’s the lewd expression on her face while doing it that finally makes you explode on her. 

A lot of it ends up on her face, but the lucky droplets slide down to her mouth. Xiaoting’s heart bursts with satisfaction at the most inappropriate of things, and this is the highest on the list of them. To be showered with cum by two anonymous men who could do anything with her if they please makes her shiver. She wants it. She wants you most of all.

And so when she gets up, she says, with a tone that warns the two of you that consequences will be consequences if you refuse: “Let’s get out of here.”

-

You end up in another place: her room. This day has just been setting change after setting change. You’re grateful that this one is well-furnished, though—any other bed would break if Lee had thrown Xiaoting like that on it. 

She likes it, however; she props herself up on the mattress after it went on with a wide smile. It’s more seductive than it should be, and for that reason, you pull off her shorts while Lee lifts her top over her body.

You’re not usually this confident. You like to stand at the side and let everything take its course. But Xiaoting just ignites something in you. She brings out a lust-crazed animal inside you that survives by fucking her numbless.

Maybe it’s her body that’s making you this way? Her arms and waist are thin, but her thighs are fuller than you expected. You part them and discover that her pussy is the same way. Her pink, puffy lips are soaked, and you’re here to clean her up.

“Oh my god, what are you doing… ahhh!” 

Xiaoting’s cry approaches a scream as you tongue her fat pussy. First, you flick her clit with a sudden expertness. Then, you latch your lips around it and give her the most powerful suction you can muster. Her wetness instantly floods your face. When she throws her head back to open her mouth, Lee comes up to make sure it’s put to good use.

“Suck me off, Xiaoting,” he tells her. “Like a good girl.”

How could she be a good girl? How could she be a well-behaved little thing when your tongue is completely ruining her, slick against her lips then wild inside her twitching hole? Xiaoting doesn’t think she can, but this is what she’s dreamed of. This is what she wanted, so she’ll go through it gladly.

Lee learns from her habits at not taking “no” for an answer and dips his hips on her face. Her lips spread and take his cock fully. She whines and tries to relax her throat to take his length, but her neck still ends up with a bulge imprinted on its flesh. 

Her engorged clit experiences the best of pleasure as your lips massage it. She finally screams and bucks her hips into your face, but you hold her down by her luscious thighs. Squeeze them, then spank them. There’s an unexpected voice inside you commanding you to pepper her creamy thighs with handprints again and again. You’d love to corrupt the paleness of her soft flesh with red. Mark her that way. Tell her that she got what she wanted. You want to see her twitch and cry and moan for more, and you want to give it to her since hell, who are you to reject Shen Xiaoting?

So, you give in to the voice. Let it control you and raise your hand to her right thigh. You squeeze in time with Lee’s thrusts into her mouth. Her lower body lifts off the bed, but you pin her down again anyway. As revenge, her thighs curl around your head and keep you locked to her center. But it can’t be revenge when you relish it, can it?

“Fuck, her mouth is so fucking good,” Lee groans. His balls hit Xiaoting right in her pretty face, and she makes sure to dedicate at least a few licks to fuel his lust. “Told you this vacation was gonna be good. Getting a pretty girl to use.”

What are you even supposed to say to that? Your fears get the best of you again. You’re afraid to sound off to Xiaoting if you say the wrong word. Her pretty cunt just addles your brain that no words can be formed. They translate into actions, like pulling your lips away from her pussy and rubbing at her clit.

“Hnnnn!” Xiaoting cries. Her hips gyrate, and it’s your job again to keep her on the bed. You can’t do anything about the wet sheets, though. You can’t stop Xiaoting’s violent squirting as your rubbing at her core grows more frequent and harsh.

Lee pulls out of her mouth. A rain of white damages her face, but it’s the very storm in which she screams to the fullest. She’s tapping out, unable to handle the furious flicks at her clit. She barely has the strength to lift herself up, but she tries anyway for the purpose of seeing how her squirt flashes out from under her engorged clit, where you thumb and lick energetically. 

“Fuck, fuck, I can’t!” she says, eyes not bothering to open anymore. “Please make me cum more, I can’t take it!”

Her words contrast each other, but you take the initiative to avoid stopping. You slip two fingers inside her to fill her desperate pussy and place your lips on her nub. Your rhythms are mismatched, but they’re perfect enough to make Xiaoting’s toes curl. 

“Look at these pretty tits,” Lee says. He comes up from behind Xiaoting to wrap his hands fully around her small, painted chest. Pinching her nipples, he kisses her neck. “So perfect. You like this, Xiaoting?”

What other answer is truthful except for the whiny, shouted “Yes!” she replies? 

Xiaoting leans back into his chest and kisses him. While Lee toys with her sensitive nipples as she screams and begs, you suck her clit harshly. It pulses between your lips. Although it’s clear you’re draining her, stopping is an impossibility. You’re high on Xiaoting, and you want to do everything but come down.

“Cum— cumming, cumming so hard!” she mumbles. Lee’s kisses on her neck rake up her sensitivity. “Please make me cum, gonna cum again, too much, please!”

As she promised, your mouth is filled again with her sweet nectar. You could live on it; you could have Xiaoting sit on your face each day for her cum to heal your shortcomings as if you were a god. But you decide that’s enough for now, and sighs heavily in relief. She relies on your friend’s chest to keep herself up.

“Y-you eat me so well,” she says appreciatively. “You’re so good.”

Your blush is almost as red as her hair. “Thanks, I guess,” you respond bashfully. 

“Hey, didn’t I fuck your mouth good, too?” Lee asks. He’s a little jealous hearing you get praised instead of him. Xiaoting is one of his heroes, that being the reason why he wants her approval, too. 

Xiaoting, suddenly full of energy, sits up straight and taps her chin. “I don't know, can your dick even fill me properly?”

You raise your brows. It’s a solid reminder that you and Lee may have spent all night ruining her body, but she still is the puppeteer. Her status, wants, and pretty face drag you around like strings, having you do whatever she wants you to do. She’s just insanely good at making it seem that you could do whatever to her. If she weren’t an idol, she could have been an actress.

“Oh yeah?” Lee sits up, too, and tries to hide the offense in his face. 

Xiaoting meets his gaze, unfaltering. “You heard me.”

“Alright then, I’ll fill you up,” he offers. He rises from the bed and stands with you. “He’ll fuck your mouth. Call it a spitroast, then we’ll see who’s better.”

Xiaoting’s eyes sparkle. He really doesn’t have a clue, does he? But he’s cute, and as much as she’d climb heights to avoid admitting it, he has a big cock. She can't wait for it to fill her up.

Excitement grips her skin as Lee pulls her up and bends her over the bed. His cock teases her hole. You take your place in front of Xiaoting. 

The first spank resounds. She winces, but she's biting her lip. You can see every lewd expression she makes with your position before her. You slap your cock on her cheek, and she moans delightfully. 

"That feels so good," she says, through ragged breaths. She runs a hand through her Ariel hair and smiles. Her grin glints with charm. "Come on, boys. Use me. You can do that for me, can't you? And—fuck."

Her pussy, still sensitive, reels helplessly. Lee has his cock penetrating her thighs, nudging her clit. It isn't even the real thing but she's already so weak. 

"Your thighs are amazing, Xiaoting," he tells her. 

"I know. Fuck them all you want, but don't forget to fill me up. You," she looks up at you and smirks, a fatal attack to your poor heart, "blow a big load in my mouth, okay?"

You nod. You brush your cockhead on her soft lips, then slowly enter her mouth. It's still as good as the first time, for her tongue knows how to work wonders on your length. She's all wet and hot, and although you envy Lee for having the chance to fuck her pussy, you think that this is good for now.

You and Lee pump into Xiaoting quickly. Both of her holes are incredibly wet. While her slick walls contract and hold on to his cock, her warm mouth moistens your length with sheen-coated pleasure. You're both knocking into her body, feeling her all over the place—her small bouncing tits, the ripples of her perfect ass, her wide hips; no place is left untouched. 

And, despite the violence of the intercourse as you fuck Xiaoting on both ends, she likes it. 

She doesn’t need to bob her head anymore to let your girth into her tight throat; Lee’s harsh thrusts from behind drive her mouth to swallow more of you. You’ve got your fingers in her hair, gathering them in one tight tail, so that there won’t be hindrance in facefucking her. So far, her face is the most perfect thing to fuck. Your hand, though a familiar dream, can’t compare to the way her eyes sparkle when her gaze meets yours, or the hollowing of her cheeks when she dares to push her limits. 

Or maybe she’s just that pretty.

“Too much for you now, Xiaoting?” Lee asks. He’s gripping the soft cheeks of her bubble butt then teasing the puckered hole. 

“You wish,” Xiaoting says, pulling away from your cock and jacking it off. You can’t really see her when she turns her head to your friend, but you can just tell that she’s got on the most bratty expression. Even her words alone can entice Lee to fuck the brat out of her.

“What about now?”

Xiaoting shimmies away after he slips a finger inside her tight asshole. Desperate not to show her vulnerability, she places her mouth on your cock again. Her moans reverberate and create breathy pleasure on your length, and you start to fuck her harder. You know she’s enjoying it; her face never shows anything other than bliss, and her moans increase despite her filled mouth. 

All her holes are filled, and it’s going further than she’s ever dreamed of. Your touch is everywhere, and she tries to sink into it wherever it goes, but it keeps roaming. She can’t keep up with the thumb on her clit. Or the fingers spreading her virginal ass. Or your cock defiling her mouth. Or—

“More, f-fuck!” 

The suction of her pretty lips increases. Xiaoting’s eyes are squeezed shut. The room fills with screams and she clenches down so hard that Lee fills her insides earlier than he’d like. 

“Holy shit, that’s it, Xiaoting,” he says. His groans almost match her screams. “Fucking cum all over this cock.”

Their cum mixes together, a lewd liquid that drips down the thighs he fucked earlier. Her moans are strained cries, ones you muffle with a few remaining thrusts. She counts your thrusts just like she did whenever she dances at the practice room, timing her licks with them. More witness dribbles down her skin at your moans, and she evokes more out of you as she swallows your complete length all in one go. Restricted by the closeness of her throat, you’ve no choice but to cum inside her mouth. 

“Xiao– Xiaoting…” You’ve lost all control over balance and logic. You sit back down heavily on the edge of the bed and try to keep up with your breath.

Xiaoting licks your cockhead one last time. She laughs when it twitches. Her lips are lined with white, hot cum. “You don’t talk much,” she says, then, as she pointedly looks at Lee, continues, “but you’re really cute.”

“That’s it.” Lee’s a jealous guy. He ’t take the poorly veiled method Xiaoting’s too good at: riling him up. He doesn’t let envy take hold of what he does, but now, lust has corrupted his mind. He was too turned on by the sight of Xiaoting’s perfect back curving with his thrusts, at the sloppy sounds of her blowjob. Everything about her oozes of sex, which is what he’s happy to do to her.

He throws her on the bed again. The soft landing doesn’t save the bounce of her ass, nor does it take away the pleasurable pain of Lee spreading her legs. Lee’s face is flushed with lust and jealousy. He takes it all out in slapping the puffy cunt the best he can. 

Xiaoting cries out with satisfaction when he spanks her cunt, even parking her crotch further into his hand. “Fuck, yes, keep doing that!” 

“Brat,” Lee spits. You’re silent, but you secretly agree with him, too. Xiaoting’s a bigger brat than she poses herself as.

“Alright,” she says. Raised brows, upturned smile, she quips: “Then fuck me like one.”

She isn’t denying it or anything, but she is running away from the consequences of being one. She’s gauging the reaction she wants from the two of you, making it seem like it’s the perfect thing to do to put her in her place when she’s only rising above. She seems to love the reaction Lee makes:

“I’ll go for her ass,” he says, pulling her into his lap. As he does, his cock slips inside the ringed hole. Xiaoting’s cracked gasp fills your ears. “You can have a turn on her bratty cunt.”

More sounds of lewdness and pleasure spill from her pretty mouth when Lee pushes his fingers inside her pussy and spreads the walls apart. You watch, with strange hooked fascination, as Xiaoting writhes at Lee scissoring his fingers inside her. Cum ribbons his fingers, but he keeps going, determined to batter Xiaoting down into a desperate passive. You’d say it’s working, for what it’s worth.

“Hnnn, so hot, I can’t—!” She looks down at her fingerfucked pussy and hisses. “Haah, fffuck, please don’t stop!”

Lee doesn’t stop for a while. He continues fucking her pussy with his digitis until she squirts. All the while her voice reaches new pitches. He ends with slapping her crotch over and over, wetting his hands with her liquid.

“Oh, oh god, so good!” she screams. You squeeze her taut nipples and rub your cockhead on her clit. “Keep doing that, I’m ‘bout to cum so hard!”

“Again?” you ask. She looks up at you, surprised you’re speaking, but her gaze breaks at your cock filling her entrance up. “You’re a little cumslut, aren’t you? It’s all you ever want to do: cum all over cock.”

Despite her surprise, she nods. It’s true, anyway, so what’s the point in denying it? And there’s really not much time to put up a fight when the two of you are filling both of her holes. 

Her ass aches, but Lee’s in heaven—her tight little asshole is heaven itself. The cum and wetness from her pussy serve as good lubricant to slide in and out of her, to spread and slap her bouncing cheeks. You’re in heaven, too, despite the sin you make of thrusting into Xiaoting’s silken cunt like it depends on your life. At times, you pull out to rub your cock on her lips, enjoying the puffed texture of it and the whine of need she makes.

Kisses are everywhere. You pepper Xiaoting’s lips with them, too engaged with how soft her lips are to regard the fact that your friend’s literal cock has been there, and Lee kisses her arms. You’re both keen on ruining all of her body, and that involves marking her as your own. For this night, anyway, but the night is still young; while it lasts, you might as well up the tempo of your thrusts and grope her body as much as you like.

You find that the parts of her form that you appreciate the most are her face, thighs, and pussy. You loved to paint her pretty face with your load, corrupting the innocence it exudes. You relish thinking, too, of how her thighs served as earmuffs around your head and almost crushed you with how full and muscular they are. Plus, her pussy’s so perfect, so tight that you don’t think you’d want any other. It clenches and grips with every thrust, sends her hands flying to the sheets and on the side of Lee’s face.

Shen Xiaoting’s insatiable. 

“So fucking big inside me!” she’s screaming, grabbing your ass so you’re compelled to ram deeper. Her eyes are wide, and her breaths barely come out anymore.  “Fuck my little pussy with that big cock, please, da—”

Lee vents his anger out on her clit. He abuses it with firm, circular rubs that make Xiaoting’s hips twitch into your cock. There’s truly no escape from the pleasure—there’s her ass filled repeatedly, and the violent thrusts in her cunt. Now, there’s the pinching of her nipples and the rubs on her clit to deal with. She could scream and crawl and whine, but mercy isn’t in the dictionary for tonight. She’s going to be fucked hard, just the way she wanted, and she’ll have to cope with it one way or another.

You part her legs as far as they could go. You’re impressed at how flexible she is; her years as a dancer have certainly brought good fruit. With this position you’re able to hold her thighs as much as you want while fucking her cunt deeper. Lee’s given the chance to bounce her ass on him with no trouble. Lastly, Xiaoting’s put in a state of bliss—to the front, she’s filled and from the back, she is, too, and she doesn’t think she could hold on much longer. There’s too many things going on: her nipples being toyed with and squeezed, her thighs being spanked, her clit being assaulted. She’s so close to another orgasm that, like the others, have gone uncounted.

It’s messy when she cums. The whole thing has been fluids upon skin and skin upon fluids, but this one in particular is plentiful. IHer cum spurts everywhere in a profane splash right into your and on the sheets. She’s screaming, too, a bunch of words that can’t be deciphered properly. It sends off the right message, anyway: she’s cumming more.

You quickly move over to Xiaoting’s nipples when you feel your climax approaching. It’s induced by curiosity, and it gets the better of you; swipe your tip side to side on her small, perky nipples. The new sensation is strange, but it sets a flame of pleasure on your length. Xiaoting moans, guiding her breast to your cockhead, and chewing on Lee’s bottom lip. 

Eventually, the stamina subsides, and all three of you collapse on the bed. No word is exchanged for a long time.

-

“You,” says Yujin menacingly, pointing accusingly at Xiaoting with a single index finger with utmost anger on her face, “are in so much trouble.”

Xiaoting wipes her hair down with a towel. It was difficult to shower when her legs could barely hold her up, but it’s done now. She has nothing to worry about. Technically, there is more to worry about: Yujin’s discovered what secret she’s been hiding, and she’s furious. But, to her surprise, she isn’t pent up about it. If anything, she’s rather proud.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she replies. A white lie for a dark sin is still not counted, right?

“I… I saw you,” Yujin goes on. She’s walking around with Xiaoting as the younger girl paces in the room. “I saw you get out with those two guys!”

“And why would you assume anything happened?”

“Because there’s fucking cum on the floor, Xiaoting!” 

"Well." Xiaoting raises her hands in the air and sits down on the bed. "A girl’s gotta have fun.”

-

Unknown Number sent a message:

Hey ;)

If you want to do that again

You know where to call me

I’ll be waiting </3

[mostlysignssomeportents]

America's largest hospital chain has an algorithmic death panel

It’s not that conservatives aren’t sometimes right — it’s that even when they’re right, they’re highly selective about it. Take the hoary chestnut that “incentives matter,” trotted out to deny humane benefits to poor people on the grounds that “free money” makes people “workshy.”

There’s a whole body of conservative economic orthodoxy, Public Choice Theory, that concerns itself with the motives of callow, easily corrupted regulators, legislators and civil servants, and how they might be tempted to distort markets.

But the same people who obsess over our fallible public institutions are convinced that private institutions will never yield to temptation, because the fear of competition keeps temptation at bay. It’s this belief that leads the right to embrace monopolies as “efficient”: “A company’s dominance is evidence of its quality. Customers flock to it, and competitors fail to lure them away, therefore monopolies are the public’s best friend.”

But this only makes sense if you don’t understand how monopolies can prevent competitors. Think of Uber, lighting $31b of its investors’ cash on fire, losing 41 cents on every dollar it brought in, in a bid to drive out competitors and make public transit seem like a bad investment.

Or think of Big Tech, locking up whole swathes of your life inside their silos, so that changing mobile OSes means abandoning your iMessage contacts; or changing social media platforms means abandoning your friends, or blocking Google surveillance means losing your email address, or breaking up with Amazon means losing all your ebooks and audiobooks:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

Businesspeople understand the risks of competition, which is why they seek to extinguish it. The harder it is for your customers to leave — because of a lack of competitors or because of lock-in — the worse you can treat them without risking their departure. This is the core of enshittification: a company that is neither disciplined by competition nor regulation can abuse its customers and suppliers over long timescales without losing either:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

It’s not that public institutions can’t betray they public interest. It’s just that public institutions can be made democratically accountable, rather than financially accountable. When a company betrays you, you can only punish it by “voting with your wallet.” In that system, the people with the fattest wallets get the most votes.

When public institutions fail you, you can vote with your ballot. Admittedly, that doesn’t always work, but one of the major predictors of whether it will work is how big and concentrated the private sector is. Regulatory capture isn’t automatic: it’s what you get when companies are bigger than governments.

If you want small governments, in other words, you need small companies. Even if you think the only role for the state is in enforcing contracts, the state needs to be more powerful than the companies issuing those contracts. The bigger the companies are, the bigger the government has to be:

https://doctorow.medium.com/regulatory-capture-59b2013e2526

Companies can suborn the government to help them abuse the public, but whether public institutions can resist them is more a matter of how powerful those companies are than how fallible a public servant is. Our plutocratic, monopolized, unequal society is the worst of both worlds. Because companies are so big, they abuse us with impunity — and they are able to suborn the state to help them do it:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B

This is the dimension that’s so often missing from the discussion of why Americans pay more for healthcare to get worse outcomes from health-care workers who labor under worse conditions than their cousins abroad. Yes, the government can abet this, as when it lets privatizers into the Medicare system to loot it and maim its patients:

https://prospect.org/health/2023-08-01-patient-zero-tom-scully/

But the answer to this isn’t more privatization. Remember Sarah Palin’s scare-stories about how government health care would have “death panels” where unaccountable officials decided whether your life was worth saving?

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26195604/

The reason “death panels” resounded so thoroughly — and stuck around through the years — is that we all understand, at some deep level, that health care will always be rationed. When you show up at the Emergency Room, they have to triage you. Even if you’re in unbearable agony, you might have to wait, and wait, and wait, because other people (even people who arrive after you do) have it worse.

In America, health care is mostly rationed based on your ability to pay. Emergency room triage is one of the only truly meritocratic institutions in the American health system, where your treatment is based on urgency, not cash. Of course, you can buy your way out of that too, with concierge doctors. And the ER system itself has been infested with Private Equity parasites:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/17/the-doctor-will-fleece-you-now/#pe-in-full-effect

Wealth-based health-care rationing is bad enough, but when it’s combined with the public purse, a bad system becomes a nightmare. Take hospice care: private equity funds have rolled up huge numbers of hospices across the USA and turned them into rigged — and lethal — games:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/26/death-panels/#what-the-heck-is-going-on-with-CMS

Medicare will pay a hospice $203-$1,462 to care for a dying person, amounting to $22.4b/year in public funds transfered to the private sector. Incentives matter: the less a hospice does for their patients, the more profits they reap. And the private hospice system is administered with the lightest of touches: at the $203/day level, a private hospice has no mandatory duties to their patients.

You can set up a California hospice for the price of a $3,000 filing fee (which is mostly optional, since it’s never checked). You will have a facility inspection, but don’t worry, there’s no followup to make sure you remediate any failing elements. And no one at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services tracks complaints.

So PE-owned hospices pressure largely healthy people to go into “hospice care” — from home. Then they do nothing for them, including continuing whatever medical care they were depending on. After the patient generates $32,000 in billings for the PE company, they hit the cap and are “live discharged” and must go through a bureaucratic nightmare to re-establish their Medicare eligibility, because once you go into hospice, Medicare assumes you are dying and halts your care.

PE-owned hospices bribe doctors to refer patients to them. Sometimes, these sham hospices deliberately induce overdoses in their patients in a bid to make it look like they’re actually in the business of caring for the dying. Incentives matter:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/12/05/how-hospice-became-a-for-profit-hustle

Now, hospice care — and its relative, palliative care — is a crucial part of any humane medical system. In his essential book, Being Mortal, Atul Gawande describes how end-of-life care that centers a dying person’s priorities can make death a dignified and even satisfying process for the patient and their loved ones:

https://atulgawande.com/book/being-mortal/

But that dignity comes from a patient-centered approach, not a profit-centered one. Doctors are required to put their patients’ interests first, and while they sometimes fail at this (everyone is fallible), the professionalization of medicine, through which doctors were held to ethical standards ahead of monetary considerations, proved remarkable durable.

Partly that was because doctors generally worked for themselves — or for other doctors. In most states, it is illegal for medical practices to be owned by non-MDs, and historically, only a small fraction of doctors worked for hospitals, subject to administration by businesspeople rather than medical professionals.

But that was radically altered by the entry of private equity into the medical system, with the attending waves of consolidation that saw local hospitals merged into massive national chains, and private practices scooped up and turned into profit-maximizers, not health-maximizers:

https://prospect.org/health/2023-08-02-qa-corporate-medicine-destroys-doctors/

Today, doctors are being proletarianized, joining the ranks of nurses, physicians’ assistants and other health workers. In 2012, 60% of practices were doctor-owned and only 5.6% of docs worked for hospitals. Today, that’s up by 1,000%, with 52.1% of docs working for hospitals, mostly giant corporate chains:

https://prospect.org/health/2023-08-04-when-mds-go-union/

The paperclip-maximizing, grandparent-devouring transhuman colony organism that calls itself a Private Equity fund is endlessly inventive in finding ways to increase its profits by harming the rest of us. It’s not just hospices — it’s also palliative care.

Writing for NBC News, Gretchen Morgenson describes how HCA Healthcare — the nation’s largest hospital chain — outsourced its death panels to IBM Watson, whose algorithmic determinations override MDs’ judgment to send patients to palliative care, withdrawing their care and leaving them to die:

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/doctors-say-hca-hospitals-push-patients-hospice-care-rcna81599

Incentives matter. When HCA hospitals send patients to die somewhere else to die, it jukes their stats, reducing the average length of stay for patients, a key metric used by HCA that has the twin benefits of making the hospital seem like a place where people get well quickly, while freeing up beds for more profitable patients.

Goodhart’s Law holds that “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” Give an MBA within HCA a metric (“get patients out of bed quicker”) and they will find a way to hit that metric (“send patients off to die somewhere else, even if their doctors think they could recover”):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

Incentives matter! Any corporate measure immediately becomes a target. Tell Warners to decrease costs, and they will turn around and declare the writers’ strike to be a $100m “cost savings,” despite the fact that this “savings” comes from ceasing production on the shows that will bring in all of next year’s revenue:

https://deadline.com/2023/08/warner-bros-discovery-david-zaslav-gunnar-wiedenfels-strikes-1235453950/

Incentivize a company to eat its seed-corn and it will chow down.

Only one of HCA’s doctors was willing to go on record about its death panels: Ghasan Tabel of Riverside Community Hospital (motto: “Above all else, we are committed to the care and improvement of human life”). Tabel sued Riverside after the hospital retaliated against him when he refused to follow the algorithm’s orders to send his patients for palliative care.

Tabel is the only doc on record willing to discuss this, but 26 other doctors talked to Morgenson on background about the practice, asking for anonymity out of fear of retaliation from the nation’s largest hospital chain, a “Wall Street darling” with $5.6b in earnings in 2022.

HCA already has a reputation as a slaughterhouse that puts profits before patients, with “severe understaffing”:

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/workers-us-hospital-giant-hca-say-puts-profits-patient-care-rcna64122

and rotting, undermaintained facililties:

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/roaches-operating-room-hca-hospital-florida-rcna69563

But while cutting staff and leaving hospitals to crumble are inarguable malpractice, the palliative care scam is harder to pin down. By using “AI” to decide when patients are beyond help, HCA can employ empiricism-washing, declaring the matter to be the factual — and unquestionable — conclusion of a mathematical process, not mere profit-seeking:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/26/dictators-dilemma/ggarbage-in-garbage-out-garbage-back-in

But this empirical facewash evaporates when confronted with whistleblower accounts of hospital administrators who have no medical credentials berating doctors for a “missed hospice opportunity” when a physician opts to keep a patient under their care despite the algorithm’s determination.

This is the true “AI Safety” risk. It’s not that a chatbot will become sentient and take over the world — it’s that the original artificial lifeform, the limited liability company, will use “AI” to accelerate its murderous shell-game until we can’t spot the trick:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/10/in-the-dumps-2/

The risk is real. A 2020 study in the Journal of Healthcare Management concluded that the cash incentives for shipping patients to palliatve care “may induce deceiving changes in mortality reporting in several high-volume hospital diagnoses”:

https://journals.lww.com/jhmonline/Fulltext/2020/04000/The_Association_of_Increasing_Hospice_Use_With.7.aspx

Incentives matter. In a private market, it’s always more profitable to deny care than to provide it, and any metric we bolt onto that system to prevent cheating will immediately become a target. For-profit healthcare is an oxymoron, a prelude to death panels that will kill you for a nickel.

Morgenson is an incisive commentator on for-profit looting. Her recent book These Are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs — and Wrecks — America (co-written with Joshua Rosner) is a must-read:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farben

I’m kickstarting the audiobook for “The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation,” a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and bring back the old, good internet. It’s a DRM-free book, which means Audible won’t carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/05/any-metric-becomes-a-target/#hca

[Image ID: An industrial meat-grinder. A sick man, propped up with pillows, is being carried up its conveyor towards its hopper. Ground meat comes out of the other end. It bears the logo of HCA healthcare. A pool of blood spreads out below it.]

Image: Seydelmann (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GW300_1.jpg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[demiurgeua]

Мобільні вогневі групи протиповітряної оборони ДПСУ захищають українське небо

Mobile anti-aircraft fire groups of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine defend the Ukrainian skies. (ВІДЕО) Мобільні вогневі групи прикордонників працюють 24/7 https://dpsu.gov.ua/ua/news/%20VIDEO%20-Mobilni-vognevi-grupi-prikordonnikiv-pracyuyut-247/ Російсько-українська війна (з 2014) — Вікіпедія uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Російсько-українська_війна_(з_2014) Російське вторгнення в Україну…

[cienie-isengardu]

Cienie's Star Wars sidenotes

While doing research and writing down the last pieces of Funeral Rites of the Clone Troopers, it became even more clear how The Clone Wars animated TV series did a great disservice to Jedi, especially in the context of medical care for clones.

TCW has clone medics, both as part of combat units (e.g. Kix from 501st Legion) and working apparently in the medcentre as sometimes was presented on the screen.

The role of doctors treating wounded troopers was given to Kaminoans (Nala Se) and droids and sure, those two groups were part of the whole GAR’s medical system in the Legends too. However Jedi Healers (doctors), as far as I remember, were seen treating mainly other Jedi like Yoda

and even then TCW barely paid attention to force healing as an important skill. 

The research about medical care for clones gives a pretty drastic idea of what was happening during and after battle which is understandable why the show destined for younger viewers didn’t go into full details about triage of wounded but considering how many dark themes were put in the same show, I dare to say not showing medical care provided by Jedi or common Republic doctors and nurses (who btw are a rare example of republic citizens conscripted into army during the war) actually is unfair. The show reduced one very important aspect of Jedi - they weren’t just generals and commanders either sending or leading troops into battle, they also provided medical help, whether they were specifically trained at healing or not. 

In Legends, we could see Jedi Healers assisting the army on various occassions, working in triage area like in Republic comics series:

The triage unit, where Jedi healers labor to save the lives of the wounded, was set up safely behind the line of battle. But as the fortunes of war shift, so do the battlelines.

and worrying first about wounded even in the face of serious danger

Master Saa! We’re cut off! There’s no way to get the wounded out!

and searching for survivors

Master Saa is hurt! She pulled the trees on top of us for protection...

and working in hospitals

Follow me Skywalker. We have much healing to do. The Jedi sickbay, where we treat the most severe injuries. And our own, of course. Master Offee has saved countless lives. She seldom leaves her post to rest. But we all work long hours.

Not to mention the whole Medstar duology dedicated to padawan Bariss Offee, doctors and nurses serving in Republic mobile hospitals close to frontine - and yes, forever I’m gonna be bitter about how TCW/New Canon treated the most iconic Jedi Healer.

(The cover art for Medstar: Jedi Healer by Dave Seeley)

When padawan Skywalker arrived at New Holstice with his troops, he was immedialy called to assist in the nearest sickbay

“Are you injured, master Jedi?”

“Not really, no.”

“Good. You can make yourself useful by heading to the nearest sickbay. We need all the Jedi healers we can get...”

and for context, this is Anakin two days after after Jabiim, one of the worst war campaigns Republic experienced so far, the solely survivor of Jedi Pack traumatized both by the loss of his comrades and what happened on the planet and forced to make a devastating choice is literally told to get at work ASAP because every Jedi in between assignment was working here hard to heal the most wounded..

Though no healer himself, Anakin even force-healed injured trooper on battlefield to stop him going into shock:

Supporting the commando trooper with his left arm, Anakin warded off blaster bolts on the run. The rest of Squad Seven supplied cover, blowing STAPs out the sky with uninterrupted fire. Cody motioned everyone into a shallow irrigation trench just short of the mound. By the time Obi-Wan arrived, the troopers were deployed in a circle, and continuing to pour fire into the sky. Anakin slid into the trench a moment later, lowering the commando gently to the muddy slope. Squad Seven’s medical specialist crawled over, removing the commando’s ravaged utility belt and deeply dented helmet.  [...]

The harvester’s pincers had crushed the armor into the commando’s abdomen. His skin was intact, but the bruising was severe. With only half the original army of 1.2 million in fighting shape, the life of every clone was vital. Blood and replacement organs - - what the regular troopers referred to as “spare parts” - - were readily available - - “easily requisitioned” - - but with the war reaching a crescendo, battlefield casualties were on the rise and treated as high priority.

“Not much I can do for him here,” the medspec told Anakin. “Maybe if we can get an FX-Seven air-dropped - - ”

“We don’t need a droid,” Anakin interrupted. Kneeling, he placed his hands on the injured commando’s abdomen and used a Jedi healing technique to keep the clone from going into deep shock. [Labyrinth Of Evil]

(and included request for evacuation of the wounded trooper when Cody called for artillery support)

In Republic comics series alone we could see Jedi showing concern for the wounded troopers at various moments, putting their well-being as priority:

or helping (healing) wounded enemies:

And I won't lie, it is frustrating how Legends, especially Republic comics series that had around 40 issues put so much pressure on Jedi Force healing and how Jedi care for wounded troopers while The Clone Wars (New Canon) that lasted for decade or so kinda ignored the issue? Which is unfair to Jedi and clones alike. The first are presented as less caring, at times indifferent? the latter deserved to have all the available medical help, not just Kaminoans and droids.

[bethanythebogwitch]

I must make an apology. Last Wet Beast Wednesday I declared that I was balancing out the vertebrate/invertebrate balance of this series. However, I realized that all the invertebrates I've covered have been arthropods. This is a grave misrepresentation of invertebrate diversity and I must make amends. Thus, this week we're returning to the no bone zone and talking about siphonophores.

(Image: a collage of different siphonophore species, sourced from Wikipedia)

Siphonophores are cnidarians: soft-bodies, radially symmetrical organisms that also include jellyfish, anemones, and corals. They are definitely amongst the weirdest of cnidarians. Most of them look like either a jellyfish or an anemone, but siphonophores run a whole gamut of shapes: from the jellyfish-like Portugese man-o-war to the vaguely comb jelly-like Praya dubia, to whatever the heck this thing is

It looks like a bunch of glass vases on a stick (image: Marrus orthocanna)

Their appearance is the least weird thing abut them. Siphonophores are colonial organisms. Each individual animal is composed of multiple smaller organisms called zooids. All zooids share the same DNA, but are specialized to perform different functions as determined by their morphology. Because each type of zooid is specialized to perform a single function, they are dependent on each other to survive and cannot exist alone. Cnidarians exist in two forms, which many will switch between during their life cycle: sessile polyps and mobile medusas. Siphonophores do this differently, with each zooid type being either a medusa of a polyp. Biologists have described multiple types of zooids found across many species of siphonophore. These include nectophores (used for propulsion), gastrozooids (used for digestion), palpons (used to regulate gastrovascular fluids), gonophores (used in reproduction), and pneumatophores (gas-filled floats only found in some species).

(image: a diagram of different zooid types. Source)

There are 175 known species of siphonophore. The majority of species are pelagic, remaining in open water their entires lives, though a few reside on the sea floor. While they do have some ability to direct their movements, like jellyfish, they are often pulled along by currents. The majority of species live in the deep sea and deep-sea species are often larger than shallow-sea species. Like their jellyfish and anemone relatives, siphonophores are predators who use tentacles to capture prey. Each tentacle is covered with stinging cells called nematocysts that fire venom-coated barbs into organisms that touch them. The prey is then pulled into gastrozooids and digested. Most species are capable of bioluminescence, which is likely used for defense. Some species also develop bioluminescent lures used to attract prey. Some siphonophore can get extremely large, with the species Praya dubia reaching u to 50 meters (160 ft), making it longer than a blue whale and possibly the longest animal in the world depending on how you measure the bootlace worm.

(image: a Praya dubia catching fish)

Siphonophores reproduce with varying methods, some of which are poorly-understood. A new colony usually begins form a single fertilized egg. This egg hatched into a single protozooid that then produces other zooids via budding. In many species, the protozooid will form a central stalk from which groups of other zooids will bud. Other species use polyps that can be ejected into the water carrying eggs and sperm which they use to fertilize themselves. In any case, special zooids called gonophores are used to make the gametes. Different species are either dioecious (each colony has either male or female gonophores) or monoecious (each colony contains both male and female gonophores.

(Image: a diagram of a siphonophore life cycle. Source)

Cnidarians are believed to have existed since the precambrian, though as soft-bodied animals fossilize more rarely, the exact origin of siphonophores is not known. Some scientists speculate that the colonial nature of siphonophores may represent an early stage in the development of true organ systems. If this is correct, the development would go something along the lines of colonies of single-celled organisms -> colonies of single-celled organisms with differentiated functions -> siphonophore-like colonial organisms -> individual organisms with differentiated organ systems.

This one's called a "long, stringy, stingy thingy". No really, look it up (image: Apolemia uvaria)

The most famous siphonophore and the first one described is Physalia physalis, the Portugese man-o-war or bluebottle. It is a neuston, an organism that lives at the boundary between water and air. Its most notable feature is the enlarged float filled with carbon monoxide that keeps it floating at the surface of the water. The float functions as a sail, letting it travel thousands of miles. Stinging tentacles trail below it to collect prey. The sting of a bluebottle is very painful to humans and can even be lethal in rare circumstances. Many a beach trip has been ruined by a man-o-war sting. Its morphology and development is different enough from other siphonophores that I may dedicate a whole post to it in the future.

(image: a Portugese man-o-war)

[apollos-boyfriend]

i haven’t seen anyone compile these yet so here’s all the first origins for new life smp!

scott: transporter

fwhip: road runner

gem: swarm (bee)

joey: dark fairy

katherine: human

lizzie: TBA

sausage: ghast

seapeekay: human

shubble: shunshine girl

joel: hippo(griff)

jimmy: bad guy

stacy: strider

strawburry: TBA

oli: TBA (possibly mimic?)

owen: human

scar: witch

pearl: copper golem

pix: archeologist

martyn: chillager

full origins descriptors under the cut!

scott: transporter [impact - •••]

a transporter is a sparse-atomed creature that is able to create rifts in space to relocate themselves and others.

wayfinder [+]

set waypoints that you can later teleport you and several others to.

hotswap [+]

you can mark someone you're looking at, and then swap places with them.

quickrift [+]

make a quick rift to teleport to a nearby location.

heavyload [-]

to be able to teleport, your particles must be in less density, therefore you can’t wear heavier armors.

atomic exhaustion [-]

using portals will exhaust you very quickly.

relocated confusion [-]

quickrift has a chance to apply nausea or slowness.

fwhip: road runner [impact - •••]

fastest origin out there. your heritage of road runners allow you to run reallly, really fast.

just faster [+]

you naturally sprint faster than other players.

gotta go fast [+]

hold your primary key to boost your speed and run really fast. as you hold your primary button your energy bar will slowly go down. you are also unable to jump while going.

still fast [+]

you are too fast to be slowed, soul sand doesn't slow you down, and the slowness effect doesn't work on you.

so tired . . . [-]

your constant running makes you exhaust more.

not made for that [-]

try to ignore water, you can't swim.

bad aim [-]

you can't use a bow or a crossbow.

gem: swarm [impact - •••]

these hive independent group of bees choose to stick together to overcome the obstacles of the outside world.

hover [+]

being made up of multiple bees, you are able to hover midair whenever you are falling.

smoke sensitivity [-]

your senses are lessened when near smoke.

pollination [+]

while you aren't sneaking, your bone meal is infused with pollen, allowing it to additionally affect the 4 adjacent blocks.

calming aura [+]

animals bred by you do not have to wait to be bred again.

expendable [-]

you have 3 less hearts of health than humans.

beekeeper [+]

taking honey and honeycomb from a hive does not anger bees.

joey: dark fairy [impact - •••]

a fairy that has turned to the dark side.

winged [+] *

you have elytra wings you can use to fly around with.

shadow embrace [+]

you can turn into an invisible entity that cannot interact with entities or blocks and cannot be interacted with.

pixie sized [+]

you are half a block tall.

moonlight [+]

you use moonlight to see at night better.

freezing point [-]

in biomes below 0.3 temperature, you have weakness and slowness.

heliophobia [-]

you hate the day, and this hatred causes you to take 15% more damage.

shadow bolt [+] **

a simple yet effective short distance beam that will hit anyone and take away 3 hearts of damage.

* bugged to only allow him to glide.

katherine: human [impact - •••]

a regular human. your ordinary minecraft experience awaits.

sausage: ghast [impact - •••]

you’re a flying denizen of the nether, capable of raining down hellfire.

pyroblast [+]

you can unleash terrifying fireballs.

spectral flight [+]

you are able to launch up into the air, and will slowly glide until you reach the ground.

fire immunity [+]

you are impervious to fire and lava.

hydrophobia [-]

you receive damage over time while in contact with water.

need for mobility [-]

you can not wear any heavy armor (armor with protection values higher than iron).

seapeekay: human [impact - •••]

a regular human. your ordinary minecraft experience awaits.

shubble has not shown her origin descriptor.

joel: hippogriff [impact - •••]

a noble creature, capable of taking to the skies.

winged [+]

you have elytra wings without needing to equip any.

gale wings [+]

you can propel yourself forwards a small amount.

rideable [+]

players can ride you by interacting with you.

claw grip [+]

you can pick up mobs.

fresh air [-]

you are enfeebled when not exposed to the sky.

embellished egotism [-]

you can only wear golden armor.

jimmy: bad guy [impact - •••]

you’re just generally a bad person, and your abilities reflect that.

bomb tosser [+]

throw a bomb into the air to quickly explode.

undying determination [+]

when your health is low, you can burst in a rage of fire, healing yourself whilst becoming stronger for a short time.

mischievous mist [+]

you can disappear in a mist for a short time.

fire immunity [+]

you are impervious to fire and lava.

carnivore [-]

your diet is restricted to meat, you can't eat vegetables.

stacy: strider [impact - •••]

travel the vast oceans of lava with the speed of a strider.

fire immunity [+]

you are immune to all tupes of fire damage.

nether inhabitant [-]

your natural spawn will be in the nether.

hydrophobia [-]

you receive damage over time while in contact with water.

lava walker [+][-]

you have the ability to walk on lava source blocks! you are also quicker while walking on lava, and slower on land.

rideable creature [+]

other players can ride you!

fungus hunger [+]

you can eat warped fungus to recover some hunger, along with a small speed boost.

owen: human [impact - •••]

a regular human. your ordinary minecraft experience awaits.

scar: witch [impact - •••]

cruel and cackling, witches are masters of brewing, and are great with magic.

better potions [+]

you consume potions better than most, potions will last longer when you drink them.

perfect potion [+]

get a random potion effect, based on the situation you are in.

pillager aligned [-]

villagers don't like you, and pillagers like you!

pearl: copper golem [impact - •••]

the copper golems are a curious automaton, designed to improve the lives of others. since they were initially prototyped, they have gained a greater knowledge of redstone components and ways to utilise them.

repairs available [-]

your body cannot be naturally or magically mended. you instead repair by consuming copper ingots.

oxidation [-]

your copper body makes you susceptible to the elements, oxidising you over time. oxidation can be removed with an axe.

galvanise [+]

honeycombs allow you to wax yourself, staving off the effects of oxidation for several minutes.

lightning rod [+]

while in thunderstorms, you're much more likely to get struck by lightning. you are immune to lighting, and de-oxidize when struck.

copper plating [+]

your chassis is made out of copper. as a result, you passively have resistance.

local area networking* [+]

you have modified an antenna to fit to your head permanently to recieve radio signals.

micro machine [-]

you are only one block tall, and your maximum health is reduced.

automaton [+][-]

your body doesn't experience hunger, and you don't benefit from natural regeneration.

button masher [+]

your programming gives you an overwhelming urge to press buttons. every time you press a button, redstone dust will drop.

tinkerer [+]

you can quickly convert a redstone component into its similar counterpart.

transmute [+]

you are able to transmute copper into other metals, allowing you to craft more metal items.

toolsmith [+]

you can also use this skill to create various metal tools.

circuit corrosion [-]

being submerged in water will damage your internal circuitry. your plating will protect you from rain, however.

heavy metal [+][-]

you don't need to breathe underwater, but your dense body holds you down.

* active ability. when standing within 5 blocks of unwaxed copper, emerald, or diamond ore and blocks, you will beep. you oxidise faster while this is active.

pix: archeologist [impact - •••]

you are obsessed with fossils and relics, artifacts and more. talents gathered among your years of practice will surely help you along your journey.

archeology [+]

from trash to treasure, you can find anything in the dust times of long past.

fortunate [+]

you naturally have two levels of fortune.

favorable fashion [+]

wearing a full set of leather armor results in a set bonus.

sacred respect [-]

you find yourself troubled by the idea of destroying structures of ancient times.

entomophobia [-]

days of looking underground is sure to put the fear of bugs in anyone.

martyn: chillager [impact - •••]

errrrr! you freeze yourself and your opponents alike, however being cold finds itself much more beneficial to you than your enemies.

cryofreeze [+]

you can temporarily freeze yourself, negating all damage and regenerating health for a short time.

frozen falling [+]

when hitting a target, they'll have trouble moving for a small moment.

frozen touch [+]

when hitting a target, they'll have trouble moving for a small moment.

fine motor skills [-]

being cold results in a loss of fine motor skills; good luck trying to attack a target in rapid succession.

[3rdeyeblaque]

On August 30th we venerate Young King Brother Fred Hampton on his 75th birthday 🎉

Deputy Chairman Fred Hampton was the one of THE greatest orators, leaders, and visionaries to join the Black Panther Party Of Self-Defense 🖤✊🏾

Fred Hampton was born & raised in the Chicago suburbs of Illinois. Civil liberties, rights, and laws were always of great interest to him. After graduating high school, he enrolled in a pre-law program at Triton Junior College in River Grove, Illinois. He joined his local NAACP branch to get involved in the civil rights movement. He rose to the position of Youth Council President for his strong leadership and organization skills. In this position, Brother Hampton mobilized a racially diverse group of 500 young men/women who successfully lobbied city officials to create better academic services and recreational facilities for Black American youth.

In 1968, he joined the Black Panther Party of Self-Defense, headquartered in Oakland, CA. Shortly thereafter, he was selected to head the Chicago Chapter. Here, he created strong personal and political ties with his mentor & chaplain, Father George Clements at the [then] Holy Angels Catholic Church; which served as a safe haven for the Panthers targeted for police surveillance or harassment.

Brother Hampton accomplished a great many things as a young, prolific leader of the BPP Chicago Chapter. He successfully negotiated a gang truce on live television.One of his greatest successes was an unprecedentedly integrated approach to sociopolitical unity; he formed a “Rainbow Coalition”, which included: the Students for a Democratic Society, the Blackstone Rangers, a street gang and the National Young Lords, a local Puerto Rican organization. He was the first leading Panther to achieve this. This alliance is what truly struck the cord of fear in the Chicago P.D. & the FBI. In an effort to neutralize the Chicago Chapter of the BPP, the Black Panthers were placed under heavy surveillance & were subjected to several harassment campaigns.

By 1969, several Black Panthers and Chicago cops either suffered injury or were killed in shootouts across the city, which resulted in the arrest of over 100 members. On Dec 4th of that same year, under the FBI's initiative, the County PD & Chicago PD conducted heinous, unlawful, and unnecessary raid on the Black Panther Party's HQ in the early morning hours while Brother Hampton, leader Mark Clark, and other Panthers slept. They fired over 100 rounds into the apartment without warning. Twelve officers executed Brother Hampton as he slept, drugged by a sedative slipped into his drink by "Panther"/FBI informant O'Neal. Naturally, in Jan 1970, the County Coroner's office ruled the Black Panther leaders' deaths as "justifiable homicide".

Over 5,000 souls attended Brother Hampton’s funeral. Many civil rights activates eulogized him, including his good friend and mentor Father George, who also held a Requem Mass for him at his church.

After many years of coverups, internal investigations, lawsuits, raids, and conspiracies confirmed, the FBI, County PD, & Chicago PD finally admitted to the wrongful deaths of Brother Hampton and Mark Clark. In 1990, and again in 2004, the Chicago City Council passed resolutions commemorating December 4th as Fred Hampton Day. Today, Brother Hampton rests at the Bethel Cemetery in Haynesville, LA where his parents are from - which continues to endure violent desecration from White Supremacist vigilantes/supporters.

" You can kill a revolutionary but you can never kill the revolution. People have to be armed to have power" - Young King Fred Hampton

We pour libations & give him💐 today as we celebrate him for his love of our people, his relentless dedication to the BPP cause, and his young yet wise spirit that lives on. May be the find restful peace in spirit that he was/is denied in the physical.

Offering suggestions: flower offerings at his grave, libations of water, prayers and frankincense toward his elevation

‼️Note: offering suggestions are just that & strictly for veneration purposes only. Never attempt to conjure up any spirit or entity without proper divination/Mediumship counsel.‼️