#Parcel Sorting system

[monolithiot]

MonolithIoT Dynamic DWS (dimensioning weighing scanning) With Sorting System For Parcels Logistics Project.

MonolithIoT has developed a wide portfolio of dimension weight scanning (DWS) systems that are designed on keeping into account the prevalent shipment size and weights in the industry so that clients can leverage on a standard plug and play system that offers them high accuracy, reliability, uptime and productivity.

[ecoamerica]

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[dailyadventureprompts]

Homebrew Mechanic: Meaningful Research

Being careful about when you deliver information to your party is one of the most difficult challenges a dungeonmaster may face, a balancing act that we constantly have to tweak as it affects the pacing of our campaigns.

That said, unlike a novel or movie or videogame where the writers can carefully mete out exposition at just the right time, we dungeonmasters have to deal with the fact that at any time (though usually not without prompting) our players are going to want answers about what's ACTUALLY going on, and they're going to take steps to find out.

To that end I'm going to offer up a few solutions to a problem I've seen pop up time and time again, where the heroes have gone to all the trouble to get themselves into a great repository of knowledge and end up rolling what seems like endless knowledge checks to find out what they probably already know. This has been largely inspired by my own experience but may have been influenced by watching what felt like several episodes worth of the critical role gang hitting the books and getting nothing in return.

I've got a whole write up on loredumps, and the best way to dripfeed information to the party, but this post is specifically for the point where a party has gained access to a supposed repository of lore and are then left twiddling their thumbs while the dm decides how much of the metaplot they're going to parcel out.

When the party gets to the library you need to ask yourself: Is the information there to be found?

No, I don't want them to know yet: Welcome them into the library and then save everyone some time by saying that after a few days of searching it’s become obvious the answers they seek aren’t here. Most vitally, you then either need to give them a new lead on where the information might be found, or present the development of another plot thread (new or old) so they can jump on something else without losing momentum.

No, I want them to have to work for it:  your players have suddenly given you a free “insert plothook here” opportunity. Send them in whichever direction you like, so long as they have to overcome great challenge to get there. This is technically just kicking the can down the road, but you can use that time to have important plot/character beats happen.

Yes, but I don’t want to give away the whole picture just yet:  The great thing about libraries is that they’re full of books, which are written by people,  who are famously bad at keeping their facts straight. Today we live in a world of objective or at least peer reviewed information but the facts in any texts your party are going to stumble across are going to be distorted by bias. This gives you the chance to give them the awnsers they want mixed in with a bunch of red herrings and misdirections. ( See the section below for ideas)

Yes, they just need to dig for it:  This is the option to pick if you're willing to give your party information upfront while at the same time making it SEEM like they're overcoming the odds . Consider having an encounter, or using my minigame system to represent their efforts at looking for needles in the lithographic haystack. Failure at this system results in one of the previous two options ( mixed information, or the need to go elsewhere), where as success gets them the info dump they so clearly crave.

The Art of obscuring knowledge AKA Plato’s allegory of the cave, but in reverse

One of the handiest tools in learning to deliver the right information at the right time is a sort of “slow release exposition” where you wrap a fragment lore the party vitally needs to know in a coating of irrelevant information,  which forces them to conjecture on possibilities and draw their own conclusions.  Once they have two or more pieces on the same subject they can begin to compare and contrast, forming an understanding that is merely the shadow of the truth but strong enough to operate off of. 

As someone who majored in history let me share some of my favourite ways I’ve had to dig for information, in the hopes that you’ll be able to use it to function your players.

A highly personal record in the relevant information is interpreted through a personal lens to the point where they can only see the information in question 

Important information cameos in the background of an unrelated historical account

The information can only be inferred from dry as hell accounts or census information. Cross reference with accounts of major historical events to get a better picture, but everything we need to know has been flattened into datapoints useful to the bureaucracy and needs to be re-extrapolated.

The original work was lost, and we only have this work alluding to it. Bonus points if the existent work is notably parodying the original, or is an attempt to discredit it.

Part of a larger chain of correspondence, referring to something the writers both experienced first hand and so had no reason to describe in detail. 

The storage medium (scroll, tablet, arcane data crystal) is damaged in some way, leading to only bits of information being known. 

Original witnesses Didn’t have the words to describe the thing or events in question and so used references from their own environment and culture. Alternatively, they had specific words but those have been bastardized by rough translations. 

Tremendously based towards a historical figure/ideology/religion to the point that all facts in the piece are questionable.  Bonus points if its part of a treatise on an observably untrue fact IE the flatness of earth

[floef-likes-minecraft]

Work

“Good moring~!” Pearl started as she crossed the DHP parking lot with a pep in her step. It was a beautiful day, she had been up since the crack of dawn riding around the Server on Donkey (who is a mule) to deliver all sorts of letters and parcels. While Tango and Etho were still busy getting the entire mailing system online, she was happy to deliver more by hand.

Recently, the DHP had gotten an influx in mail having to be delivered to them and Pearl had made friends with the somewhat grumpy clerk that was sometimes maybe around. Today he was, for which Pearl was happy because that meant she could give him the mail personally instead of trying to get it into the building by shoving it under the broken door. The office was still under construction, so Pearl could forgive them for not even having a small mailbox.

“We’re closed,” Grian said. He was lounging outside, sitting against the white wall of the building and taking in the sun that crested just over the trees. He looked like he could use a bit more of that sun, but not everybody was as blessed as Pearl to have the best job in the world as a Postmaster and be outside all the time.

“Oh, I’m just delivering the mail,” Pearl answered cheerfully as she dug into her postbag. Everything was perfectly organized so it didn’t take long for her to grab out a stack with at least ten letters bundled together. “There you go, mister Grian, it’s always such a pleasure coming out here!”

When Grian didn’t take the bundle Pearl handed out to him, she just but the them carefully on the pavement next to him. He looked at them like they had said something foul to him, which he wouldn’t know until he actually opened them. Then, Grian looked up again to Pearl and a frown appeared on his face.

“Why are you still here?” he asked, rather rudely.

“It’s just that we barely have the chance to properly have a chat,” Pearl simply explained. “I’m not actually sure if the mailing system will be operational this far out, so I might have to keep coming here myself. Isn’t that great?”

“You really don’t have to,” Grian argued weakly, as he grabbed a paper cup with a steaming liquid from his side and set it to his lips to take a little sip. He pulled a face as if he didn’t much like the beverage, but didn’t say anything about it.

“Oh, don’t worry about it, it’s my job and I do it with pleasure,” Pearl assured him with a smile. “Isn’t it just great how a job can be a calling?”

“Can’t say I share that sentiment,” Grian sighed. He had to squint against the light of the sun to look at Pearl. “Look, if there is anything you want from me you’re going to have to come back when we’re opened.”

“Oh, no, don’t you worry your little cotton socks,” Pearl answered, waving her hand. “That is the beauty of mail, you can tend to it whenever you have the time! You can do it first thing when you open again, some work to look forward to!”

Grian opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something but ended up just shaking his head slowly. He must’ve had a rather bad night of sleep to be in such a mellow mood, Pearl assumed. She couldn’t imagine moping around at her job like this, it was way to wonderful to waste a day with a bad mood.

“So… do you have any mail to send?” she continued when Grian wasn’t pushing his conversation forward. “Any replies you need to send out from the letters I’ve brought you last week?”

“Haven’t gotten to them yet,” Grian answered dryly. “We were closed.”

“Oh,” Pearl was caught of guard by that but regrouped quickly. “Well, just know that you can count on the Hermit Post & Co to deliver anything you need. I can even deliver important documents if you want, with signed handover and everything. I’ll give it my extra secure, personal attention.”

“Great,” Grian answered with a sigh. “Don’t you have more mail to deliver? I was kind of in the middle of something.”

He took another sip from his drink, which seemed to be the ‘something’ he was in the middle of doing.

“Nope,” Pearl answered cheerful, shifting to sit next to Grian with her face turned towards the sun. “But I can enjoy this wonderful sunlight together with you. Isn’t that great?”

“… I don’t get paid enough for this.”   

[seat-safety-switch]

I’m Detective Archibald Shitpope. There’s only one thing I care about more than solving crimes: inexpensive Toyota hatchbacks.

The big boss upstairs has been tired of my incessant browsing of Craigslist at work for a long time. I get results, though, and no one else in the precinct comes close.

So when a murder case came across my desk, I did what I always do. Press F5 and see if anything under $2500 has been posted.

It took a long time to load. The precinct has shitty copper T3 back haul, and it’s always being wasted on stuff like crime scene streaming and live tracking of serial killers. That’s when I took a look at the case. And it shocked me. The murder occurred at the docks. The docks? That’s where JDM cars come from.

In dick school, they tell you that every murder has means, motive, and opportunity. There’s something else, at least for me. Toyotas. I carry a vintage トヨタ shift knob in my pocket, a sort of good luck charm. And, in contravention of department policy, my investigating car is a hammered-to-shit 2002 Celica GT (non-S) with bad ball joints, enough mileage that the digital odometer flickers in disbelief when I turn it on, and a case of sassy diff syndrome.

When I got to the scene, it was what I’d been dealing with for most of my career. A murder. I didn’t need the uniformed dipshits with their unreliable, smoggy domestic V8 squad cars to tell me that.

“It’s a classic locked room murder, boss,” said my assistant Soichiro when I finally arrived. He was born in Yonkers and legally changed his name after his hero, Soichiro Yamada, the guy who invented the cooled EGR system. “The keys are still in the vic’s pockets, so it's a mystery how someone got in there and killed him.” He walked me to a Toyota Corolla II “Windy.”

At once I knew the secret. “Soichiro, you fucked up again,” I spat with some measure of fatherly disappointment. This turbocharged, nearly-top-trim 1987 Corolla II sported the rare and desirable Panasonic parcel shelf speakers. That meant it also held the remote unlock feature, hugely uncommon for the Showa era, so much so that it would never be documented outside of the sales brochure, and certainly not in the inefficient and barbaric English literature for same.

“Turn ‘em out, Soichiro,” I ordered, pointing at his pockets, and he knew he had no choice but to comply. On the table before us lay the evidence of his treachery. One Carrozzeria branded remote lock/unlock remote, and - worse - the keys to a 1988 CR-X. He’d been on the take this whole time.

Later, the aforementioned uniformed dipshits would find something even worse on a search of a storage unit registered to my "partner," Soichiro. Four single-slammer D16 ZC engines, all matching serial numbers to the cars that went missing after the big tea house shootout in Chinatown. I’d been off that week, trying to find a replacement lift actuator, and Soichiro had filled in.

I don’t carry a sidearm. I don’t need to. I simply waited until Soichiro took flight, fleeing across the parking lot of the warehouse, and hit him with my car. Bent the upper radiator support, which the department bodyshop took care of since it was "in the line of duty." Fixed the headlight tabs, too. That probably cost Uncle Taxpayer a few cents.

I got a lot of heat for it later, from the chief, but the mayor overruled him, gave me a medal for valour. She was alright. Had a late model Tercel back home, I knew. Coupe, though, had a trunk. Politics is about compromise.

[counttwinkula]

@spicymangoman this is such a thought provoking question (re: my jeffrey jerome cohen's monster culture (seven theses) post)

i think the shortest answer is that the monster is polysemic; it is a sign with multiple simultaneous interpretations and meanings. ocean vuong writes that a monster is a "hybrid signal"; any contradictions it may hold are, in some way, part and parcel of being a monster.

the monster does often introduce category crisis regarding the difference between self and Other! this is an extremely common monstrous trope:

the hivemind is the most obvious example of a monster that blurs the boundary between self and Other

the blob also comes to mind, as an Other which quite literally threatens to incorporate the self into its body

through the same logic as the blob, we can see this same threat of the self being annihilated and incorporated into the Other through any monster that engages in cannibalism or consumption

(i'm currently researching The Haunting of Hill House and boy howdy is that theme present)

infectious monsters (vampires, zombies, werewolves) pose a similar threat, the Other whose influence may cause a loss of selfhood and subsequent incorporation into a noncontiguous monstrous body

frankenstein's monster and shapeshifters both challenge the stability of the self, or the self as a singular, knowable body, thereby posing a problem for the self/Other binary

we must also keep in mind that the Other represented by the monster is quite often a coded representation for the racialized, gendered, sexed, classed, etc. other. i think that here we find a general anxiety of category crisis with regard to "you look like me but you're not me" and the differences then being exaggerated through the monster's nonbinary and excessive body

so, while the creature from the black lagoon or guillermo del toro's amphibian man do not pose these same threats of losing the self to the monster, they still represent a sort of me/not-me problem through their anthropomorphism alone (while simultaneously standing in for the racialized, "savage" other)

cohen also writes that "one kind of alterity is often written as another", meaning that not only do the metaphors within the monster often overlap, but the monster often troubles multiple binaries at once. he gives the example of the cynocephalus, a human with a dog head and intersex characteristics, thereby sitting at the border of human and beast as well as the border of male and female

regarding category crisis, cohen writes that the monster "defies easy categorization" and continues:

This refusal to participate in the classificatory "order of things" is true of monsters generally: they are disturbing hybrids whose externally incoherent bodies resist attempts to include them in any systematic structuration. And so the monster is dangerous, a form suspended between forms that threatens to smash distinctions.

i would say that the monster's nonbinariness stems, in some ways, from the fear of the unknown, and more specifically the fear of the unknowable. by existing across binaries and disrupting systems of classification, the monster presents a challenge to defining it and knowing it

knowledge is typically the antithesis to fear. Alien and Child's Play both rely on the audience not catching full glimpses of the monster, utilizing a half-seen, in the shadows, out of the corner of your eye aesthetic to maximize fear. the first step to solving a monster of the week episode is mulder or giles defining the monster. the longer the monster challenges knowledge, the longer it remains a threat, a danger, and an object of horror

similarly, the fear of the Other is a fear of the unknown, because the body outside the self can never be wholly, comprehensively, reliably known. in my opinion, this is probably the source of that overlap in the metaphor: the monster embodies category crisis and the dread of difference due to their common roots in the fear of the unknown

[ecoamerica]

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[imvenusasaboy]

PUPARIA

Chapter 7 - Oblivion

prev - chapter 1

It was at times like these when Hosah felt grateful for the New York Subway system, as even at four in the morning, him and his partner were able to commute all the way back to the office with ease.

Nobody had touched the package, it was a miracle somebody was even brave enough to pick it up and bring it into the security room. In all honesty, the shifter wasn't sure why the police weren't the first people Scotty, the guy Jules had hired to sit and watch their camera footage all night, had called.

He did have an idea as to why, though. He and Scotty had pretty much hated eachother since day one. The man had no positives to him. He's rude, he's cynical, he says the most offensive things, he's nihilistic and generally leaves a bad taste in everyone's mouth. Sure, all of those character flaws probably applied to Hosah himself, but his own hypocrisy was something the shifter preferred to not dwell on. The security guy wasn’t relevant enough to Hosah’s life to get worked up on anyway.

The rag-tag team all stood in near silence, as if they were waiting for the package itself to speak. Wrapped in a stereotypical brown paper bag, the little twine bow and all, the parcel was flat and wide, a four by four square with maybe and inch and a half of elevation to it. Just by looking at it, Hosah could tell it was a canvas of sorts. He'd been painting consistently for over a decade, so he thought himself to have pretty worthy basis to make such a theory.

Without thinking too much of it, the shifter spoke, leaning over closer to inspect the item infront of him, "Looks like it's a painting, or something."

Scotty was the first to dismiss his idea, "Why the hell would anyone mail you a painting to your workplace?"

"Why would anyone kill fifteen people?" The shifter's eyes stayed focused on what was beneath him, knowing that, if he were to look up at the crowd of much larger beings, he'd probably pussy out of indulging in any kind of argumentative urges that came over him when speaking to the insufferable man.

Jeanne spoke up, stood in the corner of the tiny office, leant against the wall away from the topic of conversation, "Let's just open it and see. Can't be anything worse than what we've already seen."

"Yeah, Hosah, you open it. That way if it's a bomb and you're blown to pieces, it won't be so hard to clean."

God, if only his prayers were answered. Suddenly, Hosah felt bad for admitting his uncertainty surrounding religion. The smell of burning flesh wouldn't be so bad if he knew it was Scotty's body that had spontaneously combusted.

The shrunken figures eyebrows furrowed, although his gaze was still unmoving. He wondered if Teddy shared the same annoyed expression as his own.

"Shouldn't we wait until we can get it tested for any , I don't know, DNA remnants? Assuming it's the same guy that fled the scene the other day that left the package." The shrunken figure questioned, leaning over to inspect every aspect of the seemingly normal parcel in close detail.

Unfortunately, Hosah seemed to have fallen perfectly into Scotty's hands with his reply. "Hah, so, you're a fucken' pussy, that's it, right?" How anybody could be so cartoonishly insufferable, the shifter did not know.

"Shut up, Scotty. God. I'll open it." Teddy's sudden bite back alongside the quick grab of the delivery caused the figure stood beside it to jump back slightly, he'd not seen such a side to his assistant before, and in all honesty, it flattered him.

Scotty wheeled his chair back out of the way into Jeanne's direction as the brown paper packaging was carefully torn apart. He was right. It was a painting after all, with a folded paper note on the hollow side of the canvas.

Upon turning it over, painted side up, delicately placed down on the table beside him, Hosah's face turned an unusual shade of white. This wasn't an original piece from the killer at all, it was his own work, even with his name written in small white text in the bottom right corner.

In any other situation, the fact almost everybody in the room gathered around, towering above him, would've put Hosah at indescribable unease, but he was far too distracted by what sat in-front of him to even notice.

"Looks like one of yours." He was glad to hear Teddy's voice again, all he really wanted to do was crawl back into the warm palm once more, and forget he'd ever seen anything to begin with.

A grating scoff could be heard from the distance away where the night shift security guard sat, although nobody paid any attention to him by this point.

Hosah looked up to the giant looming above him, whose eyes were fixated on the painting and not the shifter himself, "It is one of mine. See. Signed it and everything."

The look Scotty had on his face was disturbing if anything, a sort of sadistic smile to himself that worried Hosah. He wondered who's side he was really on, his team's, or the killer's. A hole grew in his stomach when he thought about the contents of the note, probably some edgy manifesto of all the killer's prejudices toward the most vulnerable of society, their sick reasonings for indulging in such cruelty. Nothing he hadn't seen before; but that didn't make it all any less unsettling.

"Huh. So it is." Teddy leant, his mouth slightly agape as he puzzled over what lay out in front of him. "Have you ever sold any of your art or something?"

The trouble brewing in the shifter's stomach rose as he blurted out, "No, that's the thing, I don't even.. They must've gotten it straight from my apartment." It could've been anyone. It could've even been Teddy, given his peaked interest in his work, and the fact he had a key to the apartment in the first place.

It wasn't a piece he'd done recently, it was one he'd remembered storing away in the closet under all of his old, dirty tarps. A shitty take at a man he'd pass almost every day about two years ago, always at the pick up bay by the station, always in the same coat smoking the same brand of cigarettes, Hosah had thought up a whole backstory for him. Divorced, retired, and on his way to the bar to sleuth out information on the man his wife had left him for. The type of guy Hosah imagined himself growing to be when he was around fifty, deeply troubled and fuelled by vengeance from the, in the grand scheme of things, meaningless.

"What about the note, what does that say?" Hosah's attention shifted as he heard the paper fumble in his assistant's hands in response, anxiously awaiting for what was on the other side of the folded sheet.

"Hmm," Teddy's eyebrows furrowed and his lips pursed, "It's long. And fucking.. Hard to read. Rushed cursive. Could scan it into one of the computers, get someone over to decipher it."

The shrunken man shrugged, annoyed his curiosity couldn't be fed into, but understanding of the situation.

"Sure. Sounds good." He said, standing to his underwhelming full height of three inches. Hosah wondered what was taking his body so long to adjust for another switch back, when he remembered he hadn't actually taken his size control medication since.. Maybe a week ago?

It was safe to say just about everyone wanted to get the fuck out of Scotty's office after the interaction. He wondered why Jules would hire such a dickhead, before realising she'd also hired himself too, and that was just as bad.

Even hours later, stood on his assistant's desk once more, Hosah couldn't help out pace back and forth, contemplating all that had occurred so far in the case. It wasn't a lot, but what he'd been left with felt like a thousand threads all tangled in one big, untie-able knot. The holes in the hands, the bodies lined up in order of stages of decomposition, his painting, the unreadable note, what did it all mean?

It was horrible to admit, but Hosah often found himself empathising with the criminals he sought after. Of course he knew they were society's most disgusting and depraved individuals, but that sort of behaviour doesn't just prop up out of nowhere. He'd be a hypocrite if he didn't give these freaks the benefit of the doubt, as some would go as far as to say Hosah had gotten himself into a fair amount of totally fucked scenarios that would group him with these kinds of people.

Nobody did these kinds of acts for no reason. He had his own reasons for getting into his own shit, so what gives him the right to pretend that they don't? After all, reasons are not excuses. But that was the thing, Hosah's curiosity was his biggest flaw. His utter inability to stay in his own lane, to keep his nose out of other people's business, it's what got him into the most trouble. Curiosity killed the cat or something.

Jeanne's words replayed in his head over and over, in all honesty, he never really considered himself a highly empathetic person beforehand, but everyone seemed to think otherwise. That was probably what got him into all the trouble he found himself in as a young man. At the age of twenty seven, he'd experienced a life time of shit. All because he didn't know when to stop surrounding himself with people who so obviously had ill intentions.

Hosah was an attention seeker, at the core of it, somebody paying attention to him, even if it's to hurt him, was what fed his ego. It gave him some sort of worth, this random serial killer was interested in him, it doesn't matter in what way, he had someone that saw him. What in particular they saw in him, he had no idea, and the itching to know just what made him of all the shifters out there so special was what drove him crazy. Why him? Why that painting? Why those fifteen people before him? All he wanted was answers, he didn't even really care if getting them was what killed him.

"Hosah, I think you should start living at my apartment." The statement caught him completely off guard, freezing mid step and turning to look at the giant that sat before him.

"We can go and get all your stuff you need today. I just.. It doesn't feel right. The painting, it was taken straight from your house. I don't want to leave you there, they know that's where you live," Teddy truly looked troubled as he went on, "I don't think I'd be able to forgive myself if anything happened to you."

The tiny man nodded in agreement, "Yeah, yeah you're right. I didn't even think about that, to be honest. Thanks. I appreciate it."

One week into their knowledge of each others existence, and the two had already made plans to move in together. Hosah wasn't even surprised, moving fast was his default. He had thoughts of marriage about everyone he's ever slept with, and that list was far too long to count on his hands alone. Teddy had that kind of look about him that made the shifter realise the two's lives were to be intertwined for as long as they'd live, he was just unsure of in what way that'd be.

"I know it's kind of sudden and we don't know eachother all that well, but, I mean, please don't feel pressured to say yes or anything." Teddy rambled on, the fact the giant seemed to care so much was very flattering.

Hosah could only smile, inching closer to the resting fist on the table he stood on, "I already said yes, Teddy. I'm not really one to get all shy in dangerous situations like these." That was a lie, and it sort of pained him to say it out loud with just how blatant the fact of the matter was.

-~-

"Your place is.. nice."

Hosah took a good look around from his shoulder view. Seemed his assistant had a few unpleasant traits after all. The apartment was packed with shit. Trinkets and vintage decorations, CDs and records, random pieces of junk he'd probably found out in the wild, his apartment was sort of like a hoarders home, or maybe a crow's nest.

Teddy couldn't sense the uneasiness in the shifters voice, "Thank you, thank you. I uh, I need to do a good deep clean sometime soon though. Got a lot of stuff but I can never find it in me to part with any of it. Just scared I'll need it one day, or I'll forget whatever memory I have associated with it, you know?"

"You don't say.." Really, the man stood, one foot on the shirt collar, one foot on the jacket shoulder, was in no place to judge at all. He had his absurd collection of art works, and Teddy had his absurd collections of everything else there was to own in the world.

The tiny eyes adverted to the three decorative plates mounted on the wall outside of his kitchen, a very pretty collection, with the centre piece capturing what looked like to be a rural house in a field of flowers, the rest being of various farm animals. Despite looking pretty old, the paint was just as bright as the day it was done. Bright pastels that popped out against be ceramic white, with a fine gold border around the curved edges.

"Pretty right?" His assistant noticed Hosah's fixated stare on the display, "They were a gift from my grandpa, for graduating university. His grandma gifted them to him too, when he bought his first house."

"Been in the family for a while then.." The tiny man leant closer to her a better look at the paint job.

"Yeah, yeah definitely. I'm gonna give them to my kids too. And hopefully it'll be carried on for the rest of forever."  With his hands at his hips, Teddy sighed a hopeful sigh. "Why about you? Any special family heirlooms going around?"

Oh, god, he had to wrack his brain around for a moment to even think of anything, "My mom always said she wished she had a daughter, you know, to pass her wedding dress down to. Well, it's not- I don't know, are hanbok's considered dresses? I think so,"

"Ohh," Teddy's interest seemed to be peaked as he made his way to sit on the couch, on whatever space there was free at least, as it was covered almost entirely with decorative pillows and blankets, "So, you're Korean, right? Fully, or?"

"Pshh, do I look full? No, my dad's Arab- Mizrahi, so I guess, Iraqi maybe? I don't really know, he's never specified. Always just says Jewish or American." Hosah had long climbed down from the shoulder, finding himself resting in the cupped hands of his assistant as he rambled.

"Hmm, yeah I thought so. It's hard to tell, really, never heard of that mix before." the giant's voice quietened a little, as if he were worried he could come off as offensive or something, "I was wondering where the name Hosah came from, too, is it Korean? Hebrew?"

"It's- It's a funny story, actually," Whenever Hosah started a conversation like this, the other person could expect probably the least funny story imaginable, "I'm named after my uncle, my dads twin brother, he was a shifter too. Died three days before my parents found out I was on the way. Anyway. The name Hosah in itself is Hebrew, but there is a really similar Korean name, just spelt '-suh' not '-sah'. And a different meaning, and stuff."

The giant nodded his head and gave an 'Ohhh' of understanding, "That's really interesting, actually."

"I've always been kind of worried about being named after someone who had a shifting related death. Like it's just sealed the deal for me to be.. cursed or something. It's stupid but it's always in the back of my mind whenever I do something stupid." The tiny man brushed his hands through his hair, avoiding eye contact, "I guess thats bound to happen though, seeing your own name on a coffin."

“Like an Ouroboros, the eternal cycle, history repeating itself,” Teddy soon realised that the man in his hands had no idea what he was talking about, “The snake eating itself, something like that,” still, Hosah was clueless.

“..So that Scotty guy huh!” The giant awkwardly laughed, desperate to keep the shifter talking for a reason that was unknown to him. “What a dick. So stupid too. Picking up that parcel and bringing it into his office, not even calling the police?? Total moron.” Teddy progressively seemed to get more worked up, his palms getting clammier and clammier by the second.

“I mean,” his face shifted, now looking more worried if anything, “He was just so.. rude to you. Completely unprovoked!”

Hosah’s eyes lingered down onto his shoes, now sitting cross legged in the palm, “Some people are just like that.” He sighed, “See someone weaker than them, and just getting the urge to..” the words trailed off into silence, although Teddy could probably piece together what came next.

“Well, he’s stupid. You’re great. I couldn’t imagine even considering speaking to you like that.”

“That’s cause you know I’d beat your ass, when I’d get back to normal size, anyway.” The shifter stood to his full height, not even the size of Teddy’s hand, “I need you to help me with something.”

Without a second thought, his assistant followed his every word. Hosah hadn’t taken his medication in days, he knew if he didn’t start, his doctor wouldn’t let him hear the end of it.

Teddy’s bathroom was just as cluttered as the rest of his apartment, with a cute little My Neighbor Totoro toothbrush holder and all. The tiny man hadn’t seen that movie since he was barely able to retain memories, just the sight of that grey beast sent him back in time.

“So you need to do this every day?” The giant spoke as he filled the human sized needle with whatever concoction of drugs his doctor prescribes him to take daily. Something he always forgot how to pronounce, somatotrophixine? Along the lines of that, at least.

Hosah just nodded, “Yeah. I’ve been forgetting lately.”

Pinching what little fat he had left on his thigh with one hand, and biting the arm connected to his other, the shifter was ready to take the dosage.

“Do you not get scared? This needles bigger than your whole body.”

Hosah really wished he’d stop being asked so many questions as he winced at the sudden contact, causing his assistant to give a quiet little ‘Sorry’ under his breath.

He waited until the needle had been removed to release his teeth from his arm, “Nah, been doing it since I was like.. I don’t know, twelve?” Hosah groaned a little as he let go of the skin, “Still hurts, though. Do you have any bandages?”

Very carefully, as if he was scared he’d break Hosah with the light touch from his fingers, the giant gave the bleeding wound a wipe, wrapping it with a cut up piece of gauze afterward.

“I don’t know how you cope. I think I’d be way too freaked out to even remember to breathe, aha,”

“You get used to it. I used to be terrified all the time. Constant state of fear, it was hell. Then I got medicated for anxiety and shit, all better now. You could put me in a case filled with.. I don’t know, rats and scorpions, wouldn’t break a sweat.” The shifter bragged, stretching the truth about a mile further than reality. Really, he still got scared, he was always still scared, he just knew how to mask it better.

“Well then,” his assistant leant back forward, having cleared away the surface from what mess the pair had just made, “I want what you’re on.”

This phrase had never failed to make Hosah laugh. “Let’s switch places first, then we’ll see.”

Maybe moving in together wasn’t the greatest idea. The rest of the day, and even into the night, Teddy asked questions relentlessly. On one hand, it made the shifter quite happy, nobody had ever been so curious about him, it made him feel pretty special for once. Then again, on the other hand, he quite missed his alone time with just him and his thoughts.

The giant’s chatter eventually became white noise to him, finally falling sleep as the sun had long gone down, the stars being brighter than ever. Or maybe they were just streetlights, it was hard to tell.

Hosah had managed to drift off on the pillow besides his assistant’s head, but when he awoke the next day, Teddy was nowhere to be seen. Not wanting to jump down from such a height, despite knowing that he’d probably just bounce along the floor due to his height and weight, the shifter waited patiently for his knight in shining armour to rescue him from the impossibly high castle.

Unfortunately, none of that was accurate to reality, as the shitty ikea bed was far from any fairy tale tower, and Teddy, in his boxer shorts and generic band t shirt- which the design on had long faded in the washing machine, was far from any kind of prince charming. That part was debatable, actually.

The shifter had no idea what had come over him lately, maybe it was some kind of sickness bug going around or an infection in his brain, but as every day went by that he and Teddy spent constantly in each others company, the more Hosah grew to love him. Not romantically, of course. He wasn’t even expecting to like him, never mind want to be as close as friends with him as they were becoming. Although.. he’d be lying if he didn’t admit he found the giant at least somewhat attractive. On a completely aesthetic level.

Teddy peeked through the slightly ajar door with a little knock, as if this wasn’t his own bedroom. Upon noticing his new roommate was awake, he entered shyly, still in his night clothes, uttering a quiet ‘Good morning’ in a sing-song voice. Hosah didn’t respond, he needed at least twenty minutes to properly adjust to his consciousness in the morning.

Instead, the miniature man sat on the pillow, watching Teddy carefully as he rifled through his wardrobe. From here, Hosah had pretty much the perfect view of the man. He had nice legs, thick calves, and his freckles extended past his face to the entirety of his body. One thing the shifter had always wished he had when he was younger was more moles. He had one pretty big one on the right of his belly button, and one under his left ear, but that was it. It was one of his mother’s traits that he envied, she had beauty marks pretty much in every place you’d expect them to be.

It was in moments like these which Hosah wished his eyes were cameras, so he could take a photo of the moment and store it in his brain forever. Having a photographic memory must be nice. The lighting was perfect as the sun shined through the thin fabric of Teddy’s curtains, with the dark red paint across the walls helping the man in catching the singular audience member’s eye.

The observer quickly turned his face away as his subject caught on to his peeping, “What are you looking at?” Teddy said in a laugh, his smile showing his endearingly crooked teeth.

“You, I guess.” His face flushed a colour similar to that on the walls, “I like your teeth.”

Yeesh. Hosah knew it sounded weird as soon as he said it, but it was too late now.

“Aha, thank you, my parents wanted me to get braces or retainers or something, but I always liked them too.” Luckily for the still shrunken man, Teddy seemed to take the compliment how it was intended to be interpreted.

Despite the fact it exhausted him the previous day, Hosah wanted to continue to talk with his assistant for hours. Maybe they were just rubbing off on one another, but he really wanted to know every little detail about Teddy’s entire life.

With the starting day’s rays hitting his so perfectly, the giant’s green eyes really shone, looking much paler in the direct sunlight compared to the usual darker shade they appeared to be. Hosah wondered if he had one Irish parent with how he looked, he wouldn’t have gotten Italian just by looking at him, unless told so first.

“You know,” Teddy started, buttoning up his dress shirt in the meantime, “Im so curious what that note said. The one in the package, I mean.”

Right. The detective had nearly forgotten all about the previous day, too focused on fantasising about some dream-like life he could have with Teddy. He really needed to get his head down, out of the clouds, and back into the game. He needed to talk to Jeanne, Jeanne always knew what to say, and what to do in times like these.

“Hmm, I’ll give it a look over. Might find it easier, able to see all the fine details and such..” Hosah rubbed the sleep from his eyes and combed his curly bed head with his fingers, “Probably just a load of manic shit. Dark web manifesto type thing.”

“This is all so scary. I mean, they went to your house, and mailed your own painting back to you, does that not scare you?”

“I told you, I’m not scared of anything.”

Teddy looked up from his undone tie, “I’m being serious, Hosah.” , his face really reflected just how serious he seriously was. “It’s okay you know, fuck, I’m scared of this guy.”

Eugh, that phrase the shifter hated so much, ‘it’s okay’ or anything of the sort. Being comforted verbally just caused his entire body to quiver and cringe, which was very likely evident in the disgusted face he didn’t realise he was making, as Teddy tilted his head to the side, his eyebrows angled down as if to say ‘Cmon,’

“Yeah. But I’m used to all of this, even outside of my job, I’ve had to deal with weirdos-“

His assistant rudely interjected with a counter argument, “That’s exactly what scares me. You shouldn’t just.. be used to this kind of shit. It’s messed up, even more so that you’ve had to experience it all your life.”

Hosah sat, silent- a little stunned, even, frozen for a moment. He was right, and the shifter knew it, he’d known it the whole time. It wasn’t normal for him to just be used to all the kinds of sickening, cruel and downright sadistic shit that was probably all wrapped up in a nice little bow on that note. Despite already being at his minimum height, the shifter shrunk back into himself, deciding not to say anything else at all, admitting defeat in the whole bicker.

For the whole period of quiet, Teddy never looked away from the man that sat on his pillow. He didn’t want to come off as controlling or infantilising, but it was so hard not to worry about the tiny detective. He’d been dealt a shit hand in life, all the odds stacked against him in this world, and if he was the one looking out for all of the city’s shifters, who was looking out for him?

[genshin-impact-updates]

"Secret Summer Paradise" Version 3.8 Update Maintenance Preview

Dear Travelers,

Our developers will soon begin performing update maintenance. While the update maintenance is in progress, Travelers will be unable to log in to the game. Please take note of the update time and schedule your game time accordingly.

After this is complete, the game will update to a new version. We recommend that Travelers install this update over a Wi-Fi connection.

〓Update Schedule〓

Update maintenance begins 2023/07/05 06:00 (UTC+8) and is estimated to take 5 hours.

〓How to Update Game Client〓

PC: Close the game, open the Genshin Impact Launcher, and click Update.

iOS: Open the App Store and tap Update.

Android: Open the game and follow the directions on-screen.

PS5™ and PS4™: Highlight Genshin Impact from the Home Screen, press the OPTIONS button and select "Check for Update."

Please do not hesitate to contact Customer Service if you encounter any issues installing the new version. We will do our very best to resolve the issue.

〓Compensation Details〓

Maintenance Compensation: Primogems ×300 (60 Primogems for every hour the servers are down)

〓Scope of Compensation〓

Maintenance Compensation: Travelers who have reached Adventure Rank 5 or above by 2023/07/05 06:00 (UTC+8).

Compensation must be claimed before the end of Version 3.8.

Our developers will distribute compensation to Travelers via in-game mail within 5 hours after the update maintenance is finished. The mail will expire after 30 days, so don't forget to claim the attached compensation in time.

For more update details, including bug fixes and other compensation details, please see the Version Update Details notice to be posted at 2023/07/05 07:00 (UTC+8).

〓Update Content Overview〓

〓Adjustments & Optimizations〓

● System

Optimizes the "Hold to select multiple items" function operation range and instructions on the Enhancement and Destroy interfaces in the Artifact and Weapon pages.

For Hangout Events, upon reaching the end of the event and obtaining the Hangout Memory menu, you can use the newly-added "Review Invitation" button to view the narrative checkpoints.

Optimizes the Quest-tracking process: When the objective is a certain distance from Travelers, clicking Navigate will open the Map.

The objectives for Archon Quests and certain World Quests will now be listed on the map.

Optimizes the sorting rules for Archon Quests and certain World Quests.

Optimizes the display logic for red dots in the Quest Menu.

Commissions can now be tracked persistently. After your tracked Commission Quest comes to an end, the next Commission Quest will automatically be tracked.

● Enemies

Adjusts the AoE of the Consecrated Fanged Beast's Lunging Slash skill so that it stays the same as the area of the visual effect.

● Audio

Adjusts sound effects for Kirara by softening the effect heard when moving around in the Urgent Neko Parcel state after holding her Elemental Skill.

Optimizes certain sound effects in "Genius Invokation TCG."

Optimizes the Korean and English voice-over for certain characters and quests.

● Genius Invokation TCG

Adjusts the text description for Large Wind Spirits summoned by Elemental Bursts after the Character Card "Sucrose" has equipped a Talent Card in Genius Invokation TCG (to differentiate these from Large Wind Spirits summoned when a Talent Card hasn't been equipped).

Adjusts the text description for the Talent Card "I Got Your Back" of the Character Card "Noelle" in Genius Invokation TCG (actual effect remains unchanged).

Adjusts the effect of the Equipment Card "Gambler's Earrings" in Genius Invokation TCG: this effect is now limited to 3 times per match.

Adjusts the number of Elemental Dice required and DMG dealt by the Elemental Burst of the Character Card "Yoimiya" in Genius Invokation TCG: the number of dice required has decreased from 4 Pyro Dice to 3, and "Deals 4 Pyro DMG" has been adjusted to "Deals 3 Pyro DMG."

Adjusts the Elemental Skill DMG of the Character Card "Beidou" as well as the number of Elemental Dice required and DMG dealt by her Elemental Burst in Genius Invokation TCG: for Wavestrider of her Elemental Skill, "Deals 2 Electro DMG" has been adjusted to "Deals 3 Electro DMG"; the number of dice required for her Elemental Burst has decreased from 4 Electro Dice to 3, and "Deals 3 Electro DMG" has been adjusted to "Deals 2 Electro DMG".

Adjusts the Elemental Burst DMG of the Character Card "Xiangling" in Genius Invokation TCG: "Deals 2 Pyro DMG" has been adjusted to "Deals 3 Pyro DMG."

Adjusts the Energy required and DMG dealt by the Elemental Burst of Character Card "Razor" in Genius Invokation TCG: the Energy required for the Burst has been decreased from 3 to 2, and "Deals 5 Electro DMG" has been adjusted to "Deals 3 Electro DMG."

Adjusts the Elemental Skill DMG and Elemental Burst DMG of the Character Card "Eula" in Genius Invokation TCG: for Grimheart of her Elemental Skill, "DMG +2 for this instance" has been adjusted to "DMG +3 for this instance"; for Lightfall Sword of her Elemental Burst, "End Phase: Discard this card and deal 2 Physical DMG" has been adjusted to "End Phase: Discard this card and deal 3 Physical DMG."

● Other

Adjusts the collision size of the Spiral Abyss's floor whereby there was a small chance that it would hamper character movements and attacks.

Optimizes the display location and size of special effects of certain Elemental applications and Elemental Reactions on enemies.

Adjusts visual effects when Dendro Cores appear and burst to reduce the load on system performance.

*This is a work of fiction and is not related to any actual people, events, groups, or organizations.

"PlayStation", "PS5", "PS4", "DualSense", "DUALSHOCK" are registered trademarks or trademarks of Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc.

[lovef0ols]

things to put at the end of your systems name

first odd you do t have to put anything at the end at all, you don't even need a sys name. but I thought this would be a nice list for people looking

-system

-collective/collection

-(book)shelf

-parcel

-bundle

-party

-mailbox

-office

-club

-mansion

-home

-cottage

-ballroom

-kitchen

-museum

-studio

-papers

literally any plural version of an occupation or hobby, like actors writers artists etc

-letters

-bakers

-box

-closet (sort of a joke but it's cute right?)

-village

-city

-court

-crew

-cabinet

-teaset

-tea party

-band

-unit

-list

-labyrinth

-boutique

-kingdom

-academy

-books

-stars

-galaxy/galaxies

-dance

-dimension

-snow globe

-team

-season

-shop

-garden

-void

-graveyard

-gallery

-package

i hope this helps

[starkilightz]

YODEL LOST MY TWENTY ONE PILOTS MERCH!!

GIRL OH MY FUCKING GOD IM FUCKING FUMING!!!!!!!!

this is a long rant post cause fuck Yodel, If yall had issue in the UK can yall say cause i need to know if its just my area that Yodel are fucking dumb in, thanks :)

First it was meant to be delivered on the 25th May ( at my workplace WHICH WAS OPEN AND OPERATING at the time) but apparently they couldn't find the building (bullshit, we are the only ones on this road that's straight of the high street fuck off you couldn't find it) but whatever. i knew it prob wouldn't get delivered on monday (27th) as it was bank holiday. i check the tracking and it said that 'We need some more information about your address. Please chat with us' but all customer service was down as it was bank holiday. So i waited till tuesday (28th) for when their customer service to open and i contacted them about this address thing but they couldn't find anything i needed to add or change other than the option to add a 'Leave with a neighbour' option but seeing we are the only one on the street we don't have neighbours so we got that squared off. Then the customer service agent said now that done, it should be getting delivered, with no issue. But before i could ask would that be today or? the chat got cut off.

So, (like the annoying bitch i am) i when back onto the live chat and got in contact with another agent, just to ask what the possible delivery date or time would be as we operate on business hours (7am-5pm) and yodel stays delivering till like 9pm so i just wanted to know if i would have to wait around for it. and she stated that she'll check my tracking and it was currently waiting to go out with the driver for delivery and i was like oo perfect that's great i might get it today at some point, so i ended the chat and waited (this chat was at like 9am on the 28th May). after all day of checking nothing got updates on the tracking or anything. Told myself i'll wait till today 29th. So this morning i got on a chat with another agent and asked hey is this actually going out for delivery today cause yall said that it would yesterday and this is what i got in response:

'According to our tracking, your parcel has not been scanned in our network since 25 May 24 13:57:. I do apologise for the delay in your parcel's delivery. So that we can get it moving again I will need to request that your local depot conducts a search for your parcel. To make sure that we can do this as quickly as possible could you please tell me the contents of your parcel so that I can share this with our team? Kindly confirm that the email address is the correct one to receive the notification.'

Like hey what do u ment you've not seen it or had it in your system since the 25th. i asked the customer service agent like does this mean its lost or what like??? AND HE JUST ENDED THE CHAT ON ME!! like huh!?. so at this point im starting to get really annoyed cause what why am i being told different things.

So i hop on the live chat AGAIN. this agent was actually super nice and helped me (sort of) . i told them i was sent that message and the chat was cut off, that i was confused on what's actually happening. he was like it might not be lost it might be misplaced. like girl THATS JUST ANOTHER WORD FOR LOST THE FUCK? so i was like whatever like what's going to happen now and they were like we will contact your local depot and have them do a search and you will get an update hopefully within the next 24 hours.

i predicted this would happen i made a post on like the 23/24th May that i hated yodel and literally have never got it right losing shit or delivering it to the wrong place or sayings it delivered when it wasn't. like im so close to emailing the TOP online store to be like why use yodel it's the worst rated one in the country. like why not use royal mail or evri like i would actually celebrate if they did evri and they are also the fucking worst.

i work in customer service like its my active job to help customers with shit like this yall are actually badddd, anyway if i don't get an update or its not delivered by the end of the week(Sun 2nd) imma contact the TOP shop and see if they can push them on the business/corporate side as they obvs don't care about the customers.

[burningvelvet]

Lord Byron defending himself and Percy and Mary Shelley from rumours spread by his literary enemy Robert Southey, 1818:

Lord Byron to John Cam Hobhouse, from Venice, 11 November 1818:

“[..] the first Canto of Don Juan [contains] a dedication in verse of a dozen to Bob Southey - bitter as necessary - I mean the dedication, I will tell you why. - The Son of a Bitch on his return from Switzerland two years ago - said that Shelley and I ‘had formed a League of Incest and practiced our precepts with &c.’ - he lied like a rascal - for they were not Sisters - one being Godwin's daughter by Mary Wollstanecraft - and the other the daughter of the present Mrs. G by a former husband. - The Attack contains no allusion to the cause - but - some good verses - and all political & poetical. - He lied in another sense - for there was no promiscuous intercourse - my commerce being limited to the carnal knowledge of the Miss C. - I had nothing to do with the offspring of Mary Wollstonecraft - which Mary was a former Love of Southey's - which might have taught him to respect the fame of her daughter.”

Lord Byron to John Murray, from Venice, 24 November 1818:

“Lord Lauderdale set off from hence twelve days ago, accompanied by a cargo of poesy directed to Mr. Hobhouse - all spick and span, and in MS. You will see what it is like. I have given it to Master Southey, and he shall have more before I have done with him. I understand the scoundrel said, on his return from Switzerland two years ago, that ‘Shelley and I were in a league of Incest, etc., etc.’ He is a burning liar! for the women to whom he alludes are not sisters - one being Godwin's daughter, by Mary Wollstonecraft, and the other daughter of the present (second) Mrs. G, by a former husband; and in the next place, if they had even been so, there was no promiscuous intercourse whatever.

You may make what I say here as public as you please - more particularly to Southey, whom I look upon, and will say as publicly, to be a dirty, lying rascal; and will prove it in ink - or in his blood, if I did not believe him to be too much of a poet to risk it. If he had forty reviews at his back - as he has the Quarterly - I would have at him in his scribbling capacity, now that he has begun with me; but I will do nothing underhand. Tell him what I say from me, and everyone else you please.

You will see what I have said if the parcel arrives safe. I understand Coleridge went about repeating Southey's lie with pleasure. I can believe it, for I had done him what is called a favour. I can understand Coleridge's abusing me, but how or why Southey - whom I had never obliged in any sort of way, or done him the remotest service - should go about fibbing and calumniating is more than I readily comprehend

Does he think to put me down with his canting - not being able to do so with his poetry? We will try the question. I have read his review of Hunt, where he attacked Shelley in an oblique and shabby manner. Does he know what that review has done? I will tell you. It has sold an edition of the Revolt of Islam, which, otherwise, nobody would have thought of reading, and few who read can understand - I for one.

Southey would have attacked me, too, there, if he durst, further than by hints about Hunt's friends in general; and some outcry about an ‘Epicurean system,’ carried on by men of the most opposite habits. tastes, and and opinions in life and poetry (I believe), that ever had their names in the same volume - Moore, Byron, Shelley, Hazlitt, Haydon, Leigh Hunt, Lamb - what resemblances do ye find among all or any of these men? and how could any sort of system or plan be carried on, or attempted amongst them? However, let Mr. Southey look to himself - since the wine is tapped, let him drink it.”

Byron and Southey’s rivalry was infamous. Two books have been written about it. Byron frequently parodied or ridiculed people in his poems and Southey was his top target, mainly because he was an easy target. He was the Poet Laureate, disliked Byron, became something of a moralist and royalist as he got older, and due to popularity he generally sided with the status quo Byron despised. From Wikipedia:

[crackedramblings]

Notes from 27.2.24

So I only remember bits and pieces of one dream. I was in my childhood house. My husband had come home and he was sleeping in the house. Somehow in the dream he morphed into my brother and completely disappeared from the house. I'm searching all over, every room, and I even have an ex-coworker there (DO) to help me search. Eventually we come to the conclusion that my brother is not there at all. So I think perhaps this dream means my brother is now totally gone. [HS just said "yep" in my head, or else that was my imagination, idk.]

The weird thing is my brother had sent me this test he took to detect autism. We've always kind of talked about how we're borderline autistic and I've always said I'm worse than he is. For me it's always been about social anxiety, but back when I was a kid there were no support systems for that sort of thing so it was basically sink or swim. I never had any official diagnosis or therapy. So I took this test (it's an online test, how reliable can it be? idk but supposedly it's used by professionals) and I had a really high score. Basically it said yeah I'm solidly autistic when it comes to social and sensory stuff. Which, duh. But who cares? Why is this all coming up now? I told my brother my score and he suggested I look into therapy (I immediately rejected this suggestion internally; I just thumbed up his text because what's the point of arguing). I can't quite figure out why this is coming up. Is this entire experience since finding CA's youtube channel an elaborate extension of a legitimate mental illness? Is my HS giving me an out, here? Like, is all this stuff I believe about the takedown and the recall just part and parcel of my intense need to avoid people and loud/bright/whatever stuff? I don't know what to think anymore. I don't know if I've just made all this up.

I agree the chat is dead. I thought it came back to life for a second, when you came back. But there is just nothing there anymore. Was it all a game we were playing?

Then why did I get an ad on my phone that said "The Takedown" (what an odd ad)? Why did my other game have a prominent game called "Recall"? Is it just me making up shit to fit my ideas of what I want to happen? Are my conversations with my HS all made up in my head? I mean, I don't think they are, but maybe?

I'm kind of at a loss, here. The goalposts have changed constantly since finding CA and I feel like if this recall doesn't pan out, I don't know what is left here for me. I'm just feeling extra crispy done right now.

[birdbutt]

personal tma episode today woohoo I suppose (uh.... cw for rotten/scary ?food? I guess)

I work in mail sorting. In one of The Big mail sorting plants, the kind of building lined with conveyor belts that take things across the building, up and down different floors, just wherever it needs to get to so it can leave in the right direction to the local stations and parcel carriers. A big mechanical nervous system. Filled with packages or letters instead of flesh or blood.

You find a lot of weird things in the mail. You just have to learn to ignore it. It gets weirder even on the overnight shift. Not just drugs or other illegal oddities, but those truly bizarre sights you know you'll have no way of describing later. If you even remember them after a long night.

8pm to 5am is when I'm there. We even sort on Sundays. Have to get the mail to your station by Monday you know? I usually like to listen to podcasts while I work. I mean, I'm just standing in place, waiting for that labyrinth of moving belts and conveyors to drop the next round of mail into my chute so I can start sorting the zip codes. I'll put each package on another conveyor belt, key in a code on a small number console, then watch the package get taken away and dropped into another cart or chute somewhere. There's four other drop chutes just like mine, lined up along the main belt behind me, with another equally bored or just plain tired plant worker waiting for the next round of endless deliveries to sort. All listening to their own music or books or even having a late night phone conversation. Today I was playing The Magnus Archives. It really didn't feel like it would matter what I listened to at the time. I was in the middle of episode 36 - Taken Ill, and as the narrator started describing the sickly horror of the scripted week a package at the top of my chute broke open and a slimy, pale yellow, almost gray fluid starts pouring out... well oozing out. It seemed slow, but happened so fast that I couldn't have done anything to help minimize it even if I wanted to get close enough to do that. It got over everything. The belt, the chute, the other packages, even the floor. It didn't just get my area either. When it broke it was still close enough to the main conveyor belt that it spread to the other four chutes after me too. The smell was so strong I almost couldn't move at first. Almost sweet. Before the strench of almost tangible rot slammed it's way so hard into my brain my legs nearly gave out.

Well the stench obviously traveled all over. Farther than normal I guess. Everyone on our floor level could smell it and was coming over to find out what happened. I mean everyone too which is impressive. This is not a small building, it takes about five minutes for someone fit to speed walk from one end of our floor to the other. So it was kind of a joke everytime we caught another brave soul wandering over from so far to try and figure out just what the hell they were being forced to smell.

We get people trying to mail cooked foods or meals all the time, it always turns rotten before the package even makes it to a sorting plant. Always. It's so stupid, but also so common you hardly notice it after a couple months there. A turkey sandwich in a manilla envelope, ham with mashed potatoes on a ceramic plate, a plastic baggy of homemade pickles. Almost makes me chuckle sometimes. Well, almost chuckle AFTER, the slime and smell of what used to be something consumable gets mopped up. So that full bodied stench of old organic rot isn't foreign to us in the plants by any means. Nobody could say for sure what had rotted though, but we all agreed it was definitely familiar. When we removed the box from the top of the chute we still couldn't figure out what it was. Usually when one of these busts we get to see what ever moldy, decomposed chunk meat or produce someone tried to mail ooze out of the soggy cardboard when picked up. This was somehow just slime. A molded pale yellow that almost seemed gray. There wasn't anything else. It looked like someone had packaged up only the decay while leaving out what originally fed it. If there had ever been anything else it seemed to have already completely liquefied. And it filled the entire box and more. It seemed to be too much for the package that broke. We all tried to joke about how long the package must have been lost in the twisted turns of the never ending veins of sorting machinery to get /that/ rancid, but we couldn't bare to keep our mouth open too long around it. Thinking back I don't remember anyone actually complaining about the SMELL, just how it was stronger than normal, strong enough to taste. All from a square box barely 7 inches long. A box that hadn't even smelled until it spilled open. Or we thought it had spilled, we couldn't see what might have been the tape holding it closed anywhere in the soggy mess.

Because it was just so... wet we almost forgot to check if the mailing info was still intact any any way before we binned it for another crew to inspect and clean. No chance of saving it at this point. The address had melted away into that yellowish sick of spoiled matter, but the postage mark was still dry. Pristine even. A bright unmarked spot of bright dry paper on a sea of decomposing filth where there sat a single fly. That lonely insect drawing my attention to the smallest bit of information that I would have never noticed, or thought to check, without the dance it seemed to do right on top. Pointing me to the punchline of a joke I never wanted to know.

It had been sent locally that same day.

You find a lot of weird things in the mail. You just have to learn to ignore it.

[pityroadart]

Hey, what is your process when making collages? How do you collect things for them, how do you decide on quotes and what to draw/paint on and such? I really enjoy them :)

Hello! That's a very good question, I do it so automatically that I'm not entirely sure myself — but since I caught myself in the middle of a cut-and-stick sketchbook session, let's dive into it.

First up, I collect scraps like a trash magpie. Always have done, always will. Any paper items that I enjoy the colour/shape/texture of. Nowadays I tend to enjoy things with bold primary colours or black and white, pages from old maths textbooks or encyclopedias, flyers from local exhibitions, fragile tape and shipping labels from parcels, scraps found on the floor, old shopping lists, slips of paper from inside medicine packets or covid tests etc, anything that jumps out at me.

I collect these things in the pocket at the back of my sketchbook, or in a drawer (I have a whole drawer dedicated to scraps — some picked up from six or seven years ago, and some from last week). I hoard them like some sort of paper-loving dragon.

Other things I like adding are washi tapes, stickers, cinema tickets, drawings (whether straight in the sketchbook or stuck in), and anything else flat enough to fit in there.

Here are a few older sketchbook pages (from about 2014) showing some other types of scraps I've collated and used, and I think you can see where my current style has grown from.

The second part of your question is: but how do I put them all together? Again it's pretty much instinctive by now, but here are a few things I look for:

- Do I have a theme for the page? Is there a central object I want to build around? For the recent star trek pages I shared here, I'd been to see TMP and TWOK at the cinema and glued my tickets into my sketchbook, so I knew I wanted to theme the page around them

- Is there a colour palette? Either I pick colours from my central object, or I decide on a colour palette myself. Nowadays I keep my colour palettes very limited - one or two bolder colours and a range of cream/white/black/grey - but previously I've set the palette as pastel rainbow colours for example, when those were the colours I was more drawn to

- What words, symbols or drawings do I want to add? This can be lyrics that have been stuck in my head or that fit the theme, phrases I've come up with, fragments of found poetry clipped from textbooks, drawings that fit the theme (e.g star trek screencap thumbnails in the first example), etc. They don't have to fit the theme perfectly, or make sense to an external viewer - the important thing is that *you* want them on your page

This image below is a fragment of an as-yet-incomplete page - in which I swatched some leftover watercolour paint onto the page, found it complimented the colour of a sticker from a parcel perfectly (the small circular sticker), then I added an interesting-looking image from an old encyclopedia, which reminded me of a line from a Mountain Goats song: "the low pressure system brings the breezes in", and I wrote out another line from that same song on kraft paper and stuck it in. So it makes sense to me, or maybe someone familiar with the song, but to the average viewer it just looks kinda cool and/or they enjoy the line I've written out.

Then the next thing is to stick everything together! I'll confess, I rarely do this in one sitting - I currently have multiple pages I'm working on, one started the other month and almost complete, one started two weeks ago, and one just started today. I add to it whenever I get an idea or find a scrap that fits. But I used to do the pages in one sitting, and that absolutely works too.

As to how I decide what goes where on the page, that's just intuitive! I've made collage-y type art for at least fifteen years now (and longer if you count playing 'cut and stick' with old magazines as a kid), and I've very much learnt what sort of compositions please me, and how to tell if something feels too cluttered or lopsided or too spacious. But the beauty of this part is it's all personal preference! Shuffle your scraps around before gluing them down, and see what works for you.

Sometimes I add text or drawings first and use scraps in between, sometimes I stick the scraps down first and fill the gaps with text or drawings - there's no one way to do it! And hey, if there's something you don't like, you can always tear it out or stick something over it, that's the joy of mixed media.

Anyway this was a bit long-winded but I hope it makes at least a little bit of sense. Go forth and play with scraps!

[debunkingtherightwing]

The dating market as seen through the eyes of an absolute lunatic

Well folks, I've been seeing a lot of talk in right-wing media about a "dating crisis" sweeping America recently. Naturally they have the citations to back this up, those citations being random videos that they found on TikTok. So I figured we'd take a look at one of the guys talking about this epidemic and see what's going on here, lets get into it.

02:10, Matt Walsh: "In what has become something of a monthly tradition on social media, two videos have gone viral featuring young women distraught over their inability to find a man who they consider worthy of their time. A week ago it was this woman expressing her deep frustrations over this video, listen."

I figured who would be a better fit to educate us on this pressing issue than Matt Walsh? He's famous for being a guy who lets trans people live rent free in his head and works at a platform that restores your virginity the minute you open their website, surely he can tell us all we need to know about the dating scene.

Jokes aside, Matt Walsh citing some random woman's TikTok video as proof that the dating market has been ruined by women having professional lives is peak Daily Wire journalism.

Matt plays the TikTok and then tells on himself a little bit.

04:16, Matt Walsh: "Even though I may be, infamously, a Grinch whose heart is three times too small. Even I will say that I truly feel bad for this young lady and the loneliness she's experiencing. You'd have to be a sociopath to not feel bad for her and despite popular misconceptions I am not a sociopath."

Golly, I wonder what gave people that idea about you Matt. Guess that will just have to remain a mystery for the time being.

04:39, Matt Walsh: "She says that she's worked on herself, she's done everything she can to make herself desirable. Part of the problem of course is that some of the things she highlights will have no effect either way on making her more desirable to men. For instance, no man cares whether a woman is successful or independent. Like, there has never been a man in the history of the world who has left a first date and said 'Wow, she's great. She's so successful and independent'. Those are just not characteristics that a man is looking for, they certainly won't be at the top of his list."

Ok, Matt Walsh dating tip number one is "If you are a female be submissive to your male partner at any cost. They're not looking for success and independence after all". Nothing messed up there. If you think this is a distortion of Matt's words, I would like to point you towards a blog post he made in 2014 entitled "Your husband doesn’t have to earn your respect". Quote;

"This doesn’t mean that a man has a license to be lazy, or abusive, or uncaring. He is challenged to live up to the respect his wife affords him. If his wife parcels out her respect on some sort of reward system basis, the husband has nothing for which to strive. As the respect diminishes, so too does his motivation to behave respectably. Respect is wielded like a ransom against him, and he grows more isolated and distant all the while."

Basically, if you are a female and your husband is abusing you it's actually your fault because you weren't respecting him enough. A lot of his comments recently, including the one I just quoted above, show that Matt Walsh's views haven't changed that much since then. Matt plays another TikTok of a woman lamenting her relational struggles, recaps the TikTok for some reason and then decides to present more "evidence".

08:14, Matt Walsh: "Now, it's not just women having these problems obviously. In fact, one guy replied to this last video with his own story."

Matt Walsh should never be allowed to comment on things like the minimum wage again after this episode. The reason I say this is because it's becoming glaringly clear to me that Matt's job is just watching TikTok, reading the comments under those TikTok's and attempting to turn those videos and comments into a coherent argument.

09:10, Matt Walsh: "Now, by now we're all familiar with the statistics which we've talked about on the show many times. Fewer young adults are in relationships, few are getting married, few are having kids, more of them are remaining single than ever before while people of all ages report record levels of loneliness."

It is true that we are experiencing a loneliness epidemic but the causes for this are a lot more complicated than what Matt Walsh thinks they are. According to an article written by psychology professor Susan Dugan for the University Of Denver, a lot of it is caused by people unable to manage their work-life balance and increased reliance on social media. Due to the increased reliance on social media, especially because of the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of people have became overly reliant on things like texting as opposed to seeing people in person.

Dugan also writes that one of the biggest things causing the loneliness epidemic is an overly-work oriented culture and people using their spare time to get more work done as opposed to spending time forming meaningful relationships. Now, I wonder what Matt Walsh, a guy who thinks that social security should be abolished and that the best solution to a low minimum wage is to "just stop being on the minimum wage", would have to say about dismantling a workplace culture focused around toxic productivity.

09:26, Matt Walsh: "A Pew analysis published in 2021 found that nearly 40% of adults between the ages of 25 and 54 are quote on quote unpartnered. And by that they mean these are people that are living without a spouse or a live in boyfriend or girlfriend."

If Matt actually did some research into what he's talking about instead of just skimming hed's and dek's he'd find the percentage of single Americans looking for a relationship or casual dates has decreased massively since 2019 with 58% reporting that they aren't interested in a relationship or even casual dating. Also, 40% is a scary number that Matt can use to freak out his audience but it's still the minority but I guess that's something that Matt's just going to ignore because his main solution is "just get married" (despite marrying young statistically leading to divorce but we'll get to that).

10:05, Matt Walsh: "So, what's going on? Um, there are several major factors, some of them I've discussed before but lets lay them out again in one list."

I can help Matt Walsh by compiling some of the things he's discussed in the past into a helpful list.

Factor #1: We don't just force people to marry each other

Factor #2: We don't force sixteen year old girls to get married because that's when they're "technically most fertile"

10:15, Matt Walsh: "First of course, many people are just waiting too long to get serious about getting married. The lie that my generation was sold and that the next generation after mine was also sold is that your 20's, the first decade of adulthood, is a time to be aimless and lazy and selfish and focused primarily on recreation and pleasure."

What universe is Matt Walsh even living in? Most people in their 20's are either in college or are looking for work, often due to them having to pay off large amounts of student debt from said college. If Matt wants more people to get married and have kids at a young age than he should support things like student debt relief that help make that lifestyle more affordable for young people.

According to a 2023 survey, 73% of Gen Z and millennial couples say that getting married is simply too expensive in todays economy.

Ok, so Matt Walsh factor #1 is pretty stupid if you do even the most basic research like "actually meeting somebody in their 20's". Matt's second point is that there are too many choices, fair enough, that's probably the most respectably true thing he's said this entire episode and society would be better off if Matt would just quit while he's ahead and end the video here. His third point though is just "why don't we just put traditional gender roles from the 50's back?!"

12:33, Matt Walsh: "And third, at a much deeper level, people are very confused and we've lost the basic understanding of what dating is for in the first place. Worse, we've lost any understanding of what men and women are for and what our roles are supposed to be. If we even talk about roles as it relates to men and women it's considered outrageous and offensive somehow."

So, a very verbose way of saying "get back in the kitchen", got it. Should I be taking notes for this?

13:08, Matt Walsh: "Think again about that woman in the first video highlighting her professional achievements. If she understood what men wanted she would instead highlight herself as a kind and affectionate woman who knows how to cook and take care of her man."

You thought I was exaggerating in that last bit of text didn't you?

14:09, Matt Walsh: "Four, this may be the biggest factor but the institutions that once facilitated matchmaking have completely broken down. Have been mostly abandoned or have simply stopped performing those functions."

Citation needed there Matt, no you can't cite your feelings.

14:21, Matt Walsh: "How were people matched up in the past? Well, for most of history families would arrange the matches. That's no longer the case, at least not in the west."

So, Matt still wants arranged marriages to be a thing in America, cool. In a strange stroke of coincidence, arranged marriages would strip women of their autonomy and right to choose which is what Matt was oh so subtly hinting at wanting in factor #3 and has historically espoused wanting even more blatantly in the past. Probably a coincidence.

14:30, Matt Walsh: "And so if the families not doing it, well churches used to play a major role in connecting young people with each other but most young people don't even go to church regularly so that no longer happens."

Yes Matt, that's why cultures that don't practice Christianity are sterile cultures where nobody marries ever. Seriously, we went from kind of stupid to misogynistic to extremely stupid (and still misogynistic) in the span of five minutes.

By the way, Matt Walsh met his wife on eHarmony so his stupid ass argument doesn't even apply to his own lived experience. But yeah, everyone else can only meet women through the church and arranged marriages.

14:38, Matt Walsh: "And if you don't have the family or the church, you've cut out the two institutions that used to be primarily in charge of this kind of thing, you've thrown them out then who's helping single people find each other? The workplace was sort of the third option and never the best place to facilitate romantic relationships but now it's even worse. HR regulations make it a risky proposition for a man to try to initiate any kind of romantic relationship with a co-worker and with more and more people working from home your co-workers may be thousands of miles away in any case."

So, the only alternative to church and arranged marriages is for men to sexually harass women in the workplace. Too bad those pesky HR regulations get in the way of that.

Ok, I’ve had enough “learning” from Matt Walsh for one lifetime.

Conclusion:

Well, that's was the stupidest take on the dating market that I've ever heard. I'm starting to realize that "What is a Woman?" might have actually been a genuine question because Matt Walsh clearly has no idea what women want outside of "they should be my personal slave".

I guess the takeaways here are that women don't understand their "roles" well enough and that the only possible places to meet a partner are the church and arranged marriages.

Cheers and I'll see you in the next one.

Original Video:

“Ep. 1373 - Why the Modern Dating Scene Is a Nightmare.” The Daily Wire.

Sources:

Dugan, Susan. “Psychology Professor on the “Loneliness Epidemic” — and How to Counter It.” Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences, 27 June 2023.

Gelles-Watnick, Risa. “Roughly Six-In-Ten Single Adults in the U.S. Say They Are Not Looking for a Relationship or Dates.” Pew Research Center, 7 Feb. 2023.

Gelles-Watnick, Risa. “For Valentine’s Day, 5 Facts about Single Americans.” Pew Research Center, 8 Feb. 2023.

Nathan. Gen Z & Millennial Survey on Marriage and Living Together - New Statistics 2023. 23 June 2023.

[mostfacinorous]

No. 3 A HAIR’S BREADTH FROM DEATH Jaskier and Geralt Gun to Temple | “Say goodbye.” | Impaled

The only difference between this day and every other one was that they’d lost. 

Or, more accurately, that Geralt had lost; Jaskier had absolutely held up his end of things, which was to say, he’d done as much as ever, which was again to say, not very much, but exactly as much as always. 

Geralt, however, had actually done much more than usual. It was hardly his fault their situation had quickly become worse than usual.

They were frequently confronted by angry armed men, usually at the behest of some rich man with a grudge– not against Jaskier this time, either, which was a relief on his conscience!

They were also frequently hunting or attacked by monsters, sort of part and parcel with traveling with a Witcher. 

However, it wasn’t every day that they were attacked, then the thing fled, then they’d gone after it, there’d been a fight that would likely make for a phenomenal song if Jaskier lived long enough, and then they had been confronted by the angry armed men at a rich man’s behest. 

Because it turned out, that pesta had been his daughter, and no one was supposed to kill her, and they had just been herding her to the neighboring villages, so that her father could purchase them from the other land owners for next to nothing. 

Normally, Geralt would have cut through the guards like it was nothing. There were only ten of them, after all. 

Save for one little thing: Geralt had been impaled by the Pesta during the fight. She had turned her arm into a long, sharp limb that would have looked more at home on those horribly mutated insects they saw from time to time, and she had shoved it in through his stomach and out his back. 

It would have been lethal to anyone else, and may still end up that way for Geralt. Geralt had assured him that the potion he’d had beforehand would counteract the poisons from the Pesta, but that didn’t help with the blood loss and the gaping wound in his abdomen. 

And so that was how they had come to be here, now– in a cell waiting for the Pesta’s father to decide what he would do to them, Jaskier having stripped off his doublet and shirt to use the thinner fabric to try and hold Geralt’s torso closed. 

He’d managed to lift three bottles out of the saddle bags during the confrontation, and smuggled them into his pants as he used to smuggle ends of bread, but these were significantly more important just now. 

He knew that one would speed the healing along, so he had uncorked that and dumped it unceremoniously down Geralt’s throat, trying not to feel bad at the way he’d gargled and choked a bit in the process. 

Another was a stamina boosting potion– his theory was that if he gave that to him, the process of healing might go a little faster, as his heart furiously pumped everything through his system. 

And the last one, he knew was one of those that would turn his eyes black and his face veined– a potion he could use to stay up during a fight, even if he was hurt beyond human reckoning. 

Jaskier didn’t give him that one. It would be a last ditch effort potion. One that would buy him just a little more time. It would also be highly toxic and taxing on Geralt, he knew from experience. So they would have to be sure he was somewhere to receive real help before that potion wore off. Or things would be, once again, much worse. 

The two immediately helpful potions drained and mostly down Geralt’s throat, all Jaskier could do was try to hold both Geralt and himself together– the former a little more literally as the blood on his hands went from slick to sticky to dried, and the smell began to thicken and coat his throat, coppery and dark even to his meager human senses. 

He was sure it must bother Geralt. He hoped it did. He hoped he would come to feeling well enough to complain about it. 

Hoped he would come to, at all.

He pulled his hands away and watched, critically, to make sure the movement hadn’t tugged the wound open again, but it seemed to have stopped bleeding, for now. His breathing was slow and even, but regular, and his heart beat… well, Jaskier wasn’t sure he knew what was normal for a Witcher’s heartbeat. He hadn’t had many occasions to listen to Geralt’s when he was in good shape, and so it sounded incredibly slow to him. 

He tried not to panic about that. 

Instead, he chose to panic about the sound of footsteps headed their way. He glanced back over Geralt’s form, and decided to risk it– he tucked the final potion into Geralt’s belt. 

If they took him away, at least the Witcher might have the opportunity to make it out. 

This, it turned out, was a wise decision– for the guards pulled him, protesting, to his feet and marched him up and out of the dungeon and into the hold proper. 

He felt somewhat less ready to be presented than usual, notably because he was bare chested, covered in blood, and hadn’t been listening when the soldiers who had taken them had said who they were working for. 

He’d been a little distracted at trying to save Geralt’s life, and even now, had no idea if he had succeeded. 

Even so, he ignored his unpresentability as best he could, took a deep breath, and entered the hall with every intention of doing whatever he had to to get some form of help for Geralt. 

The Pesta’s father looked up, his brow furrowing. 

“The Baron Fredro.” The herald announced, much to Jaskier’s gratitude. This part, at least, he was trained for. 

He bowed to the correct depth for a baron, sweeping his leg as required in this part of the continent, and straightened. 

“They tell me your friend, who killed my daughter, is dying.” Baron Fredro said, as Jaskier stood. 

“He is grievously wounded, yes… though, one might argue your daughter was already dead, when they fought.” Jaskier spoke carefully, and watched the Baron’s face as he did so, trying to feel out where his mind was in this matter. “He will die, though, without help.” 

“Good.” The Baron sat back in his chair. “One less Mutant on the continent. One less murderer.” 

Jaskier’s mouth dropped open and he let it open and close for a few times before he started forward, finger raised toward the Baron, only for his guards to grab Jaskier and force him to keep his distance.

“Rich words coming from a man who weaponized his daughter’s corpse, used it to kill off so many folks in the villages you now own. The only monster I have seen today is you.”

Not fully accurate, he supposed. There were those among the guards who knew, and the Pesta itself was… horrific. But even still, the words found their mark, and the Baron stood angrily. 

The guards gripped Jaskier by his arms, and the Baron pulled his dagger– as the door opened behind them. The smile that split the Baron’s face was slow, and full of malice, and with a gesture he instructed that the guards turn Jaskier around. 

The spun him, and Jaskier saw, his heart leaping with hope and pride, and then falling with fear– Geralt. Black of eye and dark of vein, swaying unsteadily on his feet. 

There were men laying behind him in the hallway, and more, Jaskier was sure, in the corridor and the stairwell and the dungeon… it wouldn’t have been easy, getting here, and it wouldn’t be easy now. 

“Your bard had no faith in you living.” The Baron announced loudly, and Jaskier flinched– not at his words, but at the fact that they came from right behind him. The Baron had approached while he was distracted. He opened his mouth to say something, but felt the tip of a blade at the side of his mouth, as the Baron leaned over his shoulder on the opposite side. 

He trailed the dagger teasingly down over Jaskier’s jaw, and let it sit at the very point in his neck that sent his pulse hammering through his ears. 

“You took my daughter from me, Witcher. I will make you watch as I take someone you care about from you. Say goodbye, Bard.”

Jaskier took a deep breath. He hadn’t spent much time considering his last words. He knew he ought to have, that a perfect ending made for the best stories, but he’d hoped that end would be years from now, where he was ancient and in a soft bed, surrounded by loved ones. 

Instead, it would be here, shirtless and with Geralt’s blood on his hands. 

He opened his mouth again, mind whirling with all the things he wished he had said to Geralt before now–

And a dagger whizzed through the air, over his shoulder, and embedded itself in the Baron’s eye. Jaskier felt the way his blade scored his neck– superficial and shallow, he hoped– as he fell. 

He saw Geralt’s loping run towards the remaining guards, and knew the countdown was already going to get him to a healer.

So he tugged his arms, forcing them to divide their attentions, and did his best to help, this time.