#thinking of the logistics of having an fp

[nyansequitur]

seriously considered giving Force Penguin an arknights themed sponsor. but all the companies are either a conflict of interest w/ another sponsor, someone i dont feel comfortable sponsoring FP, or the budget just isnt there for the company to be buying ad space on the FP car. and having RI sponsor them felt a bit on the nose. I'm running Mowobil 1 as a sponsor already i dont want another shitty corpo on there.

Not that I'm against AK companies showing up elsewhere though, or contracting w/ FP at some point. At the moment there is exactly one AK reference in FP art:

There is a rhine lab logo in the background of one bit of art.

[valence-e]

Dp is an interesting concept in Arknights because it kinda has a loose ludo narrative meaning but seems to say consistent within each Vanguard subclass, except I have no idea what the Charger DP generation is supposed to represent.

Agents are the easiest, they're all spie types so DP represent them getting more info on the enemy.

Flag Bearers help with communication/squad co-hesion, Elysium directly improves comms and Myrtyle/Saileach provide moral boosts and/or a rally point.

Pioneers generally are squad leaders eg Flametail/Texas/Fang/Siege, there are exceptions like Pontificus and Saga but I think their DP gen represents them giving orders so the squad can act more tactility.

Tacticians are kind of weird, they could just represent them ordering their summons around tho Beanstalks guys are trained to help logistics and Muesylye is known to do spy stuff so DP could represent something lile that for them.

Chargers are the weird one, I don't know if there is a Ludonarrative explanation for their FP gain. Bagpipe/Wildmane/Grani probably have the most in common in the group and they seem to be the just Charge in First and fuck up the enemy type, but it's not like they're getting info while doing it. At a stretch it could be distrusting the enemy tactics so boosting your own or something?

[inventors-fair]

Ya Basic - Back to Nonbasics Commentary

It's that time of the week again, folks! Here's the commentary for the remainder of the submissions. One thing I want to mention before getting into the card-by-card feedback is a few recurring themes I noticed; namely, the purpose lands serve in a game of Magic. Ultimately, big, splashy, game-changing effects should be ones that players can interact with. That's why they show up on other card types, and often cost a hefty amount of mana. Lands, on the other hand, are meant to provide you with resources in order to help you play the game. Obviously, they can do more than just tap for one mana apiece, but the line is a tricky one to draw. In the FPS analogy of magic, Torment of Hailfire is the DPS, and your lands are the support roles. Some of the submissions this week cross that line a bit, trying to make lands that are cool and flashy all on their own. And I get it! The very nature of this contest demands that you make something exciting and revolutionary so it'll stand out! But, hopefully as the winners and runners-up show, I will usually give more praise to a "boring" but well-designed card than I will to something that goes all-out on flashiness for the sake of it. Obviously that's my personal proclivity and I can't speak for the other judges, but there you have it. As always, I am available here or on Discord if you want to converse about feedback or pick my brain for reasons unrelated.

Ugh, that was a ramble. Here's the lands!

Astral Canvas by @spooky-bard

So far, we’ve only seen one enchantment land- I assume they’re a bit more dangerous than artifact lands because of the prevalence of constellation effects? Anyways, this seems like a fairly balanced one in that regard. Sure, you get an enchantment ETB, but this is a waste (heh) until you are able to play more enchantments- which are almost always colored, so this doesn’t really help you with mana fixing. I think it’s pretty solid balance-wise. The flavor is a bit generic, but I suppose that’s better than making it the billionth theros-themed enchantment effect. All in all, it’s a very solid card, and was pretty close to winning this week.

Aurora Barrows by @i-am-the-one-who-wololoes

Threshold is an old mechanic for sure, meaning that it was underutilized when it first debuted. This is a pretty simple take on it, but one that makes a lot of sense- it’s the generic rainbow land that turns itself on with the set mechanic. However, I think threshold is just a little too mid-game-y for this land to ever be useful. With conditional rainbow lands, you want to have the possibility of turning them on in the first few turns in order to really get a use out of them, but threshold is hard to hit that fast unless you’re aggressively going for a self mill strategy. Which, hey, every card has its place, but this one just doesn’t seem worth playing to me.

Breathtaking Vista by @snugz

Okay, using inspired as a mechanic to represent literal artistic inspiration is very clever, and you worked the name and flavor text in a way I can really appreciate. I do think there’s some logistical issues with the timing of the trigger and the fact that it’s on a land- this is a really easy trigger to just get absolutely buried in the flurry of actions that is your beginning phase, and I’m not sure if I see an easy way to fix that. This does put me in mind of an art-themed world, however, which is a fascinating concept to me, and one I hope you might expand on.

Cacophonous Catacomb by @izzet-always-r-versus-u

The long-lost sibling of our Threshold land above. This one fixes some of the issues I had with Aurora Barrows- namely, it helps enable itself, delirium is conditionally easier than threshold depending on deck construction, and the reward is a bit greater, with two mana instead of a single rainbow mana. However, I wonder if this might be too good? Not because of the reward, but I can think of a lot of decks that would love a free mill every turn, or four if you hit your playset of these. There is admittedly the tradeoff of not having colored mana from these, but I would like to see how this plays in a strong reanimator shell before passing any real judgement.

Collapsing Peatland by @salamileg

This is one of those cards that I thought I knew what it said, but had to come back and reread it to make sure. The addition of the word “land” here really changes this from a strong enabler card to a balanced dual land, since the opportunity cost of having to pitch another land makes it a big decision. I would personally make sure to include reminder text that it taps for black and green, but that’s a small nitpick. Also, that flavor text is really depressing. Not a criticism, but dang.

Dormant Volcano // Fields of Ash by @helloijustreadyourpost

I missed the transform clause at first and realy thought you put a repeatable board wipe on a land, and I was ready to just shake my head in disappointment. However, it’s a much cleaner design than that, and I never should have doubted you. HOWEVER, there are some logistical issues to be found here. Obviously, you want to hold the board wipe until you can be sure you’re killing as many creatures as possible, since you only have one shot to get this guy loaded with corpse counters. The issue arises when the land transforms, you go to combat, and all of a sudden you’re forgetting the delayed corpse counter triggers since you don’t have that text right in front of you. Since the land is already tapped, I think the easiest solution would be to have it transform at the beginning of the next end step. Little functional difference, but it means that it’ll be easier to remember and track the creatures that were caught in the eruption.

Forsaken Battlefield by @bergdg

Simple, classic, and... maybe not that good? Hey, it would be pretty solid in Limited, and that counts for something. Maybe Prosper EDH would like it. In a multiplayer game, you’re pretty likely to hit this at least once a round, so it’s just a matter of holding up two mana in the hopes of stockpiling more. Honestly though? I think this might play better if you up the threshold to two or three creatures dying, and then remove the mana cost and just allow it to tap. That makes it feel more like a battlefield if multiple things have to die, and removes a bit of the opportunity cost of having to hold another land in reserve alongside this one.

Harmonious Karst by @horsecrash

So, I’m honestly unsure about how to judge this one. I did ask for some consideration of Limited viability, and even if planechase could be made into a draft set (god I want it so bad Wizards please give it to me), this seems like it would be a very swingy land at uncommon, especially if it’s a cycle like the typing implies. Sure, always entering tapped is a downside, but making it so that you have two free rolls of the planar die every turn seems really good in a set built around the concept. Obviously it’s impossible to really judge this without seeing it in action, but I think I would like this better at rare, and maybe as a rainbow land instead of a dual that implies a full or half cycle of these.

Hazardous Warehouse by @0woah

Hoo boy, this land seems pretty straightforward, but I reckon the rules would get FUNKY. What happens if you reveal a Reflecting Pool or Exotic Orchard? Can those lands see the battlefield? Can the game even recognize what mana a land card in your hand is capable of producing? I would definitely have to consult with someone more experienced than me to see if this would work, and the confusion might not be worth it. It’s still an incredibly cool concept though, that’s for sure. The last ability could use some tightening up on the wording, since currently it looks like it can only exile creatures that already have that many time counters on it. Also, if you’re in even a decent shape, that’s essentially just a permanent, repeatable exile on a land, which is... a little scary. Lots of cool ideas here, but temperance is the key to making a solid design, especially a land.

Howling Cliff by @deg99

I do think we could stand to see more of the typal “if you control this creature or have one in hand” lands, like Murmuring Bosk. Wolf/ Werewolf is a dual tribe that makes a lot of sense here, and the first half of the card is great. I’m honestly not sure how to feel about that last ability- I get that you want to make allowances for old and new werewolves, but the way you balanced it, it looks like it was meant to transform a single werewolf, then you hastily added the day/night text because you realized a new werewolf wouldn’t transform- but then forgot to take into account that the ability now transforms ALL your werewolves. What’s more, at 6 functional mana, you’re likely putting most of your mana into this, meaning you won’t be casting spells, meaning the day/night becomes a bit redundant. It’s a tricky one for sure, and I don’t have a solution for you, but it does need some kind of adjustment.

Karbranth Grand Clinic by @mmmmmin

Thought you could sneak a Stormlight Archives reference by me, huh? Huh??? Jokes aside, it is important to bring up the fact that we tend to avoid Universe Beyond cards in the contests unless we explicitly ask for them, such as when we run our IP contests. That being said, I am going to assume this was an act of not knowing the rules, rather than deliberate malice, so I’m going to evaluate the card as though it was just a generic MTG land. I do like how the paying life/ lifelink abilities synergize, allowing you to hopefully regain the life you’ve lost to this land, while not making it too easy with a power boost. The third ability is where things fall apart for me a little bit, since you seem to have gone for flavor over gameplay. Citizen is a very niche creature type, so I think this could have just allowed you to sacrifice any creature. Investigate is neat, for sure- the talk of samples and death implies that killing people gives you clues- but why the coin flip? That just seems out of nowhere, and doesn’t really mesh with the design. A good question to ask yourself at this stage is “what deck does this want to be in?” At the moment, this wants to have Citizen typal, be an aristocrats deck to make the sacrifice worth it, maybe care about clues to some degree, and then also be able to manipulate coin flips. It’s pulling in a lot of different directions, which doesn’t really do it many favours, obscuring the really cool ideas you had. 

Lochthwain, Compleated by @curiooftheheart

Okay, this is definitely one of the coolest “ETB untapped” conditions I’ve seen. It makes sense that “legendary” locations should care about Legendary figures. The different take on Castle Locthwain’s card draw is also pretty sweet, still rewarding you for having a smaller hand rather than being greedy. However, I just don’t see the phyrexian flavor here? This could just be Locthwain 2.0. It has the same card draw, the same life loss, etc, so where is the Compleated part coming from? I guess that might be a little too nitpicky, and I don’t know what exactly I expected, but Compleated made me think there would be some mechanical tangent it would go on to differentiate itself from the OG design.

Marrow Dunes by @certification-wizard

One of our other Desert cards this week, and another one that cares about the graveyard- in a cool way, too. Not only does this provide prime fodder for the cards asking you to sacrifice a desert, but it then gives you more deserts to use for said abilities. It’s a nicely designed card, with one small hurdle- namely, land tokens are a pretty tough sell. The only cards that make Land tokens right now also make them creatures, because it’s all too easy to run into complicated issues with forgetting which lands are real and which are tokens, accidentally shuffling them in, etc. It’s still a very cool idea, and frankly Desert tokens probably have a lot less issues in this regard than basic land tokens would, but it’s worth pointing out.

Migrating Star Scape by @little-red-rabbit

Okay, nitpicks outta the way first- this land is technically white and blue because of the color indicator, and lands should be colorless- plus, watch the ordering of mana symbols: It should be 2WU. Apart from that, this is a really neat Treasure Planet-esque land! Ships sailing the stars, magical ocean creatures swimming in space- there’s a lot of flavor to plumb there, and this does a really good job of it. See above for my comments on enchantment lands in general. However, in a dedicated enchantment deck, that’s gonna be a LOT of unblockable fish. I think the scale needs to be brought down on that, especially since it’s a land as well, and four mana is not a particularly difficult threshold to meet.

Parotia, Wrenn’s Legacy by @marrinara-sauce

Ahh, the classic Planeswalker land. Something many a designer, including myself, have tried to make work. And frankly? You did a really good job of balancing it to make sure it wouldn’t absolutely take over the game if left unchecked. It works pretty much like a land in almost every scenario, which is something to be commended for, that kind of restraint is not usually seen in these designs. However, by their very nature, Planeswalkers warp the game around them. They change the rules, and give your opponents another “mini player” to consider. As mentioned in the intro, lands are the exact opposite of that. They should be playing a support role, not completely changing how the game is played. Combine that with the absolute feelbad of drawing into multiple of these, or losing your land drop to an aggro deck, means that Planeswalker lands are unfortunately a pretty flawed premise. 

Queiscent Summit by @grornt

Interestingly, eight or more lands was the Quandrix subtheme in strixhaven, and I kinda expected this to take on some of that flavor. Regardless, this is a fairly neat manland. It taps for mana, it filters when needed, and it can become a late game beater. I don’t have too much to say about it honestly, since it seems pretty well designed. The one minor detail that slipped by you is that it should have haste in creature form- if this is your eighth land drop, and all of a sudden you have a land you can’t tap for mana right away... it gets confusing. Haste is definitely something this design wants, in the same way that Nissa and her animation spells grant haste so you don’t have to keep track of which lands are summoning sick and which aren’t.

Stallblast Cliff by @dimestoretajic

I definitely have some mixed feelings on this one. I like the idea of a scaling reward based on when you play this, and the basic is a good rider to ensure you’re not just playing this with a bunch of fancy duals. At the same time, though, I think the two/three land threshold is a bit confusing, and this might have wanted the Dwarven Mine templating or something similar. I don’t know, maybe that’s me being too cautious. It’s entirely possible, honestly. Also, it’s worth wondering if a lightning bolt is too efficient for a land. Sure, it’s essentially a mini Valakut, but they have very different thresholds, and four copies of this can go a long way. At minimum, this probably shouldn’t be at common.

Starved Caldera by @bread-into-toast

This is a very cute way to animate a land, and I think a set of these with various “whenever you do this, it becomes a creature” would be kinda neat, especially to juxtapose the deliberate activated ability manlands that are more prevalent. I do think this wants the “triggers only once each turn” templating to make it a little cleaner, but apart from that, this looks pretty good to me. The name is just so evocative and chilling, it’s... whoof. I don’t wanna get on the bad side of whatever is hanging out there. My one other tiny nitpick is that you may wanna have your art and name agree with each other more, since there is a distinct lack of water hanging out in that art. Volcanoes are cool hot though, so I’ll let it slide.

The Font of Creation by @wolkemesser

This one is definitely tough to evaluate. The design you’re going for is a great idea, and you’ve definitely thought to account for corner cases, which is good, but I’ll be frank- this is not a land. This completely changes how the game is played, and forces your opponents to play by those rules as well, which is fine for designs! But this is a high-cost artifact or enchantment kind of design, not one that should be able to be dropped on turn 1 for free. Also with that in mind, trying to evaluate how a card can be broken, and making adjustments to reflect that, is a good way to improve a design. However, the best solution usually isn’t to just tack a new ability on there to prevent that abuse from happening, usually you want to try and reword the original ability to prevent that kind of abuse. Ultimately, this card is just trying to do way too much- the complexity and power level are more appropriate for a more mana-intensive card, and that’s after making some adjustments to clean up the various abilities on here.

Thunderstruck Starscape by @lanabutnotdelray

I really do like how creative people got with untap conditions this week, and this one is no exception. It’s clever, flavorful, and all in all just hits the mark. First things first, blah blah blah enchantment lands, I won’t get into all that again. Second- in a blue-red deck, two devotion seems laughably easy. This is saying “this enters untapped unless you’ve played a spell”, which to be fair is not nothing, but it makes the devotion aspect less necessary. This is me going off of a gut feeling, but I think 3 might be the magic number on this- keep in mind that devotion to two colors is much easier than to one, which is why the dual-color gods have to hit seven instead of five. Likewise, I could see two working for a single color of devotion, but I think for two I wanna see what a threshold of three would look like. Apart from that, love the design.

Tidal Graveyard by @azathoth-the-bored

I do love niche typal lands, they’re fun and often just make for cute designs. This one is pretty standard as far as things go- the costs seem pretty appropriate, especially since Crab is a pretty small type and it’s not known for making a ton of tokens. However, most other typal lands try to lean into the creature type’s mechanical identity. Sometimes there isn’t one, of course, but crabs do have a couple decent identities of high toughness and of milling. Leaning into one of those could have made for an even neater design, since drawing a card just seems like a bit of a generic payoff, as things go.

Undergrowth Tangle by @stupidstupidratcreatures

I am glad that you had the foresight to have the enter unconditionally tapped, since that shows you’re treating mill as the upside it is. Not an incredible upside, granted, but a playset of these will do a whole lot of work in a reanimator shell. Like the delirium design also submitted this week, I would want to see it in action to properly judge, since this could be a big power boost in the right decks.

Unending Sands by @just--a--penguin

Our final desert of the week- interestingly, most of them had to do with exiling from grave instead of sacrificing. It’s an interesting way to make sure they synergize with existing deserts rather than trying to compete in the same space as them, and invokes a really neat hypothetical draft format. Return to Amonkhet perhaps, with deserts as a proper archetype this time? Anything can happen. I don’t have much else to say here- 5 mana for a 4/4 token seems fair, especially when you have to jump through the hoop of getting this into your graveyard first. All in all, it’s a neat design for sure, though maybe the name could have been a biiit less on the nose.

Velis Vel by @sombramainexe

Hoo boy, okay. I don’t want to be too harsh on the commentary for this one, but tribal is a card type that isn’t used anymore for very good reasons. Even a single tribal card is very unlikely, and more likely to be used as a silly callback. However, this makes everything into a tribal card, and doesn’t even give most of them creature types. This would result in a lot of confusion and a LOT of memory issues, as well as some odd corner cases. For example, would Eye of the Storm gain the “Eye” creature type? Some of this could be fixed with templating, but a lot of it is just fundamentally not going to work very well. Also, Tribal lands are a whole mess on their own- even when they originally made tribal, they didn’t wanna mess with it that much. I do think this is an incredibly creative idea, and I applaud you for really pushing the boundaries- because what is this contest for if not to display creativity? However, it’s worth tempering that creativity with design principles- after all, they exist for a reason. This also serves as a great reminder that the hive mind over in our discord is always happy to discuss cards and bounce ideas off of each other if you ever want to refine your design before submission.

And that's that! You are now in the hands of the ever-capable, incorruptible @gollumni- we have five judges once again, so I will see you in five weeks! Farewell!

[mariacallous]

On Sept. 18, a bus carrying 47 people to a COVID-19 quarantine facility crashed in China’s Guizhou province, killing 27 people and severely injuring many more. The accident caused another round of heated—if brief—online discussion over China’s zero-COVID policies. One of the most popular comments, which went spectacularly viral before being removed by censors, asked: “What makes you think you wouldn’t be on this bus?”

For a generation of young Chinese whose lives have been reshaped by the zero-COVID policy, the disease often seems less of a threat than the government. “We might not die from covid-19, but we might die from covid-19 restrictions,” posted one acquaintance of mine, who had volunteered in Wuhan, China, at the start of the pandemic.

Many young people have accepted that COVID-19 restrictions will be part of their lives for the foreseeable future. A Shanghai resident in his early 30s described his life as “unimaginable.” He told Foreign Policy that right now, people entering public venues or taking public transportation need to show a negative COVID-19 test result taken within 72 hours and for venues like hotels and certain hospitals, a negative test taken within 48 hours is necessary. He now takes a COVID-19 test after lunch every other day, and queuing for it can take hours. Before he travels, even nearby, he checks the COVID-19 restrictions on the route.

“It’s almost impossible for most ordinary people to live even an average life under all the strict rules and regulations,” said Xu, a woman in her 20s who asked that only her last name be used. “It takes extraordinary amounts of effort to be ordinary.” She works for a once fast-growing sector, e-commerce, where China has been the largest market in the world since 2013.

But that growth ran straight into the pandemic wall. In April, when FP spoke with Xu, total retail sales of consumer goods showed a year-on-year decrease of 11.1 percent.

Sales at Xu’s firm dropped around 50 percent this year compared to the first half of 2021. Even among the orders placed, only half of them could be delivered smoothly due to logistic and supply chain issues caused by COVID-19 lockdowns. That cut sharply into her commissions even as living expenses in Shenzhen, where she lives, rose dramatically as COVID-19 restrictions left shelves empty and trucks stuck in transit. She’s been struggling to make ends meet and is actively considering leaving Shenzhen and returning to her small hometown.

Xu is one of many young Chinese who are struggling to find a job where they can support themselves.

According to China’s National Bureau of Statistics, the unemployment rate for Chinese between ages 16 to 24 in July was 19.9 percent, the highest since unemployment data was first made available by age group in 2018. Even before the pandemic, there were fears that China was producing too many graduates: In 2022, there will be a record-high 10.76 million college graduates, an increase of 1.67 million graduates year-on-year. As of the end of May, only 22 percent of male graduates and 10 percent of female graduates had signed an employment contract. (There is systematic discrimination against female workers in China, a problem predating COVID-19.)

The pandemic has also claimed plenty of firms: In the first half of 2022, around 460,000 Chinese companies announced bankruptcy. This is in line with China’s GDP growth: The economy grew 0.4 percent in the second quarter, the lowest rate of growth since the first quarter of 2020. And even those firms that survived the pandemic have become deeply risk averse and are avoiding expansion. Unfortunately for business, consumers are equally wary; when your city could be locked down at any moment, caution is the watchword all around.

Reports published by Zhaopin, one of the major recruitment sites, show college graduates this year have an expected monthly salary of 6,295 yuan (or roughly $870), a 6 percent decrease from 2021, and 55 percent of the graduates say they have lowered their expectations.

Even graduates from top colleges in China are having a tough time finding a job, in part because lots of them missed the spring recruitment season due to COVID-19-related stay-at-home orders and lockdowns. On May 13, Fudan University’s School of Management sent a letter pleading for help from alumni, hoping they could provide more jobs for the recent graduates. Young people who have already found jobs are facing risks of being laid off or seeing their salaries slashed.

Another result is a reluctance to have children—thanks not just to the economy but also to the lack of medical resources under zero-COVID. When Chinese President Xi Jinping ordered a lockdown in December 2021, videos of pregnant women being denied necessary medical treatment went viral on the internet; some women had miscarriages as a consequence. Such tragedy happened in several Chinese cities due to strict COVID-19 control policies. China’s National Health Commission admitted that COVID-19 had contributed to the decline in the country’s marriage and birth rate.

The young generation of Chinese are reluctant to have children, as data from the National Bureau of Statistics shows. By the end of 2021, the annual number of new births was 10.62 million, with a natural growth rate of 0.34 percent, the lowest since 1949. Even those figures may be too high; many demographers believe the country is already losing people.

In May, a showing a young man telling a police officer “we are the last generation, thanks” went viral on China’s internet. The police officer responded by warning him that noncompliance with COVID-19 control and prevention policies “will influence your next three generations.” Even though the video quickly got censored—trending Weibo hashtags “last generation” and “we are the last generation, thanks” were removed—Chinese netizens are still using this phrase frequently to express their dissatisfaction toward the ruling government and their despair about the future.

Liu, a Peking University graduate student who asked to use only her last name, told Foreign Policy that she wasn’t sure if she wanted to have kids, but if she decided to have children, she wanted to make sure they had foreign residency so they had the option to leave China in the future.

She can see her own future draining away though. Before the pandemic, she would travel abroad for conferences or training, but today, the zero-COVID measures—combined with growing political nervousness about contact with foreigners—have made it impossible. More and more websites have been censored in the past few years, which makes it extremely difficult for her to conduct academic research. She is extremely concerned that the tightened censorship might affect her studies, especially after her Weibo account got blocked when she retweeted a scientific paper about the rationality of coexisting with the COVID-19 virus.

The desire to leave China has grown as the borders have closed. The Chinese government isn’t happy about this trend; on the Baidu search index, data related to keyword “immigration” is not provided. Netizens created a new term “run-ism,” meaning the intention to leave China and live somewhere else. Search terms related to “run” started to surge around early April, which was the time that Shanghai entered lockdown, and they peaked on May 12, when the “we are the last generation, thanks” video went viral. Searches for immigration have also significantly grown since February.

In many ways, this generation of young Chinese are more nationalist, thanks to compulsory patriotic education and strengthened censorship. But lately, this generation has started to realize that many benefits they take for granted—such as the convenience of online shopping and food delivery as well as the freedom of traveling abroad—could all be taken away by the government at any moment.

A senior reporter working for a state-affiliated media outlet in China told Foreign Policy that reports focusing on how terrible Western countries were seemed to get less and less attention. According to her, the strategy—using how terrible Western countries are to redirect netizens’ focus—worked well in the past few years, but it stopped working because “everyone is busy figuring their own life and work out.” When Chinese government officials posted about anti-U.S. content on Weibo during the Shanghai lockdown, for a while, many netizens used the hashtag “call me by your name” to make fun of these official and call on them to focus more on problems within China; this hashtag was later censored.

Politics are impossible to avoid. “I feel painful living in this kind of political environment,” said one Shanghai-based author who wanted to stay anonymous due to fear of retaliation. As a writer, she was more interested in history and literature than politics. “I am not interested in politics, and I don’t even watch related news, but I keep seeing tragedies happen around me.” She wanted to avoid discussing politics, but even discussing what happens in real life sometimes would be classified as “sensitive topics,” and that realization made her feel powerless.

Occasionally, anger breaks through, such as with the Oct. 13 protest against Xi and his COVID-19 policies in Beijing. But for the most part, young Chinese are frustrated and angry in the COVID-19-driven isolation of their own apartments.

[rigginsstreet]

Maybe this is stupid but all I’m saying is that what if FP and Billy Loomis over lapped and that’s why he’s in the psych ward, because he “went a little funny” (as people like to say and he survived the woods burrow murder spree). And he isn’t going to be getting out anytime soon but that’s where he met Fred 👀

Just some food for thought

you are appealing to all of my interests! everyones always tryna make fp/billy connections and theyre all flops but this ???? is sexy 

[vro0m]

vro0m’s rewatch - 116/304

2013 Monaco GP

Okayyy today we're watching the worst race of the season aka MONACO

Massa and Grosjean (twice) ended up in the barriers, already.

Oh dear, there's a new controversy. What now. Apparently after the Spanish GP, Mercedes did a 1'000km test. Pirelli allowed them to do so I guess to understand the tyres better but it's illegal according to the FIA. Merc says the FIA signed off on it and that another team did that earlier in the year (who?). A meeting is happening. Lauda says they've been asked by Pirelli to do the test, they asked the FIA if they were allowed to do it, they said yes and he thinks other teams have been asked too. Honestly I understand the issue but if the FIA said they could do it, it's on the FIA and not on Merc. Lauda says one of them has tested earlier in the season (WHO?). Damon Hill says what they did wrong is that, as the team who struggled the most with the tyres in Barcelona, they somehow managed to get picked by pirelli to do the test. Brundle says it's impossible to do testing in Barcelona without people noticing because there's a hotel overlooking the track etc. and so why didn't they come out earlier and say it happened rather than try to hide it? Also he says it can only have been "premeditated" because such a test involves a lot of logistics. They agree Pirelli has to ameliorate the degradation of the tyres and lessen the risk of delamination and so they have work to do but they did it with one team. 

Ted says Redbull is one of the teams who are vehemently protesting what happened because Mercedes has protested many things they did before so they're trying to heat the issue up. (Is that where it all started?) Ferrari is also pissed. They're trying to get Lotus to join them but they don't want to take part in it. (Apparently last time they protested something Redbull didn't back them up.) McLaren are partners with Mercedes so they're not saying anything, even though the partnership is about to end as McLaren moves to the Honda engine. It's like children in school drama isn't it? 

Quali report. It was wet! Massa didn't take part in it, he crashed quite heavily in FP and the team couldn't get the car back in shape in time. Grosjean made mistakes 3 times during practice, touching the wall twice, he didn't make it into Q3. Seb thought they could challenge the Mercedes but he made mistakes and he's 3rd, ahead of Webber, Raikkonen and Alonso. Both McLarens in Q3 for the first time since Malaysia. It seems Jenson had a fuel pump issue and he's only 9th, though. Lewis wasn't happy with his setup during the FPs, and he's 2nd, while Rosberg got his 3rd pole in a row. But well… I'll wait and see how they do during the race before getting happy about it. 

Pinkham asks Lewis if he thinks they can get a 1-2 in the race. He says it's gonna be tough but he's excited, he just hopes to get a good race. He says it's the most special GP to win apart from your home GP, but it's also the most difficult race to win so when you do win and get to meet the Prince it's the “crème de la crème”. 

Now we hear Redbull has lodged a protest against the whole Mercedes testing thing. 

OH MY GOD BABY ROSCOE?!

They are in cars, each with a journalist. So at this point Lewis has been living in Monaco for a year. He says he loves it "I was literally so bored in Switzerland" (😭😭😭 yeah look, we have other qualities).

The journalist says he has his team-mate as a neighbour now. Ah here we go with the brocedes installment. Lewis says sometimes when he doesn't have food he just goes upstairs and knocks on his door. They're talking about how extremely difficult Monaco is. Rosberg, in his car, is asked if he's the jetski king and he says yes I am. Then they see Natalie Pinkham getting in a wetsuit and Lewis says she looks good in it. His journalist says yeah too bad you're not with her, and he tells him he’s with the other guy who's there. Ah they are actually going jetskiing. Nobody explains anything in these broadcasts damn.

Of course, Lewis immediately sprays Nico and starts laughing like an actual maniac while Nico gets water off his sunglasses.

But well, then Nico does the same thing to the skysports crew, so. Then Natalie Pinkham is riding behind Nico and he makes her jump for some reason?! They're supposed to be racing but everybody forgot to check the time. I'm very confused about the rules of this race, they really literally didn’t explain one thing, but whatever. Lewis does the same thing with Brundle?

Anyway Lewis lost. 

Now Ross Brawn says they weren't secretive about the testing, as while they were setting up for it all the other teams were still there. He also believes that it wasn't their responsibility to communicate on the test as the test was a request from Pirelli. He says they didn't try any upgrades or anything like that ; they did what Pirelli wanted which was a constant car, as consistent as possible. 

Oh. Oh. Seriously. What’s with that haircut?

I do not like it. 

Formation lap 

Bianchi is being pushed off the grid, the car has an issue. He’ll start form the pitlane

And they're racing! 

Oooh Lewis almost overtook Nico but it's so narrow here. Yellow flags, there's been something at the back. Seb is attacking Lewis, but he locks up. Contact in the midfield in the hairpin. A McLaren just cut the chicane as they are racing each other again. 

At the end of the first lap, Rosberg is still in the lead followed by Lewis, Seb, Webber, Raikkonen, Alonso, Perez, Jenson, Sutil, and JEV. Maldonado pits. Van Der Garde also pits as he lost his front wing. Seb attacks Lewis again who swerves back and forth to defend which is supposedly not allowed. And then they all go on tyre saving mode. We might reach record levels of boredom. 

Almost 10 laps in, it's an engine fire for Pic. So most probably a Safety Car. No. Actually not. 

20 laps in. The Mercedes boys are finally told they can pick up the pace a little bit. Webber pits. Raikkonen pits. Jenson pits. It's a bit earlier than they all hoped for, as they're trying to stop only once. Massa pits. Still nothing in the top 5. Ah yep! Alonso pits. 

30 laps in, we have yellow flags? Ohhh Massa crashed. Perez pits, Lewis sets the fastest lap. Apparently Massa crashed in the exact same way he did in FP3. Seb pits. It's a Safety Car, the first of 2013, actually. Surely now the Mercedes will pit? The Safety Car has picked up Seb, but the Mercs are still running free. We see Massa sitting surrounded by marshals and medics who are putting him in a foam neck brace. Grosjean pits. Maldonado pits. Rosberg is in. Lewis is in. It worked well for Rosberg who is still on the lead. But for some reason the Safety Car has released the Redbulls who went around the track and Lewis finds himself behind them. It's confusing I don't understand why they did that. 

40 laps in. Lewis attacks Webber! Oof it was close. Perez overtook Jenson after Alonso made contact with him. Maldonado crashed after contact with Chilton. Red flag. The barriers are dislodged and in the middle of the track, they need repairs. They're all getting new tyres I think. I mean it would be stupid not to. 

Ah, now Toto is Mercedes' executive director. 

Alonso is told he'll need to give back a position to Perez because he left the track to avoid contact with him and it's a "would he have not retained position if he hadn't done so" type of situation. 

The cars are back on the track behind the safety car. Perez is allowed to overtake Alonso. And Safety Car in. Lewis attacks Webber again. 

Lap 50. Lewis is still putting Webber under pressure. His tyres are starting to suffer. 

Lap 60. Bianchi DNF after a slight crash. And Grosjean crashed into Ricciardo. We see a slow-mo, Crofty says "that's Grosjean behind Ricciardo he's just gone… launched himself over the rear" in a surprised tone of voice. Brundle glumly says "he worries me that boy". (Remember when he said "he doesn't seem spatially aware of his car" in 2012? Lmao.) So that's another Safety Car. Nico almost ran over a pigeon. Here they go again. It looks exactly like it has looked since lap 1 (except Lewis isn’t P2 anymore, so actually worse).

Lap 70. And it had to happen, as Perez was racing very daringly since the start : contact with Raikkonen. He got squeezed between him and the barrier. Raikkonen pits. Contact between the two McLarens. That was weird. 

And it's the end of the race thank GOD 

Rosberg wins, Seb P2, Webber P3, Lewis P4.

Lewis confirms what Toto said at some point which is they didn’t ask him to hold back, he decided to hold back. He says actually he was told he needed a 6 second gap and maybe it was a bit more than that. And that's why he ended up behind after the pit stop. He congratulates Nico and the team. He just has to keep working harder. Pinkham asks how tough it is because it looked like bad luck. He says it doesn't put it down to bad luck, he just wasn't good enough this weekend. That's all. You can tell he doesn't wanna talk. 

[nerozane]

ship meme: OC x Koth, OC x Theron

Thanks for the ship asks Hex! I'm gonna put it under a read more because I wrote a lot, also I have a lot of feels with these two ships >_<

Ship: Wyuna (sith warrior OC x Koth)

1. What made you ship it?

I think i started shipping my sith warrior and Koth initially out of spite. It's not a great way to start a ship admittedly, but i was super tired and pissed at the Koth hate from both reddit and some peeps on tumblr. So i made one of the most popular OCs (sith warrior) to ship with Koth instead of Quinn.

However, now? They are kind of comforting when I saw them together. Wyuna was in an unhappy marriage with Quinn, and Koth was still processing trauma while trying to look out for his crew. And they both clicked for one another. They offered something that the other was missing. Wyuna learnt how to be a better person and reject a lot of the Sith dogma and Koth learnt to be more forgiving as a result of Wyuna's character growth.

2. What are your favorite things about the ship?

Their mistimed or lack of cultural context jokes. The way they give each other comfort, space and healthy outlets to work through their trauma and conflicts.

Also I love how they give each other space and both being frank should they need to end things or take a break in the relationship. By kotfe/kotet Wyuna had to deal with ending a broken marriage. Koth needed time to unlearn a lot of toxic ideas from being raised under the Eternal Empire all his life. So their relationship is a very slow burn.

3. Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

I don't think it is unpopular opinion, but i wish there was more meat to their romance. Like it was heavily there in kotfe and then dropped a lot in kotet. Koth should have been the third alliance council member that handles logistics and handles supplying aid to Zakuul ravaged worlds (but we all know why that doesn't happen, fucking racist fandom).

Ship: Kira (smuggler OC) x Theron

1. What made you ship it?

It might be a very shallow response, but it was because Theron was asian coded and they were my asian couple in sci-fi comfort ship. Like it was so nice to see a romancable asian male character that doesn’t deploy racist undertones to when asian male characters have any notion of romance. Sshhhh i know fandom and even some at bioware code him as whitey mcwhitey as the reason...

2. What are your favorite things about the ship?

How awful they are with being frank with their feelings. Both of them are used to be self-dependent, so their relationship started with coy flirts. But when it comes to deep relationship stuff, they both get immediately flustered. Which is one of my weakness when both of them are bi doofuses who have no true emotional experiences.

There’s also an element of playfulness in their relationship, so even if it’s not pure horny with their interactions, they have a sense of platonic banter as well which i like a lot with smuggler and theron.

3. Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship? 

I wish they had an opinion in game to have a middle ground for the relationship besides dump or full forgiveness. I know there’s a limitation on choices thru the game, but i think i would have liked to explore Theron and Kira having that opportunity to like... actually do the repairing of trust in that relationship. I know they hinted it in the FPs (theron leaving the crystals in umbara and the clues to nathema) but i would have liked more side conversations where it gets to the hard stuff. I kind of want that because both Kira and Theron had grown up without much parental figures to look upon a good relationship.

So I would have liked not the complete perfect happy ending. Like have Kira wanting to give Theron a second chance but also it’s not straight into makeout and total forgiveness.

[akkivee]

Tbh I think the only way I could ever see KR splitting the current teams up is if it had to do with the DRBs. The current setup is great because of all the buildup and development the teams are getting and because the current ones are probably most popular to the fans (everybody gets some love even if some teams are slightly more popular than others). IF, though, a team like MTR or FP or whoever won multiple DRBs in a row without giving other teams a chance KR might split them to even it out imo

those are my thoughts exactly when it comes to the monetary/logistical/whatever upper management word i'm looking for aspect of a division shuffle lol. hypmic seems to have a vision in mind so i think whatever happens with the votes/results less affects the overall story, just when things happen. like the reason mtr drama had been so light up until now and why we got papillon is because the champions were given a break. the reason why fp was given so much lore drop is, in part because they are the central team of lore lol, but also because they wanted a fp/mtc battle and i'm pretty sure before stella, samatoki was hypmic's most popular character second to doppo and we already had mtc/mtr lol. so i wouldn't worry about changes to dh's story too much; heck it might happen even sooner as central to lore team #2 lol

but yeah, if mtr somehow manages to take the championship again, i could see a division shuffle happening sooner due their back to back wins. that's a double edged sword tho, i can see the following drb being an outpouring of love for the return of the og setup and mtr fans are fcking rich yo lol

[raidbossmadi]

18, 28 💜

 18. What is a line/scene you’re really proud of? Give us the DVD commentary for that scene.

Ho-Kay, I actually put this off for awhile because I needed the scene I wanted to answer this for to actually be publish and it has been for a couple months now so lets talk about  Familiar Path, Different Place Chapter 10 Because the trailer over the cliff is what I’m proud of. 

So first of all, the trailer over the cliff scene was a big factor in the choice to make Edge of Chaos a mixed Canon series. I was upset that in FIlm canon Sarah gets one of her moments of badassery taken from her. SO that wasn’t going to happen in Fp-Dp. 

I spent a lot of time working out the logistics of how Sarah who is the shortest of the bunch at 5′3″ would deal with getting Ian whos 6′4″ out of this. Nick ended up coming in for assist but Sarah dealing with having to powerlift her big ass boyfriend was moved to the end of the fic beach rescue. 

Ian injuring his leg here, again lifted from book canon because I wanted to have Sarah perform field surgery for the angst potential (and suffered every minute writing it but it was delicious). 

I also knew I was going to avoid having Eddie die because I have plans for him in later fics, so again I borrowed from the book where-in its Thorn who comes to rescue Ian, Sarah, and Nick without encountering the Tyrannosaurs. They get Ian in the back of Mercedes because despite the upper trailer being considered safe in the book I didn’t think this group of very intelligent people would chance it. 

Then of course that leads to the surgery scene where Sarah gets herself some trauma she’ll certainly have to work through in the future.

In [ fic], what is a happy, post-fic headcanon you have about [pairing]?

Since I talked about Fp-Dp above I’ll use Ian/Sarah (this is light spoilers for Beautiful and Vulnerable so whoopsie)  After the events of Fp-dp Sarah proposes, it’s not that she thinks Ian won’t but she knows he’s  stuck in his own head to often and she hopes that taking this step for him will help him mellow out.  @mauserfrau

[kireiryuusei]

Has there been any word as to how the next round of the DRB would go? Because while I do love the new divisions added, it bring a logistical problem in a way. Since we have this first round and then there’s gonna be three teams left. How are they gonna settle this? Are they gonna have a three way battle? That could be cool at least in like manga form since it’d basically be a no holds barred grudge match with all the teams possibly trying to pinpoint who to take down or if they have the firepower, to blast the entire field. 

Are they gonna do a multi-round team vs team? Like for example if FP, DH, and MTR won, that they do it where it’s DH vs FP, DH vs MTR and FP vs MTR and the winners are based on who does the best out of these? I mean, it’d mean more music to be released and then sold but it’d also be a lot to record y’know? 

And a thought occurred to me. And believe me it sounds super crazy but I kind of wish it could happen. What if, it’s two teams going against each other and then the third team faces off against the Party of Words? I feel it strange that they showed up in all the performances. Not that I don’t love them and it gives them a chance to perform but for some reason going into DRB this time, it felt like their presence loomed over the divisions this go around. 

And it’d be cool since it’d basically allow for us to have a secret team participate that seems to be favorite to fans. And storywise, almost every division has at least one person on their crew that’s ready to go in against the Party of Words. Like the only ones I cooooullllddddd possibly argue not having a strong enough tie would be the Buster Bros and Badass Temple. Not saying they couldn’t but just like......compared to some shit going down for some other teams, I don’t think they have as much of a beef. So it’d be easy if either or both of those two win, they’d face the other team and someone else gets to deal with Otome, Ichijiku and Nemu.

Also that doing this would make the whole thing pretty neat in terms of progression because then it’d be the winner in the division vs division battle against the winner of the Chuuoku vs division battle. Plus it doesn’t really risk the party as much in a sense since it’d basically be like a ‘oh hey, we just wanna show some support and fun with these guys.’ I mean despite what’s on the line for the guys, this is ultimately entertainment for the ladies that reside there. Could have some interesting ramifications, which is always fun. 

Is this highly unlikely? Oh absolutely. I even doubt this coming to fruition. But since it came up, figured to share what I guess is a what if of Chuuoku playing with them further in a way to shake things up with the DRB. 

[gayenerd]

This is the interview with Adrienne that is teased in that Mankato punk blog I talked about awhile ago.

Green Day frontman's wife remembers Mankato

By Amanda Dyslin

The Free Press

July 01, 2009 04:38 pm

— Adrienne Nesser, living in Mankato in her early 20s, had a long-distance friendship and flirtation with a guy so interested in her, he and his band planned tours around Minnesota just so he could see her.

Green Day wasn’t famous at the time. In Adrienne’s own words, they were just another band she had seen a couple of times in the Cities.

They were both also seeing other people. But there was something pretty powerful that must have connected them over a distance of thousands of miles. There had to be. Otherwise, she never would have agreed to leave her home state of Minnesota to move to California to be with him.

Just weeks later, they were married July 2, 1994, Adrienne was pregnant with the couple’s first of two sons, and Green Day’s album “Dookie” became a household name. All of this seemed to happen over night.

Finding Adrienne and talking to her about all of this was a big part of our Campaign Green Day mission. (See accompanying story for background.) Today, we accomplish that goal as Adrienne talks to us about life in Mankato, including her favorite Pagliai’s pizza toppings, how quickly her life changed when she headed West, and also the big question we’ve been pursuing for weeks: Would Green Day ever come back to Mankato to play a show?

Free Press: Tell me a little bit about your college experience at Minnesota State University. Were you a studier? A partier? On the student senate?

Adrienne Armstrong: I was a transfer student to MSU. I was at the U of M for a few semesters, then Minneapolis Community College. I was dating my then boyfriend who lived in Mankato, so it seemed a good place to go to finish my degree.

I loved school, especially when I was in the more focused classes of my degree. And I was definitely a partier. I found it easy to balance both. I loved the What’s Up, and for the life of me can’t remember the name of the bar across from Pagliai’s that I absolutely loved. (Square Deal?)

I graduated in 1993, but I had turned in a paper after one of my classes ended, and the professor never posted the grade. I had to call the school to argue the fact. They finally sent my degree in 1996.

FP: Why sociology? What interested you about the subject and what career did you have in mind?

AA: I have always loved the dynamics of social groups, clicks and society classes. It’s what triggered my interest in social justice and being an activist. I really didn’t have any career in mind while going through college. Occasionally, I would think of getting a credential to teach, but it was always a fleeting idea.

FP: You seemed to have a ton of jobs while you were here. Your Mankato friends have listed Pier 1 Imports, the Piercing Pagonda, Pagliai’s and The Jungle among them. Am I missing any? Any favorites?

AA: I really only had a few jobs in Mankato. It was hard for me to find a job because I had dreadlocks and dressed kinda funky. So the first place that took a chance on me was The Jungle and the bowling alley. It was a trip. I really liked working there, and the bowlers warmed up to me.

I worked at Pagliai’s all through college, and that was super fun. I worked with lots of my friends and the pizza was awesome. I worked at Pier 1 after I graduated. I was a manager there. I loved that job. I was hired at the very beginning; we put the store together from the ground up. The people I worked with were fun, and I loved running the store. I remember unloading a truck full of merchandise with 70 below windchills. The whole town was shut down. Good times!

FP: Do you have any favorite moments in Mankato? Any night or event or time that really stands out for you when you think about your college years?

AA: My entire experience of living in Mankato was fantastic. I loved living there. It was a small town with such a heart. Camping in our friends T-PEE, the festivals in Sibley Park, tubing in the storm drains, biking, which seemed, at the time, the biggest hill to campus, and the really cool friends/people I hung out with.

FP: I read you met Billie Joe in 1990 at a show in Minneapolis. Had you heard his music before that show? How famous would you say Green Day was at the time?

AA: I met Green Day for the first time at a house party in Dinkytown. A friend of mine invited me to a party on the Fourth of July. So I went with my boyfriend at the time to check out the bands.

I saw a couple songs, then we left to watch fireworks. The next day they played The Varsity. I ended up going to that show, too. My friend, Erica, introduced me to the guys that day. I wouldn’t say they were famous.

I mean, I went to a lot of shows ... saw a lot of bands. They were just another band. This was the first time they played Minnesota.

FP: Was it difficult having a relationship long-distance when Billie Joe was on tour after you’d first met?

AA: Billie Joe and I were friends first. And never tried to be exclusive. I was in a dwindling relationship that was off and on. And I know he dated many other girls. We grew over time. After I graduated from college, I finalized the break-up with my longtime boyfriend and was single for almost a year. During that time, I saw Billie Joe a few times, but it wasn’t until I moved out to California that things solidified pretty quickly.

FP: I couldn’t get anyone to clear this up for me: Was it because of you that Green Day started coming to Mankato and playing shows? Or was Mankato a part of their early touring locations?

AA: Umm ... probably. : )

He booked a mini tour that started in Sioux Falls, S.D., and then came through Mankato, Minneapolis, to Beloit, Wis. So yes, to see me. Very Romantic ... .

FP: Talking to people around here now, it seems like the band was playing shows everywhere here in town: garages, basements and that show on a farm near St. Peter. Was it really like that? Or was it just a few shows that just sort of popped up when they happened to be here?

AA: Green Day always played anywhere, any time. So when they were in town as a band they would play garages, basements, street corners and even that farm on top of spools. Billie Joe came to Mankato a few times on his own for visits as well.

FP: Did you have any idea in the early days of your relationship that Green Day was going to hit the big time?

AA: I really didn’t think of it. I just knew that I loved the band and their music. They were so fun to watch live. ... But it wasn’t in my thoughts at all what their future held. I remember being with a friend in Minneapolis, and we were watching MTV, and their “Basket Case” video came on. It freaked us out. We were like “Oh My God, how crazy!! They are on TV!”

FP: A few people who knew you said your decision to move out West to marry Billie Joe happened quickly. It was like one minute you were here and then you were gone. Was that how you remember it, too? Were you scared?

AA: Billie Joe had asked me to move out to California and give us a try. I was Totally scared. But super excited. It was a new adventure, and I was ready. I had a big garage sale — sold as much as I could, including my favorite blue creepers, packed a mini U-Haul and drove out with my 15-year-old brother and my friend, Holly, who was already making the trip. I figured I’d give it the summer and see what happened.

FP: It seems as if shortly after you were married “Green Day” and “Dookie” became household names. What was that time like for you? Was it strange to suddenly be living the life of a celebrity? Is it still strange?

AA: I was out two weeks and Billie Joe asked me to marry him. It was crazy. But it was a crazy time for us — and I said yes. It was a whirlwind. I was pregnant, and his band was everywhere. It was completely overwhelming. We were just trying to navigate it all — it was a bumpy ride for sure. It took years for us to find our footing. ... But sometimes I think it was all those trials that made us stronger and brought us to where we are today.

FP: What’s your life like now?

AA: It feels pretty normal for me now. I am a mother of two amazing kids. So I am busy with school, sports and all their activities. And Billie Joe’s life keeps us busy. It’s never boring ... that’s for sure.

FP: What are your roles at Atomic Garden and Adeline Records? Does that keep you pretty busy?

AA: My friend and I are partners in Atomic Garden. She’s a very good friend who is amazing and patient. I work as much as I can when I am in town, and we do all the buying together. We have an incredible manager who does most of the day-to-day stuff. She allows us to live our lives and still have such a beautiful store. I don’t do anything with Adeline Records anymore. I worked the label for years when it first started. But I have moved on. : )

FP: Do you still keep in contact with anyone from the Mankato area?

AA: I keep in touch with a few people. But sadly lost touch with a lot of them.

FP: And now for the $65,000 question. What do you think our chances are of getting Green Day to come back to Mankato to play a show some time? Are small markets like ours pretty much out of the question at this point?

AA: I would love to imagine Green Day playing Mankato again. I don’t think it’s out of the question. They still play small clubs and stuff. They are still the same in that way — they will play anywhere. It’s more just the logistics of it all.

FP: How about you? Could we get you to come back some time? How about a big party catered by Pagliai’s?

AA: I would LOVE to get back to Mankato for a visit. So let’s keep in touch and make this happen! It’s been too long since I had a Pagliai’s pizza with onion, green olive and extra sauce. Cheryl Rueda made me the BEST pizzas!!!!!

Copyright � 1999-2008 cnhi, inc.

Photos

Adrienne Armstrong lives in California and co-owns Atomic Garden, an eco-friendly clothing store, with a friend.

[gonewiththevoid]

Saw some posts on the dash joking about Arknights being a real game (like a MOBA, a FPS, a fighting game) but I wanted to try and take it a mite seriously. I’ll be theorizing a fighting game because I’m more used to them. Under a read more to spare space.

So I’m thinking a traditional 1v1 fighter, no tagging system. Each side has a health meter, obviously, and the resource bar is the either called a Cost/DP bar or an Arts bar. It’s divided in two equal sections, and for half you get either a super or a Roman Cancel like in Guilty Gear, and for all the bar you get a big cinematic hyper (that isn’t exclusively a finisher like in BlazBlue).

I don’t know if I’d put a burst or a powerup mechanic, but they could be implemented. I’m picturing it at about the “pace” of Guilty Gear or Under Night in Birth: airdashes and decently long combos without being like. BBTAG.

I also don’t think it would need an Arc System Works style “gimmick button” (like Drive in BlazBlue or Unique action in Granblue Versus). Character gimmicks could be covered in other ways. I also don’t think a variant system like the Moon system a la Melty Blood or the recent Mortal Kombats would fit. Still, I think even without these it’d be possible to make a decent amount of fun to play characters.

All that said, considering recent 2D fighting game releases, I’d say the base cast should cover about 16 characters for a good mix of RI personnel and some antagonists. So without further ado, and trying to keep each entry short, I propose the following cast:

1. Amiya, obviously. A Shoto, equally as obviously, but with a focus towards projectiles without going full zoner. Decent at everything but can hold her own against pure zoners and projectile wars. Spirit Burst as a projectile spam super, and Chimera as her hyper; they don’t stun or kill her because that’d be crippling but they have long ending lag.

2. Blaze. A basic but solid Rushdown character. Good normals with the chainsaw and some mixups on her specials. Packs a decent meterless reversal as well. Chainsaw Extension Module as a super; it buffs her chainsaw-based attacks with more range, making her hitboxes really disjointed. Boiling Burst as her hyper, probably.

3. Flamebringer, because he feels like a natural fit. Katana/Iaijutsu character in the vein of Jin Kisaragi or a less teleport-y Yuzuriha. Good pressure and range but weak defense. Could potentially have a stacking mechanic like Johnny’s Mist Finer. Hard execution but worth the effort. Good neutral game too. Definitely uses his second sword for his hyper, Blade Demon.

4. Hoshiguma. Bruiser type. Heavy, slow, and big normals with way shorter combos but good damage anyways. 100% has a command grab. Really good defense too; only sticking point is she’s slow and she could use a bit more horizontal range. Absolutely has a counter super in Thorns. Saw of Strength is her hyper and has deceptively long range on startup.

5. Indra as the obligatory boxer. At least two variations on a dash punch. Definitely has a dodge move with like 3 different followups. Has a rekka sequence. Close ranged as hell but can’t get pushed out once she Gets In. Launcher move is an uppercut. Considering Armorcrusher, probably has guard breaks too. Hyper is Sundered Soul.

6. Gavial. Here to represent Medics and also to be the grappler. This croc WILL Death Roll you as a command grab that takes off 25% of your health. Cane wack special. Has a command grab, an anti-air command grab, a command grab super and hyper. Look I know I’m ignoring gameplay and lore here but nobody else came to mind as the token grappler OR medic.

7. Texas because no way Penguin Logistics isn’t included. Really, really good pressure but apart from her Sword Rain super has little in the way of defense. Okay reach with her sword, but tons of multi hitting moves because not including her summon swords into her moveset would be a crime. Get in, pressure, do combo, and hope you can read the enemy’s reversals.¸

8. Lappland because c’mon. Obligatory dual wielding character. Sword beams for projectiles. Does a little bit of everything, and well at that. Silence probably manifests as preventing the enemy from gaining meter with certain moves. Wolf Spirit as a super. Has a special clash intro and a unique vs theme for Texas.

9. Executor. Literally just the Terminator. Has Naoto Shirogane’s Raid but with super armor and a shotgun. Also has a bullet/ammo system like Eltnum however, so smart use of shotgun blasts is key. Probably also has a shoulder bash with bullshit frame advantage. This means he has conditional midrange and needs to get close otherwise. Hyper is Final Journey.

10. Manticore. Patient character. Gameplan is to abuse tail normals and specials to poke from afar and punish mistakes, and force mistakes or whiffs by placing traps (her energy spikes) that you can also convert into combo. Has Arakune’s Invisibility move for maximum guessing if she decides she wants to Go In. Decent defensive options. Toxic Overload is her hyper.

11. Mayer. Zoner/Summoner, duh. Meebos are a special move, they don’t attack unless another special is used to make them do so. Annoying disjointed and long with her cool robo-arms. Not super combo oriented but god help you in the corner if she sets up. Detonate and Recycle is a super, it summons one Meebo in front of her and then immediately explodes them all.

12. Siege. Complete gorilla. No thoughts, head empty gameplay. Simple close and midrange moveset, a reversal, a dash attack (probably with projectile invincibility), maybe a rekka or a command grab. No projectile though. Play neutral focused, catch mistakes, or go in: she can do it all and still get good damage. Vs theme for her and Indra.

13. Cuora. Stance character. Either in the Field Stance or Batting Stance. Field is her base state; okay normals with the bat, a counter, a baseball dive for a low dash attack, but otherwise a little subpar. Batting Stance makes nearly immobile but allows for bonkers damage if played right or especially in the corner. Hyper is literally just Chie’s Instant Kill but baseball flavored.

14. Kroos. Semi-joke character. Annoying zoner piece of shit. Has both straight crossbow shots and angled falling shots, as well as ricochet trickshots. Has an invincible movement option to both get the hell out and reposition herself. Low damage and short combos however; you gotta be willing to commit to the long game.

15. Crownslayer. Chipp Zanuff. Every ninja character ever. Low damage but good pokes. Teleports based on screen position. Dies to a stiff breeze. Can try to rush you down or abuse mobility options (of which she has many) until you make mistakes and then capitalizes on them. This is her only opportunity to ever be taken seriously.

16. FrostNova. Full zoning. Ice shards. Ice spikes. Advancing ground ice shards. The whole works. Moving is for suckers. She keeps the chapter 6 chilled and frozen mechanic on her strong specials. Of course, she has like -2 defensive abilities to compensate her avalanche of projectiles. Definitely has an ice-storm super. Vs theme for her and Amiya.

And of course:

Talulah. Absolute bullshit SNK boss. Huge and fast sword normals. Huge and chip-heavy fire specials. Gains meter passively or some bullshit. Probably has a teleport for some reason. Unplayable.

Any criticism or commentary welcome, this is super unfiltered and raw.

[imreallyloveleee]

"half of me wants to start listing out every logistical inconsistency i can think of as a result of this episode " yes please?

ok sure, i am nothing if not a pedant for the Riverdale canon, such as it is:

by the time they’re in detention, Alice is already pregnant enough that a 90s-era store-bought pregnancy test confirms it. they play the game for a minimum of 5 weeks, based on how much detention they got. Hal Cooper must have literally fucked her without a condom in the bathroom of Pop’s on that first date and grossly misunderstood how long the human gestation period is in order for any of this to make sense

sidenote: a lot of people knew it was FP’s kid! like, at least 3 other people! 3 other people who hated Alice Cooper! none of them told him!?

so Fred already had a band called the Fred Heads, with its own drum kit and everything, that FP was also a member of? but they weren’t friends when detention started? but ehh I guess they sort of were because they streaked together? I’M SO CONFUSED

this one i’m generously willing to write off as Alice being an unreliable narrator when it comes to the nuances of other people’s relationships

at what point were Fred and Hermione actually “dating” enough that they went to a drive-in movie together?

quick somebody look up the exact release dates of Candyman and tell me whether the timeline works out 

someone else pointed out: the Lodges were supposed to be rich all along, with the Blossoms sending them monthly payments for like 8 decades…but Hermione’s mom thinks Hiram is a “scrub”?

none of the kids in the Midnight Club had any idea that Penelope was adopted by the Blossoms. so like. what did the REST of the school think when her and Clifford up and got MARRIED?

I’m sure there’s more I’m not thinking of at the moment, feel free to add your own l o l

[thestagthatlovedthewolf]

I’ve just been thinking a lot about the logistics of Alice’s Serpent tattoo... Alice had been hiding it for more than 20 years...

It means that everytime she went to the beach or pool, she needed to be wearing shorts the all time... it means that her daughters have never seen her in her underwear - if she’s low in toilet paper or shower gel or shampoo, she can’t call for them... I want a scene of Betty seeing her mother’s tattoo, especially if she decides to get one, that would be a conversation I would like to see and for her tattoo to be more like her mother’s than Jughead’s...

Also sex with FP means that she can show her tattoo, that in the afterglow, she can rest there with her tattoo showing... I imagine that everytime with Hal she would have to worry to cover it - this shame she felt about who she was, and the desire to hide it... So I think there’s something particularly special to just be able to relax after

And then finally I LOVE that her Serpent clothes - the ones from SoDale and Whyte Wyrm - are shorts, they are clothes that were probably inches from showing her tattoo... that just adds another layer to her choice of clothes!! :)

[fredheads]

So what is the story behind Fred's dui?

This is my story, but it’s only one of many possibilities. 

Short form: got really drunk after the divorce, thought he was less drunk than he was, went for a long drive on rural backstreets to think and process and cry and blast bruce springsteen, got pulled over. 

Does Fred have an alcohol problem? (We’ll leave the pills out of it for a hot second) What the show makes pretty visible is that Fred uses a beer to wind down after work and after something particularly stressful. He also has a stocked AF liquor cabinet. Obviously, these two things don’t necessarily add up to a dependency, but alcoholism isn’t a black and white issue, and I think there’s ample evidence to raise the possibility. 

My personal take is that he has no history with it and was really low intake while they were getting pregnant/raising Archie, but also has a super high tolerance and if he opens that box it comes way open. Fred can hold his liquor and he can get super bombed if he’s trying. 

Does Fred have a pill problem? We got that once and then never again, so your guess is good as mine. There is a proven correlation between opioid addictions and construction workers, and a history of companies pushing pain pills on blue-collar workers to get them back on the job faster after an injury, leading to dependency. We’re gonna leave it out for the purposes of my story but a DUI doesn’t have to necessarily be alcohol-related. 

HERE’S MY TAKE: Fred’s a cry in private kind of person. Shower. Car. The jalopy? The fuckin truck shaggin wagon? Fred’s a car guy. He does his best thinking when he’s driving, preferably on rural backstreets where it’s not too busy and his mind can just wander. It steadies his nerves a little bit. 

So one evening quite soon after Mary left him and after Archie’s in bed (Archie’s 13-14 years old, for context) he’s sitting around getting loaded in the living room, fully by accident, because the divorce hit him really hard and he’s slipping into his only good coping mechanism. He has a lot of grief in him and he needs a place to cry that won’t wake up his son, but he also just needs to think and process and be alone. Bam. He’s gonna go for a drive. 

He has no idea how drunk he is (he’s definitely drunk enough not to think through the logistics of leaving his 13-year-old at home to go driving after pouring half his secret supervillain liquor cabinet down his throat) but he feels clearheaded enough to drive, so he’s probably fine. He’s numb with grief and he knows he’s going to keep drinking if he keeps sitting here so he makes himself move, picks up the car keys, isn’t really sure what he’s doing until he’s sitting in his car on rural route 6, not paying attention at all to the speedometer. In the back of his drunk mind, he knows he chose the rural route because there wouldn’t be drivers around to hit if he might possibly have had a little too much. But he won’t admit it to himself. 

For a second he feels clearheaded and okay and relaxed, even though he’s crying without noticing and weaving a bit and not obeying the speed limit. It’s Tom who pulls him over because Tom’s the only cop in town and brings him into the station. He gets a night in jail and the whole time he’s very patiently (yelling) trying to explain to Tom that he wasn’t driving drunk and that he’s not actually drunk at all and Tom is stupid and he’s not an alcoholic, that’s FP’s territory, and that’s not why Mary left him and oh god Mary left him - 

Fred sobering up and realizing what he’d done was the worst part. The thing that really eats at him is that he left Archie at home alone. Yes, Archie was old enough to be home alone and Alice Cooper lives next door, so he was never in any danger. But for a hot second, Fred put himself before his son, and that���s never happened before. And as much as it was four AM and no one was around, he knows he put anyone else who might have been on the road in danger, and that’s scary. That’s ample material for self hate. 

He used his one phone call on Alice, woke her up and told her Archie was home alone and begged her to go over the next morning and tell Archie he got called into work early and make sure he got breakfast and off to school okay. Alice is a smooth operator. It was her carpool morning anyway, and Archie gets invited to Betty’s for breakfast all the time. She got him fed and off to school and Fred was back by the time he got home and Archie remains none the wiser to this day. 

Tom dropped him off at home in last night’s clothes with a hangover and a speeding ticket and a brand new criminal record while Archie was at school (Remember, Mary had just left so he wasn’t used to the house being so empty, being so alone). He let himself in the back door with the realization of what he’s done choking him and his house was so empty and still. The sun is blinding on his hangover and the house is dusty and he staggers to the bathroom, throws up, cries, pulls his hair, curls up on the couch for a nap, and does all these things on and off until it gets near to the time Archie’s supposed to be home from school. 

When Archie gets home at three, Fred's showered and dressed in normal clothes and shaved, acting totally chipper and okay. Archie slept through the night and has no idea Fred ever left. 

Again, this is only one possibility and the one I like best, there are so many other explanations. 

Sidebar: A long time ago, @softreggiemantle and I were discussing if he would have ever told Mary, and we came to the conclusion that a) Fred could have settled his fines in secret and pulled it off even in the smallest town ever b) he would NEVER tell Archie even if he did tell Mary but c) if he told Mary, it wasn’t because the burden of keeping the secret was too heavy but more because he wanted to be punished for it and wanted someone to take over the burden of punishing him. He wanted Mary to hate him because he still felt like he deserved to suffer for what he did. 

It’s the only thing on his criminal record (that’s canon!) and his darkest secret one of his dark secrets. 

[nadjaofstatenisland]

I have no excuse for how long this took. Last time I waited this long to update a multi chapter, I lost most of my readers. So here’s to hoping you guys still love me and my broken promise to have this done like seven weeks ago.

start from the beginning or read on fanfiction.net

entire chapter under the cut

Monday, April 12th, 1992

“Did you hear something?

“Like what?”

Fred turned around and looked back up the path they were following through the woods. It was dark, but he could just make out the distant lights of the Lodge’s cabin. His eyes were still adjusting to the darkness and he couldn’t see much otherwise.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It almost sounded like a scream.”

“A scream,” FP muttered under his breath. He grabbed Fred’s arm and gave him a firm tug, but Fred’s feet stayed planted. “Come on, Freddy. You didn’t hear anything. You’re just looking for an excuse to go back.”

“Well yeah, but.” Fred turned and looked to his friend. “I swear, I heard a scream. What if something happened?”

“What? In the five minutes since we’ve walked away from the house?” FP tugged at Fred again and Fred recludantly started walking behind him. He kept his hand on Fred’s arm, in case he decided to stop again. “This isn’t a movie. There is no one waiting outside with a chainsaw or machete trying to get them.”

Fred pulled his arm out of FP’s grip, but kept pace with him. “But how can you know that?”

“I know that because we’re out here right now. We are the scariest thing in these woods. If there really was some psycho on the prowl, why not go for us? Easy targets, strolling through the woods in the dark, no weapons, only one brain between us.”

Fred clapped his friend on his back. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. You have a brain too. And as much as I love you thinking out the logistics of why they’re all safe in there, you can’t know for certain they’re okay.”

“Okay, but I think I can assume nothing major has happened in the past five minutes. If there was a scream it was probably because Hermione broke a nail or Coop saw a mouse. You ever hear him scream? It could break glass. Just let it go, Fred. We waited. Mary didn’t wake up to let us in. We’ll try again in the morning.”

Fred slowed his pace. FP turned back to glare at him, but Fred couldn’t make out the dirty look through the darkness. FP held in his sigh and slowed down to fall back in step with Fred.

“I just won’t be able to forgive myself if something happened to them and we could have stopped it. How could you explain to Alice’s dad if something happened to her and you had the power to -”

FP groaned. “To stop what? We were right outside! Anyone or anything trying to get into that house would have had to go through us first. Or at least passed by us.”

“Unless they came up the actual road instead of the walking path through the woods. Which probably would have been safer, you know. And less creepy.”

“Safer, sure. But we’d have more of a chance of getting caught or spotted. Imagine someone sees us and calls the cops? How are we going to explain why we’re walking around this nice secluded vacation neighborhood in the middle of the night? Do you want a record, Fred? Because when we tell them we came all the way up here to spy on some girl you’re crushing on, that’s exactly what you’re going to get.”

“But -”

“But nothing. How do you think Hermione’s parents will like that, huh? You’re not exactly their favorite person to begin with. Now you’re following their daughter three hours away, to what? Wish her luck as she moves on to the next guy?”

“No, I’d -”

“Try and stop them? Profess your love? Oh please. All you’d end up with is a fat lip and a restraining order.”

Fred sucked his teeth and looked down. “I just have a bad feeling about this is all.”

“So do I, but low and behold, here I am, Fred. For you!”

Fred kicked at the dirt. “And because you need to keep an eye on Alice, unless you want your ass beat by her crazy, drunk dad.”

“Alice can take care of herself. You know that as well as I do. I could have just spent these few days sleeping on your couch and pretending I went after her, but no. I know how much this meant to you, so I gave in.” FP turned away and started back down the path. After a few seconds, Fred groaned and walked after him.

“Yeah, because I never give in to any of your dumb ideas, right?” Fred said as he caught up.

“Whatever. At least my ideas are more fun than freezing my balls off in middle of - what was that?”

Fred grasped his arm. “It sounded like something going through the trees.” He squinted, but there still wasn’t enough light to make out anything clearly. “An animal?”

FP exhaled hard through his nose. He grabbed the sleeve of Fred’s denim jacket. “Yeah. Yeah, it’s probably just like a deer or something.” He tugged at his friend. “Or like a - a bear.”

“Are there bears out here?”

“We’re in the woods. I guess so.”

“So so we run?”

“No shit we run.”

Mary was on a beach with Fred and Hermione. She was building a sandcastle while the two of them made out on a blanket, breaking away every so often to tell her what a good job she was doing. When she was done, she turned to them triumphantly, awaiting their approval. A wave came and washed the entire thing away and she had to start all over. Fred and Hermione laughed and laughed until they were red in the face. Hermione stopped all of a sudden and let out an ear piercing scream.

Mary awoke with a start, but the screaming didn’t stop. She took in her surroundings as she stretched out her sore legs. Alone in the living room, lights still on, fire just dying out. Who the hell left her out here? Someone had draped a blanket over her instead of just waking her up.

Some friends.

She stumbled in her sleepy state toward the hall leading towards the bedrooms. That’s where the commotion was coming from. The screaming had died down to a frantic chatter. She tried to shake the fading dream from her head as she rounded the corner. There was probably some underline meaning there, but she never took too much stock in interpreting dreams. It was almost as bad as following horoscopes.

She stopped suddenly at the start of the hallway and pinched her leg. She was definitely awake, but god, did she wish she was still dreaming.

Her four friends were in front of the closed door of the master bedroom with various looks of distress stamped across their faces. What’s worse, not one of them was fully dressed. Hiram had lost his shirt and Alice her skirt and several blouse buttons. Hal and Hermione were just in their underclothes.

Mary, the right sensible one of the group, took one short nap and woke up to the beginnings of an orgy. How had she ever gotten talked into this?

“Just slow down.” Hiram had his hands on Hermione’s shoulders, but she was squirming under his grip, refusing to look him in the eye. Tears were running down her face leaving streaks of mascara.

Alice and Hal stood a few feet back. Alice’s arms were crossed over her partially exposed chest and Hal was bouncing in place, one hand gripping Alice’s shirt.

“I told you already, Hiram!” Hermione exclaimed. “There was someone out there! Watching me! He had his, his big, stupid face just pressed up against the glass like he was ogling me! And, and and he saw me see him and he ran! I, I, I’ve never in my - Mary!”

The other three jumped and turned in Mary’s direction. Hermione came at her running and crashed into her, wrapping her arms around her midsection.

“Oh God, Mary.” Hermione rested her head on Mary’s chest and Mary awkwardly put her hands on Hermione’s back, trying not to think about her nearly naked friend hugging her. “You believe me, don’t you?”

“What, uhh.” Mary looked at the rest of them helplessly. “What happened?”

“I’ll tell you what happened,” Alice said, shoving Hal’s hand away. “We come to the murder cabin in the middle of fucking nowhere and four hours in, someone is already waiting outside to kill us.” She turned back to Hal and Hiram. “You boys happy? Your little week of sex-capades is going to turn into all of us slowly being murdered, one by one. I bet the tires of the Caddy are already slashed.”

Hiram rubbed his temple. “No one is dying, there was no one peeking through the window at Hermione, and I swear to God Alice, if I go outside and my tires are slashed, I’m blaming you.”

Alice took two steps towards Hiram and placed her hands firmly on her hips. Hermione tightened her grip on Mary. “This place is creepy and we shouldn’t have come here. Admit it. You’re scared too.”

Hiram looked down at her, crossing his arms over his chest. “Listen here. Hermione probably saw an animal or something. She said the face was low to the ground -”

“But then it took off running!” Hermione insisted. “On two legs!”

“It was an animal, Hermione. And the only reason you two,” he gestured between Alice and Hal, “are so freaked out is because you’re stoned and paranoid. Relax.”

“Relax?” Alice asked. “When there’s some peeping Tom serial killer right outside?”

Hermione sniffled. “You guys all left me alone to get high?”

Alice turned on her. “You left Mary alone to get laid! Not the time to throw stones.”

Hal chewed on his nails, eyes darting quickly between the four others. “Hey, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to call the cops. I mean, if there is some guy peeking in windows, they should know, right? And if he comes back, like, we shouldn’t just be sitting ducks and not have done anything, right? Hiram? Alice? Right?”

“Shut up, Hal,” Alice sighed. “Just go get Hermione something to wear. Her tits are about to pop out of that push up bra and smack Mary in the face.”

He looked toward the master bedroom. “Go in there? With someone looking through the window?”

Alice groaned. “Really?”

“Hey, your stuff is in our room anyway, right?” Mary asked. Hermione nodded against her, hair tickling her chin. “So lets go get you into your pajamas at least.”

Mary led her into the smaller guest room as Hiram pulled a face. She closed the door behind the two of them, muffling out the three on the other side.

“Do you want me to find something for you?” Mary walked over to where Hermione’s suitcase was sitting on the end of the one bed. Her eyes darted quickly to the desk. She had left the walkie talkie behind the stack of books, but the books were now spread over the desk in a mess - no doubt a result of Alice and Hal’s earlier tryst.

“No,” Hermione’s weak voice came from behind her. “I can do it myself.” Mary opened the suitcase and Hermione dug right into it, pushing aside various items of clothing.

“Geez, how many bathing suits did you bring?” Mary asked.

“Two bikinis and a Baywatch looking one piece. Why?” Hermione held a top up. “Not enough? We’re only here for a few days.”

“Right, right.” Mary took a few steps away, inching to the desk. “I only brought the one, you know. That yellow bikini I got at the end of last season on sale. Haven’t even worn it yet.”

Hermione scoffed. Mary couldn’t see her face, but she knew the exact look her friend was wearing. “What a waste! You should have worn something old. Why waste a new bikini when there’s no one to show it off for?”

Mary reached the desk and started quickly rearranging her school books. “You guys will see me in it.”

“I helped you pick it out! I’ve already seen you in it.” Mary glanced over her shoulder. Hermione was taking off her bra. She quickly looked away. “There are no boys here to see you in it!”

The walkie-talkie wasn’t amongst the books. Shit. She dropped to the ground and started looking under the desk. “Oh? And what do you call Hal and Hiram?”

“No offense, but you’re not Hiram’s type. You’re practically the same height and I know he hates that.”

Mary rolled her eyes. “Hiram Lodge isn’t exactly my type either.” She could just make out the antenna of the walkie-talkie shoved up against the wall. She reached her hand into the small space.

“Although I won’t lie, you and Hal have potential to be adorable together. He strung Penelope along long enough, so you know he likes redheads at least.”

“No thank you.” Mary pulled off the ring her parents gave her for her sweet sixteen to make her hand fit. “Hal only has eyes for Alice.”

“You’ll never know if you don’t try!” Hermione sung. She was quickly getting over her earlier panic. Mary could just feel the antenna of the walkie-talkie.

“I don’t like Hal like that.” She tried to pull the desk back a bit, but it was too heavy. Leave it to the Lodge’s to have this kind of expensive wood furniture in the kid’s guest room of their vacation home. Mary grabbed the antenna and gave it a gentle pull.

“But you guys would make the cutest, nerdiest - what are you doing?”

Mary gasped and hit her head on the underside of the desk. The antenna broke free in her hand. Hermione grabbed her arm and pulled her out from under the desk as Mary rubbed her head. She had tossed on a flowy black nightgown that reached mid-thigh.

“What were you looking for?” Hermione gripped her arm, panic falling back into her voice. Her eyes widened as they fell on the broken antenna. “What the hell is that?”

“Oh, it’s a… well, I don’t know. I dropped a book and I just found it behind the -”

“It looks like an antenna or something. Is there something back there?” Hermione fell on her knees and started crawling under the desk.

“Hey, is that a new nightgown?” Mary let out a nervous giggle. “It’s so cute! You don’t want to get it dirty crawling under there.”

“Oh my God!” Hermione scooted out from under and jumped up. She bounced in her bare feet. “There’s a recording device back there or something! Oh my God, Mary! It’s wedged in there. Someone must have planted it! Help me move the desk.” Hermione grabbed a corner and started tugging.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Mary put her hand on her friend’s shoulder. “A recording device? Who would ever?”

“Hiram!” Hermione called. Mary jumped and let go of her. “Guys! Get in here!”

Hiram came rushing through the door. He had tossed on a black silk robe on over his clothes. “What? What happen-”

“There’s something fishy going on!” Hermione put her hands on her hips as Hal and Alice walked through the door. Alice had buttoned her shirt back up and Hal had tossed on pajama pants. “Someone is recording us! Mary just found this little recording device behind the desk.”

“I don’t think it’s anything!” Mary insisted much louder than she’d intended. Everyone turned to her and she felt her face heat up. “I mean, I just - it looks like a simple walkie-talkie. Like a toy! Here, I pulled this off of it.” She held up the antenna and Hiram snatched it out of her hands. “It broke off so easy. Who knows how long it’s even been back there for.”

Hiram spun around and held up the antenna towards Hal and Alice. Hal’s hands were digging into Alice’s shoulders as she stood with a sour face and crossed arms. “What do you guys think?”

“I think this whole place is fucked and we never should have came,” Alice said simply. “Lets take shifts sleeping and leave first thing in the morning.”

“The morning?” Hermione asked. “I am not staying here until morning!”

“And I’m not going out when it’s still dark!”

“We’re not going anywhere,” Mary insisted.

“Guys,” Hal said loudly. He took a sharp intake of breath as everyone turned to him. “Could you hear me and Alice in here earlier?”

Alice sighed and hit her forehead. “My God, Hal. Now is not the time.”

“It’s just I could practically hear every word Mary and Hermione were saying while we were standing outside.”

“Of course we could hear you fucking!” Hermione screamed. “What’s that have to do with someone trying to murder us?”

Mary groaned. “A walkie-talkie doesn’t equal murder!”

“Stop saying murder!” Hiram yelled. “Everyone needs to relax!”

“Stop telling us to relax!” Hal voice was reaching hysterical. Alice turned around under his grip. “I can’t relax knowing someone might be trying to kill us and,” his voice dropped to a whisper, “that you guys could hear us having sex and didn’t have the decency to say something.”

“Babe.” Alice took his face in her hands and pulled it down. “You’re high and paranoid and you sound like an idiot right now. Shut up.”

Hal sighed and wrapped his arms around Alice. “Right, you’re right. No one is trying to kill us.”

“Oh, I didn’t say that.” Alice looked at the rest of their friends. “Someone is definitely up to something and this week is going to end with at least one of us not making it back.”

“Alice!” Mary exclaimed. “Cut it out! He’s your goddamn boyfriend, don’t scare him.”

“I don’t make the rules, Mary!”

“Christ,” Hiram sighed, shaking his head. “Come on, Hal. This desk weighs a ton. Help me move it so we can get whatever this thing is out.”

Hal reluctantly let go of Alice and helped Hiram slide the desk a few inches forward. The walkie-talkie fell to the hardwood floor with a thud and Mary and Hermione both darted under the desk for it.

“What the hell are you doing, Mare?” Hermione said as she tried pushing her out of the way. “Let me get it.”

“I told you,” Mary panted as she reached around Hermione. “You’ll get your nightgown dirty. I have to change anyway.”

“I’m smaller. I fit easier!”

“My arms are longer. Plus, I’m the one who found - got it!”

Mary jumped up quickly and held the walkie-talkie to her chest. Alice grabbed it from her before Hermione could even pull herself to her feet.

“This looks so familiar,” Alice said. She fiddled with some buttons on it, but just static came out. “I swear, I’ve seen this same walkie-talkie somewhere before.”

“They look cheap,” Mary said quickly. “Like a toy. Hiram, did you ever have them as a kid? Maybe they’ve been there for years.”

“Not if the batteries are still working,” Hal chimed in. “Those things eat up batteries. My sister and I used to have a pair. Plus,” he reached out to take it from Alice, “this brand is pretty good.”

“I’m sorry, Hal,” Mary glared at him. “You were afraid of getting murdered two minutes ago and now you’re an expert on electronics?”

“Not an expert! I just know a bit -”

Hermione hit her fist against the desk. “The important thing is why is it here? In this room. Hiram, you’re sure it was never yours?”

Hiram pursed his lips before talking. “Maybe the housekeeper brought her kids with her and they left it here.”

“Is that likely?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. But a walkie-talkie seems like a really ineffective way to spy on people. What’s the point?”

Alice took the walkie-talkie back from Hal. “Come on, you know there are some freaks out there who’d damn well get off on two girls talking about their bikinis.” Alice held the device close to her face, looking at it closely. “Mary, don’t your brothers have a pair like this?”

“No, no, no.” Mary laughed. Her legs started twitching under her weight. “My brothers have a really expensive pair. My dad got a great deal on them. The antenna would never just snap off like that one.”

“Right.” Alice held it out to Mary and pulled it back last minute. “Say, there’s no chance that maybe your brothers threw it in your bag and it was all mixed up with your school books?”

“Of course not.” Mary put her hands behind her back and started wringing them. “My books were neatly stacked until someone came in here and probably did some unmentionable things on top of them, knocking them all around.”

Alice scoffed. “We were not on top of them.” He eyes looked to the ceiling. “I was just kind of bent over them.”

“Gross,” Hermione sighed, sitting on one of the beds. “Now I really can’t sleep in here.”

“Oh please, like you were ever going to -”

“Ladies!” Hiram exclaimed. He took a seat next to Hermione and snaked his arm around her waist. “No fighting. We’re all better than that. There has to be a solution to all of this.”

“There is no solution because there is no problem,” Mary said calmly. She bounced on the balls of her feet. “The best thing to do is just go to bed.”

“I will never be able to sleep knowing there’s someone out there,” Hermione said. “Absolutely never.”

Alice rolled her eyes. “Not like you were going to be doing much sleeping anyway.”

Hermione opened her mouth but Hiram cut her off. “How about,” he held up his finger between the two girls, “Hal and I go do a perimeter check? We’ll walk the property once or twice and make sure the coast is clear. Check for tire tracks.”

“You’re going to check for tire tracks in the paved road leading here?” Mary asked skeptically. “In the dark?”

“We have flashlights. It’ll be fine. Hal, you in?”

“Not on your life!” Alice pulled herself away from Hal and stuck her finger in Hiram’s face. “If you think I’m letting you take Hal outside in the middle of the night so you can sacrifice him to whatever demon you come across.”

“Oh,” Hiram sighed, “my God. You’re all nuts. Every last one of you.”

“Hey!” Mary said. “I am not -”

“Hal, bud, you want to go check outside, right? Make sure nothing is going to attack the girls, right?”

Hal was biting his nails. “Make sure - make sure nothing attacks the girls? Are you insane? What about something attacking us out there?”

“There is nothing out there! It was an animal! A bear or something.”

“A bear?” Hal took the finger he was chewing on out of his mouth. “How is a bear nothing, Hiram? How?”

“You’re overthinking this!”

“You’re not taking him with you!” Alice shouted.

“No one is going anywhere,” Mary said, stepping between Alice and Hiram. “We are just going to go to bed and regroup in the morning when we all feel a lot better about everything.”

Hermione jumped off the bed and out of Hiram’s grip. “Actually, if you really don’t mind, I would feel better if you guys went out there and looked around.”

Hiram grabbed her hands. “We don’t mind at all. Right, Hal?”

“Of course I mind!”

“You’re not taking my boyfriend out there to certain death!”

“No one should be going anywhere!”

Hiram rolled his eyes and stood up, not letting go of Hermione’s hand. “Come on. I have protection.” He tugged Hermione hand. “Follow me.”

Alice pursed her lips, but followed them out the door, Hal and Mary in tow. “You hear that? Now the boy has protection.”

“So you see, my friend over there,” FP jutted his thumb over his shoulder in Fred’s direction, “is just grumpy that he couldn’t save the fair maiden from her captor, you know? He’s heartbroken, down-trotted.”

“Poor fellow,” the waitress sighed. She leaned over the counter and rested her chin in her hand. FP’s eyes traveled slowly down her uniform to her name tag. Franny. “So why’s he sitting over in that booth while you’re over here with me?”

“Oh, forget about him. He’s a grump.”

“Hmm.” Her eyes traveled over to Fred. “He’s kinda cute though. Looks like that guy from 90210.”

“No, he doesn’t,” FP said quickly. Franny’s eyes traveled back to him and he cracked her gum in a way that reminded him eerily of Alice. He shook the feeling off. Her hair was a light brown and straight and shoulder length. She didn’t look a thing like Alice. “So Franny. How do you get stuck working third shift?”

Her eyes traveled back to him and she laughed. Cracking her gum again. “Don’t get jealous.” She picked her chin up and reached out for his cheek. “You’re cute too.”

“You see, Fran, we’re in a bit of a pickle,” he sighed. “We were here earlier today talking to Beverly. You know Beverly, of course?”

She cracked her gum again. “Sure. She works the dinner rush and I work the graveyard shift.”

“Well, we were telling her all about our girl troubles when we were here earlier and she told us if we needed any little thing at all, to just come back and give her a hollar.”

Franny laughed. “Yeah, that sounds like old Bev. Such a ma, I swear.”

“Only, silly us.” FP leaned closer across the counter. “We didn’t ask what time she got off tonight. I should have figured -”

“Shift switch is at midnight.” She bit her lip and looked him up and down. “What’d you say your name was, junior?”

“FP.” She raised her eyebrow. “Trust me, you don’t want to know the whole name. My buddy over there? That’s Fred.” He yelled over his shoulder. “Right, Fred?”

Fred looked up from the cup of coffee he was staring into. “Huh?”

“Yup. That’s Fred.”

“Okay, FP. Million dollar question. How old are you?”

“Eighteen.”

“Try again.”

He sighed. “Seventeen and a half. Well, a half in a few days at least.”

“Seventeen and a half. Okay. And Fred over there.”

“Sixteen going on sixty.” He spun around once more. “I mean, look at the poor guy. Falls in love at every corner and gets his heartbroken each time.”

Fred looked up at that one. “I do not get my heartbroken all the time! And I’ve only ever been in love once and that’s with Hermione. I can’t help it if she’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever laid eyes on.”

Franny waved Fred to the counter. He reluctantly got up, bring his lukewarm coffee with him. FP cringed looking in the cup. Fred had poured so much cream, it practically looked like a mug of milk.

“Why do you have it so bad for this girl, sweetheart?” Franny asked. She leaned a little further over the counter, the top button of her uniform threatening to come undone. Fred paid her no mind as he stared into his untouched coffee.

“I dunno,” he mumbled. “She’s special.”

“Ah. Special.” Frannie turned back to FP, straightening her back. “She took his virginity?”

FP snorted into his own coffee and Fred’s head popped up in horror.

“You told her!” Fred accused. “What kind of friend are -”

“Relax, relax,” Franny laughed. She placed her hand over Fred’s. “You wear your heart on your sleeve, sweetie. You’re too easy to read. People will walk all over you if you keep that up.”

Fred sighed, cheeks still bright red. “That’s what my mom says.”

“I really, really shouldn’t do this but, I think I can help you boys out tonight. I’m not entirely comfortable housing two minors, but I can’t let you boys sleep in that van. My place is empty. My brothers are away for a few days. I’m off at 8 am, so you guys just need to take off by then, okay?”

“You serious?” FP asked.

“Serious as a heart attack.” She reached into the pocket of her apron and pulled out a keychain in the shape of The Statue of Liberty with two keys on it. “It’s right there on the corner. Second floor apartment in that blue building. Take any bedroom you’d like, although the couch is probably more sanitary than either of my brother’s beds.”

“I could kiss you, Franny.”

“Don’t.” She laughed. “You’re about five years too young for my taste. You can leave your van parked on in the diner’s lot. I’ll keep an eye on it.”

“No need. We walked down here. It’s still parked on the main road leading to the vacation homes. We figured they’re still mostly empty this time of year so no one would really mind it there.”

“You are right. Well hurry along and catch some shut eye. It’s after 1 am already.”

“Let’s get a move on.” He hit Fred’s arm. “Hey, what’s up? What’s wrong?”

Fred’s face had lost the flushed that crossed it just a few moments earlier. “How come you’re being so nice, Franny? You don’t know us.”

She cracked her gum in Fred’s direction. “Do one to others and all that stuff, you know? Now scat before I change my mind.”

“Can do!” FP snatched the keys with one hand and took Fred’s arm in the other. Why’d it feel like he and Fred had been dragging each other back and forth all day?

“FP, I still have a bad feeling,” Fred whispered as they stepped out the door. The street was completely empty and they had to wonder why the diner bothered to stay open all night in a place like this. “Why’s she being so nice?”

By habit, they ran across the street even though there wasn’t a car insight. “This is the country, middle of nowhere. People are just nicer than the suburbs. You didn’t question it when your pal Beverly was being nice.”

“Beverly was like sixty. She’s a grandma! Of course she’s nice. That Franny.” Fred looked back at the diner as FP opened the outside door to the apartment building. “She can’t be what, twenty at the oldest? Are young people that nice?”

“Fred, you’re one of the nicest people around. You’d give someone the shirt off your back if they told you they liked it.”

“I did that one time, shut up.” He sighed, chasing FP up the steps two at a time. “It just feels wrong.”

“It feels like you’re jealous I know how to flirt with young, hot waitresses while you’re stuck talking to old Bev about her grandkids.”

Fred rolled his eyes. “Yeah, sure, asshole. Like you had any interest in Franny. You just didn’t want to sleep in the van.”

“That’s not a crime. Oh, I guess this is it.” He fit the second key into the door and it opened. The living room was small and clean, but lacking personality. There was a blue checkerboard couch and a small television with rabbit ears on top. “Home sweet home. Here’s to hoping we’re living it up in the Lodge’s cabin this time tomorrow. I really want to soak in that hottub.”

“No.” Mary stood with the other four around her and shook her head. “No, no, a million times no.”

Hiram laughed. “Mary, I’ve used this thing before. No need to worry.”

“A gun, Hiram?” Mary crossed her arms over her chest and stood to her full height. She was nearly level with Hiram. “Don’t lie to me. You have never shot a gun in your life.”

“Oh please,” he scoffed. “My dad taught me how to aim when I was a kid.”

“How to aim or how to shoot?” Alice asked.

“Same difference.”

“Same difference?” Alice hit Hal’s arm. “He’s never touched that gun before.”

“It’s not even loaded.”

“Prove it.” Mary uncrossed her arms and let them fall to her hips. “Prove that it’s unloaded.”

Hiram looked down at the gun in his hand for a few moments before shaking his head. “I have nothing to prove to you.”

“Yes you do!” Mary tossed up her hands. “As the only sober person here right now -”

“What about me?” Hermione cried. “They all ditched me to get high!”

“I’m not high!” Hiram yelled. “I had one hit off their joint. One! Hal is the only one here who’s impaired and that’s just because he’s a lightweight.”

Mary took a deep breath. “Look. I cannot in good faith let you go outside with that gun. If you don’t shoot Hal, you’ll probably shoot yourself. Or some poor defenceless animal.”

Alice snorted. “No way. It takes skill to shoot an animal.”

“I have skill!” Hiram grabbed Hal’s arm. “Come on, man. We have to protect the girls.”

Hal turned around and looked at Alice’s helplessly as Hiram pulled him towards the front door. She shrugged.

“If anything happens to him, Hiram, you’re dead,” she called as Hiram opened the door. “If I don’t get you, Mrs. Cooper will!”

“God, Alice. You can’t tell my mom about this!” Hal said over shoulder. They crossed out to the porch and the three girls followed them out. “She hates guns! And hunting! And Hiram.”

“Should we go after them?” Mary asked unsurely. “I mean, I’m sure there’s nothing -”

“No!” Hermione and Alice yelled in unison. Their eyes locked as they took a step away from each other.

“What if something happens to them?” she asked, looking off after the boys. Hiram was just pulling Hal through the clearing of trees, to the road leading away from the house.

“They can take care of themselves,” Hermione insisted. “I know they can. Or they’ll take care of each other? I guess?”

Alice turned to Hermione with her finger out. “If anything happens to Hal -”

“Don’t worry.” Hermione stepped back inside. “I will replace him with a newer model if Hiram shoots him.”

Alice followed her. “I was going to say, you’re the one telling his mom.”

“Not a chance!”

Mary watched Hiram and Hal walk away until they disappeared.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” she muttered to herself. She stepped back into the foyer and locked the door.

“Hey,” she called after her friends, “Did either of you notice if they took a flashlight or not?”