#intuit most evil of companies

[thelaurenshippen]

I just think that if you pay a subscription for a service it should be illegal to then have pop-ups asking you to pay for more stuff. I want to kill intuit with hammers

[cepheustarot]

What do you need to know about yourself?

Attention! This reading is for entertainment purposes only. This tarot reading does not give a 100% guarantee that all the described situations will occur or being ultimate truth. You build your own life and destiny and only you know yourself best.

✧ Masterlist ✧ Paid readings

Pick a pile. Choose one or more pictures. Trust your intuition.

Pile 1: By yourself, you are a fairly calm person who prefers stability in life and strives for harmony in all spheres of life, balance in these spheres of life is also important for you. Most often you have a really calm state, it is difficult to anger, you also calmly react to failures or unexpected events in your life. However, now you do not feel this harmony in yourself, an imbalance prevails inside you, you feel yourself between two fires and are indecisive, to a greater extent your condition is related to one person. As the cards show, this person is close to you, they may be an earthly zodiac sign (Capricorn, Virgo, Taurus), may be the same age as you, may be in the same company, it may be your best friend or your crush, a new acquaintance with whom you quickly found a common language. But in any case, I see that you are now feeling rather incomprehensible, indecisive, unable to realize your feelings for this person. There is a high probability that this is due to an unpleasant situation from childhood or adolescence and this fear has remained with you. You are careful with people and it is difficult for you to open up to them, tell them something personal, open your soul, as if you keep some people at a distance and prefer to keep it without getting closer.

Pile 2: You are a very bright person who attracts people with your charisma, your aura and your eloquence. With such personality traits, you are capable of being a leader and, as the cards show, you love to be one, love to work in a team, take the main role in it and lead people, inspire them. As the cards show, you are also a very purposeful person with great ambitions, you are really able to achieve a lot due to your resourcefulness and ability to find an approach to people, you probably know how to establish connections with people. The cards also show that you can act rashly, most often you act impulsively and do not make plans, do not think through your every step. You lack a cold head and thoughtfulness in your actions, it will be useful for you to learn how to plan, think through your actions a few steps ahead, have backup plans because thanks to these qualities you will be able to achieve much more in your life than you could imagine. It will also save you from unnecessary actions and unforeseen situations.

Pile 3: You are a cold-minded person, you always try to think clearly and objectively but nevertheless you like to rely on your principles. You may have clear ideas about good and evil, about justice and injustice, and you tend to divide the world into right and wrong. You may also have doubts about some news or facts, people's words, because it is important for you that arguments are given. In disputes, you also rely on logic, people's feelings are less important to you than the arguments and evidence themselves. I also note that you rely more solely on yourself, very rarely do you turn to someone for help, you prefer to act on your own. You are very good at solving everything alone, but because of this you lack the support of other people. Do you seem to be very distrustful of people? Because the cards show you really as a person who puts yourself first and trusts yourself exclusively. This is not a bad thing but it is equally important for you to have support in the person of at least a few close people.

Thank you for reading! I will be glad of any feedback 🖤

[mushroomnoodles]

color refs for three AT characters i have converted to my vamp au to populate the vampire king's inner circle (especially since a few of the tarots die in an attack) info under the cut

TEMPERANCE - doctor princess

TEMPERANCE (also known as doctor) has the power of intuition- an uncanny ability to just know something about someone, no matter how little she knows on the subject itself. she's smart, helpful and kind by instinct, and the youngest member of the inner circle. she was an individual who was seeking humble apprenticeship under the great scientist and princess bonnibel bubblegum, and she is keen to learn even now- provided she gets to have her fun on her own time.

she has limited medical knowledge but tends to wing it just fine, and acts as the closest thing the vampires have to a medic. (vampires are rather durable and heal fast, and don't catch disease.) she attended a few of THE HANGED MAN's history classes before being promoted to tarot rank and they get along well with each other.

JUDGEMENT - flame king

JUDGEMENT (who never disclosed his true name) was once the bloodthirsty, ambitious prince of a small country along the shore, hundreds of years before simon and betty's time. he acknowledges himself as cruel, perhaps even evil, but vampires have no moral obligation, he argues. he's rude and arrogant to all except the vampire king, whom he treats with utmost respect.

when JUDGEMENT's father died, his elder brother naturally inherited the throne. but JUDGEMENT felt he would make a much better king, and slaughtered him in cold blood. his brother left a large, gaping defense wound on his cheek, and JUDGEMENT's crime was discovered. swiftly banished, JUDGEMENT was eventually turned into a vampire and turned his fury back on the people who had forsaken their rightful king- laying waste to the land and people with his newfound pyromancy and a vampire army, given to him by the vampire king in exchange for his loyalty. how long that loyalty will last is anyone's guess, but JUDGEMENT seems to respect the king in a way he has never shown anyone else. he and THE WORLD tend to work together a lot despite constantly butting heads.

THE HERMIT - mr. fox

a curious case. THE HERMIT, true to his name, struggled to get along with his fellow vampires and his new form and shut himself away from them. THE HERMIT was never his tarot moniker but an apt description that stuck. despite his power, despite the king's interest in his abilities and knowledge, he is hardly ever awake these days. most of his time is spent asleep, because his subconscious can go wherever it feels like- he has mastered astral projection, and the sun has no effect on that self. and when he sleeps, he can dream- dream of a world where he has plenty of company.

this has allowed him to gain quite a lot of wisdom and perspective on himself- he knows himself well, and he knows he is happier free and unconstrained.

whenever he is summoned from his sleep, he is quiet, unhappy and unwilling to impart his knowledge.

THE HERMIT is hardly ever referred to, and is largely considered either nonexistent or an absolute waste of ability.

[ominaterthegreat]

My sister, who spent four years at Mailchimp, just got laid off yesterday. She called me sobbing to let me know she got the email. No amount of a fat severance package can fix the damage to her psyche this job did imo. Her birthday is coming up soon. So i made her this cake.

(i only decorate a cake like once every few years lol don't come for me)

She started in customer support, and sure enough was skilled and talented enough in apprenticeships with a higher up team in a different department that she was happily brought onto the team.

She ran events, improved entire workflows that saved the company thousands of dollars, delivered tasks on time and of high quality, and was highly praised by leaders of other teams and from those above her boss. She kicked ass and took names.

On that team, she spent two years experiencing bullying and discrimination for having ADHD. Yes, arguably the most common ND condition out there just about. She had to take 2 months off for mental health leave to get her ADHD diagnosis to defend herself from all the corporate bullying. She documented her boss literally making things up and her coworker refusing to communicate with her and then blaming her for things not being done how she wanted. They actively ignored all the times she went above and beyond expectations and all the times she did receive praise from other teams. I watched two corporate goons crush the confidence my sister had finally closed together for herself.

The CEO of Intuit called her and 1800 other employees that were laid off "low performers" in a public statement. A convenient 10% of Mailchimp was completely laid off. We knew this was coming because over the past year or so, Intuit has been forcing managers to label a specific percentage of people as "Does Not Meet Expectations" on year end reviews to justify letting people go, no matter how much they actually did meet expectations.

I look in the Intuit Mailchimp tags and only see one post about them Union busting. The only posts are just geared towards companies comparing and contrasting products and marketing strategies. Reddit isn't much better because the only sub on there is the official one modded by MC themselves. This isn't the biggest fire rn by any means but it's once again proof that the people behind these corporations are as soulless and evil as the corporations themselves. No matter how much good you do they will never appreciate you.

I hope the company eats shit and dies. Intuit is ruining everything people liked about MC, from the product to the culture. Fuck you.

[necronatural]

Dante (Limbus Company) meets Yoo Jonghyuk (ORV). How does it go?

You have to understand in asking this that the ORV characters are part of WoS and most of their existence is dedicated to how they fight against the story being told about them so I have to answer in terms of Dante Is In The LitRPG Novel

Dante exists in WoS: instant comrade. most regressions dante dies tragically to a probability storm & after a certain point he learns to keep them back. post 3rd regression they have a toxic and abusive relationship because yoo joonghyuk both claims to understand their suffering and circumstances and also gets a little "if I can do it you can do it. bootstraps" about it. he would be absolutely evil to them in accordance to the convenience of their rewinds and denies them any independence. dante feels stifled, resentful, helpless and hopeless. yoo joonghyuk says "well, yes!" which rekindles the evil cycle. In later regressions Dante can do the happy memory trick fairly intuitively

dante exists in WoS orv: kim dokja does not once use dante and just unkills himself regular and uses WoS precedent to decide "I think Dante should stay in the back, so our teammates can do riskier maneuvers and be there for dangerous fights". dante is well-attuned to yoo joonghyuk's regression depression and yoo joonghyuk is conscientious of their feelings but since kim dokja sponged away his minmax compulsion their dynamic is stable and equal.

dante meets yoo joonghyuk [general settings]: yoo joonghyuk's angst is a scab they can't stop picking at. they give him space like everyone else but they also can feel the shape of his trauma and gradually learn how to say the right thing and make him self-conscious about his pessimism. dante is initially very unskilled at it but gradually learns how to talk to him.

[durgesupremacy]

durge fic writing process thoughts: guilt versus shame

Write whatever you want! Headcanon your best life! And, I noticed a pattern in how I think about durge's character arc, especially because I'm currently writing an evil-to-the-end durge. No one asked for this (though asks are open!) but here it is, some rambling on how my durge(s) feeling guilt vs shame for their urges impacts whether they choose violence / stay evil.

(apparently the brand for this blog is Long Post Only)

I have a *lot* of oc durges. I'm writing Solace (they/them wood elf rogue / fighter) because they're the only one who fully pursues Gortash pre- and post-tadpole and I want to write durgetash rn. But in my weird personal multiverse of durges, the ones who were self-satisfied and confident pre-tadpole are the ones who become more "good" post-tadpole. The durges who were the most troubled pre-tadpole are more likely to do evil things, or at least be morally flexible.

Why? For me, a durge who experienced some kind of self-confidence, fulfillment, and/or pleasure during their time as a Bhaalist murder baby enters tadpole life with a seed of self-acceptance. Though they can't remember why, their amnesiac self has some preexisting inclination to like themselves for who they are and have more trust in their own judgment. They experience their urges for a second first time with enough security in themselves to reject them. They feel guilty, but they don't think this is who they are. (The internal conflict at this point is accepting their villainous past, which will be differently fun to write if I ever do it).

But a durge who moved through their Chosen of Bhaal phase with fear, insecurity, and/or low self-worth enters tadpole life with vestiges of self-loathing. Their broken brain leaned into traumatic rewiring, and when they re-encounter their urges they're predisposed towards self-hate and identify with the urges instead of challenging or rejecting them. Being Bad makes more intuitive sense to them than being, idk, Good with a Serious Problem. Something is wrong with them. They feel shame.

But without their memories, they don't really know why. Depending on party composition they can get praised and rewarded for the things they feel ashamed of. And in time, they realize they don't have to feel shame - after all, it's their reaction. They can react differently. If they stop fighting their "true nature" they can finally enjoy themselves. They'll even get rewarded for it and more or less have what they need to survive. (There's a whole other point of analysis here on companion interactions and community vs isolation, I can write that at some point if we're into it).

Ultimately, my post-tadpole self-loathing villain-arc durge is tempted not just by the urges, but by not feeling bad about themselves. Without their memories of who they were and why they should feel ashamed of that, they have the freedom to indulge in their worst traits. It might look like self-acceptance, but it's not. They just stopped caring about anything and followed the dopamine. And the more they give in to their "true self," the more inevitable it seems to them that their only path towards meaning and worth is through Bhaal. (At least it makes Solace go perfectly with Gortash. Misery doesn't love company so much as it hates being alone).

I guess this feels worth saying because I've seen nuanced discussion about durge's capacity for redemption, but the evil arc for durge seems mostly like them leaning into misc Bhaalist insanity and/or being very comfortable in their evil. I'm curious about (and enjoying) writing an evil durge that's less unhinged and is experiencing more relatable emotional arcs, even when we can't relate to their stabbing. Hopefully.

Stay tuned for more rambling

[dannyhq]

DANIEL RENÉ SUTTON, tv tropes.

friend to all children ; a character who is fond of and has a soft spot for children. bonus points if the kids like the character back. overlaps with wouldn't hurt a child, as characters who fit this trope not only refuse to injure children, but would go out of their way to protect children if it was necessary. gods help you if you're dumb enough to harm a child in the presence of someone with this character trait. they will not forgive you, ever. 

kindhearted cat lover ; it has commonly been said that the dog is man's best friend, but there are many people out there who prefer company of a more feline variety. unlike the above mentioned evil and crazy versions of the cat loving tropes, these characters have an honest affection for cats and are usually decent individuals themselves. the range of love for cats in these characters runs a wide spectrum. some people simply have a cat as their best friend or just adore them for their inherent cute factor.

the nice guy ; the nice guy (or girl) is nice. if not necessarily an all-loving lero, they're definitely not unpleasant, obnoxious or an overly cynical byronic hero and edgy rebel. these characters are kind, friendly, psychologically well-balanced, morally good and socially decent in most cases, and in short, someone anyone would genuinely like to be around and have as a friend.

real men cook ; everybody has to eat, which means, oftentimes, somebody has to cook. while it is often the job of the lady of the house to prepare delicious meals (or to at least try to), you can also count on seeing the men taking care of this. expect him to be flipping burgers or steaks on a grill, preparing food on the trail for the rest of the team, or preparing a meal to impress a female companion.

situational sociability ; a character with situational sociability is someone whose ability to socialize with others can vary depending on the circumstances. said person may be a shrinking violet with strangers, but more talkative with true companions. the core element of the trope is that the individual's attitude changes drastically in private compared to in public or when able to speak anonymously.

the mccoy ; the mccoy is another part of the freudian trio, along with the kirk and the spock. (specifically, the id.) where the former is rational and intuitive, and the latter is cold and logical, the mccoy is emotional and humanistic. he cares about others deeply; for him doing the right thing is not a question of convenience or moral relativity, but about the concrete reality right now. if the mccoy is placed in front of the to be lawful or good choice, he will always choose the "good" option in a heartbeat.

[leviathanswingman]

Oleander - Oneshot

pairing: gen, mentioned dialuci

characters: oleander (OC), diavolo, lucifer, barbatos, luke

word count: 3784

this is part of my next gen AU with @ruewrites !!!

Diavolo was walking through the streets of his city, feeling quite at peace as the warm evening air caressed his cheeks and tousled his hair. The quiet mumbling of his subjects going through their day-to-day lives made for excellent background noise as he strolled leisurely. It was an agreeable evening, not as scalding hot as it had been the days before. The Devildom sun was finally dimming, dipping the city in a dark orange light and filling the air with the promise of a mild night. With his presence concealed and the most overwhelming parts of his demonic aura dimmed down, he could enjoy his walk without any incidents.

Diavolo was walking through a vacant side alley, perhaps not with intent, but certainly not without reason. For once he was all by himself, his trusted butler Barbatos left behind at the castle. Evil voices might whisper he’d snuck out of the castle while Barbatos had been busy preparing the kitchen for a cookoff with Luke. Just as Barbatos was bent down, searching the cupboards for a bag of flour, Diavolo had leapt out of the window. It was a skill he had honed to perfection over the years. Barbatos hadn't even heard him when he fled. He would deal with the repercussions later on.

He strolled down the alley, carefree and calm. There was a bounce to his step and he let his arms swing freely from side to side as his eyes wandered with the curiosity of a child. 

Diavolo crossed over to the main street again. Something was about to happen, he was certain of it. His intuition was rarely wrong and today, his gut feeling seemed to be pointing him in a specific direction. 

Of course, walking on the main street made things a tad bit more difficult for him. After all, Diavolo was very recognizable, being the Devildom’s newly crowned king who recently hosted one of the biggest weddings for the denizens of the Devildom to remember. There was only so much a spell could fix. Not every day did Devildom royalty marry a former angel and esteemed Lord of Hell. Speaking of Lucifer, Diavolo was certain he’d ream him out for aimlessly wandering the streets by himself, without protection or company. But there were certain sacrifices he had to make. Lucifer and Barbatos’s expected anger was one of them.

Diavolo smiled to himself, lost in thoughts of his husband when all of a sudden, he bumped into someone. Or rather, someone bumped into him. 

Diavolo was greeted by a shock of auburn hair barely peeking out from under a hood. The person had a lanky frame and a gaunt build. It was quite clear that they weren't an adult just yet. For a second, their eyes met. 

“S’cuse me,” the youth muttered under their breath before pushing past him with an almost imperceptible limp. Perhaps they were good at balancing it out, but Diavolo could make out the little discrepancies in how they distributed their weight with each and every step. Perhaps a past injury that had healed crooked. 

Diavolo patted down his suit pocket. Where once had been his pristine leather wallet was now nothing but emptiness. He smiled. So he’d been correct. He'd just been mugged. How exciting.

Diavolo turned on his heel and walked in the direction the kid had disappeared in.

There was almost no light in the alleyway as Diavolo retraced the kid’s steps, reaching out for their magic and following its traces.

Then, he suddenly felt a presence emanating from behind a dark corner, hidden behind a few stacked boxes. He pretended to ignore it and before he could so much as blink, he felt something sharp being pressed to his side.

“Don’t move,” a voice behind him uttered. “Not even a damn inch.”

Slowly, Diavolo lifted his hands in defeat. He was fairly certain the youth had a knife pointed at his side, so he decided to keep things civil for now. Lucifer and Barbatos most certainly wouldn’t be amused if he returned home with a stab wound.

“A good evening to you too, young demon,” he greeted calmly to diffuse the situation. “What brings you here on this fine-”

The kid lifted their head and stared at him in disbelief. “Have you lost it? Quit the bullshit.” Their hood slid back a bit to reveal a set of bright green eyes as they stared him down. 

This was the moment where Diavolo assumed the ball would drop for them. Surprisingly however, that moment never came. They continued to glare at Diavolo with that same volatile expression they had worn before and only seemed to press the knife harder against his side. It stung a bit but was otherwise bearable. 

“You followed me. Why?” they spat out, the tone of their voice all sharp edges and knives. 

Diavolo kept his hands lifted and simply let out a little breath. “To retrieve my portemonnaie, of course. There’s something in there I’d like to have returned to me. It’s very dear to me.” After all, he had been trying to retrieve his wallet. Of course, the fact that their meeting hadn’t been quite unintentional on his part would have to remain a secret for now.

The kid ogled him for a moment, presumably to assess his threat levels. Their lips were pressed together into a thin line. “You just want your money. That’s all you rich folks want.”

“You are free to check the contents yourself. You’ll see I was telling nothing but the truth. The money does not matter. You can keep it if you want to!”

They remained quiet as they considered their options. Only now could Diavolo see how young they truly were. 14, perhaps 15 years of age at most. There was nothing to them, their form a tale of wiry skin and bones, and from up close it was quite obvious that they were trying not to shake. The little thief was afraid. 

“May I ask your name?” Diavolo asked slowly. In response, they pushed the knife further into Diavolo’s side before retracting it with a snap. They twirled the knife skillfully to force a better grip, then wordlessly pointed it at his chin and opened their mouth to speak.

“No funny business, I am aware, believe me,” Diavolo interjected cheerfully, which only made the youth lift their eyebrows in disbelief. 

“Why is everyone over here so weird,” they mumbled as they rummaged through their bag with their free hand. Finally, they managed to produce Diavolo’s wallet from the depths of the bag. Getting it to open with only one hand was a challenge and Diavolo had to actively hold back from offering his help.”Just take it and lea-”

Finally, it popped open and the contents came spilling out. A handful of candids of Lucifer slowly floated to the ground.  

“What the-”  

Diavolo moved forward, gently pushing the knife pointed at his throat to the side. He knelt down and started picking up the photos that had fallen to the ground.

“These are very precious to me,” he said with a soft smile on his face. “My charming husband. Isn't he a sight for sore eyes?”

The kid jumped back two steps, knife still pointed at the Devildom prince. “Are you crazy?! All that for some photos?”

“Of my husband,” Diavolo threw in. 

The teen squinted at the photographs and began to mumble. “I know that guy…”

Then, their eyes widened and darted over to Diavolo. You could see the cogs turning in their head as they put an arm’s width between themselves and Diavolo.

“You're-” 

“Ah, so you've finally noticed!”

“Royalty?!” 

Diavolo scratched his head, unfazed by the youth's shock. A soft laugh left his lips. “That, I am. May I ask your name?”

Their eyes were darting from one side to the other as they scanned the alleyway, the need to flee evident on their features. “My name? Why would you need to know? I don't have one.”

Diavolo's eyebrows knit together as he watched them. “Everybody has a name,” he said. Silence fell upon them. 

The youth considered their options for a moment. “Lan,” they finally said. “Call me that, for all I care. Doesn’t matter anyway.” 

Diavolo smiled to himself. He couldn't discern a clear lie, yet it was obvious the youth hadn't told him the full truth. “I fear I have to apologize for my rudeness. I should have introduced myself first. My name is Diavolo.” He extended one arm to shake hands, but the youth recoiled.

Their eyes were wide as they stepped back. “You think I’m dumb?! There’s no way you’re-” Their breath caught in their throat. So they had finally noticed. “You're that prince,” they hissed, their stance tense. Before their fight or flight could kick into action, Diavolo took another careful step forward. “There are a few questions I would like to ask you. Would you be willing to join me for a cup of tea at the castle?”

Apparently, that was the wrong thing to say. They bolted without looking back. Diavolo tried to call them back, but before he even had the chance to warn them, they collided with a wall, dropping to the ground upon impact.

Diavolo had tried to warn them of the city’s alleys, of the way they changed course from time to time. But it was too late already. 

The knife clattered to the ground and Diavolo rushed to their side. Their breathing was quite irregular and their skin radiated with a feverish fervour. 

Oleander came back to his senses in a room he did not recognize. There was a mouth-watering scent wafting through the air and hushed voices could be heard from behind the door that was separating him from whoever had taken pity on him. His stomach roared with a familiar violence, and he pressed an unforgiving hand against it to quiet the noise.

His chest was beating viciously and adrenaline started to rush through his veins as he pushed the blanket aside and leapt from the bed someone had put him in.

He couldn't remember the last time he’d slept in a bed this comfortable. Scratch that, he couldn't even remember the last time he’d slept in a bed all by himself to begin with. Back at the orphanage, he had always shared with his siblings, had sat on the ground and guarded the door once there had been too many children and too few beds, had made sure they were tucked in, safe and sound. How inconsequential any of it had been in the end. 

Oleander looked around, the ghostly memories of his siblings clawing at the edges of his vision.

Right. He was alone again and the sound of voices talking urgently behind the door quickly ripped him away from his distressing thoughts. Quietly, he moved closer to the door, pressing his ear against the wooden paneling when he heard people arguing. The voices were loud enough for him to make out snippets of what they were saying. 

“-were you thinking?!”

“My Lord, did we not talk about this? Why were you out by yourself when it has been mere weeks since your wedding!”

A voice, deep and relaxed, answered. It was too quiet to make out what he was answering, but his tone of voice rested somewhere between nonchalant and upbeat. It had to be that man from before. Diavolo, the crown prince. The freshly crowned King. Whatever he said seemed to calm the other two voices down.  

Oleander looked around, trying to calm his nerves. Quickly, he surveyed his surroundings. The door was big and heavy, the voices behind it still shushed. The bed he had been sleeping in was distressingly soft and impossible to hide under. Several portraits were decorating the walls and at the back of the room was a big window, framed with long curtains that were pulled shut to offer some privacy.

Bingo.

Oleander shuffled over, careful not to make any unnecessary sounds. Quietly, he climbed on top of the window sill to take off the curtains, tying them together before securing them near the window. This would have to make due. After all, flying wasn't an option anymore. Oleander had lost that privilege months ago. His shoulder blade throbbed at the thought, remembering the nauseating pain and the panic, the screams of his baby siblings. Quietly, he mourned the loss, shoving it aside for later consideration. Grief would always wait for him.

Thankfully, the window swung open without making too much noise. He peered down. It would be a good drop, but he'd have to risk it.

Suddenly, there was a knock on the door. Oleander already had one leg swung over the window sill when the door opened. His head snapped around towards the sound and he made eye contact with none other than that fallen angel Lucifer standing in the doorway with crossed arms.

“I wouldn't do that if I were you,” he said calmly, his expression guarded.

“And why not?” Oleander replied from between clenched teeth. His eyes darted from the opened door to the window. There was a high chance he wouldn't make the drop from this height, not with one wing and his injured leg, and he was painfully aware of that. He couldn't risk breaking or straining his healthy leg.

Another head peeked past the door. It was the King. “Oh!” he exclaimed upon seeing Oleander’s thwarted attempt at escape. “You're awake!” He clapped his hands together and seemed disturbingly unbothered. “Barbatos made us breakfast! Could I interest you in some?”

Lucifer threw his husband a sideways glance before taking another step into the room. Oleander buried his hands in the curtains and leaned further back, staring at them in disbelief, eyes wild like a caged animal’s as the hot morning air tousled the hair on the back of his neck. Barbatos. That name rang a bell as well. He could feel his chances of escape dwindling by the second.

Lucifer lifted his hands. “Get off the window sill, kid.”

“What do you want from me?! Why did you bring me here instead of the slammer?!”

“Now why would we do that?” Diavolo asked calmly.

“I stole from you! I threatened you with a kn-”

Diavolo made a little face and shook his head. Oleander quieted down, face full of questions. 

“You returned my portemonnaie, so no harm done.” 

Lucifer narrowed his eyes and watched them both carefully. Then he sighed and his form relaxed. The former angel ran a hand across his forehead. “We mean you no harm,” he offered, his voice tired. “As long as you choose to behave.” 

“What do you want from me?” Oleander repeated. 

“There is nothing we could want from you. You knocked yourself out and Diavolo brought you here. You should be grateful.”

“Grateful?! I never asked for any of this!” Finally, Oleander got off the window sill, careful to keep his weight on his good leg. “You people have never done any good. Why would you start helping out now?”

“Are you talking about your siblings?” Oleander stared at the crown prince incredulously and swallowed his words. “How do you know about them?” Oleander hated hearing the way his voice shook. “Are they- You didn't send them back, did you? You can’t, they- they won't make it!” Panic made his voice a fickle thing. 

Quickly, Lucifer realized their blunder. “Calm yourself.” He paused for a short moment, then cleared his throat. “I apologize. It was wrong of us to bring them up so carelessly. We assure you they are safe as can be,” he said carefully.

At that moment, Oleander remembered that Lucifer was an older brother too. Perhaps he would show leniency. Perhaps he would understand. 

“I have contacted the orphanage,” Diavolo started. “They will make sure they all find a proper home.” Oleander’s shoulders relaxed considerably but tensed up again at Diavolo’s next words. “Naturally, that offer extends to you as well. We are aware of your story and would like to extend our con-.” Diavolo’s next words were drowned by static. 

Oleander’s heart was beating with an uncalled-for violence. The uncertainty of the situation, the memories of a past he couldn’t allow himself to forget, the sudden possibility of peace; it was all too much to handle. “I’m gonna throw up,” Oleander warned. 

Lucifer furrowed his brows and opened his mouth to speak when Barbatos stuck his head through the door. 

“To your left,” he simply offered. 

Oleander grabbed the empty flower pot and got violently sick. They cleared their throat once the heaving stopped, spitting out bile before wiping their mouth with the back of their hand. “No.”

“No? We are offering you respite and you refuse?” Lucifer's tone was irritated, but he paused when his husband put his hand on his shoulder and shook his head again. 

“My siblings… they need a home. I don't. I won't.”

Diavolo and Lucifer exchanged a look and Lucifer sighed. “Then at least rest here until you've recuperated.”

Oleander didn't know what to say. He didn't believe in promises, hadn't in a long time, but asked regardless, vulnerability be damned. “Can you promise they'll be safe?”

“You have my promise as ruler.”

It felt too good to be true and suddenly, it was as if all the fight had left his body. He realized how tired he was, how exhausted he must’ve been for years now. Despite himself, Oleander chose to accept this frail promise. 

The days passed in a blur. Before he even noticed it, two weeks had already gone by. It was all a mystery to Oleander. Why he stayed, he couldn't tell, but the careful promise of safety was a daunting thing keeping him in place.

Morning, midday, and evening, a meal would find itself in front of his door. Although he wouldn’t admit it out loud, they were the tastiest meals he’d ever had. It was strange to have food all to himself, even stranger when he realized after a few days that he slowly stopped setting half aside for his siblings.

He could tell his body was growing stronger, sturdier, lanky arms slowly starting to swell with careful muscle. He was given new clothes, fine clothes that probably cost a fortune and Oleander had half the mind to think about selling them off.

Diavolo and Lucifer allowed him to ask for whatever he wanted, even when he refused to take them up on the offer. After all, there was only one thing he truly cared about. 

But he didn’t even have to ask about proof of his siblings’ wellbeing. One after another, letters arrived. He recognized his siblings’ handwriting, after all, he had taught them how to write, tucked away in the shadows while the orphanage’s employees weren’t looking. The pictures attached showed his siblings in front of their new homes, with their new families, their smiles reluctant but hopeful. There was a faint ache clawing at his chest. 

During Oleander’s second week, Lucifer entered the room and unceremoniously dropped a strange device into his lap. One of Asmodeus’s old DDDs, he'd called it. After teaching Oleander how to use it, he thumbed through various messages and clicked on a video. It showed his youngest siblings, the ones who couldn't write just yet, safe as well, their bodies strong and cheeks round like freshly picked apples. 

At least once a day, someone stopped by. Diavolo with well-meaning, but inconsequential chatter. Barbatos with food and small talk. Lucifer with tales of his brothers and stunted awkwardness. Oleander did not understand what they were trying to achieve, not when he remained cagey and vigilant, not when he hadn’t even told them his full name yet. Still, the truth managed to slip through in little moments, with the arrival of each and every letter when a smile found its way onto his lips. He did not ask to stay, but they also didn't tell him to leave. It made no sense. 

It was the beginning of week three, a Monday morning nearing dinner time, when Oleander heard another knock on the door. The soft rapping was quiet, unfamiliar. Whoever it was, Oleander certainly hadn’t met them just yet.

“Can I come in?” a light voice asked. 

Oleander walked up to the door, stood before it in anticipation. “Who are you?” he asked back. “And what do you want?”

The reply came without hesitation. “My name is Luke, I-” There was only a door separating them, so Oleander could feel them. Their aura was strangely bright and airy. Oleander had never felt anything like it before.

“You're not a demon. What are you?” he shot back. His hand was shaking, but for once, his voice didn't expose his state of unrest. 

The light voice did not falter. “Oh, you noticed? That was so fast! I am one of the exchange students from the Celestial Realm. I was wondering if-”

“Bullshit!” Oleander ripped the door open. “What would an angel want-”

Before him stood a boy, light-haired like he'd never seen before, his eyes blue like the ocean. He was young, probably close to Oleander’s age, and so slender it seemed like his body hadn't grown into itself just yet. The boy stiffly extended his hand. “It's nice to meet you. My name is Luke. I wanted to welcome you earlier, but everyone told me I had to wait.”

Oleander didn't shake the hand he was being offered. Instead, he crossed his arms. “Why?” he simply asked. “I’m not that interesting.”

Luke blinked in surprise. “I was happy to finally meet someone my age. Plus you never came down for dinner, so I thought…”

“You thought what?”

Luke smiled. “I thought it would be easier if I escorted you. Everyone is super excited to meet you!” 

Oleander had no words to spare, so he simply repeated his question. “Why?” 

Luke furrowed his brows. “Why not? Will you come down? I bet it’s lonely up here.”

Strangely enough, Oleander didn't feel like the young angel would leave him alone.

“And if I say I won't come?” he asked testingly. 

A determined expression ran over Luke’s face. “Then I'll come and ask again and againuntil you agree to be friends.” 

“Friends?”

“Sure!” Luke offered his hand a second time and smiled brightly. “Hello, my name is Luke, it's nice to meet you. What's your name?”

Oleander did not understand what brought Luke here. However, strangely enough, he was curious to find out. They never had a friend before, but there was a part of him, that wanted one desperately. 

Reluctantly, they clasped their hand around Luke’s. “I'm Oleander.”

[megzeppelinn]

Last weekend I got to see not one, but TWO horror play readings - both written by two of the most riveting, boundary-pushing Los Angeles theatre artists I know - Alexis Roblan and Chelsea Sutton. Ali’s exponentially brutal, actively nightmarish play “Javelina” - about how when an indie horror movie’s writer visits its disquieting Texas set she must confront the wild external and internal violence that moral culpability ignites - was Echo Theatre Company’s inaugural New Play Competition winner. Chelsea’s “I’ll Be Your Villain” - a darkly beautifully gothic type of ghost story about a woman who loses control over her true self as it wrestles with the warping nature of grief, betrayal and exploitation - was a part of Road Theatre’s New Play SlamFest. Women writing horror is not new, but something about the freshly unsettling spiritual provocations of these plays and the dark psychological/sociological screws they’re boldly twisting with their female protagonists’ uncompromisingly, almost terrifyingly authentic self-actualizations is thrilling to me as an audience member and playwright stoked for spooky storytelling and restless for groundbreaking genre vocabularies. While I’ve always loved ghost and gothic stories, it’s only been a year or so that I’ve become obsessed with the cultural impact and resonance of horror movies and specifically the way women are utilized within them. I’m still watching and learning, but in the ones I’ve seen so far the majority of the female characters (if they’re not victims killed off early on) are singularly intuitive in sensing a malignant supernatural entity, and have a hell of a time convincing others (especially their husbands/partners) that their child or loved one is in danger. Their rally cries to stop the ensuing threatening forces are silenced or ignored, so they must confront evil on their own, leading to either a gloriously badass obliteration of this evil, or a somber “I told you so, but no one listened” succumbing to it.

While the plays are uniquely themselves - Ali’s is viscerally unsettling, a masterful construction of a psychological unraveling, Chelsea’s a powerfully haunting, hilariously ominous reflection-myth on what makes a woman “bad,” they are both so compelling/refreshing in that they radically subvert the limiting binary character resolution for women in horror as outright hero or victim by not only dirtily spelunking through its meaning’s mines to unveil monsters of unpalatable moral truths never before made visible through a female lens, but outright upend it by challenging me as a viewer and woman to wrestle with my connection to these monsters and my complicity in their societal dubiousness - disturbing me into wondering what complex horrors I am capable of, but not so pointedly judging me for recognizing those terrible possibilities within me that I poisonously repress them.

I so appreciated that I didn’t feel asked to simply root for or pity the female protagonist, but to see her as someone complex with horrors - the monsters, ghosts and duendes thrashing inside her soul in the human attempt to know itself. That this revelatory storytelling of reenvisioning women in horror is happening in the L.A. theatre space makes me quiver with excitement. Shoutout to the Echo for recognizing/honoring Ali’s brilliant play, and to theatre genius/masterful conjurer of the dark and divine Carly DW Bones’ tender, playful and fearless direction of Chelsea’s play - her brilliance of uplifting the mythic voice is unmatched. Keep an eye out for more Ali and Chelsea radness, and sláinte to more women in horror!

[raining-tulips]

Master Post on Diamonds

Diamonds were first found in India in rivers and streams, and quickly became associated with protection. Greeks, European Royalty, and romans associated them with divinity. As diamonds became more accessible with mines discovered in Brazil, they became more associated with wealth, and today, they are known for promises, love, and commitment. The opening of new mines in new locales is creating more accessibility to the diamond.

Let's look at how the attributes of this gemstone and its history reflect to create its spiritual and metaphysical associations.

Physical Attributes of Diamonds

10 on the mohs scale - the hardest, most stable stone. Can cut all others.

While they do not create "doubling" they refract light and create "fire" and are often called one of the brightest and most reflective stones.

They remain stable at high temperatures and high pressures, are great at conducting heat

Cubic structures - most commonly in octahedrons (8 sides), but also in rhombic dodecahedrons (12 sides) or cubes (6 sides)

History & Lore

This is a shortened list of where diamonds appear in history

Mentioned in Buddhist texts as protective talismans to ward of evil spirits, evil eye, snakes, illness, and negativity due to its refractive nature

Hindus used these stones to protect against fire, poison, and evil spirits

The Greeks associated diamonds with longevity and power, noting a diamond would always outlive its owner - most likely due to their strength and stability

Romans believed they were tears of the Gods

Once diamonds were bought by European royalty and aristocrats, they became associated with divinity, power, and were believed to be a link to God.

Disputed timeline, but eventually diamonds were given as engagement rings and were thought to symbolize promises, love, unity, were believed to fix problems between lovers

Interestingly, many famous large carat diamonds are associated with curses, usually resulting in injury, illness, and death. The Koh-i-Noor (now owned by the British Crown) was written about in Ancient Hindu texts; "He who owns this diamond will own the world, but will also know all its misfortunes. Only God or a woman can wear it with impunity."

Spiritual Associations

The physical properties and history of the stone give it these associations. However personal expierence can also specify associations to a particular practitioner.

Associated with the sun - due to the "fire" illusion, and its ability to conduct and hold heat

April and Aries - a modern association due to it being April's birthstone

Bridge between physical and spiritual - due to the use in history by Royalty

Protection

Power, amplifying energy - the wearers energy or to raise energy in spell work and ritual work

Wealth, abundance, money, gaining wealth - often can be used in prosperity spells

Love, self-confidence, passion, promises, fertility, harmony, partnerships - due to its history as a love gift

Communion with guides, higher self, deities, fae, divinity. Intuition, clarity of mine, inner vision.

Purification, cleansing

Numerology of 8, but also 6, and 12

One source said it was associated with clearing and aligning the chakras, specifically the throat and Crown chakra.

Healing in the Body

*Please note that crystals should not and cannot replace medicine, talking with a trusted doctor or physician, etc. Do not ingest diamonds or diamond infused water.*

Detoxification

Healthy Brain function

Clearing vertigo, anxiety, and depression

Increase fertility

Ward off illnesses (commonly used during the plague).

Gemstone Care

These stones are water and sun safe. They are particularly durable. This is why its used in jewelry a lot.

Notes on Diamonds

Diamonds are not particularly rare. In 1990, 90% of diamond trade and production was controlled by one company, hence why they remain expensive. Due to the number of diamonds, they should be considered semi-precious, not precious. They remain precious due to the control around them.

Don't have access to diamonds? Use a printed picture.

Use your personal judgement and belief on weather lab-grown diamonds (which are the exact same thing and are usually more affordable at higher quality) contain the same properties as natural diamonds.

A Herkimer diamond is not a diamond. It is quartz.

In history, rock crystal is also not diamond. It's extremely clear quartz, and was often valued higher in spiritual regard than diamond.

DM if you're curious about sources.

[inthehalfpearl]

thoughts on the journey from addiction:

I never thought i’d experience touching the bottom of the ocean before. I’ve always had problems with my eyes but for the most part i’ve had an intuitive heart and ordered steps.

I remember turning 20. I was excited to take on life as a young woman, pure in the mind & spirit, filled with curiosity.

However, naive to the weight of experience, one night my alarm clock rang… it had been 3 years and I was filthy.

My body in a cycle of despair, my stomach constantly in knots, my senses foggy…

I did not know who or where I was. I didn’t feel the need to ask either.

The goal was always to sedate the reality of questions and feelings due to the fear of facing every true answer.

I drank… I drank some more… and more until i was ultimately drowning. With every part of my spirit occupied, I was bellowing out haze to comfort me. Ashes would be everywhere, my lungs and my cells beginning to shrivel, begging me to send oxygen to my brain for once. But I kept bellowing, I kept sinking… holding the stone over my torso, waiting to reach the bottom.

The continuous suffocation was one of my true addictions…the pain, the tears, the stress.

At times I would bob my head back up just to gain a little energy to drown for longer.

I was always allowing myself to come back to get another fix, and what’s crazy is my dealer never lied to me… at least not about the drugs. He always told me it’s not what i needed.. it’s not what i deserved. Constantly telling me to go and get clean… yet he still continued to prescribe me, & no matter how much he told me to go, I wouldn’t.

I always wondered to myself if he had an addiction too. I could imagine as a dealer, loving the investment, company and consistency of your top fiend just as much as they love your product.

I pondered if his addiction had to do with the constant need to create an illusion of safety for the fiend, in order for them to feel comfortable to return to the harmful stimulants. Maybe he thought as long as it was the fiends choice to return he would carry no weight of responsibility for their demise. “I never told them they should use nor buy these drugs from me” a chant I would hear every so often. An essence of damage control.

My dealer always had this unseen tendency to need to prove to himself and others that he was a good human. It revealed to me that deep down there was a lot of unspoken guilt but no way of knowing how to cure the wounds inside his psyche.

I pray for him still.

Everyone yields their own balance beam of good and evil, many adherently weighing down on one plate versus the other. Back and forth and so on.

I’ve been clean for a few months now, forgiving myself & injecting my own grace and tenderness back into my flesh . I speak to and nurture my shadow daily. We fight, we argue we pray together. She has taught me many a thing, keeping me with an unwavering childlike quest to understand the duality of the human being…

a quest that truly has no ending.

At times I wonder about my own likelihood to fall into another addiction experiencing life for answers…

[theofficersacademy]

                                Forsyth   Byleth (F)   Andrei   Lachesis                           Naesala   Selena (FE8)   Chrom   Yarne   Hilda                                 Katarina   Ephidel   Saizo   Isadora   Eir

TEAM TAG: #AOtheta2024 CORPSE COUNT: 0. PUBLIC OPINION: POSITIVE [65/100]

Where does this portal go? You walk for what feels like a whole continent's distance, uncertain, for a destination you still hold little concept of as of yet. There's a presence that keeps you company, however, winding its way into the very fabric of this dimension.

Keranes, you intuit as if you have known her for most of your life. The more you walk, the more you feel certain that must be her name. She guides you, takes you closer towards where you must go through the creation of the skies and the earth. Before you, she makes your whole world. There is another presence making this world too, you know deep in your soul, but she does not make it alongside you.

She is farther off, you think. Keranes is here with you however.

But Keranes grows weary. You sense her compassion morph in her exhaustion, and the woods around you begin to rot, beckoning you even further into the safety you yearn for.

My love, my light.

You begin to grow strange and numb in this world. You had entered to pursue your quarry, but this world... the longer you stay, the farther you walk, the more this sense of unease bleeds into you.

When will we return to the surface?

And that's when you reach your paradise at last: the village of Rusalka. But you are no less exhausted from the pilgrimage.

The Circumstances

Rusalka is built into what appears to be a massive pit and is covered by a dome. Inside, the weather and temperature remains constant so it's easy to forget about the summer rains and heat beyond. Additionally, the village is entirely self-sufficient. Clothing, furniture, food, and medicine are all produced within its territory, and the crops grow year-round here, both out in the fields and in the many impressive greenhouses scattered around the village.

Before you enter the village, Keranes tells you all that in order to dismantle this world and the ill powers within it, there need to be some sacrifices. Seven of Rusalka's inhabitants, specifically ones from a group she calls ‘The Newcomers’, must be killed and their corpses left someplace outside the village walls. It does not matter which of them die nor how, but she will return by the end of the week to retrieve the corpses to help you end Rusalka and the evil power lurking and building within here. It is the Newcomers’ spirits that are keeping the place stable, so it would seem.

Upon arriving, the village's inhabitants turn out to have some very familiar faces. Amidst the residents are fourteen people: Python, Jeralt, Brigid, Diarmuid, Reyson, Vigarde, Emmeryn, Panne, Holst, Kris, Nergal, Ryoma, Harken, and Hel. Together, they make up a group the village calls ‘The Newcomers.’ They claim to have arrived some time ago and that they've been waiting for you to join them in living in this paradise forever. You are safe here so long as you stay inside the village, they insist, and now have the ability to be in a world free from pain. They dress in hemp tunics and shoes with vibrant hues, and you truly have never seen them happier. Despite their familiarity to you, you cannot help but feel greatly unnerved by their happiness somehow…

Due to the efforts of the Newcomers vouching for you, your party has been tentatively allowed to stay within Rusalka. For now, the fourteen of you are sleeping in one of the village's largest buildings, being granted accommodations as a group. The village expects you to pitch in whilst you stay; paradise, as happy as it can be, still requires hands to help sustain it! 

The Newcomers insist you join them. Keranes and your mission asks that you end them. The clock is ticking. You will have to make a choice.

What Do I Do?

Make your case. Keranes made it very clear that at least seven people need to be dead by the end of the week. If there's an inhabitant you wish to save, this is your chance to try and persuade your teammates within your threads to keep them alive. Alternatively, if you believe someone should die, this is also your opportunity to argue why and try to convince them to take your side. 

Commit murder. If you don't think cooperating and discussing with your peers is enough, or you wish to make their choice a little easier by making it so there are less people to save, you could always take matters into your own hands. A guide on this system will be in the next section.

Complete tasks and assimilate into the village. You still need to find a way to survive within this realm, unable to find your way out of here now. This is the only civilization for miles. It might do you well to get on the village's good side while you're stuck here... or at least figure out more about where you even are.

How to End a Life

If you wish to murder one of the village inhabitants before the week is over, DM your Team GM, Mod N. N will ask you who you wish to kill as well as how you wish to commit the murder in very basic terms for the sake of flavoring the death.

In the team channel, N will then ping the teammate most closely associated with the inhabitant you are trying to kill. That person alongside N (on behalf of the murderer so as to preserve their anonymity) will roll a 1d20 each. If N's roll result is equal to or higher than the number the other person rolled, you will have been successful with your murder and the corpse will be available for the group to discover.

If N rolls lower, the inhabitant will survive the encounter but will be unable to recall who tried to murder them.

If you wish to kill your own most closely associated inhabitant, you can. The process shall be the same except that you will be rolling for the sake of your inhabitant and N will still be rolling on behalf of your murder attempt. This is to keep up your anonymity, but your muse is free to reveal to their teammates that they murdered (or at least tried to in case you failed) that person if they truly wish to.

If the group would instead prefer to execute an inhabitant together, you can set this up. To instigate a potential village execution, ping N in the team channel with a name of an inhabitant since this will be treated as a public matter that all the muses will be discussing IC. N will create a form and ping the whole team to decide the fate of that specific inhabitant. If a simple majority is achieved within the next 24 hours, then the execution shall automatically be successful. More than one public execution vote can be running at the same time. In the event of a successful execution, how the group chooses to do it can be flavored by you all, but the village does make a point of noting how dangerous the world is outside of the village if you wanted some ideas...

You are allowed to kill more than seven village inhabitants if you would like. If the group fails to obtain a minimum of seven corpses by the end of the week, ███ ████ █████ ██████ ██.

How you choose to accumulate corpses will influence Public Opinion. The more private/secretive the method, the less public opinion you shall lose for each death. The more public, the more you lose for each death. ㅤ- Successful Murder Attempts: -1 per corpse ㅤ- Unsuccessful Murder Attempts: -1 per attempt ㅤ- Group-Voted Execution (Private Method): -5 per corpse ㅤ- Group-Voted Execution (Public Method): -10 per corpse

Tasks [ Resource Key / Team Document ]

Investigate outside of the village walls. The inhabitants strongly discourage this, but if you must go, they insist you do not go alone. [Max 4 muses per thread] ㅤ- Lose -1 Public Opinion per post ㅤ- Once you reach 5 posts in the thread, ping N.

Harvest the fields [Max 2 muses per thread] ㅤ- Grants 2lbs of vegetables per post ㅤ- Gain +1 Public Opinion per post

Forage in the specified forest outside of the village. The inhabitants direct you to this one as the one they frequent, but they still request that you don’t tarry overlong outside the village walls. [Max 3 muses per thread] ㅤ- Grants 1 basket of a random resource (berries, nuts, mushrooms, herbs, flowers) per post. Roll 1d5 every post to determine which resource you gain. ㅤ- Authority rank of C or higher grants knowledge of which plants are safe, coaxing the villagers to tell you this information beforehand. If no muses of C-rank Authority or higher are participating in this thread, roll a d4 for each basket. If 1, then that basket will turn out to be poisonous. ㅤ- Every 5 posts, roll a 1d5. If 1, ping N.

Assist with chopping wood [Max 2 muses per thread] ㅤ- Gain +1 Public Opinion per post ㅤ- Axe rank of C or higher grants multiplier of 2x

Help make medicine [Max 2 muses per thread] ㅤ- Gain +1 Public Opinion per post ㅤ- Every 5 posts creates one Vulnerary ㅤ- Faith rank of C or higher increases effectiveness; creates Concoctions instead of Vulneraries ㅤ- Apothecary Class Mastery increases speed to one creation every 3 posts instead of 5

Help with chores (e.g. mending clothes, cooking food for the village, making tools) [Max 3 muses per thread] ㅤ- Gain +1 Public Opinion per post

Care for the village ranch animals [Max 3 muses per thread] ㅤ- Potentially grants resource depending upon involved animal ㅤ- Gain +1 Public Opinion per post ㅤ- Riding/Flying rank of C or higher grants multiplier of 2x for Public Opinion only

Fortify the village walls ㅤ- Lose -1 Public Opinion per post

Important Notes

This event is mostly meant to be driven by the players rather than being ushered by your GM at every turn. Please take note that while the tasks above will contribute to the narrative of the campaign, you are not limited to only threading about the tasks above. You are free to write threads unrelated to the tasks if you so wish, so long as they take place within the setting of the event.

In addition to the above, if writing a task thread, please indicate it either in the title post of your thread or in your starter so that it is clear from the start.

Also, task threads are not limited to only featuring writing directly about the task at hand. You are encouraged to write character exploration and conversations outside of the scope of just the task as your characters carry them out. Please feel free to have your muses discuss the plot or anything else currently on their mind. See these tasks as a way to get characters together physically in one space, but the narrative freedom you are allowed is still just the same as most other threads too.

There is currently no time limit rule for when posts need to be written, but please remain in open communication with your thread partners/teammates. Shorter posts are encouraged to help keep things moving and for relationships to progress along with the narrative.

"Good" or "Bad" outcomes will still progress the campaign, so don't feel too stressed about needing to "win" this event. The primary focus on this event should be character development and building relationships with your teammates. Actions have consequences, but all consequences can have narrative potential for exploration.

The team document was linked up above, but here is another link to Team Theta's team document if you require it. This will also be pinned in your team channel. Whilst it will be updated in certain areas by your GM, players should do their best to update the thread tracker on it with link to thread replies and any notes they might wish to jot down whether for their own sake or for helping their teammates stay in the loop.

If you have any questions at any time or require additional information, ping Mod N.

[justforbooks]

Although she was born in London, and retained a classic English poise all her life, Angela Lansbury, who has died aged 96, was a Hollywood and Broadway star for more than seven decades, and one who was completely unclassifiable. On her film debut, she played Ingrid Bergman’s cockney maid in George Cukor’s Gaslight (1944) and was promptly nominated for an Oscar, though she was never to win one. She graduated to play Laurence Harvey’s evil, possibly incestuous, mother – although she was only three years older than Harvey – in John Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate (1962), and then a dotty amateur witch in Disney’s follow-up to Mary Poppins, Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971).

This versatility, allied to her natural grace, vitality and chastely appealing features – her eyes were full, blue and unblinking, her face almost perfectly round, her mouth a cupid’s bow from the studio era – propelled her to stage stardom in Jerry Herman’s Mame (1966) and, in London at the Piccadilly theatre in 1973, as the show-stopping Mama Rose in Gypsy, by Jule Styne, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents.

Lansbury had been initially reluctant to assume Ethel Merman’s mantle in Gypsy but, like Merman, she gave the performance of her life, full of steel and tenderness in equal measure. Her performance was more nuanced and needy than Merman’s; the critic Robert Cushman described “a slow steady build towards magnificence”.

But she became best known worldwide for Murder, She Wrote, an American television series running from 1984 to 1996, with four subsequent TV films. She played the incisive and level-headed Jessica Fletcher, a retired English teacher, mystery writer and amateur sleuth in the coastal town of Cabot Cove, Maine, a sleepy location with a criminal body count as delightfully high and unlikely as in Midsomer Murders.

“It really was a fluke success,” Lansbury said, “and came at a time when that kind of family entertainment seemed needed.” She added that, of all the characters she played, Fletcher was the one most like herself: intuitive and sensitive, a voice of calm and reason in a troubled time. She gradually assumed ownership of the CBS series. Peter Shaw, whom she had married in 1949, was joint director of the production company; her son, Anthony, and stepson, David, were executive producers, her brother Bruce was supervising producer.

Family was always of paramount importance to Lansbury. She came from strong, muscular stock: her father, Edgar Lansbury, was a lumber merchant and one-time member of the Communist party and mayor of Poplar (his father was George Lansbury, a reforming leader of the Labour party); her mother, Moyna MacGill, was an Irish actor who took Angela to the Old Vic theatre in London from an early age. One of her cousins was Oliver Postgate, the British animator best known for Bagpuss.

She was educated at South Hampstead high school for girls and trained at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art. Her father died in 1934, and her mother merged her family – Angela and her younger twin brothers, Edgar and Bruce – with that of a former British Army colonel in India, Lecki Forbes, under one roof in Hampstead.

It was not a happy arrangement.

At the outbreak of war, Moyna decamped with her children to New York, and Angela continued her training for two more years at the Feagin school. While her mother toured Canada in a variety show for the troops, Angela did cabaret turns in Montreal. When Moyna’s agent sent her to Hollywood for an audition, she decided to move the children out there with her.

Nothing much happened at first, so mother and daughter took jobs as sales clerks at Bullocks Wilshire, the art deco department store in Los Angeles, while continuing to audition. Angela was still only 17 when she landed the role in Gaslight, and this set a pattern of playing older than her age. A notable exception was The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), in which she played Sibyl Vane, the chirpy music-hall singer, a role that brought her second Oscar nomination; through her co-star, Hurd Hatfield, she met her future husband, Shaw. She had been married previously, for just nine months, to the actor Richard Cromwell, who was almost twice her age.

By this point a Hollywood fixture, Lansbury played Elizabeth Taylor’s older sister in National Velvet (1944), sang Jerome Kern’s How’d You Like to Spoon With Me? in Till the Clouds Roll By (1946), fooled with Danny Kaye in The Court Jester (1955), peaked in glory in The Manchurian Candidate, with her third and final Oscar nomination, and joined another great cast list in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), which David Lean took over as director from George Stevens.

Lansbury took American citizenship in 1951, and made her Broadway debut opposite Bert Lahr in Feydeau’s Hotel Paradiso in 1957, following with Helen in Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey in 1960 and, most significantly, Cora Hooper Hoover, the corrupt mayor in Sondheim and Laurents’s 1964 flop Anyone Can Whistle. The show, which has since become a concert favourite, closed in a week, but Lansbury came out of it with flying colours, commended by critics for her agility and engaging personality; she was even likened to a young Bette Davis.

This led to her Mame acclaim, and her first Tony award. Lansbury played Auntie Mame, a free-spirited woman who picks herself off the floor of the stock market crash to sing Bosom Buddies (Lansbury duetted with Bea Arthur) and who ultimately recoups her fortunes by marrying a southern aristocrat. She won a second Tony in Herman’s next show, Dear World (1969), a musical based on Jean Giraudoux’s The Madwoman of Chaillot, in which she appeared to be dressed in “a wedding cake made of cobwebs”, according to the critic Walter Kerr.

A belated London debut followed in 1972, when she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Aldwych in Edward Albee’s All Over, playing the mistress of a dying man, locked in battle with Peggy Ashcroft as his wife. She took Gypsy back to Broadway in 1974 for a few months, winning her third Tony, then joined the National theatre at the Old Vic in 1975 to play a fairly youthful, glamorous Gertrude to Albert Finney’s thickset, plainspoken and powerful Hamlet, directed by Peter Hall; the production was part of the opening season in the National’s new home on the South Bank in 1976.

Back on Broadway, she hit another great milestone in Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s Sweeney Todd (1979), playing the gleefully cannibalistic, pie-making Nellie Lovett (and winning a fourth Tony) opposite Len Cariou’s demon barber in a dark and scintillating production by Hal Prince that played on Broadway for a year before touring the US for another 11 months.

Before Murder, She Wrote, a series of starry film roles included John Guillermin’s Death on the Nile (1978) with Peter Ustinov, David Niven, Bette Davis, Mia Farrow and Maggie Smith; Guy Hamilton’s The Mirror Crack’d (1980), in which she did some sleuthing stretches by playing Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, with Elizabeth Taylor, Kim Novak, Tony Curtis and, in his penultimate movie, Rock Hudson; Wilford Leach’s rocked-up The Pirates of Penzance (1983), opposite Kevin Kline as the Pirate King; and Neil Jordan’s wonderfully weird The Company of Wolves (1984), in which she played yet another eccentric old granny figure.

She did voices for two animated movies – Beauty and the Beast (1991, for Disney) and Anastasia (1997, for 20th Century Fox) – but was not in a feature movie again until she played Great Aunt Adelaide in Kirk Jones’s Nanny McPhee (2005), starring and written by Emma Thompson. Subsequently, she was with Jim Carrey in Mr Popper’s Penguins (2011).

For many years, Lansbury kept a home in County Cork, Ireland, where she and Shaw would spend two months each year while maintaining their base in Brentwood, Los Angeles. She rented an apartment in New York in 2007 to return to Broadway in Terrence McNally’s Deuce, a specially crafted two-hander for her and Marian Seldes about former tennis partners reliving past glories while watching a match at Flushing Meadow, and switching their heads from side to side during the rallies.

The play was not a huge hit, but Lansbury was electrifying and was greatly moved by the affection with which audiences greeted her. She had not been on Broadway since a possibly ill-advised 1983 revival of Mame.

Regarded by now as a national treasure, in 2009 she won her fifth Tony as Madame Arcati in Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit, wearing a bright red wig and “with a superfluity of bad jewellery, the gait of a gazelle and a repertory of poses that bring to mind Egyptian hieroglyphs”, wrote Ben Brantley of the New York Times.

At the end of the same year in New York, she appeared for six months as Madame Armfeldt in Trevor Nunn’s Menier Chocolate Factory revival of Sondheim and Wheeler’s A Little Night Music, winning plaudits for her nostalgic litany of fading qualities in Liaisons: “Where is style? Where is skill? Where is forethought? Where’s discretion of the heart? Where’s passion in the art? Where’s craft?”

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences compensated for her lack of an Oscar with an award for “some of cinema’s most memorable characters” in 2013, and the following year she was made a dame, and took Madame Arcati to the Gielgud theatre in London. She was Aunt March in the BBC’s adaptation of Little Women (2017), and in 2018 she both appeared as a balloon-seller in Mary Poppins Returns, and joined up with another member of that cast, Dick Van Dyke, as guardian angels in the Christmas tale Buttons.

Shaw predeceased her in 2003, and she is survived by Anthony, David, her daughter, Deirdre, three grandchildren, five great-grandchildren and her brother Edgar.

🔔 Angela Brigid Lansbury, actor, born 16 October 1925; died 11 October 2022

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[vividxp]

On NBC's Last Comic Standing, Dat Phan was a comedian who would record his sets and then take notes on how the audience reacted or didn't react to his jokes. He even measured things like rhythm, syllables, and the type of words he was using. He had a big binder of these notes. He would then take that information to create his sets.

I remember the other contestants on the show sneering at his approach to create sets, but it seemed like he was actually on to something as the eventual winner of the competition.

If someone wrote a program that did the same thing and was able to write an algorithm to recommend which jokes to include in a set or what topics to make jokes about or to predict whether a joke would flop or not, would they be an evil tech bro trying to dehumanize artists and reduce their work to numbers on a spreadsheet? Or would they just be attempting to automate a process that human beings can do intuitively.

Remember how sorters were a trend for a little while on social media? Someone wrote a program on tumblr to allow people to rank a list of of the titles of characters/songs/shows etc. A computer program is not necessary for this; humans were able to rank their favorite things without a program since the beginning of time. However, when the list of items gets particularly long it gets harder to hold all of those comparisons in your head. A computer that's able to split a long list into a series of comparisons against each other makes this process easier. It isn't taking away your judgement or your taste, and if you don't agree with the results that it comes up with, that algorithm can always be changed.

I tell you all of this just to say that algorithms are not evil. A lot of algorithms attempt to do things that humans can do but at scales that become difficult for humans to hold in their heads. Where harm and evil come into the equations is when humans act like these algorithms are magically more objective than humans instead of being filled with the biases of their creators or the data that they are collecting and analyzing. It's harmful when people are sold a bunch of hype about what these programs can do and that leads them to fire people. It's harmful when people use them to do evil things like jail people based on facial recognition software.

To go back to my first example, I think most people would find it a bit weird but still ok for a comedian to use a program to help them create their own sets. It would become more controversial if comedy clubs were using a similar program for all comedians who wanted to perform at their venues and then making decisions to book based on that. Now it's affecting people's livelihoods. Now we want to ask questions like is that program able to be updated with new data? What about the existing data, did it take into account different audiences and their tastes or the identity of the person telling the jokes or the history of who was allowed to be celebrated as comedians? Where did this data even come from and are you allowed to use it? Great questions to ask, but a lot of tech companies don't operate that way. It's enough to create enough of a something to so that I can go to a comedy club and tell them their problems for getting butts in seats are over with a click of a button. Even if it's not true. And right now a lot of hype about AI is not true, and yet people are making serious decisions as if they were.

[danlous]

I don't have energy to reply to the post itself because i already have headache and op seems rather aggressive so it probably wouldn't go well but this post with over 1000 notes is literally incorrect. There is like. OVERWHELMING scientific consensus that going vegan or just eating significantly less animal products is one of the most beneficial things you can personally do for environment and for mitigating climate change. Yes, even if you import much of your food. Of course it's more complicated than live stock = always evil and plants and crops = always good. There are big differences between different products and countries and companies. As op said you can't fully separate animals and plants in farming industry. Counter-intuitively buying from small local farmers is not always automatically more environmentally healthy. And indigineous people and their traditions are a completely different subject. And no individual person can do much about climate change through their own choices, we need change our entire system for that. BUT there is wide agreement among the scientists and experts that people need to significantly reduce their meat consumption globally. It's part of the systematic changes we need to make. It's just a fact.

[akhenaten-imhotep]

@wayward40k

Continued from here:

Achilles was quite aware his circumstances were unusual. But such things were bound to happen given his background as a warpsmith-sorcerer. He got the job thanks to being a technomancer. His abilites, albeit passive, made a great boon for Warsmith Bellerophon’s 19th Grand Company. Intuitively knowing how machines worked and how to fix them made him valuable.

Surviving the aspirant trails and the transformation into an astartes convinced Bellorophon he was worth training. After all, weren’t the geneseed strains Fabius Bile produced meant to separate the wheat from the chaff? Only 1 out of 1000 made it.

So he learned under the tutelage of Caekar and the warpsmiths. Not only did he learned how to create daemon engines, but also everything related to daemons. How to summon them, how to bind them to metal monstrosities, how to placate them once trapped inside daemon engines and most importantly; how to capture any who escaped when the evil machines were destroyed. Caekar was pleasantly surprised after discovering Achilles could summon more powerful daemons.

He supposed his background made it easy to adapt to the use of wraithbone, and later the Xana’ath’s psychoreactive technology.

But all of those things were for him to say, and for the scion to find out. And besides, lose talk cost lives. Often the most harmless looking people were the most dangerous.

“I report directly to the chapter master. When it comes to the armoury, I am the lord and master of my domain. All of the techmarines answer to me.”

His mechadendrites curled around himself in a protective gesture. He had never had much love for imperials.