The day seemed like it would be ordinary until the aeronautical community’s most sought after document showed up on my doorstep.
It came wrapped in brown kraft paper tied off with twine, and the exterior packaging had no return address nor any indication of a postage stamp. It was as though it had been simply bundled up and dropped into my wall-mounted mailbox by a random passerby.
No part of me was willing to surrender the strange parcel without opening it first. Regardless of who its contents truly belonged to, my eyes would be the first to see it. I removed the twine and then dug a thumb under a fold in the packaging paper before clawing it away to expose a brown tan notebook circa 1900. It was full grain buffalo leather with a crisscross of cord for the spine and a thick hand cut string keeping it sealed shut.
When I undid the string, the pages that had been gripped tight by the leather fanned out gently then returned to their original position, my eyes landing on the front page. It was without a printer’s mark and read in big handwritten type: “THE DIARY AND RECORD OF HENRY H. HELGELAND.”
I knew in that instant the package was in the hands of who it was rightfully sent out for. Not just because I’d recently lost my job as an associate at our city’s art museum but because of a separate, much deeper connection to the diary’s author.
Perhaps it’s in my best interests to turn it over to the National Archives, or the US Arctic Research Commission, or maybe even the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center, but at the risk of seeing it blue-penciled to death, I’ve elected to instead share it here and now.
The world needs to know what happened.
---
Henry H. Helgeland — my great grandfather — was a severe looking man with a walrus mustache and a bone to pick with anyone who ever doubted him. He was born in Oakland, California in 1871 and was, by all available accounts relayed to me, well-behaved and well-liked. His father worked a lucrative job in the shipping industry, transporting timber between San Francisco and the Central Valley. Two years into Henry’s life, his mother would contract a fatal case of diphtheria and die shortly thereafter; when he was old enough to understand what had happened, Henry “yearn[ed] fervently for a reunion to mend [his] great anguish and sorrow.”
Near the turn of the 20th century, Henry attended Stanford University’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, where he learned everything from thermodynamics to machine design. But it was a lecture about polar transportation that would ultimately kindle his interest in a separate enterprise: arctic exploration. Indeed, the race to the North Pole was well underway, with naval officers, geologists, and aeronauts around the globe vying for the chance to make history. My great grandfather, like many of his peers, propounded the theory that he, and he alone, would be the first to reach the Great White North.
In 1895, Henry graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering and sought to expand the member list of the so called Ascension Society, a student organization he’d assembled to aid engineering graduates with materials science. Many of its constituents had engaged in research projects and experimental setups to hone their craft of mechanical systems, but in time, however, the venture would instead prove a hotspot for investors and philanthropists. Donations averaging up to $5,000 helped fund and promote the fantastic ambitions of my great grandfather. So long as the Ascension Society was gracing him with their support, he’d be the first to reach the North Pole.
In early 1898, armed with enough capital, Henry used the proceeds to purchase the materials required for the balloon.
---
A notable circus at the forefront of traveling attractions in the early twentieth century was The Fielding Troupe. With its impressive lineup of talent — from fire eaters and aerialists to equestrians and strongmen — the ensemble drew crowds from nearly every town in western America during its historic run. Its wide reach would ultimately reel in many notable faces, including my great grandfather.
Prior to a performance in Oakland, the Fielding Troupe led a procession through the town around Stanford University, announcing their arrival with a parade of wagons, floats, and animals. The strategy, as it were, was to drum up as much publicity and fanfare as possible. Evidently it worked, as a healthy fraction of the faculty and student body at Stanford made the trip over to Oakland in order to see the troupe in action.
Surrounding their arena with two hundred feet of heavy duty tent canvas, the troupe put on a show for the ages the night Henry was in attendance, with extravagant acrobatics, trained animal performances, and a special appearance from Curtis the Clown. Following a skillful display of juggling and good natured audience ribbing, Curtis’s master stroke was an intricate stunt involving balloons and wire flying. Firstly, he would inflate several multi-colored balloons and tie them off with string, securing them firmly in his grip. They served as a flashy distraction from the piece of flexible metal snaking out from the harness he had concealed under his equally flashy costume. Then, with a whisper of strength, a couple stagehands hoisted the balloon-carrying clown thirty feet into the air to make it appear as though he was levitating by virtue of the balloons alone. A separate performer — a marksman — showed off his sharpshooting skills with a Winchester model rifle and gunned down the balloons, exploding each one as the stagehands loosened their hold on Curtis’s harness until he was eased to the ground.
Henry watched the routine with eager delight. Seeing Curtis the Clown float above a hundred or so onlookers helped stir within him a plan. The ceiling of the Big Top Tent where Curtis had concluded his ascent represented more than the centerpiece of a traveling circus.
“Ascendancy,” Henry muttered to his wife Ruth. “This is how we get to the top of the world.”
---
The spherical vessel measured sixty-five feet in diameter, with a capacity of over 200,000 cubic feet. Its construction was overseen by Henry and a couple french engineers who installed in its gondola three berths and ample ballast to keep it stable. The gondola, a carefully constructed assemblage of wicker and chestnut wood, was built as such to bar any interference to the magnetic instruments of the explorers. Keeping it shielded against severe weather conditions was a varnished silk calotte and a vaselined net composed of over four-hundred hemp cords. A bamboo pole was attached bellow the carrying ring to attach the side sails and, perhaps most notably, the balloon was fitted with hemp and cocoa nut fiber guide ropes to help steer and maintain a consistent altitude.
After two years of exhaustive construction, work on the balloon was completed in 1900. Henry named it Ascension, after the society that funded its creation.
---
What follows are several selected passages lifted directly from Henry’s memorandum, transcribed by me. The first entry reads:
“At nine o'clock on the forenoon, May 5, 1900, under the auspices of the Ascension Society, we embarked from the 71st parallel on our quest of the Pole. Our great journey sets off from Point Barrow, Alaska following a grueling adventure aboard the steamer Sursum. I, Henry Helgeland, travel forth, accompanied by Charles Ringvold, esteemed navigator, and Edward Meyer, long celebrated physician, into the arctic wilderness. Together, our efforts will generate a most formidable team and an unwavering spirit. We will ascend.”
Indeed, the SS Sursum disembarked from a port in San Francisco in mid May of that year; it offered easy access to the Pacific Ocean and sailed through the Bering Strait, covering over 3,000 nautical miles before reaching Point Barrow on July 2.
When the balloon took off, carried by a fierce north east wind, it was to a thunderous applause from those that had come to bear witness to the bold endeavor. Among them were crew members of the SS Sursum, high ranking associates of the Ascension Society, and carpenters tasked with helping the balloon reach its initial phase of liftoff.
As it elevated to 300 hundred feet and passed around an onlooking whaler, Henry was reported to have shouted: “To the top of the world, hurrah!”
---
36 hours would elapse before a second entry was made.
“July 4, 1900, Lat. 77° 48' N, Long. 143° 4' W. We are soaring at a height of 600 feet above the Earth's surface, traveling at a speed of approximately seven kilometers per hour. Our morale remains similarly aloft. Charles relayed to me that, God willing, we anticipate reaching the pole in roughly 800 miles. Beyond the drag ropes lending their ballast to our journey, optimism is our guiding force. We will ascend.”
Turbulent air currents had a different plan in mind, however.
“July 5, 1900, Lat. 80° 8' N, Long. 138° 37' W. Alas! Our aerial journey came to an abrupt halt yestereve on the 80th parallel. We voyaged as many as 500 miles before a forceful downdraft spun our vehicle on its vertical axle and compelled it into a sharp descent; we had lost what we estimate to be just over 100 cubic feet of gas.
“Edward suffered severe injuries during the initial impact and claims his vertebrae have been shattered, leaving him immobile. We’re at the mercy of the floe on which we now rest, at the mercy of the Polar Sea. Should we face the specter of death, we shall meet it with unwavering honor. We will ascend.”
---
“July 6, 1900. We find ourselves solitary in the barren expanse, accompanied only by bergs, ice-fields, and majestic glaciers. Our rations encompass a container’s worth of hardtack, enough salted beef for approximately one week, canned stew, dried apricots, some chocolate bars, and seven bottles of ale.
“Edward’s outlook remains grim; he suspects he’ll never walk again. In witness of his current state, I’m beginning to share in such apprehensions. Edward, whom we have reposed on on of our sledges, fears that the opportunity to make known the great love he holds for his mistress Rebecca is one he’ll never be granted. ‘You shall be reunited at once,’ I assured him. ‘Our journey to triumph will not be thwarted by minor inconveniences.’
“We’ve plotted the course to our next destination: that being Herschel Island, located off the coast of Canada in the Beaufort Sea. Charles — who shares in Edward’s dismay — estimates a three month footslog spanning just under one thousand miles is in store for us, perhaps more given Edward’s ailment. I am determined to see this mission to its completion, yet survival remains a paramount desire. Who’s to recount our extraordinary journey should we fail?
“While establishing our encampment and scouting the local flora of the area for additional sources of sustenance, I happened upon a plant of an unknown species. Half a meter tall, bulbous tubers, and thin roots terminating in clusters of white flowers; intuition suggests this is a water hemlock, which precludes it from edibility. Nevertheless, I shall regard this finding as one of great fortune. A portent of divine value. We will ascend.”
---
Two days later, gold prospectors off the Alaskan coast at Nome beach were in the process of emptying their sluice boxes when from the sky flew a carrier pigeon directly to their mining site. It bore a label with the inscription “Helgeland” and contained the following dispatch:
“July 7, 1900. First dog watch. Three southerly traveling carrier-pigeons were sent off at approximately 7 h. 40 p.m. Pacific Standard Time, the following among them. This is Rear Admiral Charles Ringvold of the United States Navy and the Helgeland Balloon Expedition of 1900. Our hopes of reaching the pole have been reduced to naught. Assistance urgently needed. Our destinies have hitherto been unknown, and now my fears have been actualized. GO IN TERROR OF HENRY HELGELAND. He is not who he proclaims to be. I volunteered for a man of honorable stature and venturesome drive. The man before me betrays neither.”
The remainder of the message was a hasty scrawl, decrypted only by the best in linguistics and modern codebreaking.
“UNASSISTED WE WILL PERISH HELPED WE WILL PERSEVERE PLEASE GOD HELP US HENRY WILL KILL US ALL DO NOT BELIEVE WHAT HE PROCLAIMS.”
The communication was immediately passed off to the Smithsonian Institution, where word fell within the earshot of Ascension Society proponents and additional members of the US Navy. A follow-up expedition — a rescue team led by Captain S. P. Matthews — was put together at once with the authorization of the Secretary of War.
Months later, after a congressional bill introduced to secure grant funding for arctic exploration — and thereby a rescue mission for Helgeland’s lost expedition — was successfully passed, the USS Greenwich departed from the San Francisco Naval Shipyard with a crew of thirty boatswains, medics, and deck officers among others.
What they would ultimately uncover puzzled them all.
---
“July 7, 1900. The team has fractured. We are without our provisions and without the morale that has served us thusly.
“Charles and I set upon the pursuit and capture of a walrus, a most strenuous task in the Arctic Circle. Furnished with a Winchester model .40-82, the sport skews in our favor but we are in no short supply of peril. These are one ton beasts with the strength of a hundred strongmen as they stave the ice, and yet it is not them I should have feared.
“’I can’t allow you to proceed further.’ I heard the click clack racket of the Winchester as Charles chambered a round and raised the rifle, training its twenty inch barrel toward my back after I had volunteered — quite ignorantly — to take the vanguard.
“’Charles?’ I managed between clattering teeth.
“’You’re a man of bold stature. An honorable man at that. But not honorable enough to die for. And that’s it, Henry. I will not die for you.’
“’You speak out of distress, not rationality.’
“’I’m as rational as one permits when I say we won’t all make it to Canada. You can’t expect us to sledge Edward for the next month and retain our strength. Our sanities.” I could hear him gulp, ‘our lives.’
“’You’re not who you say you are.’ I realized in that moment. ‘Not even an ensign would renounce his own crew. Who are you really, Charles?’
“His credentials were a farce; a clever scheme to scrape through the expedition’s vetting process. He was no navy-man nor expert nor navigator and if you piled his life’s accomplishments on top of one another, they’d be equal to that of a cretin.
“’Doesn’t matter any more, Henry.’
“’Then why haven’t you shot me?’
“I sensed beyond his terror a hint of reluctance and felt within him the trepidation of an amateur. The man had never wielded a firearm in his life and wouldn’t start hence.
“’In Your infinite mercy, hear my prayer. In Your boundless grace, grant me Your forgiveness,’ he muttered below his breath. I could’ve believed he’d have squeezed the trigger if not for the unexpected convulsion that suddenly brought him to his knees. Befallen by the strange attack, Charles unhanded the Winchester and collapsed to the ice in the midst of a crippling seizure. And in a matter of moments, he had succumbed to death.
“With some activated charcoal or perhaps an emetic, he could have eluded such a painful demise. I stepped over to look upon his body, his pupils dilated to the size of dimes. Reviewing the immediate symptoms, intuition tells me he’s become the latest victim of hemlock poisoning, the kind of amateur mistake I’d expect from someone such as Charles. Ideal timing, if I may speak candidly.
“Hope remains alive. I will ascend.”
---
Investigators with the crew of S. P. Matthews found everything except answers.
It took them all of three months to zero in on the campsite left behind by Helgeland’s expedition. Any prospect of finding the balloon itself was dropped by the wayside to preserve manpower and time.
The camp was discovered on the 79th parallel, not in any particular state of disarray but with enough evidence to suggest conflict had broken out between the members. Edward was discovered in a tent with the rest of the rations and a bullet hole stamped in the side of his head. There was no telling how long he’d been dead for.
Forty-five meters away from the camp, buried under a stalagmitic gathering of ice and snow, was the body of Charles Ringvold. A followup inquiry would prove my great grandfather’s claims that he was a fraud, but like Charles himself, the truth is buried deep under the surface. Edward and Charles are commemorated for their failed — albeit honorable — efforts in the face of great opposition.
The body of my great grandfather, however, was never found. Theories thus abound in the saga of Henry H. Helgeland and we are no more the wiser now than we were a century ago. He is remembered for murdering his men in cold blood, deserting them, and then yielding to the elements somewhere in the frozen hell of the arctic. The carrier-pigeon message sent by Charles corroborated the apparent facts.
But I know the truth. Because only I have the answers.
“July 8, 1900. All that remains is me, for everyone else has vanished. Edward and I regaled each other with stories of our mistresses as night fell upon our place in the arctic wasteland. Rebecca, Edward’s beloved, works as an expert seamstress in San Francisco and will no doubt be devastated when news of his fate reaches her. But the great memories they shared together, I assured him, will serve her well in the years to come.
“‘You shall be reunited at once,’ I whispered to him once more before executing the dying man with the Winchester. It is my turn to face whatever awaits me on the ice.
“My great anguish and sorrow have been mended.
“Ruth is calling to me now. Our son promptly requires our presence.
“I shall go to them."
The fruitless search for my great grandfather peaked at last with the unearthing of a path of footprints snaking away from the tent where Edward’s body lay. Investigators followed them for approximately ten meters before they abruptly ceased. Captain Matthews is quoted as saying: “it was as though the walker had simply floated away.”
And indeed, it was our family that won in the end, for my great grandfather received exactly what he wanted. The final, undated entry of his diary is comprised of but three simple words:
“I have ascended.”

We must separate the people that are telling us the truth from the people that just want to become famous from the subject. A lot of people here have put their faith in a military figure recently: Chris Mellon. He was the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, a high ranking official in the government. Surely, he would know things about black projects and such right? Well, he recently published anOp-ed in Politico where he states that he knows there are UFO crash retrievals in the government and that the public has the right to know. Surely, he is our friend, he is one of us. Well, let me tell you why he is not our friend. He is an ex-government official; we should not trust him. Here is a quote from an interview he had with Leslie Keane in 2016 from the Huffington Post:

“I Highly doubt DoD (Department of Defense) or any other government agency is concealing UFO information. I participated in a comprehensive review of DoD’s black programs and spent over a decade conducting oversight of the national foreign intelligence program, an almost totally separate world of secrets. I visited Area 51 and other military, intelligence and research facilities. During all those years, I never detected the faintest hint of government interest or involvement in UFO’s.”

So, he is stating that when he was in a position of power, a place where he would absolutely know most of the secrets about black projects that would involve UFO’s, he doubted that the Department of Defense was not concealing any UFO information. He said he spent over a decade doing oversite and he couldn’t find any evidence of UFO’s. This statement was made a year before he and Lue Elizondo came with the New York Times story, which so happened to be published by the same Leslie Keane. I don’t know about you, but this seems a little suspicious. Just a year earlier he didn’t know anything but a year later he came out with a story on the New York Times revealing these videos and believing the United States is in possession of UFO’s? Something doesn’t add up.
Have you noticed that in this subject, it’s always the same characters doing either interviews or podcasts with each other? Leslie Keane interviewing Lue Elizondo or Chris Mellon. The same Leslie who recently made a documentary with Hulu about UFO’s, featuring, yeah, you guessed it, Lue Elizondo and Chris Mellon. Why would Mr. Mellon say in 2016 that he doesn’t know anything about UFO’s and spent 10 years doing oversight, yet just a year later change his mind and believe the US has retrieved non-human materials? It doesn’t help that Leslie Keane believes in ghosts and the afterlife and claims she talked with her dead mother via a medium.
Maybe we should investigate these character heads a little better and then pass judgement. Maybe Chris Mellon really did change in a year, and he went from being a non-believer to knowing it all. The question is, do you believe him based on facts? Or do you believe him based on his ranking? Suddenly, we trust all ex-military guys. When we know most of them have been lying on this subject? I don’t know but an ex-government guy that says he could NOT find evidence of UFOs for 10 years who suddenly says they exist, and the government is reverse engineering them sounds suspicious to me. What’s your take on this?

Have some time to finally write a trip review for Maui and the Big Island of Hawaii for my honeymoon in December 2022 for two weeks. Mid December and left for home on Christmas Day. This was our first time redeeming cc points for anything, so lots of trial and error and lessons learned.
My wife and I had gotten married in October and were actually not planning going on honeymoon until Spring 2023 until we researched further and managed to make December 2022 work in our favor. We started planning and booking reservations TWO months before our trip. We are very fortunate to have done it in that time span and managed to make almost everything work out.
IAD - DTW - SEA - OGG on Delta, First Class One way.

• First time using a lounge ever was at DTW. We had access to the Sky Club there. Pretty good food here, very roomy. No time to lounge in Seattle
  
• only I used points for this one way flight. Transferred 95,000 Amex points to Delta. Wife paid $958 before tax for hers through the Amex travel portal. I think she got a steal as I had written on a note somewhere that the cash cost was $1533 through Delta directly but cannot remember if that was the increased price after purchasing the tickets or at time of purchase, otherwise it would have been 1.61 CPP.
  
• Very nice service in first class. Abundant alcohol and food was very nice as well.
  

Maui
Day 1
Got to Maui late in the night and picked up our rental car, a Chevy Equinox, with Enterprise. Used my Hilton Aspire to get 7x points.
One night at Courtyard Marriott by the airport and paid $500.
It was the best we could do with our timing.
Day 2 - 6
Breakfast and lunch was by the food trucks near Costco. Shopping nearby for supplies for our vacation.
Meals (Costco food trucks):

• Mo 'Ono Hawaii acai bowls
• Da Nani Pirates fish tacos
• fresh coconut water

5 nights at the Grand Wailea - 440,000 HH points
Left to check into our resort the Grand Wailea in Wailea. Both the wife and I are Hilton Diamond members. Mine through the Hilton Aspire and she has status through actual stays. We booked these nights through her account and using all Hilton points. Each reward night was 110,000 points and we got the 5th night free. So 440,000 points total.
This resort was huge and immaculate. Words can describe how nice this place is and the customer service is SUPERB. Literally, the best we have ever experienced. You only have to see and experience it for yourself. My wife and I still talk weekly about the Grand Wailea.
We booked the Terrace View - 1 King Bed as the Standard Night Reward and upon arrival we were upgraded to the Deluxe Ocean View - 1 King Bed in the Molokini wing. Breathtaking views! Avg cash price so this room type is around ~$988 before taxes, fees so it comes to 0.89 CPP (if not including taxes, fees in the total). All meals, incidentals, shopping, and experiences were put onto my Hilton Aspire. Daily food and beverage credit was $25 each for the two of us and used usually at their divine but pricey breakfast buffet. No resort fees charged for booking with points which saved us hundreds of dollars. We immensely enjoyed ourselves at this resort and the lush, manicured surrounding area.
Meals:

• Lineage Maui. A favorite in the Wailea area
  
• Morimoto - Maui. Getting the sticky ribs is a must. As well as the ishi yaki buri bop. The guy won Iron Chef because of that, apparently
  
• Wolfgang Puck's Spago at the Four Seasons. Got the best seat in the house here. Get the "Poke" cones and Hawaiian snapper
  
• Mama's Fish House. Literally the hardest restaurant to get on Maui. Must reserve 4-6 months in advance. I called two months before our trip and managed to get a table for the two of us for late lunch. We arrived and we got the best seat in the house overlooking the water! Shout out to Mike for his superb service.
  
• Lahaina Grill. Another favorite for tourists and locals
  

Experiences: renting a cabana at the Grand Wailea pool, spa day at the Four Seasons with outdoor hale beachside, Wailea Beach, hiking Twin Falls, Baby Beach, Haleakala National Park
Day 7 - 8
Two nights at the Hotel Wailea, Relais & Chateaux using Amex FHR.
Paid total ~$3400 for the One bedroom, Luxury Suite, Ocean View. Unfortunately, no upgrade upon checking in. Hotel was sold out. Daily breakfast in the form of $30 credit per person and $100 food/bev credit given through the FHR. This stay triggered the $200 FHR credit for my wife's Amex Plat
Quiet, small resort, adults only. We enjoyed our stay here and loved our room. Bed was harder than what we were use to and it was far from the beach. Otherwise we loved the restaurant and the ability to "get away". One of the top hotels in Maui and all of Hawaii. Price tag to boot.
Meals:

• The Restaurant at Hotel Wailea. Another great dinner watching the sunset
  
• Leoda's Pie Shop. Any pie is great, get the banana cream though. Lines out the door
  
• Merriman's Maui. Another top-notch restaurant with hard to get reservations. One of my personal favorites the whole trip. Another sunset dinner favorite
  

Experiences: cabana and pool day at Hotel Wailea, spa day at Montage Kapalua Bay. Outdoor hale with hot tub.
Big Island of Hawaii
Day 9 OGG - KOA (Big Island) round trip booked with Hawaiian Airlines. $106 for each of us before baggage fees. Booked direct using wife's Amex Plat.
Arrived to the Big Island and rented a Toyota Prius though Budget. Paid using Hilton Aspire.
Day 9 - 15
We booked the Hilton Waikoloa Village using all Hilton points, 6 nights in total with one night free. 350,000 pts in total used, 70,000 each night. Initially the standard room redemption was for the Palace Tower Resort View - 1 King Bed and was going for ~$540 a night before taxes/fees so CPP was 0.77. We realized even before our trip that the Palace Tower and old, needed a refresh, and was terribly far from the beach and the parking lot. We asked for an upgrade when we checked in and was given the option to move to the Makai Tower - Ocean View 1 King Bed for an additional $75 per night. We promptly took this offer. This room runs ~$694 per night before taxes/fees and if I subtract the $75 per night, I calculate this to be 0.88 CPP. The Makai tower was much better, our room overlooked the ocean and part of the resort. Frankly, Palace looked like dogshit. Daily F&B credit was $18 for each person. Incidentals again went onto my Hilton Aspire.
Towards the end of our stay, we stayed at the DoubleTree Hilo using 50,000 pts. Room rate was $308 before taxes/fess. CPP was 0.61. This was on the other side of the island and very far from Hilton Waikoloa so we decided to stay overnight there after hiking Volcanoes NP instead of driving to the west side in the middle of the night.
Meals:

• Brown's Beach House - at the Fairmont Orchid
  
• Kilauea Lodge
  
• Merriman's - Big Island
  

Experiences: Kauna'oa Beach, Mauna Kea sunset and stargazing (this is a must!!), Captain Cook monument snorkeling, Pu'uhonua o Honaunau National historical park, Punalu-u Black Sand Beach, Volcanoes National Park, Akaka Falls.
Trip home: OGG - LAX - IAD. United, First Class One way.

• Used 220,000 Chase UR rewards to redeem this flight for the both of us. Cash price of each ticket was ~$1485 before taxes/fess. CPP was 1.35
• Service was fine, food in 1st class was not very memorable.
• Did not have time to get into the Centurion lounge at LAX

Overall, an EXCELLENT trip. We were amazed and thrilled to do so much in two weeks and in such short notice. Again, only two months to plan once our dates were finalized. Between my wife and I, we have the Amex Plat and Gold, Hilton Honors and Aspire, and CFU, CSP. Each card strategically used during our trip. The FHR credit triggered for my wife, and my Aspire triggered the $250 resort credit. If I had to guess, we saved ~$15,000 or more by redeeming CC points. Hope this data point helps some of you trip planning, happy to answer any questions.

Follow-up to my last post:
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An Attenborough documentary on dinosaurs with the same CGI that made The Jungle Book so lifelike? I couldn't think of a greater sell. But was it worth it? Would it give me the same sense of wonder that I felt when Walking with Dinosaurs came out 22 years earlier?
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The first episode, "Coasts", is overall the strongest episode of season 1. Starting immediately with a swimming t-rex (Tyrannosaurus rex) leading his children to an island where he smelled a dead archelon (species unknown, as no Maastrichtian-age archelon was ever found in the fossil record), that first scene showed the promise of the show as a whole. Seeing CG baby t-rexes interacting with live-action baby turtles is both concerning (as sea turtles are currently endangered) and entertaining, as they are demonstrated pretty goofily. But after that, we are done with dinosaurs for the rest of the episode.
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We cut to the one scene that, while endearing with a riveting soundtrack by power couple Anže Rozman and Kara Talve, does give me pause. The pterosaurs featured in that episode were based on bones so fragmentary that they couldn't be diagnosed. How can we be sure that Barbaridactylus was a member of the antlerwing family, Phosphatodraco a member of the simurgh family, or even Tethydraco a member of the pteranodon family? How do we even know what Alcione even looked like? Also, the score doesn't really match the slower, less urgent movements of the pterosaurs.
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The next scene was described as "the sunken continent of Zealandia", which is a refresher to see the lost continent bearing recognition for a change. Here, a family of plesiosaurs (Tuarangisaurus keyesi) comes to the coast to gulp themselves on anti-buoyant rocks, while the males ceremoniously poke their long, heavy necks up to the surface, the only good moment in an otherwise generic sequence.
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After a quick focus on coral, we get treated to a Hoffmann's mosasaur (Mosasaurus hoffmanni) relying on fish and shrimp to give him a good, proper scratch, only to be pushed out of turn by a younger male. This sequence sticks out to me because it shows mosasaurs being portrayed as animals, not as monsters to shadow Nigel Marven or kaijuified Blackfish bootlegs.
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The next scene shows a dazzling, mesmerizing mating ceremony of ammonites ("scaphitids", they were called, but that doesn't determine specific species, as it was a very huge family). They glow in the dark and mate very particularly. If the male's flashes don't sync with those of the female, he'd be rejected. Complimenting this alien but still soothing scene is Rozman and Talve's equally alien and soothing score.
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Back in Zealandia, we end with plesiosaur pod mentality, as the whole group defends a pregnant mother from a kaika taniwha (Kaikaifilu hervei). As with the previous plesiosaur scene, it wasn't a scene that I got too crazy about.
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The next episode, "Deserts", isn't really as impactful as the Planet Earth episode of the same name, both in regards to execution and the musical score, and it was riddled with confusing scene decisions. The first scene demonstrates a lek of dreadnoughts (Dreadnoughtus schrani) acting like a combination of elephant seals and frigatebirds, right down to the pops on their necks. The score in that sequence is definitely memorable, as it (literally) highlights the weights that the males take to demonstrate their fitness to attract the gaggle of girls in the audience. Though I'm left wondering--did the upstart beat the veteran because he was stronger, or because he popped one of the veteran's neck balloons, as male frigatebirds would do to ditch the competish?
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Once the sauropod show is over, we now move to what was presumed to be Nemegtia, but it was portrayed to be as dry as Djadochta, which leads to the next problem. While there was evidence of Maastrichtian-age velos in Central Asia, calling them "Velociraptor" is just wrong. I grew up watching Walking with Dinosaurs, which means I watched "Giant of the Skies", which featured Utahraptor in the wrong place at the wrong time. And while the American cut justifies this with a demonstration of a land bridge that connected North America to Europe, I don't know how much water that holds, and that doesn't seem to be relevant anyway, for the damage has already been done. So having in Velociraptor, a genus of velos that went extinct 71 million years ago, in Nemegtia, which was set 66 million years ago, is just a rehash of that previous mistake. In short, Prehistoric Planet has Utahraptor'd the Velociraptor. And besides, hasn't the picture of pack-hunting raptors already been discarded?
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The next scene, the one with the Nemegtian mononych (Mononykus olecranus), is cute but not top-notch memorable, and its color choice is teetering way close to the point of plagiarism.
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Afterwards, the brief but violent rains have created a watering hole in the middle of the desert, luring in dinosaurs and pterosaurs from miles around, including a wandering khan (Tarbosaurus bataar). The reason that scene is so low was that it was just a near-identical rotoscope of the Water Truce sequence from The Jungle Book, right down to the herbivores making a clearing for the khan.
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Then we go high up to see more Barbaridactylus. This scene I wasn't aware was a problem until Unnatural History Channel brought it up in his video, but the females were shown to be oddly consensual towards the similar-looking sneaky males, who use their feminine appearances to sneak past the larger, more impressive males. This is a problem, apparently, because the more extreme the sexual dimorphism, the more likely the sneaky male will be rejected and therefore resort to assaulting the females.
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The last scene is an interesting one, albeit one that suffered an unmemorable score in the soundtrack. Apparently, salty southern duckbills (Secernosaurus koerneri) can thrive on dunes of gypsum, but when rains hit the coast, they rely on both their tenacity and their know-how of the sky to get to more productive grazing. This scene stands out to me because I question why any large animal would choose to thrive on such a taxing environment. It'd make sense for an animal as small as the cryptile, the scrofa and the gryken from The Future is Wild, but not for a duckbill bigger than 16 feet long.
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It is unanimously agreed upon that "Freshwater" is the weakest episode in the first season. Apart from the humpbacked false duckbill (Deinocheirus mirificus) getting a scratch in the swamps of a more accurate Nemegtia and the devil frog (Beelzebufo ampinga) making a snack out of a baby whacktooth (Masiaksaurus knoplferi), the habitat itself has been relegated to the backseat, which is why the mating scene of the t-rex and the laying magnificent simurgh (Quetzalcoatlus northropi) are on the C tier, good scenes that have been damaged by simply being in the wrong episode. Speaking of the latter, memes have popped up in which the faces of dinosaurs have been pasted over two shots of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, with either Masiakasaurus or the Planet Dinosaur model of Majungasaurus being Galahad and the Quetzalcoatlus being the French taunter ("What are you doing in Africa?" "MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS!") when, really, that meme is more applicable to Velociraptor being in the Maastrichtian. On that topic, not only is it STILL in the wrong time, there is another problem, one I didn't pay attention to until Unnatural History Channel brought it up on his video. Instead of showing audiences raptor prey restraint (or "RPR"), the storytellers relied instead on mountain cats to show the velos hunting the pterosaurs (species unknown). Like the Deserts episode, Planet Earth has a far stronger "Freshwater" episode.
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"Ice Worlds" didn't excite me as much as "Spirits of the Ice Forest" did, which is a shame, because dinosaurs in the snow is a refresher by default. We start at Prince Creek, which I couldn't ask for a worse place to start because the cast list is very fragmentary. In the opening scene, a pack of raptors (species unknown, though modeled after the pitbull raptor), shadows a herd of ugrunaaluk (Edmontosaurus sp.) for a long-delayed meal. Again, the picture of raptors hunting in packs has been debunked for a very long time now. Why insist on resorting to old cliches?
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The Ornithomimus scene (can't think of a vernacular for them), while the designs look cool and add distinction to overall character, is still just a rotoscope of the Adelie penguin sequence from "Frozen Planet". Next.
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The sequence with the swanneck (Olorotitan arharensis) is even less impressive. Are horsetails really more nutritious than grass? If so, then why have grasslands been the dominant plains since the Miocene?
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The reason the scene with the tro-o is relatively low on the tier list is that it should have been longer, because a dinosaur with the intellect of a fire hawk is a very interesting prospect. But the final scene was just too short and too bland to show off any real gold.
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We have spent so much time in the north that I question the necessity of a quick detour to Antarctica, rendering the scene with the polar macahutiul (Antarctopelta oliveroi) my least favorite of the series.
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The final scene demonstrates the predator-prey dynamic between the northern boss (Pachyrhinosaurus perotorum) and the nanook (Nanuqsaurus hoglundi). The scene is great, the score has some very rhythmic moments, but what puts it low on the B tier are the nanooks themselves. From a distance, they look as good as most of the others. But in closeup, they look kind of fake, especially when they're running. Which brings up to the next problem--the story is based on fossil footprints of different lines pointing in the same direction. But how do we know that those parallel tracks were made at the same time and not separated within hours, days or even weeks of each other? And while it is true that nanooks were smaller than t-rexes, their portrayals in the show were just too small. More recent consensus shows that one nanook could easily match a boss in size, if not overtop it.
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"Forests" is an everywhere kind of episode. The opening scene with the austroposeidon (Austroposeidon magnificus) is not long enough to get me invested.
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Then a herd of trikes (Triceratops, species unknown) visits a cave to visit a clay lick to neutralize the poisons from their plant food. But why clay? Why not salt? Herbivores can clearly deal with poisonous plants without problem, but plants lack sodium, which is why the elephants of Mount Elgon (the inspiration behind that scene) scrape the caves not for clay, but for salt.
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This next scene has gotten everyone talking. A male minotaur (Carnotaurus sastrei) clears the stage to wave his arms around to impress an impossibly stoic female. Everything about that scene--from the choreography to the score--is very goofy, and that is what makes it work so well.
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While it is nice to finally see the Pinocchio-rex (Qianzhousaurus sinensis) in the flesh, its hunt for bright blue corythoraptors (Corythoraptor jacobsi) is not a scene I'd be in a hurry to revisit.
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The fire scene is oddly slow, the only memorable moment in the whole sequence being my first official introduction to Atrociraptor marshalli...literally just one short week before Jurassic World: Dominion predictably ruined it.
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The scene with the baby Therizinosaurus is passable. While it is cute to imagine babies having a taste for honey, it just wasn't executed memorably.
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The final scene, the one set on Hateg Island, slogs on in pace, with the greatest focus being a bunch of odd-looking baby zalmos (Zalmoxes robustus) running and hiding from the real star of the episode, the robust simurgh (Hatzegopteryx thambena), looking more proper than how it looked in Planet Dinosaur. One question, though--weren't pterosaur wings supposed to be rounded at the tip? Sure, they've got the hands pointing backwards, but the pointed wingtips is now believed to be an outdated picture.
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So it goes without saying that years of watching a moderate quantity of Attenborough documentaries has made the watching experience of Prehistoric Planet, at least in comparison to the original Walking with Dinosaurs, a bit numb. The creature designs are good, the CGI has not faltered in its photorealism from The Jungle Book, and even the soundtrack has enough of a score to make it memorable. But it's the stories that amount to the overall numbness of the first season. They hadn't opened my eyes in the way that Walking with Dinosaurs did.
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When season 2 was announced literally one year after season 1, I had my doubts. Planet Earth 2 came out literally a decade after the first Planet Earth, and the differences in filming technology and musical score clearly show that. Same for the 16 years that separate The Blue Planet from Blue Planet 2. Dynasties 2, by contrast, came way too soon after the first Dynasties, and the end result is sloppy, from the stories being set at the tedious start rather than at the steady prime to the score from the first Dynasties being reused so often that the only episode to have any new music was "Meerkat". So to find Prehistoric Planet 2 come out literally one year after Prehistoric Planet, I was concerned that it'd be as shorthanded as Dynasties 2 was. The opening episode, "Islands", kind of suffered that, but it thankfully wasn't as severe a problem.
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The first segment of that episode struck me as odd because the adult zalmo looks weirdly identical to the baby model from last episode.
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While it is cool to see the robust simurgh being expanded upon, I personally wish we'd stayed at Hateg Island, where they'd hunt the Transylvanian dwarf duckbill (Telmatosaurus transylvanicus) and not the funky combbill (Tethyshadros insularis).
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One of season 1's most recurring complaints is "no crocodiles", which is pretty apt when you consider how diverse they were during the Cretaceous period. So to see the Malagasy armadillo (Simosuchus clarki) at all, let alone stand up against a mahjong (Majungasaurus crenatissimus), is one to remember for the ages.
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This next scene is actually pretty interesting, in which we see Adalatherium, which wasn't a true mammal, but rather something hovering closely outside the taxonomic boundaries. It's a long sequence, which is just as well, because this is as new a clade to me now as the cynodont was when Walking with Dinosaurs came out.
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As with in "Ice Worlds", a quick detour to Antarctica doesn't seem necessary to me, as the hunt between the Imperobator and the Morrosaurus feels more like a skim.
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The last scene in the episode is my personal favorite, in which a male robust simugh stands on a sandbar to do whatever it takes to impress a mate.
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"Badlands" stands out in that there are only two settings. The first one is the strongest because of how the Deccan Traps, long reputed to be the co-culprit to the fall of the dinosaur empire, has been repurposed into prime nesting estate for a herd of sauropods (Isisaurus colberti). The journey seems reckless, but volcanic sand is hot and toasty, something that a modern species of dinosaur, the megapode, also exploits as it lays its egg in the hot volcanic sand of the Solomons.
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The next scene hasn't fixed on last year's problems, in which Velociraptor is still there and it still hasn't performed RPR--it just kicks an herbivore off a cliff, and that was that.
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The nesting Corythoraptor scene didn't interest me, but what really bugged me was that the antagonist of that sequence was a kuru (Kuru kulla), a raptor who, like the pterosaurs on the "Coasts" episode, was based on incomplete, fragmentary specimens.
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The sequence with the tarchias (Tarchia, species unknown), is a refreshing detour from the previous sequence because we have a better idea as to what they would have looked like. And to see them slog around for an oasis is a second highlight (next to the Deccan nursery).
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This next scene has nothing new added from either "Time of the Titans" or "Alpha's Egg", in which a herd of baby sauropods gets picked on by larger predators on their way to the safety of the forest.
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The majority of the "Freshwater" sequences I feel fit better in "Swamps". The same unnamed pterosaurs from "Freshwater" have reappeared, this time trying to fly past an approaching population of alligators (Shamosuchus djadochtaensis).
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The next episode features a grizzly bear gathering of austroraptors (Austroraptor cabazai) hunting gar. It stands out as highly as it does because it shows a species of raptor that looks and acts differently from the usual velo or nych. Plus, we know many miles more about austroraptors than we do about Spinosaurus, so that is a relieving plus.
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The devil frog stands out in this episode, and to see a grumpy male try to fight off a herd of goavambe (Rapetosaurus krausei) is humorous. It also deviates from the usual picture of "the frog that eats dinosaurs".
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This next sequence I was very concerned the moment I saw it in the ads. Thanks to Jack Horner, the poorly-known family Pachycephalosauridae has been under very hot fire with the notion of bone sponginess being a taxonomically viable method of identification, which it really isn't because all amniotes have spongy bones in their teens. But very thankfully, this sequence does not resort to Hornerism. It shows that older males do get longer horns on the backs of their heads, not the other way around. Also, new evidence has shown that the domes may have been covered in shiny skin, so this has me asking--is the dome a boys-only trait? Could that dracorex (Pachycephalosaurus hogwartsia) skull that I saw at the Black Hills Museum just be a girl entering her sweet 16 when she died? Could those stygimoloch (Pachycephalosaurus spinifer) skulls just be those of high school footballers?
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"Swamps" ended on a high note with a couple of t-rexes hunting an anatotitan (Edmontosaurus annectens) in the dark. One just walks to the duckbill, and the animal, in its panic, goes right in the direction of the other t-rex in hiding. This perfectly reflects the current understanding that t-rexes exchanged fast running for better walking. Now can we see some duckbills fighting back, please?
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On May 26, The Little Mermaid came out in theaters. A day earlier, "Oceans" came out. If I were to choose, I'd stick to the latter, simply because we're treated to fresh new stories with a wider variety of mosasaurs and ammonites than any of the Walking with programs ever did. The scene with the hesperorns chasing bait fish only to have themselves be chased by bulldog fish (Xiphactinus) is a classic, but a good one. However, "X-fish"? What's wrong with "bulldog fish"? But the highlight, no doubt, is the final sequence, in which a Hoffmann's mosasaur killed a juvenile plesiosaur simply by ramming it great white style.
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"Freshwater" was weak due to being sorely unfocused. "North America", by contrast, is even weaker for being too rushed. Also, the "scars make the man" narrative with the trikes bugs me the most. What justification is there for that?
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This has been a very exhaustive review of Prehistoric Planet, and it's way too early for me to worry about a season 3 coming out, if there is going to be one.

Hello, friends.
Today, we're going to receive quite a lot of exposition about the nature of Strictland through the eyes of Seonghwa. There's a lot to discuss, so let's jump right in.

01: What are your thoughts on the page?

BobbyJ: I have a note on my page that says the Strictland government and economy are further explained in Pt. 3 Intro
GD: Okay. This is a big page
BobbyJ: It's interesting that emotions aren't fully abolished. They're just severely dulled. Which obviously reminds me of The Giver. And that only art has been abolished specifically.
GD: Yes, I think that's right. I feel like we should go paragraph by paragraph with this one because there is a lot
BobbyJ: From the top then?
Once again, it feels that we're left to infer what has happened in the meantime
GD: Yes, the first line makes it feel we're getting the Halateez story from the Grimes’ perspective, but then we get a lot of world building details to help us understand it. Are we to assume that the Grimes siblings think these boys look like Halateez? Or do they not know? Because Halateez wore masks?
BobbyJ: No, I think Ateez probably were like "What's the deal with this place?" And the Grimes Boy has been filling them in on the story. The entry starts at the end of the story and then fills us in
GD: A note: "the entire human race"
We've talked before about whether there is a world outside of strictland. And you know, I still don't know? Maybe that's a future goal? Or Z is in charge of the entire human race, which feels... big
BobbyJ: Yeah--it feels more like the simulation says "the entire human race would benefit from this thing" and Z just applies that structure to his world he somehow is in control of. And by his world, I mean more the country/area he's in charge of
GD: I'm in this second paragraph here, and I guess I'm just thinking that Z isn't wrong. Human emotions do cause crime and terrorism. But it reminds me of the gun debate we're currently having in our country? And all of the politicians who want to blame it on mental health? which is part of the problem, but it isn't the whole problem
BobbyJ: I disagree. It's true that we can't control our feelings. But our feelings do not dictate what we do or how we act. It's the will to do something wrong for the sake of selfishness or greed--which I don't classify as emotions
GD: I guess I'm saying that I think human emotions are a cause, but not the cause
BobbyJ: Mental health is also a factor, I think
GD: I think I am more sympathetic to Z and the simulation. I do think human emotions can lead to crime and terrorism, but they can just as easily lead to beauty and joy. So if you get rid of human emotions, you probably will stop some crime, but you will also stop other things.
BobbyJ: I am not sympathetic to Z because I don't feel this is as benevolent as it might appear. It feels very sinister to me. "This is all for you" is bullshit
GD: I can see Z as the hero of his own story--a Thanos type character--but we don't really know enough about him at this point.
BobbyJ: This is full speculation, but do we think Z also agreed to have his emotions limited and memories removed?
GD: Almost surely not. Those rules don't apply to people who can be trusted, I assume
BobbyJ: "Central government.” Implies, like, the existence of branches, no? Which makes me think the world is bigger than it feels
GD: Does the Korean government currently have branches? I know they have a president, but I guess I don't know much else about how power in the government works there. Like I don't know if they have legislative bodies, how powerful the judicial branch is, etc
BobbyJ: It appears it is similar to the U.S. After reading for two minutes
GD: Helpful context though
BobbyJ: Their president can only serve one five-year term. Means nothing but is interesting. Kinda wish we had that same policy these days
GD: For sure
I want to talk about art. Art with a capital A. Art=emotion
BobbyJ: Yes. The entire process of creating and engaging with art is based on emotions
GD: Sort of no matter how the individual members of Ateez feel about their lore, I have always felt that they embody that philosophy. Just this idea that Art is Important?
I talked about this the other day, but I was very impressed with KQ hiring a local artist for the billboard promotion during anchor. I thought it was very thematic, and also that it sort of embodied a lot of the ideas that they do put out in their diaries. Because as you mentioned earlier, art is the only thing that's banned
BobbyJ: I'm thinking about this idea of songs that give me negative feelings vs. songs that give me no feelings at all. I don't know exactly what I am thinking. But it reminds me of a chat I had with a fellow yearbook advisor years ago
He said that when his staff is trying to decide on their artistic direction for that year's volume, they'd go through a bunch of magazines and everyone would pick out spreads they really like. They'd pin them all to a bulletin board. Then each staffer would get two colors of push pins. They'd all use one color for spreads they like and one for spreads they hate. He said that after the exercise, they'd remove all the spreads that received none or few pins while those that had a lot of either love or hate pins they'd keep.
And I thought it was interesting that the hated spreads were kept. And his reasoning was that those spreads made the staffers feel something. It wasn't a good something, but it was something
GD: That is interesting
BobbyJ: And when I apply this idea to music or movies or tv or art--the things I actively dislike do stick with me while the things I just nothing fade away
GD: It reminds me of book clubs in a way? Like, in my book club, we have a great book club discussion when everyone loves or hates the book. If people are like, yeah, it's fine, the conversation is so.... nothing.
BobbyJ: Is it. . . harder to talk about things that we love actually?
I can't help but notice that whenever there's a heartfelt appreciation post, it gets very little traction and engagement. But if someone does an "unpopular opinion" or "things you hate about the group you love" post, suddenly everyone has something to share. Perhaps we've talked about this before. Justifying why you dislike something is easier than justifying why you love something?
GD: So I sometimes wonder if, when it comes to music, the problem is one of vocabulary more so than a lack of desire? Like, most people have taken a basic literature class, so when we love a book, we can all universally talk about things like plot, structure, characters--we have some sort of shared understanding of the parts of a story and can discuss and identify the things that we like
It's different for music. I do not know how to identify the parts of a song or the instruments or just the music things that are happening. Music knowledge and vocabulary is so much more niche, so I do think that makes it harder to discuss and pinpoint music that we really love--because we're experiencing it fully emotionally, the context and words all removed. So I do think with music especially, it is easier to talk about the things that we dislike.
BobbyJ: But shouldn't your dislike also require vocabulary? I remember when I was trying to rant about O.O I didn't have any of the words so I had to resort to metaphor
GD: I think it's possibly easier to come up with metaphors for things we dislike than things we love. I can only describe listening to Jongho as like looking into the face of god so many times before I start to sound like I'm slightly insane.
But you know, people don't have the right words to describe why they dislike something all the time--and they just go forward with the wrong words. How many times have you seen someone say "Ateez's music is too noisy for me" when Ateez has possibly two songs in their discography that could be labeled noise music? "I don't like the autotune" when there's barely any autotune
BobbyJ: People do seem to have Feelings about Ateez music. Which I would argue supports the idea that Ateez are making Art
I do wonder exactly what Z classifies as art
GD: I for sure agree with you. It's like that conversation about what a cover should be from the other day: you can like or dislike what Ateez does when covering another group's song, but they will be changing it to achieve their own artistic expression. They will not make you a copy. They will make new art.
We know paintings. Music seems implied.
BobbyJ: Fashion probably? Which makes me think it's interesting that Left Eye specifically is a former designer. But it wasn't the art ban that made him give up designing
Actually, reading ahead. I'm not sure fashion was banned after all? It's hard to tell
GD: I guess it's interesting to me because anything can be art. A house, a car, furniture? Given the right person making those things, they can be art just as easily as they might not be art.
So I do wonder if Z is defining Art more broadly... like, art is not this thing, but art is anything that incites an undue amount of emotion
BobbyJ: Right--I was just thinking, is all music art? And I would argue no if the person writing a song is not doing it for the sake of expression but for the sake of making money. But if that song evokes emotion in someone else, I'd say yes, it is art.
GD: We do have those prohibited signs from Rhythm Ta, which calls out "art, music, dance"? Am I remembering that correctly? Or is it "art, music, emotion"?
What does it mean for something to be defined as art is really a question courts have struggled with for many, many, many years. So it's possible that even in Z's world, what is art is a question that is constantly influx and being redefined
[BobbyJ provides screenshot of Rhythm Ta stage]
Okay, so art, dance, and music are Art specifically.
"Art" lower case art, I'm assuming is paintings, drawings, sculptures. The physical arts.
BobbyJ: Right. Literature and fashion aren't mentioned. Or acting. But maybe they fall under the general Art umbrella. Keeping it vague gives Z more control
GD: Do you know the supreme court case where the supreme court tries to define art?
I feel like I should look it up to get that quote. Hold on--I need to check something
[GD checks something]
So in Tutton v. Viti, the supreme court implied that it is up to the creators to define whether the thing they created is art. The case was about sculpture, and whether these sculptors who were copying sculptures were engaged in the act of creating art
BobbyJ: Just straight up copying?
GD: And basically, they said the sculptors were artists due to their skill despite the lack of creative merit. They weren't trying to like, sell them. It was creating replica sculptures in art class. Which would violate copyright (if they were selling them)
BobbyJ: So, like, if I do a cover of a BTS song and I sound identical to BTS, I'm still an artist . Hypothetically
GD: If you perform it with good enough skill, according to the US Supreme Court, it seems so
BobbyJ: Wait--they weren't selling them? Then what was the problem? How did it end up in the Supreme Court?
GD: I have not read the full case and it is extremely old, so hard to parse, but it seems the original sculptor did not want them making replicas in their art class and argued they were not allowed to do it because it wasn't real art
BobbyJ: Artists do studies all the time where they basically copy other artists' work in order to learn techniques
GD: And the supreme court said, no, they can do that. Which, exactly. This is a precedent that holds. If you do art and sell it, I can't copy it and also sell it. I can however copy it and use it for my own personal use (legally--that doesn't mean it's ethical, but legally)
BobbyJ: Well, it's the same idea as me copying a designer dress and making it myself and for myself because I don't want to spend $800 on a dress
GD: Like if someone made something on etsy that I wanted, and I didn't want to pay for it, I can legally copy it for myself. Right, the supreme court would define both of those things as artistic endeavors
BobbyJ: Huh. I mean--I don't disagree. I'm also not certain it needs to be termed as "art"
GD: Terming it "art" is how they protect it because art is a protected right under the constitution
BobbyJ: Wait--if art is also a protected right in the South Korean constitution, then that would imply that Z was able to change the constitution. Which is wild. How long did this process take?
(Also, assuming that Strictland was originally more like South Korea)
GD: We'd have to review the South Korean constitution. I don't know for sure that it is a right because I know nothing about their legal system. But because art is protected under our constitution, I have always defined art fairly broadly. So considering art being banned, is putting me in a different head space
BobbyJ: Article 22: All citizens shall enjoy freedom of learning and the arts.
GD: I'm now looking up how to make constitutional amendments in Korea
BobbyJ: I mean if they also had a National Assembly, he got the bill passed there
GD: It makes me think I've gone pretty far afield here
BobbyJ: If we're thinking about it, I guarantee the Intern also thought about it
GD: I would like to note that "people enjoyed material affluence"
BobbyJ: Yes, I have a sticky note about that
GD: And I am thinking of Maslow's hierarchy? Which I know is something we've also discussed a lot. But I am wondering, how many citizens weren't having their basic needs met when they agreed to give up art?
BobbyJ: Right. Is art part of our Maslow?
A lot probably. There had to have been problems in order for people to accept Z's proposal
GD: It's certainly easier to give up art if you're not currently able to eat
BobbyJ: Mingi comes to mind. Which I think is when we were discussing Maslow
GD: I have argued, and I will still argue it, that art should be part of human's basic needs. Like, it can make the rest of it all seem less grim for some people. But yeah, if you don't have a place to live, don't have any food, are struggling to just survive, giving up art for the promise of having your basic needs meet will be very appealing to many people
BobbyJ: I think I would argue that art belongs on the "love and belonging" tier which is about friends, family and connection. Art helps us connect with ourselves and others and the world around us. Like, you read a poem that perfectly describes how you feel. Or Ateez releases Turbulence and you swear they pulled the lyrics straight out of your soul
GD: Mmmmmm. . . and love and belonging aren't actually that low on the pyramid. High I mean. They're not that high--they're in the middle
BobbyJ: But you can't really fully reap the benefits of that tier if you are starving to death. And self-actualization is pretty meaningless if you aren't connected to other people in some way
GD: I spend a lot of time thinking about self-actualization which I forgot was even on this pyramid. I'm looking at the pyramid now, obviously
Yes. Art is love and belonging. I've decided you're right. So they've traded in love and belonging for the two things below it
In the next paragraph, they say that the songs had "the power to attract people" which I think is interesting
BobbyJ: The "various fields" is interesting to me. I think of people in different lines of work. Like scientists, teachers, lawyers, etc. But I'm not sure that's what it means
GD: I had long ago been confused about who the black pirates were and how they related to halaateez, but this line makes it pretty clear that halateez sort of inspired other people to get out of Z's control, and then those other people formed the black pirates
BobbyJ: Right. Halateez are "men wearing black fedora.” The Black Pirates is the name of the resistance
GD: Halateez "stimulated" them. Which, with what we know from Halazia, makes sense that the resistance seems to venerate them? Because they weren't necessarily a part of, and well known, to the resistance. They were merely the inspirational rallying cry. Does that make sense?
BobbyJ: Like Katniss. Not everyone knew her but they knew OF her
GD: Yes, and I'm interpreting Halazia as showing us what Strictland thought of halateez, not that halateez appear in the MV because I do not think they do.
Back to your point, what do you think people from various fields means if not different positions?
BobbyJ: I wondered if it meant more physical location. Although, if you have people with different skills and specialties, it would explain how the resistance is able to start fighting back
GD: Do you think it could mean something similar to stations too? Like, young, old, rich, poor, etc
BobbyJ: Could be.
GD: Skipping to the last line, we have Hwa sort of repeating a line similar to Hongjoong's in the first entry? What's important is getting back home. And they can't do that now
BobbyJ: Right. They haven't grasped their place in this story yet
GD: I read ahead because I couldn't stop myself and the jump is fascinating "we have to get back home" to "I won't come back home"
BobbyJ: I have also read ahead but a lot further
GD: Sounds right lol
BobbyJ: Because I became very curious about a different switch--how do they go from we need to get home to let's save this country
And I think I have an idea
GD: That is also the switch I was looking for
BobbyJ: This is way ahead, but after the Receiving of the Suits, in the very next chapter, San discovers the lost memories and feels "a surge of anger.” After that, Yeosang gets caught and all the drama happens with the museum and Yunho's brother. But I think that's the switch. I think it triggers San's empathy. And he spreads the agenda to the others
GD: I am very interested in what's happening with Yunho, but I suppose I need to save my interest for like 6 weeks. I do think we will need to cut this bible study in half
BobbyJ: Expected
GD: Well, this was a big page. It had a lot. We read some constitutions even
BobbyJ: Much was learned
GD: Do we have any more thoughts on the page? Or should we pick a patron saint to hold us to next week?
BobbyJ: I'm sure there's lots more to say. I just don't know what any of those things are.
GD: Perhaps we will have more thoughts on the page next week even. A double round of thoughts on the page
BobbyJ: Might even need a part 3
GD: I've been using an extra ES album to pin the postcard for my patron saint on my bulletin board, and I have appreciated it deeply. Hongjoong has been up for two weeks now
BobbyJ: I feel like the patron saints actually work. Except I didn't have one this past week and that probably explains a lot
GD: I kept Hongjoong, but I do think it would've been wise to have a refresher
BobbyJ: Let's just make sure we do it every Sunday, Bible study or not
GD: Right, even if we cancel bible study, a new, Very Important thing
So, this week, I need to finish the line edit of this book. Which means I need to focus and stay motivated. I think the boy I want to guide me through it is Jongho. I need his professionalism in the face of challenges and his commitment to doing the things that he doesn't like as much because he knows that it is part of his job.
Also, it's hard to think about anything other than his Immortal Songs stage, so I may as well lean in
BobbyJ: Let it be your battle cry
So. This is the last full week of classes. Which means a lot of work to finish off the semester. But, the list is so much shorter than it used to be. So that's something to be happy about.
But also, based on his condition today, I suspect that this might be the week I have to let go of Oliver. [Editor’s note: It was.]
And I think I need San. His ability to embody whatever moment he's in on stage. I don't fully understand how it translates, but I feel it's true
GD: Hmmm yes I think I understand, though I don't have the words either.
There's something about present-ness and humanity in there. I have always thought that San had a real ability to see the human-ness in others and to communicate the human-ness in himself. Which probably only makes sense to me.
BobbyJ: No, I think you're right. There's something extremely real about him
GD: I hope he helps guide you through what has the potential to be a very hard week
BobbyJ: Whatever happens, we keep moving forward. Which also feels very San.
-----
Thank you for joining us today. We'll be back next week with our Seonghwa Sacred Writing Practice. Have an excellent week, and may your personal patron saint guide you well.

I don't have the background to Pakistani Politics but have been watching from afar. It seems like with Pakistani Politics, as with other countries, a "fact" gets thrown out, that was never validated, and then it becomes happen stance. A few questions if you will - I would like as evidence based answers as possible:
1.) Was Imran Khan inept at handling the economy?; Imran Khan was in power from 2018 to 2022; 2018 the GDP growth rate was 6.5% (what he inherited) - in 2019 (before corona) it plummeted to 2.5% - thats pretty bad. 2020, corona happened, 2021 still corona; 2022 that he touts - was the same from most of the world, not sure he can take credit for it. I mean it makes sense that he is inept at running a economy; he never has although he has good morales and ideals. What was the cause of the 2019 slowdown in GDP growth? Is Imran Khan capable of running the economy? Again I know he touts alot of figures, namely the 6.5% growth but that was AFTER covid, most numbers under his economy were actually not great - but also know it takes time to get things on track. Just curious about what others have to say based with fact.
2.) When Imran Khan accused the US of overthrowing him; he didn't provide evidence (the cypher he referenced) was not evidence if no one can review it and the national security council didn't object to it. I noticed he doesnt have all the answers so he just says what his best guess is. Like when he accused the US. To me, it seems far more likley its just the current government attacking him then the military. Why are people blaming the military? I know thats the prevailing sentiment, but there is no evidence. It makes way more sense for the current government to be the ones doing this; so why flack for the military? What evidence is there that the military wants to overthrow Imran Khan and why?
3.) I looked up the organization for the military and see there is one head, and then 5 corp commanders; who actually runs the military; is it just the army head Asim Munir?
4.) Could it be possible for the military to save Imran Khan and the democratic system? If its actually the government that is the cause of the crackdown of PTI and incarceration of Imran Khan, is it actually possible that the army could step in and force elections. Why wouldn't they want Imran Khan to come to power?

I don’t know if any of you have noticed, but the last few years have been wild for airline travel. It seems like not even a week can pass before a new viral video is circulating the internet, showcasing some idiot on a plane or airport screaming, shouting, and even starting fights with other passengers and flight staff for no apparent reason.
I’m sure it’s entertaining when you’re sitting at home and come across these videos while casually scrolling through Reddit or Twitter. You might laugh, or shake your head at the stupidity and not give it a second thought. Unfortunately, this isn’t an option when you’re the one on the job.
I can’t even count the number of times I’ve had to call security to deal with a rowdy or straight-up violent customer in the airport over the last couple of years. Most of the time, the things that set people off are surprisingly minor and avoidable issues.
They want to board now but it wasn’t their turn so they start harassing me and my co-workers. Another passenger looked at them funny so they get into a screaming match. A baby is crying so the grown adult starts whining even louder. The person in front of them took the last chocolate donut with sprinkles from the airport bakery so they start throwing punches.
You would not believe the stuff I’ve seen. Needless to say, I got tired of it. Getting up to go to work, wondering what kind of unhinged maniac was going to make a problem for me lost its appeal. So, I started to look for a new job.
A few weeks into the job search, I began to get doubtful that I would find a suitable replacement. Seeing as my only tangible skills and experience were in the airline industry, I didn’t have much more than other airline jobs within realistic reach. Though I didn’t have a problem with relocation, if it meant I was going to end up in another major airport, I had no interest.
During one 3 am job search after my long shift at the airport, running on nothing but the jittery movements from the room-temperature coffee, I found a new job listing. One Pine Airport, a rural airport in the midwest. I sat up and took another sip of coffee. The pictures for the place gave an idea of the size and it looked tiny. Only a couple of runways, a single terminal, and a cute internal design reflective of the forestry that surrounded it. Perfect for me, I thought. I imagined there would not be nearly as many people to deal with.
I scrolled down to the job details and to my relief, it was for the exact same job I had already been doing. The only difference was that it required frequent night shifts. I had done plenty of night shifts before, but doing a few more of them made no difference to me. Surprisingly listed was the pay. I couldn’t believe my eyes. They were offering more starting than I was being paid at the airport I had been at for over three years.
Now wide awake, I eagerly uploaded my resume, filled out all of the application questions, and even spent the next hour crafting an unnecessary cover letter. I headed to bed with the hope that my days at overflowing airports might be over. The next day as I was getting ready for work, I opened my phone to scroll through notifications and check emails.
To my disbelief, I had one from the job I had applied for only hours earlier. The manager at the airport, who had posted the job, requested an interview over Zoom. I quickly replied and we settled on a time during my lunch break that very day.
The first few hours of work breezed by and as I boarded flight after flight of passengers, I couldn’t help but think about the upcoming interview. When it came time, I was nervous as hell but my fears were diffused within the first minute. A bald, well-kept, and well-dressed man joined the meeting room and greeted me with a warm smile. He introduced himself as James.
I couldn’t have asked for a more friendly interviewer. He welcomed me and after some small talk and a few questions about my relevant experience, he gave an overview of the job's details, that being the same job I already had with better pay but more frequent night shifts. No problem with me. After affirming that I knew all the details of the job, James cracked another wide, friendly smile and asked an unexpected question.
“When can you start?”
I spit the out sip of coffee I had just taken back into the cup. I looked back up at James and tried to find the right words but I was unprepared.
“You uh… aren’t gonna give me a call back like later or something? Don’t you have more interviews and… and paperwork waiting to clear and, and…?”
James waved his hand dismissively at his webcam.
“You’re the only applicant we have, and we couldn’t have asked for a better one. As for the paperwork and such, we’ll figure that out when we figure it out. The job is yours, whenever you can start, that is. Preferably soon?”
Though the feelings of shock and confusion remained, they were pushed to the side by my excitement. Throughout the remainder of our conversation, James and I reviewed our schedules and set up a start date before ending the call. I sat back in my break room chair with a sigh of disbelief and a chuckle.
I am well aware that it is standard to give at least a two-week notice to your employer and moving across states for a job is supposed to take quite a bit of planning but I was dying to get out of my current job. Through both eagerness and maybe a little stupidity, we settled on a day only a little over a week away.
At the end of my shift that day, I let my manager know I had to be done in a week. Though she wasn’t happy, she assured me it wouldn’t be a problem.
My final day was nothing short of horrendous. A couple had come up, demanding and screaming that I refund their tickets for no apparent reason. On top of that, they still wanted to fly. After hearing that no, they would not be able to fly for zero cost, the husband, followed by the wife, both started shouting threats. Security was quickly called to the terminal.
As soon as they arrived, I checked my watch to find that my shift was over. I let out a sigh of relief and excitedly walked away. As deprived of sleep as I was, with a long and undoubtedly stressful drive ahead of me, I was still more energetic and in higher spirits than I had been in a long time.
Surprisingly, the drive went off without a hitch. I arrived earlier than expected and checked into the motel room I rented for the week so I had time to get the move figured out. After dumping a few boxes of personal items and a suitcase of clothes into the room, I turned off the lights. I passed out as soon as my head hit the pillow.
I energetically awoke that evening to prepare myself for my first shift. I quickly got dressed and started the drive in hopes of arriving plenty early. Naively, I hadn’t considered how my unfamiliarity with the roads would slow me down, and after a staggering amount of wrong turns, I arrived at the little airport with only minutes to spare.
The airport was even smaller in person than I had imagined it to be from the pictures. I quickly walked through the entrance and was greeted by the small team of security. After notifying them that I was there for work and that James had been waiting for me, they hurried me through without so much as a question. The security, the architecture, the beautiful scenery that surrounded it, nothing about this airport couldn’t have felt more welcoming.
I walked through to find the single terminal inside, devoid of any passengers, with James sitting behind a counter at the end. After a moment he looked up and upon making eye contact with me, his tired face lit up. I was about to apologize for my tardiness but didn’t have the chance as he rushed to show me the employee locker room where he had my new employee uniform and badge waiting inside my very own locker. He told me to get changed and to meet him outside right away.
I did as he asked and within a couple of minutes, I walked out to find him back behind the console at the counter, gathering his belongings. He noticed me approaching and glanced up, thanking me for showing up and starting so soon as he handed me a fresh cup of coffee. He also apologized for not being able to stick around long for my shift but he sounded sure that he wasn’t all that worried.
“I have to be going now, I’ve been on duty for 17 hours. I know you’re plenty familiar with our systems and software, you know what you’re doing.”
He assured me with a pat on the back before walking out from the desk. He turned and added
“It’ll be a quiet night for you anyway. No flights scheduled. Just sit back, relax, and uh... Oh yeah. Most importantly, I nearly forgot”.
He reached into his bag and pulled out a single sheet of laminated paper and held it in front of me.
“Give this a read as soon as you can. Go over it a few times if you need, don’t deviate from it”.
I took it but before I could even get a look, I noticed James begin to walk toward the exit, along with every single one of the security guards and the cashier who had just closed down the only shop in the airport. I then noticed that all of the scanners and metal detectors at the security gate were shut off. I started to panic.
“Hey! James? Where is everyone going?”
I shouted. The first words I had managed to speak to my new boss since arriving. He stopped and turned back again
“Oh yeah. Another thing I ought to have mentioned. Everyone except whoever is working the night shift in, well, your position takes off right around now. Don’t worry, security will be back sometime around 5 am. You’ve got this place to yourself. Grab a magazine from the little store in there if you get bored. Feel free to snag yourself a couple of snacks too”.
He began to walk away again before briefly turning and pointing at me.
“But before you do anything, read that list. You’ll need it”.
I stood, dumbfounded as I watched my new boss along with all of the other airport staff leave. I started to wrap my head around the fact that I had an empty airport to myself for 10 hours, with nothing to do and no one to deal with, all while I was getting paid the highest wage I had ever earned.
As much as thinking about it delighted me, I turned my attention turned toward the sheet of paper I almost forgot I was holding on to. James said to follow whatever list was on it, so I figured I ought to take a look. I walked behind the airport counter and sank into one of the seats behind it. I took a sip of coffee and finally took a serious look.
A total of 6 rules were neatly spaced on the sheet.
Rule 1: All lights in the airport are to stay on at all times. If one is off, or if you are to accidentally turn one off, turn it back on as soon as possible. If a light seems to be broken or is out and unable to turn back on, calmly exit the area. Report the outage to James or maintenance when possible. Do not listen to the sounds. Do not listen to the voices.
Rule 2: Rule 2 pertains to rainy or stormy weather. If it is raining or storming outside, disregard rules 3, 4, and 5. They will not be a concern during these types of weather conditions. Stay inside at all times. Do not use the men’s restroom and avoid going near it entirely if possible.
Rule 3: Sometime between 11 pm and 1 am, a young woman will walk out of the women’s restroom. She will enter the terminal and sit, occasionally getting up to walk around or change seats. Her name is Elizabeth. She will attempt to make conversation but you must not reciprocate. You may look at her, you may give nonverbal communication such as a head nod, you may write as a means of communication, or you may shake her hand but do not speak to her. If you refuse to speak to her, Elizabeth should be gone within a few hours. If you happen to make such a mistake, go to the men’s restroom and wait for her to leave.
Rule 4: At around one or two in the morning, a janitor in blue coveralls will arrive at the front entrance. Crack open the door and ask for his name. If he says his name is Simon, let him in. If he gives you any name other than Simon, shut the door and lock it without another word and walk away. If the janitor is Simon, he will attend to the janitorial needs of the airport. If he asks to clean where you are standing, oblige him. Simon will not interfere with your duties otherwise. He is not hostile or dangerous. You may engage in conversation with Simon. He will leave the same way he came when he feels it is necessary.
Rule 5: At around 3 am, you may notice that a black and red Cessna Skyhawk has landed on one of the airstrips. You will never see it land, and you will never see it take off. It will just appear when you’re not looking. After spotting the plane for the first time, do not look at it again. Avoid looking in its general direction if at all possible. There is a picture of the exact plane displayed inside the terminal, behind the counter.
Rule 6: Later in the night but sometime before dawn, a group of men claiming to be from TSA may arrive at the airport. They will have their own key and let themselves in. Some could be armed. Often, they exhibit panicked behavior. They may search through the airport, sweep room to room, and ask questions. They are permitted to search anywhere in the main airport building that they please, and you may oblige to any questioning but under no circumstances are they permitted to enter the sky bridge. They will not enter without verbal approval and they cannot harm you.
After reading over it a few times, I set the laminated sheet down and leaned back further into my seat before taking a long sip of coffee, wondering what on earth I had just read. I hadn’t taken James to be the imaginative type. Most of all, I hadn’t taken him to be anywhere near the unprofessional type. Though as I thought about it, it was unusual how rushed this all was and how he left in such a hurry, leaving so few details.
I began to wonder if I was being pranked, I considered that maybe this was all some sort of messed up joke or setup. I ruled that out pretty quickly. This was, in fact, a real airport. I had done plenty of research by the time I got here. At least a few real flights were coming in or going out each day. James has been working here for years and I couldn’t think of a reason why he would jeopardize his job or reputation just to get a scare out of me.
After chuckling to myself at the absurdity of my situation, I decided to indulge and see what would happen. Maybe it was a “test” for me as a new employee. Maybe James wanted to see if I could follow orders.
After glancing at the list once more and realizing the impact rule 2 had on the number of things I would have to keep track of, I brought up my phone to check the forecast. Clear skies, not a chance for rain or storms all night. Great, I thought to myself. I had to watch out for these Elizabeth and Simon characters to show up and I suppose “not” be on the lookout for a random plane to appear on the runway.
I stood up and grabbed my coffee, walking to the glass panes. I took another sip from my cup while admiring the lit runways along the airfield. It sure was a pretty nice sight. As I was raising my cup to finish what was left, I began to hear the click of shoes on the floor somewhere behind me.
Startled, I spun around abruptly, dropping my cup and spilling the remainder of the coffee in the process. At the other end of the terminal seating stood a young woman, around her mid-twenties in my estimation. She was holding two large leather suitcases in each hand and had an old-fashioned sense of style with a skirt and heels. Most surprising was her stunning beauty and welcoming smile.
“Oh I’m sorry dear, didn’t mean to scare you”
She expressed with a sincere tone. I opened my mouth, ready to assure her that everything was fine but I stopped myself. I recalled the list. At this point, I was certain that she was here at James’s request, a paid actor determined to make me break the rules. I was more determined not to. Instead, I simply fixed my posture, straightened my uniform, and looked back with a smile.
She walked to the counter where she placed her leather suitcases on the ground before closing the distance between us.
“Looks like we’ve got this fabulous airport all to ourselves. I am Elizabeth”
She said, reaching out her hand. I shook it, but she didn’t seem quite satisfied.
“And your name?”
I continued to smile and lock eye contact. Her grin grew for a moment before she remarked
“You don’t seem to be much of a talkative one”
And with that, she turned and started to walk away. I returned to my seat behind the counter, watching her closely as I did. Elizabeth proceeded to the unattended airport shop and after a couple of minutes of looking over magazine covers and occasionally taking a peek inside, she returned carrying a small stack of reading material. She approached my counter before placing a National Geographic magazine in front of me.
“I figured you might like this one. Enjoy”
She said, winking before settling on a seat in the first row of the terminal, straight across from where I had been sitting.
Remarkably, her intuition was spot on. I may have lived in cities all of my life but I loved nature, despite how little of it I had gotten to see. National Geographic was a favorite of mine, one I had been familiar with and enjoyed on work breaks from time to time. Rarely was I given this long to be able to read. I was almost tempted to break the rule and thank her for her rather thoughtful act, though I didn’t. I stuck to the rule.
The next couple of hours were uneventful. Elizabeth and I read through our magazines, occasionally looking up at each other to exchange glances and smiles. Within that time, she had attempted to get me to talk at least half a dozen more times. I almost gave in when she asked me if I wanted another magazine.
At a little past 1:30, I could hear a knock at the front entrance. Elizabeth and I both looked before she remarked
“Oh, that must be the nice cleaner man”
With a giggle before returning to her magazine. I walked over to the front doors and sure enough, there stood a man around his mid-thirties, sporting a blue janitor suit waiting patiently at the door. I unlocked the door and opened it. As he took a stride to enter, I remembered the most important detail from rule 4. I closed the door halfway and sternly commanded
“Wait”
The man looked up at me with a surprised look. I asked him the question.
“What is your name?”
The man stared back at me as an innocent smile formed on his face.
“I’m Simon!”
He announced excitedly.
“The Janitor here. Did James let you know I was coming tonight?”
I stood there for a moment, thinking over the rule, before nodding my head and opening the door once again to let him in.
Once inside, Simon walked with purpose to the janitor's closet which was positioned near the men’s restroom. I followed him somewhat suspiciously for the next few minutes as he began to clean but I eased up once I got the feeling that he was just the janitor around here and that James made up the whole “ask for his name thing” to make into one of his rules.
I returned to my counter in the terminal and continued to read. Occasionally, Simon would pass by, off to do his duties in some part of the airport or Elizabeth would stand up to look at the various pictures and paintings on display in the terminal. A good half an hour of this would go on before Simon approached the terminal counter with his mop in hand. He seemed to be eyeing up the two leather suitcases Elizabeth had set there.
Assuming he wanted to clean where they were, I got up to move them. I grabbed each one by the handle but failed to lift them off of the ground. Confused, I stepped back to see if they were stuck on something. They were not. Just two suitcases, left right where Elizabeth had set them.
I tried to lift just one. Again, I failed. I tried both hands, putting my back and legs into it with all that I had. It wouldn’t budge.
I looked back up at Simon who nodded his head in Elizabeth’s direction. I turned to look at Elizabeth, who after noticing my stare, and my apparent inability to move her luggage, smiled and stood up.
“Let me get that for you”
She insisted. With ease, she lifted both leather suitcases and moved them closer to her seat before lowering them, this time letting them drop a few inches. When they hit the ground, a boom echoed through the airport and I flinched in surprise. I looked back at Simon, who hadn’t seemed shocked at all. He just continued to mop.
I slowly made my way back to my seat, not taking an eye off Elizabeth for one second as I did. After a few minutes, she looked back up from her magazine, noticed my stare, and returned to her reading with a grin. She seemed to find my shock amusing. Eventually, Simon noticed my surprise as well. He paused his mopping and approached me before raising his head.
“I know, I know. Stick to the rules and everything will be just fine, trust me”
He stated quietly. I nodded my head in response.
Simon went back to his cleaning. A few minutes passed before Elizabeth had something new to say.
“What a remarkable aircraft!”
She exclaimed, looking out the glass panes facing the runways. I followed her gaze to the lone, black, and red airplane positioned on the runway. I turned around, looking at the picture displayed behind me. It certainly looked like a match. I turned back to the window and felt my heart sink. A silhouette of a person now stood next to the plane, facing the airport and the windows of the terminal.
“Stop looking at it”
Simon sternly muttered from behind me. I looked back at Simon who quickly cowered, seemingly ashamed to have raised his voice at me but I was grateful he had. I read over rule 5 again, specifically where it stated to not look at the plane twice. I murmured insults at myself under my breath but they didn’t have much room between my now heavy, frantic breathing. My eyes darted through the other rules. I chose to focus on that sheet of paper. At least it was something other to look at than the plane outside.
This went on for a good ten minutes or so and my breathing started to calm down. I had begun to pray in my head that whoever and whatever that was would go away when Elizabeth suddenly approached my counter. I snapped my head up in a jittery movement to make eye contact with her.
“I’m going to get some more reading material. Want another one of those?”
She asked, reaching a hand out to my National Geographic magazine. I looked up and nodded, forcing a smile. As She moved away, my gaze didn’t, and once again I found myself looking at the plane on the runway, the silhouette now standing hundreds of feet away from the plane, even closer to the building, and still staring in my direction.
Chills ran up my spine as I snapped my gaze back to my desk. I began to shake with fear and the manic breathing returned. Moments later, Elizabeth returned and placed a new magazine on the counter before running a hand over my shoulder, seemingly to comfort me. Simon then put his hand on my back.
“He’ll be gone soon and so will the plane. Just don’t look at it again”
He assured me.
“Mind if I clean here?”
He then asked.
I got up and walked to the end of the counter, watching Simon thoroughly clean the floor before I looked up and let out a soft
“Thank you”
He nodded and smiled back.
“What was that?”
Elizabeth asked. I turned towards her.
“Oh, I was just thanking Simon for-”
My error occurred to me before I could finish speaking. My eyes locked on Elizabeth as she stood up from her seat and her smile faded. Her eyes and nose began to bleed profusely as she started to sob, lightly at first, then hysterically. She let out a bellowing screech, a mix of pain and anger. She picked up one of her suitcases and hurled it at me, I barely dodged the ridiculously heavy object before it crashed into the wall behind me.
Luckily I was quick thinking this time and made a run for the men’s restroom recalling rule 3. She chased after me but I slammed the door shut in her face and locked it. Elizabeth pounded on the door with furious anger a few times but gave up quickly.
“So that’s how you dance, is it love? I can play that game”
She snickered before flipping a light switch outside of the bathroom. The clicking of her shoes faded away. A few minutes of silence passed before laughter started to become audible from the other side of the door.
One voice grew to two, two voices grew to three, three grew to ten. While others continued their now hysterical laughing, some began to scream. I crumbled to the floor, covering my ears as the voices went on, only stopped by another flip of the switch. Light beamed through the bottom of the door.
“It’s over now. She’s gone, and so is the plane. I’ve gotta be getting out of here soon”
Simon’s calm and friendly voice called out. I reluctantly exited the bathroom and followed him back to the counter, where he had prepared another coffee for me.
“Wish I could have done more there but you’ll come to find out that when Elizabeth gets angry, you just gotta let her do her thing”.
I looked up at him, still with my distraught face, at a loss for words. Over the next few minutes, Simon finished cleaning Elizabeth’s blood from the floor before putting everything back into the janitor's closet. He looked down at his watch.
“I better get out of here. Good luck with the rest of your night. I hope I’ll be seeing you soon”.
He said, letting out a sigh as he again looked at me in pity. I think he knew how shaken up I was. It was like he had seen people in my position before. Something told me he doesn’t have a choice on when he leaves. After I watched him exit the door, I returned to my seat behind the counter. I began to feel alone and afraid, but the loneliness wouldn’t last at least.
Only minutes after Simon left, the doors swung open and men in tactical gear, most of which had their faces covered in masks and goggles, rushed through the door. I sprung back up from my seat and watched as they did, with not much else I could do. They swept room to room, checking every nook and cranny at gunpoint, ignoring my existence at first.
As they cleared the entire building, the twenty or so armed men made their way to the terminal seating area. A lone man in a suit, whom I had not noticed enter, made his way to the front of the group.
“I’m with TSA, I’m going to need you to answer some questions for me”
He demanded. I nodded in affirmation.
“How many individuals have you seen in this airport since the security team left the building?”
“Besides myself, 2 Inside, one outside”
I answered confidently.
“Was the individual outside next to a black and red Cessna Skyhawk?”
“Yes”
I again responded confidently. The man in the suit nodded and paused for a moment before making another demand.
“We’re going to need to search the air bridge”.
I glanced back at the sheet of rules on the counter. Making sure I had read it right before. I took a step forward and straightened my uniform.
“No”
I replied. The man in the suit looked irritated.
“If you do not step aside and give us permission to search, I’m afraid I’ll have to detain you”.
Already tired and worn out, I wasn’t going to break the last rule. I decided to give a not-so-smart remark to the man in the suit
“Looking a little well-armed for TSA, wouldn’t you agree?”
He ignored my comment.
“Last chance, step aside”
“No”
Again, irritated by my response, the man in the suit turned to his right and raised his chin to give a signal. Gunshots rang out and I collapsed to the floor. I felt as though my life left my body before it all faded to black.
The next thing I remembered was the feeling of my hand gripping a water bottle. Then came James’s voice.
“I see you made it through the first night intact. Looks like you got to meet Simon. He’s a nice guy, you’ll get to like him. And Elizabeth, she’s…well, she’s something else, isn’t she?”
I opened my eyes and looked up at James.
“Am I dead?”
I asked in a raspy voice. James chuckled in return.
“No! No, you did great. You’re fine. It does, however, look like you might have been a little assertive to our undead TSA special forces wannabes. I would recommend sticking with the less aggressive tone and word choices, maybe I ought to edit that into the rules sheet… In any case, they can’t hurt you but they can still get a jump out of you, as you saw”.
Once again, I was at a loss for words. I slowly made my way back to my feet from the ground and looked at the sunrise over the airfield. James held out an envelope for me. I opened it, revealing a stack of crisp $100 bills.
“A little bonus for your first night. It sure is a lot to go through for the first time but I promise, you get used to it all”.
I turned to James with an angry look and finally spoke up.
“What the hell is wrong with you? What makes you think it’s okay to put someone through this without any warning? I'm done, keep your damn money. I’m gonna go call the cops”.
I started to walk towards the exit when James stepped in front of me.
“Look, I know it isn’t fair for you but it wasn’t fair for me either. It wasn’t fair for any of us. It’s not okay, I know. But what do you expect me to do? Someone needs to be here for the night shift. You wouldn’t believe any of this if I told you ahead of time. You would have thought I was some sort of nutjob and the police will think of you the same if you tell them. I needed you to see it for yourself”
James was starting to get worked up and stoppeto breatheth before continuing.
“This money is yours, no strings attached. You’re free to leave now and never come back, there will be no shame in it”
I also started to calm down but I couldn’t bring myself to look James in the eye yet.
“If you choose to stay, I’ll see you in my office to finish up your paperwork”.
And with that, James walked away. Facing the front of the airport, I watched the first passengers of the day come through the entrance. I just stood there for a few minutes. Whether I was ready for this job or not, I knew right then I sure as hell wasn’t going back to another overcrowded city airport.
I turned and headed for James’s office.

Just came back from PDC where I can say I had an absolutely fantastic time. Stayed at the Hilton Adults All-Inclusive. It was my first time doing anything like this as I’m more of an “AirBnB and explore the area” type person, but wife really wanted me to try it out so we did. I did go out and explore the area by myself a couple times but just to go to Soriana and Fogón.
Naturally, we checked out La Quinta on the 2nd day. I read all the heads up about the way vendors swarm you or grab your attention so I felt prepared, but one thing that caught me off guard was “Hey! Remember me?! Hilton! persons name here!”
Happened three times, 1st time it worked and dude caught my attention and we chatted some as I just kept walking, then I heard another vendor pull the same play on another couple and that‘s how I knew it was a strategy to get your attention.
I’m not sure how they knew where we were staying, but gotta be cause of the resort bands, right?
Not keeping me from ever going back, but wanted to share for those who visit and just to be aware.

Arsenal 22/23 A Season Review Part 1 Of 3: August-World Cup: A Stunning Start.
The 2022/23 season is Mikel Arteta’s 3rd full campaign in charge of Arsenal and as well the 3rd of his managerial career. His 1st game in the hot seat came on Boxing Day of 2019, a 1-1 draw at Bournemouth which saw Arsenal drop down a place to 12th in the table. Just a few months into his reign and Arteta was the first high-profile figure in English Football to be diagnosed with Covid-19, the virus which drew the Premier League to a standstill for 3 months and the wider world for a much longer time. It was to empty stadiums which Arsenal played out the remainder of their season which eventually concluded on the 1st of August. An 8th-placed finish was the club’s lowest since 1995. However, there was joy to be found as there so often has been for Arsenal, in the FA Cup. In the one and only Covid FA Cup Final played in front of no spectators Arsenal came from behind to defeat London rivals Chelsea for their record-extending 14th FA Cup, after reaching the final with an unlikely triumph over Manchester City in the semis. Arteta’s first half-season had ended brilliantly and his first full-season started in the same vein with more silverware following as Arsenal defeated Premier League Champions Liverpool to win the Community Shield. Tough times quickly followed and Arteta may have been somewhat grateful for the empty stadiums, as it’s questionable whether the board would have held their nerve and kept faith with such a young manager through this dreadful period had the fans been inside the ground and able to voice their frustrations. On Boxing Day of 2020, not only did Mikel celebrate the 1 year anniversary of his first match in charge, he celebrated a 3-1 victory over Chelsea, his side's first league win for nearly 2 months. It was the first time Saka, Martinelli & Smith Rowe all started a league game together for Arsenal. It was to prove a seminal moment, but it wasn’t enough to move his team up from 15th in the table. It was never so bad again for Arteta and his Arsenal team, with the side eventually settling for a repeat of the previous season’s finish, again coming in 8th. Failure to win the Europa League (exiting the competition to Villarreal in the Semi-Finals, who were incidentally managed by Unai Emery, the manager sacked prior to Arteta taking the job) meant that Arsenal would be without European football for the first time since the 95-96 campaign. And the 21-22 season would begin horribly with Arsenal bottom after 3 matches in which they failed to score and conceded 9 goals. However as the season progressed Arsenal began to find some resilience, quality and self-belief. The sides upheaval came not coincidentally around the time club captain Aubameyang was stripped of that duty before being allowed to depart for Barcelona in the January window. Aubameyang had been the team’s standout performer when winning the FA Cup, but since those performances had seen him rewarded with a new bumper contract which made him by far the club’s best-paid player, his attitude and performance level had become a problem that needed to be dealt with.
More so than any win, it was actually a home defeat to Champions City which perhaps best demonstrated this new Arsenal which was beginning to emerge. They took City on and pushed them all the way only to eventually lose in the 93rd minute, whilst being a man down for the final half-hour with centre-back Gabriel being harshly dismissed. The fight was on with local rivals Tottenham for the final Champions League spot and it was firmly in Arsenal’s hands until a run of 4 defeats in 5 allowed Spurs back into contention. The Gunners appeared to retake control with a run of 4 straight wins before losing tamely away at Spurs and then Newcastle, in the end missing out by 2 points. Throughout the season Arsenal had spells of real high-quality football, and the fans had taken to the project with more passion and belief than they had in the final years of Wenger’s reign or during Unai Emery’s short-lived stint. In the end, though they missed out on the prize of Champions League football due to a combination of injuries to important players and the inexperience of a young group.
Despite the significant setback of missing out on a Champions League spot having held it in their hands for many of the season’s final months, Arsenal still entered the summer of 2022 with plenty of reasons for optimism. Bukayo Saka and Emile Smith Rowe had emerged as the real breakout stars of the prior season and Gabriel Martinelli wasn’t too far behind. There had been some clearly smart signings made by the club, in particular, those of Martin Ødegaard and Ben White, signed from Real Madrid and Brighton & Hove Albion respectively. The July purchases of Gabriel Jesus and Oleksandr Zinchenko for a combined 75M from Manchester City seemed yet more smart business, in them, they had picked up two quality players with four Premier League winners medals each, and both arriving aged 25 they seemed in the perfect age bracket to become big players for Arsenal not just for the immediate but as well the foreseeable future.
Jesus’ Arsenal debut came in a 5-3 friendly win over FC Nurnberg in which he scored twice. He followed this up with another in a 2-0 win over Everton as Arsenal continued their pre-season with a tour of the USA. Arsenal played 3 matches in America and won all 3, by far the most impressive being a 4-0 trouncing of Chelsea. The Gunners made it 5 pre-season wins from 5 when they returned home the following weekend to beat Sevilla 6-0 at the Emirates, a hattrick from Jesus meaning he had netted 7 goals in his first 5 appearances in Arsenal colours. Arsenal would get the Premier League season underway away at Crystal Palace, under the Friday night lights of Selhurst Park. No Premier League side would have envied them this difficult fixture, Arsenal had experienced just how tough it was 4 months prior when a 3-0 loss away at the ground began a torrid run of results for the Gunners. Arsenal had also begun the previous season away on a Friday night and come unstuck against newly promoted Brentford. Again Arsenal was straight back under the Premier League spotlight to see whether they had grown and matured from such damaging defeats last season. The Arsenal quickly proved they were up to the test, starting right on the front foot and keeping Palace penned back in their own third. Jesus immediately highlighted the new dimension he was going to bring to Arsenal’s attack, when his strength and then neat dribbling fashioned a great chance out of nothing, a chance Martinelli should have done much better with, his side-foot finish going the wrong side of the post with the goal gaping. The Brazilian would make up for it in the 20th minute when a corner was headed into the six-yard box by Zinchenko, who was picked out by Saka to deliver a free header. His head found Martinelli’s and from close range, he was able to notch Arsenal’s first of the league campaign. That was to be the only goal in the game for the next hour, but despite Arsenal’s slender lead they rarely looked in danger of being pegged back. On the instances that keeper Aaron Ramsdale was called into action, he was ready and dealt with Palace’s occasional threats soundly. The game was put beyond Crystal Palace in the 85th minute when Bukayo Saka’s dangerous ball across the six-yard box was headed into his own net by Guehi. This made certain of 3 richly deserved points for the Gunners.
Jamie Carragher for one was particularly impressed with the start Arsenal made to the game saying afterwards: “Arsenal played like a big team. When I say a big team, I’m talking about a Man City or Liverpool, a team who wherever they go, dominate the opposition. I felt like we were watching City or Liverpool in that first 20 minutes, half an hour.” Fellow Sky Sports pundit Gary Neville was more impressed with Arsenal in the second half saying: “The question mark about Arsenal will be whether they’ve got that robustness and resilience, physicality to get through that difficult 15 or 20 minute periods in away matches, and they got through that (tonight) and that impressed me.” Saliba was also singled out for praise with Carragher adding: “He looked the real deal. He adds something, we’ve always felt they were weak, at Brentford last season they got bullied and here last season, his physical stature will certainly help them in tough away games.”
Arsenal’s first home league game of the season was against Leicester City. The opening goal began with Jesus tormenting Johnny Evans tight to the touchline, after beating him he fed Martinelli who was able to get into the penalty area and find Xhaka, the Swiss international touched it first time back into Jesus who took a touch to steady himself then teased it over the head of Ward in the Leicester goal and into the net. It was an angle he had no right to try from, let alone score from but such was the Brazilian forwards confidence in front of the goal he fancied his chances from anywhere. The goal was nominated for Premier League goal of the month. Jesus got his second to double Arsenal’s advantage in the 35th minute, this time in a much simpler fashion. A corner across the six-yard box was not dealt with, a Leicester head on it only sped up its path to Jesus who was waiting to nod home from practically on the goal line.
Later in the first half, Leicester thought they had a way back into the game when referee Darren England pointed to the spot having judged Ramsdale to have brought down Jamie Vardy. However VAR advised him to check the monitor, and after re-watching the incident it was clear there was no contact made and the penalty decision was reversed. Leicester did still manage to half their deficit early in the second half though, a long ball was flicked on leaving Saliba in a difficult situation to deal with. Ramsdale was advancing but wouldn’t get there first and Vardy was waiting on the French defender’s shoulder, leaving him no alternative but to try and head the ball clear whilst facing his own goal. He only succeeded in diverting it into the net. This could have been a moment when the Arsenal crowd got nervous and frustrated. They had allowed a soft goal and their youngest defender was at fault. However the crowd immediately rallied behind Saliba and his teammates, he and the team needed help putting that mistake behind them and the crowd’s noise in the aftermath of conceding will have been reassuring to the players.
Demonstrating this, Arsenal went straight up the other end and scored, Ward made a meal of a cross, dropping it at the feet of Jesus who squared for Xhaka. The Swiss midfielder was being deployed in a new, more adventurous role where he was spending more time in the opposition box, he got his reward for this new tactic with a simple tap-in from right in front of the goal. Leicester would again reduce the home team’s lead to one however when Iheanacho found Maddison, who was able to shoot straight through Ramsdale. The young English keeper will have been disappointed at being so easily beaten from such an angle, his wide-open legs presenting the opportunity to the Leicester midfielder. Again Arsenal immediately responded to the setback by going up the other end and scoring again. This move began with Martinelli winning the ball back and feeding Ødegaard who moved the ball on to Jesus, who carried it forward before finding Martinelli who shot low from outside the box, he beat the outstretched Ward and hit the bottom corner, with the ball hitting the inside of the post on its way in. It had been a good day at the office for Arsenal and a great day for Gabriel Jesus, though despite scoring 2 and assisting the other 2 of Arsenal’s 4 goals, according to his manager Jesus left the field disappointed because: “he thinks he should have scored 4, that’s the sort of mentality you need. I wouldn’t like to play against him. He’s so mobile, intuitive, sharp and proactive in any moment or phase of the game.”
Arsenal next travelled to newly promoted Bournemouth. It took The Gunners just 5 minutes to take the lead and again it came from the phenomenal centre-forward play of Gabriel Jesus. A loose touch from White saw the ball launch high into the air, the Brazilian reacted first, beautifully controlling the ball whilst at the same time using his considerable body strength to hold off the Bournemouth midfielder, with exceptional balance he then dribbled around two other Bournemouth shirts until he was on the edge of the box facing their defence, with a lovely disguised pass he then fed Martinelli who was free to his left, his shot was saved but it fell straight at the feet of new captain Martin Ødegaard who was on hand to notch his first of the season. Rightfully though the praise went to Jesus with commentator Alan Smith saying: “You won’t see a better example of centre forward play than this.”
Ødegaard had to wait just 6 more minutes for his second of the season, a cross along the floor from White found Jesus who was free, his first touch wasn’t the best but it allowed it to set up nicely for the Norwegian to strike first time, which he duly did and the ball flashed into the net. Early in the second half and Arsenal had a third goal, with Xhaka setting it back to Saliba just inside the penalty area. Saliba struck it beautifully the first time, keeping his shot down under the bar and too perfectly placed for the keeper to do anything about. It was just Saliba’s second goal in senior football but he had finished it with the class and composure of a player who had scored 200. The strike drew Zinchenko to his knees, clutching his head in disbelief at the quality of the finish and unsurprisingly it was voted as Arsenal’s goal of the month. Jesus thought he’d netted Arsenal’s 4th but a VAR check ruled the goal out for offside, so the North Londoners had to settle for a 3-0 win in what had been an excellent away performance.
The Arsenal faced more newly promoted opposition the following week, this time back at home against Fulham for Arteta’s 100th Premier League game in charge. They would be without Zinchenko and Partey who had picked up injuries and were replaced by Tierney and Elneny respectively. The best chance of the first half went to Saka who got beyond his marker to face Leno one-against one, but he was unable to beat the keeper. It would be Fulham who took the lead however with Arsenal falling behind for the first time in the season. From the full-back position, Saka flighted a ball into Gabriel, who unnecessarily played himself into trouble. He never seemed to have the ball truly under his spell, and his second touch invited Mitrovic to try and take it off him, the defender then got his body positioning wrong, and failed to protect the ball allowing the forward to nick it from behind him and then the Serb was able to keep his composure and finish past Ramsdale.
Fulham’s lead lasted just 8 minutes, Martin Ødegaard lodging Arsenal’s response. There was a degree of good fortune about the goal, with a big deflection on the strike. But there was no doubt the Norwegian had deserved it, he was having an outstanding game with all of Arsenal’s danger coming through him. He was constantly creating, with inventive passes and dribbling runs. In this instance, a clever stepover had bought him the space for the shot. Ødegaard continued to lead Arsenal’s push for a winner with he, in particular, deserving to be on the winning side, and the winner did come though not until the 86th minute. Leno failed to deal with a corner, missing his attempted punch clearance and the ball fell at the feet of Gabriel who was able to gain the perfect redemption for his earlier error by securing all 3 points for his side. The goal kept Arsenal at the top of the Premier League as they remained the only team with a 100% record.
Arsenal finished August with another home game, facing Steven Gerrard’s Aston Villa. This presented Arsenal with a chance to win their opening 5 league games for the first time since 2004. Saka passed up a golden opportunity to give Arsenal the ideal start when Martinelli’s cross found him completely free at the back post, it was set up perfectly for Saka to hit on the volley, which he did but he got too under the ball and lifted it horribly high and wide from inside the six-yard box. An Arsenal opening goal felt inevitable however and it came on the half-hour mark when Emi Martinez could only push out an Xhaka shot as far as Gabriel Jesus, who was on hand to punish him. Martinez did go someway to redeeming himself later in the half with an excellent stop to deny a brilliant half-volley from Martinelli from 25 yards out.
Arsenal dominated the first half and continued their domination in the second but could not increase their advantage, it was instead Aston Villa who got the second goal of the game, in a somewhat controversial fashion. A corner from Douglas Luiz went straight into the net with Ramsdale unable to reach the ball due to his path being completely blocked by Kamara, who also limited the keepers’ movement by having both arms wrapped around his back. The goal stood but Arsenal cancelled it out in their own way, by going straight up the Villa end and retaking the lead. Saka coolly picked out Martinelli who struck it the first time on the half volley, Martinez clawed desperately at the ball but could not prevent it from going over his goal line and The Gunners were able to see the victory out. Arsenal’s player of the month was unsurprisingly Gabriel Jesus with 3 goals and 3 assists in 5 games. Arsenal’s maximum points after 5 games saw Mikel Arteta pick up Premier League manager of the month.
Arsenal started September with a chance to go 4 points clear of City in 2nd, after just six games. Standing in their way was Manchester United who would be hosting the Gunners at Old Trafford, a ground Arsenal had only won at once in the league since 2006, that one as well being without fans during the Covid season. Arsenal was boosted by the return of Zinchenko but had to start with their 3rd choice midfielder Sambi Lokonga for the Partey role after Elneny had followed the Ghanaian onto the treatment table. Regardless of the blow, Arsenal appeared to have made the ideal start when Saka threaded the needle and put Martinelli clean through on goal. The Brazilian finished brilliantly to give Arsenal the lead, but VAR advised the referee to have a look at a potential foul in the build-up. On review, the referee judged Ødegaard to have won the ball from Eriksen unfairly and chalked the goal off. The intervention made by Lee Mason on VAR was later judged by a Premier League review to be an incorrect one, the minimal contact not penalised in real-time by the ref was judged not to be a clear or obvious error. The review came too little and too late as far as Arsenal were concerned as they’d lost their lead and instead found themselves trailing at half-time after a good move from United culminated in a debut goal for Antony who finished past Ramsdale.
VAR’s intervention in the Arsenal goal was always likely to prove a vital one as remarkably United had not lost at Old Trafford when leading at half-time since 1984. This showed the size of Arsenal’s task going into the second half, but they continued to probe and ask questions of United and they got their equaliser on the hour mark when the ball broke to Saka in the penalty area after Ødegaard had looked to thread one through to Jesus. United dealt with that immediate threat but could only clear as far as Saka who slotted through the legs of Martinez for his first of the season. Arsenal looked to be in the ascendancy, but they were only level for 6 minutes. Overcommitting bodies forward left them without a midfield and after winning it back United was able to counter-attack with Bruno Fernandes who looked and found Rashford in behind the defence and he put United back in front. Arteta reacted immediately by looking to chase the game, giving a debut to summer recruit Fabio Vieira. The changes appeared to backfire however as Arsenal were left with even fewer defensive bodies on the field and in the 75th minute they were cut through once more, with Eriksen and Rashford both left in acres of space as United hit Arsenal once more on the counter-attack. It was a horrible goal for Arsenal to concede, it reminded of the worst years of Wenger with everyone so committed to attacking they had no thought for defending. Arsenal suffered their first defeat of the season going down 3-1.
There were some positives to take in how confidently and capably they had passed the ball around, however, United had defended their penalty area very well and counter-attacked effectively. The frustration for Arsenal was how they had helped them in that regard, by leaving key areas of the midfield devoid of players. Partey had been very badly missed, and to a lesser extent so had Elneny whose defensive intelligence would not have seen him vacate his position as often as Lokonga did. The third goal conceded was perhaps the responsibility of Arteta who had gone all out attack mode too early, given the counter-attacking success United were already enjoying.
Arsenal got the chance to put the defeat behind them 4 days later when they began their Europa League campaign. They were placed in Group A alongside PSV Eindhoven, Bodo/Glimt and FC Zurich, and would kick off against the latter away in Switzerland. Summer signings Matt Turner and Marquinhos made their competitive debuts, and Vieira would make his full debut. Arsenal did some counterattacking of their own in the 16th minute when Vieira found Nketiah who travelled down the wing before playing a great ball across the box which found Marquinhos who expertly finished the first time into the top corner. The hosts equalised on the verge of half-time however when Nketiah was judged to have committed an offence in his own penalty box. The death of the Queen being announced during the first half led to the unusual circumstance of a minute’s silence taking place before the second half. When it did kick off, Arsenal regained the lead in the 62nd minute through Nketiah who was found with a delightful ball by Marquinhos who had made a fine debut. That’s how the score remained. Arsenal would not be in Premier League action that weekend, with their home game against Everton being postponed due to the Queen’s passing. Also delayed was their home game against PSV the following week, so the team were not back in action until 10 days after the Zurich game when they travelled to Brentford.
Arsenal dominated the games opening and took a deserved lead in the 17th minute when Saliba’s header from a corner struck the inside of the post on its way over the line. Just shy of the half-hour mark and Arsenal had their second, again with a header, this time it was Gabriel Jesus who rose to meet Xhaka’s perfectly placed ball. The Gunners then got the ideal start to the second half, when Vieira, making his first start in the Premier League in place of the unavailable Ødegaard, struck a beauty out of nowhere from well outside the box for Arsenal’s September goal of the month. Arsenal was in cruise control, always looking like the more likely team to score whilst barely giving Brentford sight of their goal. In the final minutes, Ethan Nwaneri came on for his Arsenal debut, aged 15 years and 181 days he became the youngest player to ever appear in the Premier League. After the match, Brentford Manager Thomas Frank was one of the first to tip Arsenal for a title challenge saying: “I think they will do brilliantly. I think they compete for the title now.” Xhaka was the resounding winner of Arsenal player of the month picking up 83% of the votes. A once deeply unpopular player, his turnaround best exemplified the strides in the right direction Arsenal were taking.
After the international break, Arsenal returned to action in the North London Derby against hated rivals Tottenham. Arsenal went into the fixture just one point above their opponents. Spurs were content to let Arsenal have possession whilst aiming to contain them and spring counterattacks. They kept Arsenal at bay until the 20th minute when Thomas Partey shot from over 20 yards out and hit it so perfectly that Lloris couldn’t get so much as a fingertip to it, the ball flew past him into the net for Arsenal’s goal of the month. Spurs responded in the 31st minute however after a good counterattack between the front three of Kane, Son and Richarlison saw the latter presented with a chance to cross from inside the penalty area and Arsenal did not effectively deal with the situation, a loose touch from Xhaka put his side back in trouble and Gabriel was panicked into conceding a penalty. Kane stepped up and of course, scored for the 7th time from the spot against Arsenal. This sent the sides in at the break-level pegging.
Arsenal regained the upper hand early in the second half after a shot by Saka was spilt by Lloris to his centre-half Romero who, under pressure from Jesus, looked to return it to the French keeper. Lloris missed the ball, it travelled under his body and then Jesus reacted first to poach it home. Spurs hopes of drawing level for a second time were damaged when Emerson Royal was shown a straight red card in the 62nd minute for a stupid and unnecessarily bad tackle on Martinelli. Arsenal quickly punished this ill discipline getting their third 5 minutes afterwards, with Granit Xhaka rifling past Lloris. At this stage Conte retreated to avoid a hammering, he accepted defeat and took off his offensive players, bringing on defenders to ensure the score line didn’t get embarrassing and Arsenal saw out a comfortable 3-1 derby win. Arsenal next returned to Europa League action putting Bodo/Glimt to the sword with a 3-0 win, goals coming from Nketiah, Holding and Vieira, the latter after brilliant footwork in the box from substitute Jesus.
Next up for Arsenal was another tough test at home against Liverpool. With a win, Arsenal would return to the top of the Premier League. Arsenal had faced Liverpool 4 times the previous season, failing to win any, losing 3 times including twice at home. They had also failed to even score against Liverpool in their last 6 meetings with them, but they needed just 58 seconds on this day, with Saka finding Ødegaard, whose ball between Van Dijk and Alexander Arnold put in Martinelli who finished beyond Alisson. Liverpool recovered well from the nightmare start however and was the better team from that point until they got their deserved equaliser in the 34th minute through Darwin Nunez. It was Arsenal however who went into half-time with the lead when Martinelli led a brilliant counter-attack from a Liverpool set piece, finally taking out both Arnold and Henderson by cutting inside and finding an unmarked Saka who slid in to put his team back in the ascendancy.
Again Liverpool responded well, equalising for a second time early in the second half through Roberto Firmino. From that point on though Arsenal found another level, they searched feverishly for a winning goal, looking to pass Liverpool to death and calving many openings. The noise inside the Emirates had reached deafening decibels as the fans urged their team on. The golden chance came with just under 15 minutes to go when Thiago was judged to have caught the back of Jesus’s foot inside the penalty area, having been beaten to the ball by the striker. Saka stepped up and held his nerve, confidently dispatching an excellent spot kick. Arsenal held out for what was in the end a deserved win after an excellent second-half display. In a decision that had raised a few eyebrows, Tomiyasu had been drafted in for a first league start of the season to go into an unfamiliar left-back position, the move paid dividends as the Japanese international had a fine game up against Mo Salah. The result put Arsenal 14 clear of Liverpool who had endured a dreadful start to the season.
“These are broad shoulders, this is courage. A sporting moment in time. Bukayo Saka.. Such poise! such noise!” – Peter Drury as Saka beats Alisson Becker from the penalty spot.
Four days later Arsenal made it 3 wins from 3 in the Europa, with an away win in Norway on the artificial pitch of Bodo/Glimt. A sole goal from Bukayo Saka was enough after he got on the end of a one-two with Lokonga. His initial shot was blocked by a defender but the ball then deflected in after coming back off the Arsenal winger. Bodo calved out many good chances for themselves but was let down by woeful finishing, squandering chance after chance by blazing high and wide of the target. Arsenal then returned to Premier League action at Elland Road against Leeds, though 40 minutes behind schedule after a power outage just after the game had initially kicked off caused the game to need restarting once power had returned.
Again Saka was the only man to get himself on the scoresheet, his goal coming after Jesus had passed up a golden chance to open the scoring failing to hit the net from close range after Ødegaard had found him with a backheeled flick. Jesus attempted to lift the ball over the keeper, but he lifted it too high and it ended up over the crossbar. Arsenal did not let Leeds off a second time however and punished them after a sloppy cross-field pass from Leeds midfielder Rodrigo only found Saka who headed it into Ødegaard’s path. Ødegaard’s return pass then asked a lot of the winger, but his speed allowed him to reach the ball first. Saka was faced with a tight angle, but it didn’t phase him one bit and he picked out the top corner hitting it high into the roof of the Leeds net.
The second half was full of drama, first when Bamford thought he’d equalised but was instead penalised for a foul on Gabriel. The Leeds striker received a second chance though when Saliba was found guilty of a handball in the box after the referee had checked the monitor. Ramsdale guessed correctly in his dive, but in the end, he wasn’t required as Bamford’s penalty went wide of the post. Arsenal continued to suffer in the second half, struggling to cope with the Leeds onslaught and maintain their slender advantage. Through fatigue and pressure from the home side, Arsenal had lost all ability to pass the ball and could do little else but stay in their own half and try to defend. Ramsdale proved his worth to this Arsenal side with his best performance of the season to date, right when his team needed him most. It appeared as though Arsenal had got the job done when crazily they conceded a second penalty of the half in additional time. Patrick Bamford was nowhere near the ball which was safely back with Ramsdale when Gabriel was penalised for a kick out in the box on the Leeds forward. As well as a penalty, the Brazilian centre-back was also dismissed. However on a VAR review, it was clear that Bamford had fouled Gabriel first, barging him to the floor, so rightfully the decision was reversed and Gabriel’s red card was rescinded. Arsenal held on to a win they’d scarcely deserved and it proved an even bigger win later that day when City lost at Anfield meaning The Gunners stayed 4 points clear after 10 games.
The following Thursday Arsenal were back in action in the Europa League. They were originally scheduled to host Manchester City in the league that mid-week, but the Queens’ death led to the postponement of Arsenal’s fixture with PSV, and it was re-arranged to this game week. Arsenal battered their Dutch visitors, in the end mustering 25 shots to Eindhoven’s 4. As was often the case Saka and Jesus were the standout performers. The young English winger was unstoppable in his direct dribbling runs, unstoppable that is without resorting to fouling, which PSV defenders did time and time again after being skinned by Saka’s great ball control when running at speed. Jesus was similarly dangerous, doing his usual thing of fashioning chances out of nowhere with his quick thinking and somehow even quicker feet. In the end, though the deadlock was broken by Xhaka in the 70th minute when Tomiyasu found him in space 15 yards from the goal. He hit the shot down into the ground and it bobbled just at the right time to go under the keeper and past him.
Next Arsenal travelled to struggling Southampton looking to make it 9 straight wins across the Premier League and Europa. They started fast, and when Xhaka finished off White’s cross with a brilliant volley into the back of the net in the 11th minute, it looked like it would be a case of how many, as it wasn’t the first good chance Arsenal had created. For the first 20 minutes, Southampton couldn’t get out of their own half, Ødegaard cleverly found Jesus with a lifted return pass but his volley was straight at Bazunu in the Saints goal. Jesus was in again after a long ball flighted over the head of Caleta-Car putting the Brazilian clean through until the defender dragged him back using both arms. There seemed to be enough contact for 3 separate penalties in there, but unbelievably the referee Robert Jones didn’t point to the spot and nor did VAR intervene. One of the most inexplicable decisions of the season, and that’s saying something, meant that Arsenal went in at the break only a single goal to the good.
The Southampton defence must have felt encouraged from not being penalised inside the box, as the fouling continued on Jesus outside the box for much of the second half, Lyanco getting away with man-handling Arsenal’s striker time and time again, wrapping both arms around his body whenever the ball was anywhere near the Brazilian. Jones did not however ignore perceived ‘diving’ from Saka showing him a yellow card for simulation, even though there did appear to be some contact. A one-sided refereeing performance and poor finishing from Arsenal allowed the home team back into the game and they got the equalising goal with 25 minutes to go through Armstrong after a swift move cut through Arsenal’s defence. In the 78th minute, Ødegaard thought he’d put Arsenal back in front but Tierney had just carried the ball beyond the line before he was able to cut it back into his captain’s path.
The Gunners had to settle for a point and an end to their winning run, paying the price for not scoring more in the first half. As they began to tire in the second half Southampton calved out some good chances of their own, but there’s no doubt the visitors were also harmed by a dire refereeing performance. The dropped points cut Arsenal’s lead at the top down to two. Another away game followed for The North London side as next they travelled to Eindhoven. With 2 group games remaining, they needed just 1 more win to secure the top spot which would mean they progressed straight through to the final 16, without the need for a playoff game. However Arsenal’s performance was poor, PSV were the better team for 90 minutes and good value for their 2-0 win.

This is my headcanon for the events following Suzerain as the game played out in my (communist) playthrough:
Disclaimer 1: This obviously includes many spoilers from the game.
Disclaimer 2: This story is written with storytelling and lore at the forefront, not necessarily gameplay accuracy.
(Part 2 is on my page if you can't find it elsewhere)
Disclaimer 3: This is only the first chapter (and backstory) of this headcanon story/fanfic/whatever you want to call it. I want to write more, but would like to see what people in the Suzerain community think about the writing so far and if they’d like to see more of it. :)
Background:
Anton Rayne got elected President of Sordland in his first term by promising progress and an end to the recession. In his term, he managed to fulfill these promises and more.
He ended the recession through several economic programs including an infrastructure program that included the building of a highway in Agnland, the distribution of stimulus checks for people in need, an agricultural revitalisation program in the city of Sarna, an economic revitalisation program in the greater region of Bergia, and the establishment of the Fair Trade and Competition Commission.
Rayne had also enacted his foreign policy that prioritised self-determination and non-intervention, which resulted in improved relations with many nations and many new trade deals with Wehlen, Agnolia, and Valgsland. In slight contrast with this policy, however, Rayne entered Sordland into the Contanan Security Pact. While this move alienated Sordland from some western-alligned nations such as Lespia and Arcasia, it increased trade and cooperation with nations of the east and many of the rising powers in Rika and Xina.
Rayne had also enacted gradual reforms of the economic direction of the country by nationalising several large corporations, most notably Gasom and Bergia steel. In order to temporarily appease the oligarchs, Rayne had through his nationalisation of Bergia steel, let Marcel Koronti, one of Sordland’s most powerful oligarchs, increase his power within his circle of oligarchs. He had also, through the extra income the state had earned from nationalisation and trade deals, been able to cut taxes for all, which further appeased the oligarchs. Rayne, as a communist, saw the oligarchs as a threat, however, he saw the sollists, nationalists, and fascists as a bigger threat that required a temporary appeasement of the oligarchs in order to focus on a larger threat within the nation. Towards the end of his term, however, when the old guard had in large part been brought down, Rayne removed the independence of Sordland’s central bank, a body of financial governing that had long been an extension of the power of the Lothenburg Group.
One of Rayne’s big promises of progressive reform included an increase in the healthcare and education budgets. This was also a promise Rayne was able to deliver on, and through the skillful leadership of education minister Ciara Walda and healthcare minister Paskal Beniwoll, the government was able to efficiently use this budget to make many positive changes to the education and healthcare systems in Sordland.
The increased healthcare budget was used to improve the quality of healthcare services provided in the country, especially in rural areas, as well as a complete subsidisation of dental care and prescription medicine for all and the relocation of doctors to rural areas. The Rayne administration also enacted several taxes on consumer products harmful to the health of the people, including a tax on tobacco and alcohol products.
The large educational reform that Rayne embarked on included a large scholarship program for impoverished families, the building of several hundred schools across rural areas of the country, and the relocation of teachers to rural areas. The reform also radically changed the curriculum of Sordish schools, with desollinisation of schools and an implementation of critical pedagogy and a larger focus on science, physical education, and the teaching of subjects unburdened by sollism. Rayne later established rural education institutes across rural areas of Sordland in order to further improve the availability and quality of education in rural Sordland.
The rights of women and minorities also became a critical issue for the Rayne administration. The first lady, Monica Rayne became a large figurehead in the battle against patriarchy and alongside Ciara Walda they established the Commission on the Status of Women and passed the women’s liberation act that included policies that helped victims of domestic violence, abolished the gender pay gap, affirmed equal access to education for all, and enacted maternity leave laws and state-funded daycare. The support of this commission and its policies, along with Rayne’s personal funding of the Sordish League of Women made them a loyal political ally to Rayne and his inner circle.
President Rayne also became known for his pro-Bludish sentiment that led to a political alliance with Mansoun Leke and the declaration of the minority rights act, the establishment of the minority rights commission that would be headed by Leke, and the granting of amnesty to soll-era political prisoners, many of which were Bludish activists.
Rayne’s other progressive reforms included a vast expansion of the sordish welfare program, that came to include the establishment of the Comission of Social Progress and Uplift, the workers rights act that gave better pay and better conditions to workers across Sordland, two new social benefits programs, one for the unemployed and one for impoverished families, as well as a complete subsidy of public transport and a lowering of the retirement age.
As a communist and subscriber to the ideas of Karlos Marcias, Rayne believed that for Sordland to enter a new age of socialism and communism, the power of the existing dictatorship of the bourgeoisie had to be toppled and replaced with a dictatorship of the proletariat. He saw the judiciary and legislature as being tools of the bourgeoisie. However, the presidency, now under a communist president, was Sordland’s chance for the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat. Rayne believed that he had to topple the bourgeois institutions of government, and replace them with new ones that represented the proletariat. During his first term, he started doing this with a very risky play. Namely reforming the constitution to give wide-ranging powers to the presidency while he continued to build a dictatorship of the proletariat.
The constitutional reforms included the replacement of the presidential veto with a pocket veto, removing the supreme court’s power to vote on constitutional amendments, removing the ability for the president to be impeached, decreasing the electoral threshold to 8% thus allowing Rayne’s Bludish and communist allies into the legislature, removing the requirement of reviews of presidential decrees, removing the immunity of judges, and abolishing the honorary position and immunity of Tarquin Soll.
Rayne used his new powers to crush the reactionary forces of Sordland, starting with a complete reshuffling of the supreme court. As an extension of the removal of Tarquin Soll’s immunity, Soll was then put on trial in front of a new supreme court that found him guilty and sentenced him to life in prison. After Soll’s imprisonment the Rayne administration started their de-sollinisation efforts in full. Rayne also established the anti-corruption police that he used to investigate corruption within the old guard.
The ACP found evidence of several sollists collaborating with the Young Sords in order to assassinate communist politician Bernard Circas. The investigation led to the arrest of many sollist politicians, most notably minister of interior Lilias Graff and former members of the supreme court Orso Hawker and Heron Garaci. With the old guard crippled, Rayne took advantage of the situation in order to change the manifesto of the United Sordland Party to move away from sollism and towards socialism.
In order to further consolidate his power, Rayne used his presidential decree powers to purge the general staff and thus remove the military’s power in internal political affairs. In the aftermath of this purge, minister of defence Iosef Lancea was also made commander of the sordish armed forces in place of Valken Kruger. Rayne also established the Sordish Radio and Television Supreme Council that he primarily used to further rein in the propaganda spread by the old guard, liberals and oligarchs. Rayne also started funding the Red Youth, an organisation he had previously been a member of, thus winning him another political ally outside of government.
The rising threat of Rumburg was also handled during Rayne’s first term. Using his diplomatic skill as a former diplomat in the foreign ministry, Rayne de-escalated the conflict and made Rumburg appear as an aggressor on the world stage. Any uncertainty about the threat of invasion was then put to rest when Rayne entered Sordland into a military alliance with Valgsland and later joined the Contanan Security Pact.
But as elections approached instability within the Rayne cabinet appeared. First with a political scandal that led to the arrest of Illana Vance, the Rumburg spy that had posed as President Rayne’s assistant. This scandal also led to Vice President Petr Vectern resigning, retiring from politics, and going to rehab. Lucian Galade was appointed Vice President in his stead. The instability continued however, with the resignation of several ministers including minister of economy Symon Holl due to ideological differences with the President, minister of health Paskal Beniwoll due to concern for the President’s machiavellian tactics, and minister of justice Nia Morgna and minister of education Ciara Walda both due to the President’s constitutional reforms.
This flood of resignations coupled with the arrest of minister of interior Lileas Graf and the retirement of foreign minister Deivid Wisci left a vacuum of power within the administration that Rayne had a clear plan on how to fill after his reelection.
After the election, the results came in with a big change in the political environment of Sordland. The USP came in first with a slight increase in votes since the 1953 election, the NFP came in second, thus becoming the second biggest party in the country, and the PFJP suffered a loss, losing a significant amount of votes to the USP, BFP, WPB, and CPS. The Communist party of Sordland finally made the threshold and due to the popularisation of communism under the Rayne administration they were able to become a legislative power to rival the PFJP. The Workers party of Bludia were unable to make the threshold however, due to the Bludish vote being split between the WPB and the BFP.
As Rayne took to the stage for his victory speech, he reaffirmed his commitment to a turn to the left and to the east and promised further expansion of Sordland’s welfare system and political and social reforms. He declared that this was the start of the Sordish Revolution.
Chapter 1: Inauguration Day
In the aftermath of Rayne’s victory speech and after meeting with the people of Sordland at a USP rally, Anton Rayne entered the black presidential car and was met with a smile through the rear-view mirror and the eternally joyful voice of his driver, Serge, greeting him: “That was a great speech Mr. President, I am glad you got re-elected. Where to now?” Rayne smiled slightly as he always did when hearing the voice of the man who had become one of his closest friends during the last four years. “I am glad to hear that Serge, thank you for all of your support these years, I am really grateful for all your kind words.” Rayne took a slight pause before continuing “We’re off to 137 Wisci Avenue.” “Right away, sir.”
As the two sat in the car in momentary silence, Anton regretted having to leave his wife and daughter at the rally with Lucian. But Monica was strong, he thought to himself. She would be able to handle herself against Lucian if he were to try anything. After another few moments of silence, it was finally broken when Anton realised this wasn’t the same car he had been chauffeured around in earlier in the day. It was similar enough he hadn’t noticed, but it was newer and frankly more comfortable to sit in. “When did you get a new car, Serge?” “Finally noticed it, eh Mr. President?” He continued “But it isn’t my car, it’s yours, you’re the President, I am merely your driver” “The car was a gift. Sent from Chancellor Hegel in Valgsland, as a congratulatory gift for winning the elections. It seems you made quite the impact on him when you visited him in Haelm.” Anton adjusted his posture in his seat and asked Serge what he thought of the Chancellor. “Oh, I don’t follow the politics of other countries that closely sir, but if he made a deal with you he must be a smart man.” Rayne, slightly tired after the rally, simply replied “You’re too kind, Serge” and resorted to staring out the window as the ride continued through the streets of Holsord.
After a while, the two men in the car started to see a gradual decline in the quality of the houses and infrastructure on the streets as they got further from the hill of pride. Once the car rolled onto Wisci Avenue there seemed to be a slight improvement in the quality of the street, however it was still a far cry from the hill of pride. Suddenly the car stopped. “Here we are, sir. 137 Wisci Avenue.” Before Anton could say thank you, Serge was already outside of the car opening the door for his president. Anton stepped out and was then able to thank his driver for the pleasant drive and conversation.
He stepped onto the cracked pavement as Serge got back into the car. Anton instinctively put his hands in his trouser pockets, only to find a packet of cigarettes there. As he took them out of his pocket he was reminded of the time he had caught his son, Franc, smoking, and he further was reminded of the promise he made to Franc to stop smoking. Granted it had become easier to stop after the tobacco tax had been implemented, but it was still a difficult task. Anton promised himself he would call Franc when he got home to see how he was faring in medical school in United Contana. He looked back at Serge and called out his name. “Could you take this and throw it away for me?” Anton threw his last packet of cigarettes to Serge who nodded back at him in acknowledgement. “Thanks, Serge. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” Anton said as he walked into the building ahead.
It was a two-story flat-building, more specifically it was the home of Ciara Walda, among other people. As the President walked into the building he was surprised by the interior, which was far more well kept than he expected. As he walked up the stairs however, there was still a quite distinct creak with every step he took. When Anton reached the top he stood directly in front of a door that said “1B Walda Residence”. Rayne knocked on the door and was soon met with a slightly dishevelled former minister of education. Ciara looked her usual self for the most part, aside from looking quite a lot less put together than usual. She was sporting an old bathrobe and slippers, as opposed to her usual political uniform of a pantsuit or dress. “Mr. President?” Ciara blurted out, trying to hide her slight surprise at the situation. “Please Ciara, you don’t work for me anymore, and I know you don’t care for formalities.” Ciara slightly adjusted herself and tried to put on her poker face she had become known for during her time in politics. “Would you care for a drink, Anton?” She didn’t wait for a reply however and simply entered her home, leaving Anton to catch the door and come inside.
“Tea would be nice” Anton replied as he walked into Ciara’s flat. He heard a call from the kitchen “Already started making it.” Anton let out a slight chuckle at Ciara’s unique demeanour as he followed her voice to find his way to the kitchen. The flat was a lot nicer than he expected. Far from luxurious, but it was nicely decorated and brightly lit with large windows, something that was somewhat surprising given that this flat belonged to Ciara Walda of all people.
As Anton found the kitchen, Ciara had already moved into the living room with two cups of tea in her hands. Anton sat down across from her and thanked her for the tea as she sat it down on the coffee table. “I suppose congratulations are in order” she said with a barely detectable sadness in her voice. “I hope congratulations will be in order for you too” Anton said, giving Ciara a slightly puzzled look on her face. Before she could ask what the President meant, he continued “Rejoin my cabinet. I know you miss it.” He paused for a brief moment, “And I need you.” he continued. “You are a talented politician, but you’ve been able to keep your ideals. I need ministers like you. I know you don’t approve of my methods but who will you support if not me? Ricter? Kibener? Leke and Stahler don’t stand much of a chance without my support, so by supporting either of them, you’d be supporting me still. Why not take that opportunity to rejoin the cabinet and make some real change again. Continue the reforms you started with me and Monica.”
Ciara looked down for a few seconds before replying “You know why I left. You know I cannot stand by and support your constitutional reforms, they aren’t democratic and-” Before she could continue, Anton cut her off “What would be democratic then?” He paused before continuing to speak “To give power to an indirectly elected assembly of capitalist leeches and fascists who want to kill half the country and oppress the other? To keep the institutions put in place by a sour old man who wants to stop the world from moving on?” That last comment about Soll made Ciara chuckle slightly. “I’ve never heard you talk about him like that.” Anton replied with a smile “Well, I couldn’t bad-mouth that old fool too much when his lackeys still had such a firm grasp on the country.”
“Listen, I know you might not support my constitutional changes, but-” Before he continued he stopped to rephrase himself “You are familiar with Marcian dialectical materialism I assume?” Ciara looked slightly offended. “Of course I am” “Who do you think you’re talking to?” She said with a slight scoff. “So then you know that class struggle is an antagonistic struggle. You know that capitalists won’t give away the means of production willingly. Oppressors must be taken down by force, not by the systems that gave them power in the first place.” Anton sighed “I know it isn’t ideal, but it isn’t supposed to be. If Karlos Marcias taught us anything, it’s that ideals don’t bring change, material conditions do. Reality does. And reality is messy. Ideals are pure, but as long as they remain that way they are just ideas, they cannot bring real change if they cannot exist within material reality. What does this idealist notion of liberal democracy mean compared to the real material change that comes with socialism?” Ciara sat back on her couch and sighed deeply, looking at Anton the entire time. “I still don’t know, it just doesn’t seem right.” They sat in silence for over a minute before Anton got up and sighed for a final time in defeat. “Thank you for your service to the people of Sordland, we’re going to miss you Ciara. Both me and Monica”. Ciara looked back down at her floor after Anton stopped talking and started walking towards the door.
“Wait” she said as he was on his way out. Anton turned back around. “You stood by me in my educational reforms, you stood by me-” she stopped for a moment “Us, you stood by us as we fought for the rights of our gender.” She looked away out her window for a brief few seconds, “I’m not sure even Leke or Stahler would’ve done that. At least to such an extent. I owe you at least another chance. Both you and Monica” she said with a slight glimmer in her eyes. ”Thank
you Ciara. Really, thank you. Because between Gus, Iosef and Lucian, I could really use an ally in my cabinet” They both smiled at each other as Anton exited the flat. As he started walking down the stairs he heard the door open again. As he looked back Ciara bid him farewell “Good luck, Anton.” “You too, Ciara.”
As Anton walked out of the building he saw Serge leaning on the side of the car. As he noticed Anton he quickly stood upright and opened the backseat door for his President, bowing slightly as he did it. “I got a call while I was waiting for you sir. Your wife and daughter have left the rally along with your cabinet and are on their way to the maroon palace for the celebration dinner.”
While Anton’s first term had been ceremonially opened with a grand ball at the maroon palace, the event had ended catastrophically with the assassination of Bernard Circas, which drew a lot of bad press to the tradition. It had already been criticised before for its over-the-top extravagance, a criticism Anton agreed with. However, the event still occurred during Rayne’s first inauguration as it was still a quite popular affair, particularly with sollists who wanted to honour the traditions of the nation, and with oligarchs who wanted to take the opportunity to cosy up to politicians. But with the assassination, and the loss of power suffered by sollists and oligarchs during the first Rayne administration, it became easier, and frankly more popular, to replace the event with a more modest one. Namely a televised dinner with the President and his cabinet, along with their families.
Due to the wave of resignations at the end of Anton’s first term however, the dinner might come across as a little too modest though. Especially with Lucian who was married to his work, and Iosef who was married to his own idealised version of Sordland. It was unclear if Ciara would attend. She definitely knew about the event, as she was one of the people campaigning for an end to the inaugural ball. She was welcome to attend as she was to rejoin the cabinet, but Anton hadn’t thought to ask her. Especially as she wasn’t fond of any sort of ‘style over substance’ meeting.
Anton was brought out of his deep thoughts as Serge cleared his throat, and he realised he’d stood there for a solid half a minute. He shook his head for a moment and saw a bin in the corner of his eye that he hadn’t noticed stood next to the building he’d walked into. Anton noticed his packet of cigarettes laying there along with another pack that looked just as newly thrown away. He smiled to himself and walked into the car, letting Serge close the door behind him and get back into his own seat in the front.
“You trying to quit as well Serge?” The president’s driver looked shocked for a moment, as Anton realised what that might’ve sounded like. “Cigarettes.” he assured Serge. “Oh! I got a tad confused there for a second Mr. President.” he nervously tapped the steering wheel as he started the car's engine. “Yes! I’ve decided to quit Mr. President. I couldn’t have done it without you though! I saw the press conference you and Mr. Beniwoll did on television before he resigned, warning of the dangers of tobacco.” Anton grinned slightly as he heard Paskal’s name, before Serge continued. “And as I noticed you were throwing away your last pack, I thought I’d do the same. Follow the example of a great leader.”

Heading to Greece for 8 nights late September and looking to fill in an itinerary.
We’re a couple in our early 30s. Both studied Philosophy (including Greek) at university. I was also obsessed with Greek mythology as a child, and did a 1/3rd of a year of Ancient History. Into contemporary art, music and culture.
We’ve booked four nights (including Friday/Saturday) in Monastiraki, Athens where we’re hoping to see the ancient sites, find some good food and bars, and maybe check out some record shops & galleries. Plus I’m hoping to look for some interesting music (jazz, psych, indie, experimental) in the evenings.
The days in Athens will be hectic, so we’re looking to fill in three nights by taking a ferry to an island somewhere before one final night in Athens before our flight home.
In a dream world I would like lush beaches, crystal waters, cool bars and decent food with a sea view. More culture or archeological sites would be a bonus.
We looked at Hydra for while. I’m charmed by the romantic cultural history. (The Leonard Cohen factor is a bit of a draw.) It seems quite expensive though, the beaches don’t look too enticing in comparison to other places, and the idea of getting stuck amongst the Jeff Koons camo yacht crowd is a bit off putting.
We’re looking at Naousa on Paros too, but worried that it might be a bit resort-y? It’s easy to be attracted by photos of whitewashed buildings but are these just really well framed? Reviews seem mixed, and I’m keen to avoid somewhere where the beaches run alongside busy roads.
Should we look elsewhere? Milos? Hydra/Poros? Antiparos?
Any thoughts would be appreciated!

I’ll close the post when I’m no longer considering responses, so don’t be afraid to apply if the post is a little old! The astute among you might recognize this as a repost; lost a player today to an unfortunate schedule change. Unfortunately this game has kinda found lfg limbo but I'm committed to running it for the great players I've found here if nothing else!
I'm hoping for this to become a weekly, long-term game that can see some serious development over time. Expect things to be a bit different from the traditional Tolkienesque adventurer fantasy (though there'll be plenty of action and excitement!); the world of Galrea is my personal 5e setting, designed with an eye towards my strengths as writer and DM! Some big inspirations are Fullmetal Alchemist for themes and handling dark topics, Star Wars for worldbuilding, Fallout New Vegas for intrigue and factions, The Order 1886 for many stylistic and plot elements, and FFVII for getting fantasy elements to work with firearms and an industrial setting. And as for the campaign pitch proper:
For 50 years the elves waged a campaign of subjugation against the human nations of Galrea. The war devastated much of the known world, and saw the rise of many new innovations; well-developed firearms have become the standard ranged weaponry while the armored, hulking, tank-esque constructs known as juggernauts now stalk the battlefields of Galrea. At great cost, through blood and steel, the Osinyan Empire finally broke the elvish invaders - and in turn united two-thirds of the mortal realm under one banner for the first time in history. The Empire is ascendant; a new era of history has begun.
But now, 17 years after the Union, the cracks in this order have become increasingly apparent. The once backwater collection of city-states to the East have reorganized themselves into the Ancian Federation, a rival power capable of effective opposition to the Empire. In the new territories, Osinyan rule has proven unpopular with many, who sometimes even resort to violent insurgencies. All the while the Empire struggles with itself; falling victim to the corruption and internal rivalries that have plagued Osinyan society for nearly as long as history can remember. For all its size, power, and industrial might - the Empire is stretched to the limit.
Within this oversized polity is an organization of exceptional people known as the Imperial Knights; a group your character is expected to be a junior member of, or perhaps simply associated with. For the most part, the Knights do whatever needs to be done to keep the empire running in situations where throwing manpower, metal, or money at a problem isn’t viable. This ranges from monster hunting to espionage to arcane research - even confronting eldritch terrors. Most knights typically specialize in a couple of areas, but the group as a whole are multipurpose enforcers. (The Knights aren't really the traditional, plate-armored kind - the title is more about the nature of their service than it is about a specific role.)
A skilled knight can expect lavish rewards for their service. Riches, land, noble titles, and political influence are common, and it is far from unheard of for an important individual to request more creative favors. The party are not yet full knights, lacking some of the formal authority and informal influence that come with the title - but as initiates they're acknowledged as candidates for the title, should they prove themselves clapable.
But, don't let the above limit your character ideas and backgrounds too much! The Knights have a large amount of freedom in how, exactly, they resolve the situations they are faced with; so long as the problem goes away, their methods needn't conform with traditional Osinyan thinking. (I'm pretty specifically trying to avoid an evil campaign here!) And your character doesn't have to be on board with the whole imperialism thing to have good reason to join; perhaps they might want a measure of social mobility, to use a knight's influence to support unpopular reforms, or simply to stop the bloodshed of a second war. (The one major restriction I have on character motivation is to avoid an outright double-agent type who is expected to backstab the party at some point. I want to make sure everybody can stick together as a cohesive group!)
This campaign is a living world and in many ways a sandbox for the players. In practical terms, while the party is expected to pursue tasks assigned to them, the methods you choose in doing so are entirely up to you, and you'll have increasing opportunities to set your own objectives as your influence grows. All the major people you encounter are probably playing an angle of some kind - you're encouraged to work towards your own ends, too! Don't be afraid to be a driver of the plot in your own right; you'll lose your head in the Empire if you only ever do things you're told. Play your cards right and you might just be able to change the fate of the world.
That’s all the important player buy-in out of the way for now. So, as for some details, I’m going for a smaller party (3-4 people, if we lose somebody I’ll repost here and work with you for replacements), and I’m looking at a level 5 or 6 start. I do have some moderate house rules, the most notable of which is “gritty realism”, though I mostly like it as a pacing tool as I’m not fond of overly much grit nor realism. I should note that while roleplay is my primary focus, I come from XCOM and JRPGs so I do have a love of tactics. I might not always have frequent combat, but I like to think quality beats quantity for tabletop fights! And if you’d like some basic lore I have written up to skim…
-Here’s some lore on regions of the world: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iuaYmO12DxAHGAOv\_Gnddog8wIJ9dQOpNYQLuyOyMSg/edit?usp=sharing
-And here’s some lore on races and cultures: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zbIcWgB11olDWF3WJ1oqEvuOlfjAXmyh5PyY5UiJg-M/edit?usp=sharing
Feel free to message me here for any questions!
And with that, here’s a link to a player survey I’d like you to fill out: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSctG93invNb8w3TvtgStDISco2EMGoelAV8Aqngh9c-xTZSoA/viewform?usp=sf\_link
I know this one was bit long, so thank you if you’ve stuck with me up till this point! Hope to hear from you!

So a couple of weeks ago I posted my ideas for hypothetical starters for the next generation of Pokemon based in an Australian region, and since then I've been thinking about what the story for such a region could entail. I really liked the concept of having three separate story paths that eventually converge at the end that Scarlet and Violet introduced, but I feel that each of the three paths had their own shortcomings that could be improved on in a future entry like generation 10, assuming it still keeps the open-world style.
I've decided to explain these three story paths in three different sections of this post, as well as having two additional sections at the beginning explaining both the plot synopsis of the game as well as the central gameplay mechanic of the region. I've also decided to mix up what types ended up in each equivalent story path so that there were no repeats from Gen 9. So without further ado, here are my ideas of what the three story path structure from Scarlet and Violet could look like in an Australian based region.
​
Part 1: Starters https://www.reddit.com/TruePokemon/comments/13p5z88/ideas_for_gen_10_starters_for_an_australianbased/
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Plot Synopsis:
Unlike most other Pokemon games, the main protagonist is not a child embarking on their first journey to become the Pokemon Champion. Instead, the player takes control of a 16 year old teenager who is moving to Auborn (Aussie based region's name) from Galar along with their mother, having already participated in the Champion Cup and coming close to beating the champion in that region. Because of Auborn's strict laws on importing foreign Pokemon due to a rise of unexpected new evolutions that first occurred when various foreign Pokemon first set foot in the region due to Auborn having an innate connection with the Dream World, the player was unable to bring their previous team along with them to the region, forcing them to essentially start their journey over from scratch.
Upon arriving in the region, the player, along with their mother, head to the Auborn Association of Rangers' Headquarters, an organization that specializes in studying and catching the various wild Pokemon of the Auborn region. They meet up with the leader of the organization, who is based off the crocodile hunter, but essentially plays the role of the professor of the region. He gives the player the option of picking either Crocodino, Lamblast, or Splatypus as their starter, and the player's mother picks the starter that is strong against them, leaving the final starter in the professor's care.
The Auborn Association of Rangers' Headquarters will be the central base of operations for the region, functioning similar to the Academy in generation 9. Here, the player can take training courses to learn more about catching Pokemon, the lore of the region, and the history of Pokemon battling in the Auborn region.
After the player is finished with the introductions, they are encouraged to explore every corner of the Auborn region in whatever order they wish, but they will be tasked with three main objectives: take the eight endurance trials to raise the max level of Pokemon that can be used in battle on their trainers' license, go on ranger expeditions in the five National Parks of Auborn to study the local wildlife, and investigate the five traditional shrines of the Dream Guardians to deal with the reports of an evil team attempting to vandalize the sacred homes of these creatures.
Auborn-The name of this region is a combination of Australia and Melbourne, one of the most populated cities in the country. When said out loud, it also sounds like "awe-born" which refers to the fact that this is the region that is most closely related to the dream world first established back in Gen 5.
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Central Gameplay Mechanic: Astral Ascension
In the Auborn region, Pokemon have the ability to draw power from the dream world and temporarily realize their full innate potential in battle by achieving a state known as Astral Ascension. Gameplay-wise, this mechanic is similar to Terastalization, as it allows one Pokemon in the party per battle to enter their Astral form, which allows them to transform into whatever their Astral type is. However, unlike Terastalization, this state will only last for three turns before the Pokemon reverts back to normal. A Pokemon's Astral type can be changed at every Pokemon Center by using ten Astral shards of any given type to craft an Astral orb of that type that can be used on a certain Pokemon to give it the desired Astral type.
Additionally, the Pokemon's ability will swap over to its Astral ability, which is typically just whatever ability is going unused for Pokemon that can have 2 possible abilities. The terminology for abilities has changed slightly for Pokemon who can have 3 possible abilities. A Pokemon's ability when it isn't in its Astral form is called its Standard Ability, its Astral Ability can only be used temporarily for three turns in battle while it's in its Astral form, and its Hidden Ability is whatever ability is going unused. A Pokemon's abilities can be freely swapped around by using an Ability Capsule.
One last change from Terastalization is the STAB bonus that is achieved when a Pokemon is in its Astral form. In Scarlet and Violet, Pokemon who had terastalized would keep the STAB bonus from their original types in addition to whatever type they terastalized into. For Astral Ascension, I've decided to make it so that for the three turns that they are in their Astral form, the Pokemon will only gain the STAB boost from their Astral type to balance out the fact that they can now make use of multiple abilities in battle. In addition, Pokemon who ascend into an Astral type that matches one of their original types will now only get a 1.75 boost to moves of that type's base power rather than a 2x boost.
Unlike in Scarlet and Violet, Astral Ascension wouldn't be available from near the beginning of the game. Instead, players will gradually unlock the ability for their Pokemon to attain Astral Ascension by completing the three story paths and defeating all 18 type specialists to incentivize heading towards a certain challenge earlier based on the player's team composition and so that they can't make use of their entire party's other abilities from the get-go.
I think that these changes would help to make Pokemon battles more interesting without being too overpowered, and would help make the main campaign more exciting by gradually allowing the player to unlock the true potential of their Pokemon over the course of the game. It would also lead to interesting situations like with the Pokemon Krookodile. Since its abilities would swap around when using Astral Ascension, players would now have to think about whether they want to have Intimidate as their base ability while only potentially having Moxie for three turns or essentially forgoing Intimidate entirely in favour of Moxie, since Intimidate wouldn't activate upon entering its Astral Form. I think it would make players think more about what role each Pokemon could bring to the team and devising strategies based on that rather than just focusing on type effectiveness, which would have the potential of adding multiple layers of strategy that weren't initially there with Terastalization.
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Path 1: License to Victory
This path would mirror the gym challenge path from Scarlet and Violet, but with a twist. Since Pokemon battling is considered to be a dangerous activity in the Auborn region, trainers are required to obtain a license to battle with Pokemon in a graduated-licensing system through the endurance trials. This will introduce a level-scaling system to the game, where players will only be able to have Pokemon in their party that are below or equal to the level that the next gym leader's ace is at. Any Pokemon caught in the wild that are higher than the max level on the player's current license will be forced into the PC until they beat enough gym leaders to be able to use them in battle. If a Pokemon in the player's party reaches the level cap, the EXP that they gain will be turned into Bonus EXP, which won't be earned until the player obtains their next badge, kind of like how Shadow Pokemon worked in Colosseum and XD.
While the gym leaders could be fought in any order, since the first leader fought will always start at level 20, there would naturally be certain leaders that would be tougher to face, like a dragon trainer having single stage dragons at the start with a higher base stat total than the Flying-type leader's Pokemon. I would imagine the level curve would go something like this:
0 Badges-Pokemon in party can be trained up to level 20. First gym leader has three Pokemon, with their ace at level 20. Recommended first gym leader is Flying type.
1 Badge-Pokemon in party can be trained up to level 25. Second gym leader has three Pokemon with their ace at level 25. Recommended second gym leader is Poison type.
2 Badges-Pokemon in party can be trained up to level 30. Third gym leader has four Pokemon with their ace at level 30. Recommended third gym leader is Fairy type.
3 Badges-Pokemon in party can be trained up to level 35. Fourth gym leader has four Pokemon with their ace at level 35. Recommended fourth gym leader is Fire type.
4 Badges-Pokemon in party can be trained up to level 40. Fifth gym leader has five Pokemon, with their ace at level 40. Recommended fifth gym leader is Dark type.
5 Badges-Pokemon in party can be trained up to level 45. Sixth gym leader has five Pokemon, with their ace at level 45. Recommended sixth gym leader is Fighting type.
6 Badges-Pokemon in party can be trained up to level 50. Seventh gym leader has six Pokemon, with their ace at Level 50. Recommended seventh gym leader is Steel type.
7 Badges-Pokemon in party can be trained up to level 55. Eighth gym leader has six Pokemon, with their ace at Level 55. Recommended final gym leader is Dragon type.
8 Badges-Pokemon in party can be trained up to any level. Elite Four is in the postgame, and have six Pokemon each, with their aces at level 70. Their types are Normal, Electric, Fairy, and Psychic, filling out every remaining unused elite four type except for Grass. Upon defeating the elite four, it's revealed that the player's mom actually defeated them prior, and they have to face off against their mother in a final battle. Her ace is at level 75, and her team has diverse typing.
These changes, along with the introduction of Astral Ascension, would make endurance trials that much more challenging. Now, the fire-type leader could use Astral Ascension on a bulky Grass-type to turn into a Fire-type for three turns to take advantage of an ability like Chlorophyll or Solar Power before reverting back into a Grass-type to perfectly counter all of Fire's weaknesses, adding an element of tension to the fights where players would want to knock out the opponent's Pokemon as soon as possible before they could potentially hit back and counter their entire team with a different, unexpected type. It's situations like this that would add a ton of variety to the endurance trial system, which is what the gym challenge desperately needs after nine generations of feeling kind of samey.
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Path 2: Ranger Expeditions
Replacing the Team Star Route from Scarlet and Violet, this path focuses more on catching Pokemon and crafting certain things for the ranger scout of that particular area. Taking the 10 wonders of the region concept from Scarlet and Violet a step further, the five national parks that the player will visit over the course of this story route are five of the ten wonders of the Auborn region, with the other five being explored in the third story route. These national parks will be filled with Pokemon and tourists alike, making these areas just as bustling as the cities housing the endurance challenges.
This route would play out similarly to the missions in Legends Arceus, and I would imagine Pokemon catching would work basically the same as it did in that game as well. Players would be tasked with catching a variety of Pokemon within the biome to study features such as size differences, move variety, and gender differences between different species of Pokemon, as well as what their dropped materials can be crafted into. These parks would be based in a Grass-type outback area, Water-type beach resort area, Rock-type mountain area, Ground-type desert area, and Ice-type Snowfield area to maximize the type diversity of Pokemon being studied.
I won't go as in depth with this story path or the next one since this post has already gone on long enough, but I feel like having a campaign more in line with Legends Arceus focused on catching would be more interesting, at least gameplay wise compared to how Team Star Bases played out where if you had the type advantage it felt like it was basically just tap auto-battle to win until the real boss fight came out.
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Path 3: Dream Guardian Investigation
The final section will be the most brief one, since it will essentially be a mixture of the Titan Pokemon path from Scarlet and Violet and the Totem Pokemon challenges from Sun and Moon. I feel like the concept of having these super strong Pokemon that you can find in the wild like with Titan Pokemon is just so interesting that you could have a similar system in Gen 10 without too many changes and it would be fine.
There are five ancient shrines dedicated to the "Dream Guardians" scattered across the region, and each of them are considered to be five of the ten wonders of the Auborn region. These are legendary Pokemon that were said to roam the land in ancient times long before the first humans were born in the region, where the connection between the Dream World and the Pokemon World was even stronger than today. However, due to the nefarious actions of the Ghost-type Team Spectre, the five ancient shrines are being corrupted by the Successor Pokemon to the Dream Guardians (equivalent to Totem Pokemon), and the player must work together with the locals who worship the Dream Guardians to heal their successors before their ancestral homes are destroyed for good.
Unlike the other two paths, the missions in this route must be completed in a specific order to unravel the story of these legendary Pokemon in a linear fashion. The original Dream Guardians each share a primary type with their successors. The progression for this route would go as follows:
Bug Primary Type Successor-Level 20
Electric Primary Type Successor-Level 30
Normal Primary Type Successor-Level 40
Psychic Primary Type Successor-Level 50
Ghost Primary Type Successor + Team Spectre Leader-Level 60
I admittedly didn't go as in depth with this story path as I could've, but I think this general template would work to create an interesting story and an intimidating evil team.
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And there you have it. I didn't come up with a final story segment like Scarlet and Violet had, but I hope this gave a good enough idea on how I would imagine an Australian based region could play out for Gen 10. I also have ideas for 29 different evolutions for old Pokemon for the Auborn region if anyone would be interested in seeing posts about that in the future. I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts in the comments below!

I write this review, mostly, to organise my thoughts: spoilers will be marked by the spoiler bracket, and I apologise in advance for any misuse of the English language (not my first).
My dearest friend with whom I usually discuss fantasy has been insisting for many years that I should read some Sanderson, but I have always procrastinated, because I am not particularly fond of hard magic systems. However, I've been writing my own fantasy story for a while, and the more I write, the more I feel the need to make my magic system harder. As I am both a scientist and a writer that needs to plan beforehand (as G.R.R. Martin puts it: an architect as opposed to a gardener), this in turn has compelled me to go back to "studying", and I have read some books with hard magic system, with various levels of enjoyment, and many essays on writing such systems. And finally, I realised that I really had to tackle the author that is considered by many amongst the best at that: Brandon Sanderson. And so, I read the entirety of the Stormlight Archive (and the first Mistborn book). Furthermore, before reading these books, I listened to a full set of university lectures by Sanderson on writing that are availible on youtube. So, with these facts in mind, I have approached these stories with a very critical eye regarding plot structure, character arcs, magic system: because I wanted to study them more than enjoying the books themselves, and for which I already knew (mostly) the author's own intention or point of view.
With a story this long, it will perhaps not be a shock that there are some things I liked, and some that i did not. Stormlight Archive (henceforth: SA) is a huge epic about individuals that need to rediscover ancient ways of power of which only shards (pun intended) remain, powers that have crossed history to become religion; all this in order to contrast a threat that greatly grows during the scope of the story. The worldbuilding is rich and encompasses flora and fauna, religion and history, various nations with cultures and fashion, different races and even planes of reality. The POV characters are several but not as many as one might expect from such a long epic (definitely fewer than, say, a song of ice and fire) and depending on the particular entry in the series they have more or less focus / page-time. But what did I like and what did I dislike, specifically? I'll divide this discussion into sections for the magic system, the characters, the plot, the worldbuilding, and the writing style.

• The magic system. This point is the most controversial in my mind. Sanderson clearly wants the rules to be crystalline for the reader, but he repeats himself so much it really hurts my enjoyment of many scenes. X character fell upward: the ceiling was "down" for him now. You are going to hear similar iterations of this sentence a thousand times. Everything feels so... explained? I think this is a blend of the way Sanderson writes, and his philosophy on magic systems: "An author's ability to solve conflict with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic" (his 1st law). I wholly agree with the sentiment, but in practice, the way he presents the rules is too much for me, it's too repetitive, too omnipresent (like, constant reminders of already introduced rules, even in the middle of an action scene). Also, I have exactly zero visual imagery in my head, so I couldn't appreciate most of said fight scenes and got constantly stuck on how repetitive they sounded (and by sounded, I refer to these small reminders more than the actions themselves). Finally, the individual actions and ideas during these fights may have been always different, but rarely they were unexpected; I guess predictability is a consequence of this over-explanation. I'm not talking about predictability regarding plot here, but on a microscopic level - everything feels straightforward, more like the unfolding of the correct solution than an actual narration. That said, I didn't dislike the system in its entirety. Something that often bothers me in mainstream media (think: Marvel movies) is that characters are set up with huge powers and always, always end up beating each other with regular punches. This does not happen in SA: coherently with his philosophy, Sanderson exploits cleverly the magic system and integrates it into the society in a very consistent way. Some examples without spoilers: stormlight/power is actual currency as it can be used to manifest food and can thus sustain an army without supply chains; shardbearers greatly affect how armies fight; the weather pattern influences architecture and human habits... To conclude this topic: I give bonus points for the magic system as the story goes on. The highest peaks of the magic system for me areNavani's subplot in book 4 where she studies fabriels, as rarely you see actual interesting "research" in fantasy; and the whole charade about the words of radiance that must be discovered and accepted to raise one's magic power definitely has its charm and uniqueness, much more than the actual powers.
• The characters. In general, if I have to keep reading one between a book with poor characters and good plot or vice-versa, I prefer good character studies; I can read a character driven book with extremely simple or non-existent plot, but I struggle with awesome orginal plots and bland characters. To get it out of the way immediately: I don't like how Sanderson writes characters and their feelings. I constantly think that he explains too much how they feel: he either tells you this explicitly, or uses so many actions to show their feelings that it becomes too obvious. It is especially annoying when the bonded spren are in the scene, because every other "alone" moment turns into a conversation about feelings. I mean, trust a bit more the emotional intelligence of your readers, Brandon! That said, about the character themselves: I didn't hate the characters in SA, but I didn't like most of the protagonists nor found their arcs interesting, and some of them I even found a bit too 1-dimensional, laser focused on a single character trait/flaw. However, the plot was compelling enough that I wanted to know more, and some of them grew on me afterwards (and he probably became better at writing them as people). The character arcs are also a mixed bag, in my opinion. It feels like they keep repeating. They all have this one thing, this one (1!) flaw that haunts them: Kaladin and not being able to save people he loves / thinking himself weak, Shallan and lying continuously / thinking herself a monster (nope: don't think about that Shallan!), Dalinar and his honour code because of his violent and dabauched past, and so on. We always get lengthy flashbacks to explain why they became like this even if half of it is extremely obvious from the context. They seem to move on but actually have an unhealthy way of coping and ignore their problems that get even worse (Kaladin becomes depressed / battle shocked, Shallan becomes essentially schizophrenic, ...) with some kinda cheap psychoanalisis (if you excuse the word?) that treats their "mental illnesses" quite superficially. Many times there seems to be some developement, but after a while they keep repeating the same mistakes over and over, invalidating the moments of growth. I'm kinda hopeless about Kaladin and Shallan becoming truly interesting to me (even though they both have their moments of "epicness" if I may say so) but at least Dalinar shows actual growth and seems more 3D to me, more real. At least, Sando gets bonus points as the story goes on because new characters are introduced as POVs and they are much more well-rounded in my honest opinion. Navani finally becomes a POV in book 4, as she's way more nouanced than the others, that feel hyper-focused about ONE trait (and also expands together with Venli the female cast, since Shallan even with her 3 personalities was the only FMC, if an annoying one at that). Taravangian is also a very peculiar character with great potential. Venli I honestly don't really know what to think about, just like all the Listeners. To conclude with a sour note: the lack of homosexual characters (even just secondary) or even the mention of homosexuality is quite embarassing to be honest, since we're talking about a huge cast. There is only one passing mention of Drehy liking fellow men after two or three entire books. For a worldbuilding so rich and detailed, it's quite an annoying omission. There are lengthy discussions about fashion, food, arts, philosophy, gender norms, other cultures - but nope, almost no gays on Roshar. Come on, Brando, you can do better.
• Plot. As I said before, the plot is what really saves the series. The underlying mysteries that the reader needs to uncover are well paced in their revealing and lead to some very interesting plot twists. The story is deeply relevant to the world and its peculiarities and the characters really serve the plot. There is a rich history to everything that happens, and the world is the proper setting for the conflict. The actual development of the threat that turns into war with ever rising stakes is well made. I'll keep this short because this section is the easiest to spoil, but it's good, with some more traditional parts and some more original details. It is clear that Sanderson knows where he wants to go, with subplots and an overarching plot that are well organised and thought out. It has the proper scope of a high-fantasy epic, involving many groups with different objectives, mysterious individuals, powerful entities with grand plans, myths, races, wars ancient and new. One small pet peeve though is something that is too evident if you watch Sanderson's lectures: the "yes, but; no, and" rule he abides. For every "win" the main characters get, something must go wrong to create conflict and raise the stakes; and for every "loss" things must go even worse for the same reason (example: the whole "trip" to Kholinar + Shadesmar + siege). In the long run, I feel that stakes get unreasonably high yet the MCs always end up safe, and this kinda ruins the feeling of danger. And also, you always know that the good guys will not die, it's that kind of story. A bit safe for work sometimes, but again, this is more of a pet peeve that does not ruin it too much.
• Worldbuilding. This is a strong feature of the series. The world feels curated in almost every detail (except the gays, yes), especially for things I did not expect like flora and fauna. Without repeating myself, the world is unique and deeply intertwined with the magic system. Highstorms and Soulcasters affect the building of cities, travel, the currency, how wars are conducted. There is a weird take on gender norms (with only women being allowed to write) but at least it's interesting and it really affects Alethi / Voren society, it's not just a quirk. The revelation about the Parshendi being the original inhabitants of Roshar makes sense and it's quite interesting. The ancient history about the Heralds that turned into religion and got warped is also rich. The deepest level of lore of the Cosmere and the gods (Odium, Honor, Cultivation...) is something I will definitely research more and liked a lot. I don't have much to say about this section.
• Writing style. I don't have strong feelings about this topic, neither good nor bad. The prose is quite clean, not especially illuminated or captivating but not below average. The balance between descriptions, narration and dialogue is quite standard and none of them is particularly good or bad. Except maybe dialogues are a bit weaker, especially most of Shallan's: I couldn't stand 95% of "witty" dialogues, they felt childish and way too forced (extremely long and unrealistic sentences, and not as clever as they were proclaimed to be). Regarding the prose, I would have liked some more literary flare but that's just my personal preference. I recently read the two Kushiel trilogies by Jacqueline Carey and damn I missed some more artistic prose.

Well well, these were my thoughts. All that said, I'm definitely looking forward to book 5 to end the first Arc, because the plot is captivating, the world is interesting, and some characters grew on me (looking at you Dalinar and Navani). I wouldn't know how to grade the books, and I especially don't even remember where one book ends and the following one starts because I read them all in a very short period of time. I think I also learned something about how to handle a big story, about worldbuilding and about magic systems, if a bit less than what I expected. I can understand why many people like this series, even if I would not put it amongst my favourites. I wanted to write a much shorter review including also Mistborn (1-1) but ended up rambling so much about SA that I cut out the part about Mistborn. It's a pity because Mistborn (1-1) does indeed address (despite being written before, iirc) at least some of the issues I had with this series, even if I ended up liking it a bit less. But that will be another review, if I ever find the time to write it. Anyway, Thanks for reading, if you got this far!

I write this review, mostly, to organise my thoughts: spoilers will be marked by the spoiler bracket, and I apologise in advance for any misuse of the English language (not my first).
My dearest friend with whom I usually discuss fantasy has been insisting for many years that I should read some Sanderson, but I have always procrastinated, because I am not particularly fond of hard magic systems. However, I've been writing my own fantasy story for a while, and the more I write, the more I feel the need to make my magic system harder. As I am both a scientist and a writer that needs to plan beforehand (as G.R.R. Martin puts it: an architect as opposed to a gardener), this in turn has compelled me to go back to "studying", and I have read some books with hard magic system, with various levels of enjoyment, and many essays on writing such systems. And finally, I realised that I really had to tackle the author that is considered by many amongst the best at that: Brandon Sanderson. And so, I read the entirety of the Stormlight Archive (and the first Mistborn book). Furthermore, before reading these books, I listened to a full set of university lectures by Sanderson on writing that are availible on youtube. So, with these facts in mind, I have approached these stories with a very critical eye regarding plot structure, character arcs, magic system: because I wanted to study them more than enjoying the books themselves, and for which I already knew (mostly) the author's own intention or point of view.
With a story this long, it will perhaps not be a shock that there are some things I liked, and some that i did not. Stormlight Archive (henceforth: SA) is a huge epic about individuals that need to rediscover ancient ways of power of which only shards (pun intended) remain, powers that have crossed history to become religion; all this in order to contrast a threat that greatly grows during the scope of the story. The worldbuilding is rich and encompasses flora and fauna, religion and history, various nations with cultures and fashion, different races and even planes of reality. The POV characters are several but not as many as one might expect from such a long epic (definitely fewer than, say, a song of ice and fire) and depending on the particular entry in the series they have more or less focus / page-time. But what did I like and what did I dislike, specifically? I'll divide this discussion into sections for the magic system, the characters, the plot, the worldbuilding, and the writing style.

• The magic system. This point is the most controversial in my mind. Sanderson clearly wants the rules to be crystalline for the reader, but he repeats himself so much it really hurts my enjoyment of many scenes. X character fell upward: the ceiling was "down" for him now. You are going to hear similar iterations of this sentence a thousand times. Everything feels so... explained? I think this is a blend of the way Sanderson writes, and his philosophy on magic systems: "An author's ability to solve conflict with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic" (his 1st law). I wholly agree with the sentiment, but in practice, the way he presents the rules is too much for me, it's too repetitive, too omnipresent (like, constant reminders of already introduced rules, even in the middle of an action scene). Also, I have exactly zero visual imagery in my head, so I couldn't appreciate most of said fight scenes and got constantly stuck on how repetitive they sounded (and by sounded, I refer to these small reminders more than the actions themselves). Finally, the individual actions and ideas during these fights may have been always different, but rarely they were unexpected; I guess predictability is a consequence of this over-explanation. I'm not talking about predictability regarding plot here, but on a microscopic level - everything feels straightforward, more like the unfolding of the correct solution than an actual narration. That said, I didn't dislike the system in its entirety. Something that often bothers me in mainstream media (think: Marvel movies) is that characters are set up with huge powers and always, always end up beating each other with regular punches. This does not happen in SA: coherently with his philosophy, Sanderson exploits cleverly the magic system and integrates it into the society in a very consistent way. Some examples without spoilers: stormlight/power is actual currency as it can be used to manifest food and can thus sustain an army without supply chains; shardbearers greatly affect how armies fight; the weather pattern influences architecture and human habits... To conclude this topic: I give bonus points for the magic system as the story goes on. The highest peaks of the magic system for me areNavani's subplot in book 4 where she studies fabriels, as rarely you see actual interesting "research" in fantasy; and the whole charade about the words of radiance that must be discovered and accepted to raise one's magic power definitely has its charm and uniqueness, much more than the actual powers.
• The characters. In general, if I have to keep reading one between a book with poor characters and good plot or vice-versa, I prefer good character studies; I can read a character driven book with extremely simple or non-existent plot, but I struggle with awesome orginal plots and bland characters. To get it out of the way immediately: I don't like how Sanderson writes characters and their feelings. I constantly think that he explains too much how they feel: he either tells you this explicitly, or uses so many actions to show their feelings that it becomes too obvious. It is especially annoying when the bonded spren are in the scene, because every other "alone" moment turns into a conversation about feelings. I mean, trust a bit more the emotional intelligence of your readers, Brandon! That said, about the character themselves: I didn't hate the characters in SA, but I didn't like most of the protagonists nor found their arcs interesting, and some of them I even found a bit too 1-dimensional, laser focused on a single character trait/flaw. However, the plot was compelling enough that I wanted to know more, and some of them grew on me afterwards (and he probably became better at writing them as people). The character arcs are also a mixed bag, in my opinion. It feels like they keep repeating. They all have this one thing, this one (1!) flaw that haunts them: Kaladin and not being able to save people he loves / thinking himself weak, Shallan and lying continuously / thinking herself a monster (nope: don't think about that Shallan!), Dalinar and his honour code because of his violent and dabauched past, and so on. We always get lengthy flashbacks to explain why they became like this even if half of it is extremely obvious from the context. They seem to move on but actually have an unhealthy way of coping and ignore their problems that get even worse (Kaladin becomes depressed / battle shocked, Shallan becomes essentially schizophrenic, ...) with some kinda cheap psychoanalisis (if you excuse the word?) that treats their "mental illnesses" quite superficially. Many times there seems to be some developement, but after a while they keep repeating the same mistakes over and over, invalidating the moments of growth. I'm kinda hopeless about Kaladin and Shallan becoming truly interesting to me (even though they both have their moments of "epicness" if I may say so) but at least Dalinar shows actual growth and seems more 3D to me, more real. At least, Sando gets bonus points as the story goes on because new characters are introduced as POVs and they are much more well-rounded in my honest opinion. Navani finally becomes a POV in book 4, as she's way more nouanced than the others, that feel hyper-focused about ONE trait (and also expands together with Venli the female cast, since Shallan even with her 3 personalities was the only FMC, if an annoying one at that). Taravangian is also a very peculiar character with great potential. Venli I honestly don't really know what to think about, just like all the Listeners. To conclude with a sour note: the lack of homosexual characters (even just secondary) or even the mention of homosexuality is quite embarassing to be honest, since we're talking about a huge cast. There is only one passing mention of Drehy liking fellow men after two or three entire books. For a worldbuilding so rich and detailed, it's quite an annoying omission. There are lengthy discussions about fashion, food, arts, philosophy, gender norms, other cultures - but nope, almost no gays on Roshar. Come on, Brando, you can do better.
• Plot. As I said before, the plot is what really saves the series. The underlying mysteries that the reader needs to uncover are well paced in their revealing and lead to some very interesting plot twists. The story is deeply relevant to the world and its peculiarities and the characters really serve the plot. There is a rich history to everything that happens, and the world is the proper setting for the conflict. The actual development of the threat that turns into war with ever rising stakes is well made. I'll keep this short because this section is the easiest to spoil, but it's good, with some more traditional parts and some more original details. It is clear that Sanderson knows where he wants to go, with subplots and an overarching plot that are well organised and thought out. It has the proper scope of a high-fantasy epic, involving many groups with different objectives, mysterious individuals, powerful entities with grand plans, myths, races, wars ancient and new. One small pet peeve though is something that is too evident if you watch Sanderson's lectures: the "yes, but; no, and" rule he abides. For every "win" the main characters get, something must go wrong to create conflict and raise the stakes; and for every "loss" things must go even worse for the same reason (example: the whole "trip" to Kholinar + Shadesmar + siege). In the long run, I feel that stakes get unreasonably high yet the MCs always end up safe, and this kinda ruins the feeling of danger. And also, you always know that the good guys will not die, it's that kind of story. A bit safe for work sometimes, but again, this is more of a pet peeve that does not ruin it too much.
• Worldbuilding. This is a strong feature of the series. The world feels curated in almost every detail (except the gays, yes), especially for things I did not expect like flora and fauna. Without repeating myself, the world is unique and deeply intertwined with the magic system. Highstorms and Soulcasters affect the building of cities, travel, the currency, how wars are conducted. There is a weird take on gender norms (with only women being allowed to write) but at least it's interesting and it really affects Alethi / Voren society, it's not just a quirk. The revelation about the Parshendi being the original inhabitants of Roshar makes sense and it's quite interesting. The ancient history about the Heralds that turned into religion and got warped is also rich. The deepest level of lore of the Cosmere and the gods (Odium, Honor, Cultivation...) is something I will definitely research more and liked a lot. I don't have much to say about this section.
• Writing style. I don't have strong feelings about this topic, neither good nor bad. The prose is quite clean, not especially illuminated or captivating but not below average. The balance between descriptions, narration and dialogue is quite standard and none of them is particularly good or bad. Except maybe dialogues are a bit weaker, especially most of Shallan's: I couldn't stand 95% of "witty" dialogues, they felt childish and way too forced (extremely long and unrealistic sentences, and not as clever as they were proclaimed to be). Regarding the prose, I would have liked some more literary flare but that's just my personal preference. I recently read the two Kushiel trilogies by Jacqueline Carey and damn I missed some more artistic prose.

Well well, these were my thoughts. All that said, I'm definitely looking forward to book 5 to end the first Arc, because the plot is captivating, the world is interesting, and some characters grew on me (looking at you Dalinar and Navani). I wouldn't know how to grade the books, and I especially don't even remember where one book ends and the following one starts because I read them all in a very short period of time. I think I also learned something about how to handle a big story, about worldbuilding and about magic systems, if a bit less than what I expected. I can understand why many people like this series, even if I would not put it amongst my favourites. I wanted to write a much shorter review including also Mistborn (1-1) but ended up rambling so much about SA that I cut out the part about Mistborn. It's a pity because Mistborn (1-1) does indeed address (despite being written before, iirc) at least some of the issues I had with this series, even if I ended up liking it a bit less. But that will be another review, if I ever find the time to write it. Anyway, Thanks for reading, if you got this far!

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Season 5 “Exotic Pets”
Episode 1 “The Night's Weave”
In any other professional setting, doing what he was currently doing would be considered highly unprofessional. In fact, even in any other precinct what he was doing right now would be very unprofessional. Usually, walking through the front door with your boss clinging to your arm like a swooning teenager would generally be interpreted only one way.
Thankfully, nobody specifically cared about this in this precinct, nor did they come to the obvious conclusion “Thank you, I’ll finish recovering in the break room” she says, with a trembling voice.
“You sure you don’t want me there?” admittedly, playing this role wasn’t really professional either for him but everyone understood the need of it.
“Yes” Keya lets go of Santos’ arm “I’ll just do the thing and drink something cold, then I can start this waking properly” she gently taps her tail on his shoulder “Now go get to work”
He sighs as he walks back to his desk. They had a wonderful two days with nothing happening after the short little session of everything happening, it was unsurprising that she’d start processing things through her nightmares now, leading those being screaming days. “‘least it isn’t the cold bastard yet” he mutters as he sits down.
And so here he planned to spend the rest of his work day getting mighty annoyed at their Regional Firebase. That damned place was in charge of both the fiscal, maitenance and archivistic functions for all the precincts in this area, not only they held the pursestrings of the operation they were also the ones in charge of maintaining equipment, assigning personnel and keeping all the information they needed to work up to date. And they seemed to hate him. Him, specifically, because the problems only started happening when he got here.
Of course he wasn’t just getting annoyed at the Regional for no reason, he was getting annoyed at them for their sheer incompetence, and he hoped it was incompetence, at keeping up data. He’d been hunting down any information about some old unsolved cases, and he’d been getting more luck with random phone calls to other precincts halfway across the planet than an official request to his own Regional.
Sadly, not every plan survives contact with the work day. After some time he feels a presence nearby and turns to look, there is Keya looking mostly like her normal self, except perhaps more tired than normal. She brings her holopad down to put it against his, transferring mission data “Nothing serious, or at least nothing dangerous. But we really should take this call”
He looks down at his device and calls up the mission data he’s just received. Predator sighting near… Orran’s house? Bit too close for comfort, real sightings are usually at the farms, but scarcely any information. Just something small and quadrupedal is the useful information, the rest is just usual ‘predator’ panic speech. “This looks like a ghost call, but sure I’ll go” he stands up and starts heading towards the garage, but stops and turns around “Stay here boss, no need to-”
“Yes there is, don’t worry about me” Keya takes a deep breath “I’m not at full capacity but i’m fine, let’s go” she walks past him.
With a shrug, he follows. As they settle in the car and Keya starts driving, he picks up his holopad to re-read the mission data. Nothing, obviously, has changed but he gives it more attention now. Small quadruped, fast, like a shadow… If there were any other humans here he’d believe it was someone’s pet cat, but without anyone dumb enough to bring an exotic animal to an alien planet in sight that’s unlikely. Sadly, none of the usual trash-diggers quite match either.
But there’s one final detail that’s weird. This… Isn’t the first call. There’s been a lot more calls related to this one, an entire fifty eight different calls all tied to this same incident report. He starts following links to the previous calls and checking them- All of them are the same incident, small quadruped, fast and like a shadow… And they were all marked as minimal priority, and left forgotten and unattended.
With a raised eyebrow he continues to check, seeing the dates of the reports. They were insistent, and have been going on for a while now. They’re not older than his presence here, but aside from them having stopped completely for the previous five days, those calls have been a daily occurrence. And each and every one of them was set to minimum priority by Keya herself, and promptly forgotten. Which indicated there had to be something going on here, because she’d never leave a call forgotten like this, at least not when she woke up screaming.
“Boss-” but before he can say anything, they’ve arrived. A considerably different house than the rest of the residences of the town, Orran had been living here long enough to have completely rebuilt his house in the style of his people, or at least the exterior and a few additions. It was weirdly tall for his size despite being only one floor, the exterior was coated with a material that looked like an earthen-brown daub but the evenness of the striations in the material showed an artistic care in its application beyond the means of manual work. The windows were higher in the walls than in a normal venlil residence and they seemed to have multiple layers, both glass and wood were used in their construction with the final layer being some form of metal.
“Huhn, I wonder if the weather on his homeworld is that wild?” he says, staring at the windows. He’s familiar with that kind of design, it could easily be used to control airflow to various degrees and help regulate temperature. But this entire getup seemed like overkill to him, unless wherever this was used had the breadth of half of Earth’s weather happening in the same area.
“Only about where I lived” Orran’s voice echoes from behind the door, which consists of a mesh door behind a wooden door. The yotul opens them and offers him an ear flick “Nightmare weather that place, used to have a flood gate in the house too. Only good thing the feds to that town was deepening the river to handle the summer floodwaters”
Santos blinks, looks at the agriculturalist, looks back at the car where Keya still is, then back at the yotul “Dang, have I been just staring here for long? I got kind of distracted, haven’t ever actually stopped by to watch your house before”
“Oh, feel free to take it in. Took some effort to get the wattle and daub look just right, not really helping the primitive stereotype much” he says with a joyful wave of his tail “But what can I say, I’m wild nations, feds ain’t the first to call me primitive and i’m still proud of it. Still, to what do I owe the honor?”
He tilts his head to the side slightly, taking in the man’s words for a moment. They made a distressing amount of sense, guess the Yotul would still remember those parts of their own history. But he was here for a job “Yeah, we got a sighting report around here” he picks up his holopad and brings it up “In fact a report in your residence. Do you mind if I look around real quick?”
He notices Orran’s tail stilling “Hrm? I can say I haven’t seen anything, and I live here”
Taking a deep breath Santos stares at the yotul, he knows the flinch isn’t an instinctive reaction “Orran. A few paws ago you didn’t notice the nixa’s claw marks in your kitchen. And this call came in today” then he turns his stare to the side with a sigh “I just want to make sure there’s nothing, alright?”
He can see in his periphery the man going through a wild set of conflicting emotions, only to settle into a defeated expression “Alright… Just, I was uhn… Canning some food. Can you at least spare my dignity somewhat and let me clean up?”
“Sure man, it’s not urgent” he shrugs. As Orran heads back inside he looks back at the car, where Keya is still sitting. Then he looks back at Orran’s door. Something isn’t adding up, and that something is his boss’ behavior.
There is some noise from inside for a while until Orran returns “Alright, got my machinery packed, c’mon in” he mentions before waving him in.
There’s a certain aesthetic clash heading inside, it’s visible that Orran had put in effort into adding in the colors and signs of his people into a venlil residence, but the apparent lack of capacity (or funds) to really change the foundations of it meant a lot of the structure was still that of a normal venlil home.
Still, the walls had been decorated to look like they’re made of wooden planks on the inside with the actual materials only visible near things such as power sockets. The living room itself was decorated in a lightly distressing manner with effectively a circle of couches on slightly raised platforms around a central table, the television has been set up on it with a pivoting base. It looked like someone had repurposed a firepit, or rather the entire setup was designed to evoke the look of a firepit.
There was what looked like, initially, a cloth hanger near the door, but on second look what it really held was a very long string of beads- The way they were strung around it made him imagine Orran wearing those very much like a scarf which also bound around his wrists.
On the wall in the far end was something that looked like a banner, though it was best described as an unframed painting with a tougher canvas. It depicted a distant view of a town in some sandy plateau, the center of the picture was bright and colorful and clearly in the morning but at the sides one could see two long-tailed animals making their way to the center where the town resides, behind them the image was dark and stars could be seen in the sky. The way the nighttime emanated from the creatures it seemed more like they were dragging the curtains of night with their tails. Shaking his head, Santos forces himself to stop ogling Orran’s things and starts looking around.
He wasn’t, sincerely, being serious about this. But not only was this whole song and dance a necessity, but his earlier words WERE true. Just had to check for obvious signs of dangerous things. So a quick cursory glance under the couches, a short moment in the kitchen whose fridge’s scratches still weren’t repaired- Santos stops for a second more staring at the scratch marks on the fridge. He looks at Orran who’s following him, who looks confused. No, this man was not that stupid, he trusted him enough.
Still, that meant he’d have to pay more attention now. Respectfully, without actually touching anything, he continues a visual inspection towards the other side of the house. A short corridor with the doors to the bedroom and bathroom. He passes by the bedroom and stops in front of the closed bathroom door. He sighs and kneels down in front of it.
“What is it?” Orran says behind him
What is it, is that he had heard something “Just… Let me check…” he gently taps the door. And he hears the noise again, light scratching. It stops for a moment, and then he taps the door again, causing them to start for a moment again. He looks back to the frozen yotul, who was apparently actually that stupid “Set ‘em loose if you would?”
Orran doesn’t respond, he just stays there “Look, man. At the very least trust in the fact I’m a human? Not a fan of using my species as a bargaining tool but I think it’s actually relevant here?” Santos stands up again and starts heading to the living room.
He waits patiently for a while, until Orran finally arrives. A small little beast threads through his feet as he walks, not unlike a cat that is doing their best to get kicked, it is indeed a small quadruped with great agility, not only that it has a distinctive striped dark blue coat that is so deep it could be mistaken for black as well as a tail about as long as it’s torso. It’s not a beast Santos recognizes, other than from the painting in the wall, so at least he can’t blame his own kind for this problem. He looks up and sees Orran has another one in his arms, this one looking much more calm and gentle.
Santos rubs his eyes “Really, Orran? You, of all people” he sighs “Come on, not to be racist here but I’d expect a yotul, no, a yotul ecologist to know better.” he waves at the man’s beasts “Did you really bring exotic pets to another planet?! No, not another country, another planet?” he sighs “What even are those?”
“Nightweaver hensa” says a soft voice from behind him, he turns around to see that Keya had finally arrived “An endangered species native to Leirn, called like that after a legend that they were the ones who’d drag the veil of night over the scorching sun” she sounds mostly like herself, but he can feel a flatness creeping up in her delivery.
Santos stares at her for a moment, looks back at Orran with a piercing stare, then slowly lowers his eyes to the hensa he’s carrying “Endangered animals? Are you-” but a light sound draws his attention back to Keya. She simply taps a place in her chest, the motion confuses him for a moment until he looks down at himself. Where she tapped is exactly where the insignia of the exterminator’s guild is in his uniform. He starts exhaling air slowly as he sits down on a couch “Are. You. Fucking. Kidding. Me.”
He looks at Orran protectively holding his pet, looking terrified. The first time he’s seen the man look afraid. He looks down, and notices one of the two hensa had walked up to him. He notices in his periphery Orran flinches when he offers his hand for the feline-like to sniff “Plausible deniability” he says.
When nobody else says anything, he continues “I thought it was weird she made me get inside on my own before her. I am, of course, human. Some things are expected out of us, I’m sure a big fuss is expected out of me over a pet” when the alien feline seems confident enough, it gives his finger a gentle nip and puts its entire head on his hand “So just in case we don’t have any protocol about how to deal with this situation, she can pretend whatever happens is because of me”
He gently caresses the little beast “I thought it was weird you had personally deprioritized fifty eight calls” the tone is not quite accusatory
“He quite clearly had them under control, there was no need to do anything about it” Keya says as if it was the most normal thing
“Why now?”
Keya gently sways her tail “I got tired of it. After the last few paws I don’t think I have the energy to deal with this anymore” it made sense, he knew she had a limit to her emotional energy.
Orran slowly tilts his head to look at Keya “Wait… You’ve known about them?”
She gives him an affirmative ear flick “I even know they’re Nightweavers. They were already an endangered breed before your first contact, for all I know they’re the last two living Nightweavers”
At that, Santos focuses on the one that Orran is holding… Something about it… It’s a she “A breeding pair” this causes the yotul to snap his focus on him “You brought a breeding pair. It would be bad enough if they were just pets, maybe they’d be neutered and the worst damage they’d do would be for however long those fluffball live, but you’re looking at increasing the population”
He sighs “Orran… You know this will cause a disaster, don’t you? Do I need to tell you about the extinction level events that were every goddamn invasive species on Earth? Do I need to tell you the number of species gone extinct because of our cats?” he takes a deep breath “Actually, no, I don’t think I need to. You don’t actually care, do you?” he continues to gently caress the overly-affectionate little feline that at this point had jumped on his lap and burrowed itself under his shirt “Not only you don’t care… Any collateral you cause is probably just rightful vengeance for you is it?”
“It’s not like that!” the yotul shouts “I… I was breeder back home, okay? I wasn’t a farmer, I was a hensa breeder” he thumps his tail on the ground in anger “You weren’t there… You weren’t there to watch what they did to my… When I had a chance to run away and… And save some of them. I just grabbed who I could and just ran.” he holds the pregnant female a little bit tighter “I wasn’t planning on… Anything. I wasn’t planning, I wasn’t thinking… I… I wound up here, eventually…”
Santos brings down his other hand to scratch the little alien kitten. He takes a moment to just take in the little beast, whatever ecological niche it filled had to be infinitely similar to that of cats to be so similar yet so different. The tail movements were so different, a lot more energetic, a lot more in general, made sense since their owners had tails too, they probably could read each other much better. And it seemed to enjoy getting squished for some reason, he wondered why. He had all of those wonders and thoughts while he tried to not think about what he’d have to do.
Those hensa couldn’t stay here. Maybe, a very wild maybe, if they were neutered they could. But those were pretty much for breeding and of a particularly endangered kind as well, so that was out of the picture. Of course, those two space felines would also need to be cared for, they were an endangered species so that was non-negotiable. The UN had some measures for dealing with terran animals in this planet, from relocation to shelters to even a few approved areas they could live in, but they only dealt in terran animals not leirnian animals.
At this point his thoughts are interrupted by Keya’s voice “I don’t care who, anyone that can help is enough” he looks up at her, she has her holopad firmly clenched in her hands and her right eye focused directly on it.
She’s on a call.
---
And here we have it, we meet the two little disasters-to-be while the precinct chief throws their human into the fire as a possible scapegoat for any possible crazy plan they might have to resort to. And in fact, said crazy plan seems to involve a desperate plea over the phone.
Also, I had a bit of fun trying to thinking what Orran's house might be like, and somewhere along the line I got this weird thought: They're certainly not innocent of or about colonialism, so wouldn't the displaced natives of their own world at least feel a tiny bit of vindication watching their own conquerors get conquered in turn? Doesn't make things better but the irony of it all must be sweet.
Edit: FFS. Reddit, LET ME EDIT TITLES

My family is spending a month in Hawaii this summer, visiting Oahu, Maui and Kauai. We will be travelling between islands on Saturdays. Since we are spending a whole month, we don't feel the need to leave first thing or late in the day to maximize each day. Just want to make sure I'm not missing anything. We will need to drop off rental cars too.
Oahu to Maui - checkout at 10am from Hilton Hawaiian Village, check in The Westin Ka'anapali Ocean Resort Villas 4pm. I am thinking of either a noon or 140pm flight. Noon I think we'd need to be up and out before check out time. The 140pm we'd have more of a leisurely check out and would probably just have some extra time for lunch. Probably splitting hairs.
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Maui to Kauai, checkout 10am from The Westin Ka'anapali Ocean Resort Villas, 4pm check-in at Marriott's Waiohai Beach Club. Choices are 1235pm or 240pm. Leaning toward 1235pm, so we just check out and head right to the airport.
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Thanks for your help!

"A couple very good guys wrote an article today, the tobacco king, you the tobacco king..." - Disgraced former president Donald Trump doing some classic word salad during his Fox News town hall with Sean Hannity

Law And Border

Some variation on “CHAOS AT THE BORDER” is a staple phrase in the Fox News chyron. But the source of that chaos is not who they want you to think it is.

• The Trump-era policy known as Title 42—which allowed American border agents to rapidly expel many migrants to Mexico or other countries to request asylum—expired in May, and conservative media whipped its viewership into a frenzy anticipating a huge increase in illegal crossings at the Southern border. That hasn’t happened. What has happened is a crisis of a different kind.
  
• An internal Border Patrol investigation found that medical staff “declined” (refused) to review the file of an eight-year-old girl with a chronic heart condition and a rare blood disorder before she had a fatal seizure on her ninth day in custody. Her parents had shared her medical history with authorities the second day the family was in custody. Anadith Alvarez was the daughter of Honduran immigrants, born with a congenital heart defect that required surgery three years ago. The day before she died, the girl had a fever of almost 105 degrees.
  
• The video surveillance system where the girl’s family was detained in Harlingen, TX, had been out of service for over one month, a violation of federal law that prevented authorities from collecting evidence, but interviews with Border Patrol agents and medical personnel there raised enough troubling questions to trigger an investigation into the girl’s nine days in custody. The agency’s own limit to detain migrants is 72 hours. The Office of Professional Responsibility (which is like Border Patrol’s office of internal affairs) reported that despite the girl’s rapidly deteriorating condition, her mothers concerns, “and the series of treatments required to manage her condition, contracted medical personnel did not transfer her to a hospital for higher-level care.”
  

This is far from the first report of this kind detailing inhumane treatment of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.

• Adding to the unstable conditions at the border, the head of the U.S. Border Patrol, Chief Raul Ortiz, announced his retirement Tuesday night, which will take effect on June 30. It is unclear who will replace him. Ortiz oversaw Border Patrol’s nearly 20,000 agents during the pandemic and through the implementation of Title 42 after beginning his tenure in August 2021 following the ouster of MAGA-head Rodney Scott, who fully embraced Trump’s policies including #BuildTheWall. But the malpractice plainly did not end with Scott’s removal.
  
• During the Biden administration, agents have continued to engage in “unnecessary use of force” against non-threatening Haitian migrants. Biden’s own DOJ defended the continuation of Trump’s family-separation policy in court, despite his past criticisms of the policy as “criminal.” Since taking office, Biden has tightened standards for asylum seekers at the border to the degree that some argue he has all but eliminated the right to seek asylum on American soil. Seeking asylum is an internationally protected right, so it doesn’t feel particularly radical to criticize the policy choices that led to this.
  

President Biden, like President Obama before him, made a wager: that tough border policies and deportations will buy good will from conservatives or neutralize their bad-faith attacks. Except, it didn’t, and it won’t. Conservative media and GOP lawmakers will always portray Democratic presidents, falsely, as open-borders fanatics, no matter how strict their actual immigration policies are. Multiple GOP governors thousands of miles from the border have deployed national guardsmen to Texas, absent a big uptick in crossings, as a propaganda feint, to create the false perception of disorder. Democrats can’t beat that approach by meeting it in the ever-shifting middle, and they shouldn’t try.

Look No Further Than Crooked Media

It’s Pride month, and the Crooked Store has a whole collection of merch to help you celebrate and fight back against the total freaks obsessed with what we wear and where we put it. The collection has everything from tees to bags, so you can stock up. I’m not going to tell you how to celebrate Pride, but I will say that if you don’t ruin at least one article of clothing this month, you could be doing more. So grab an extra tee.
Plus, a portion of the proceeds will be donated to Crooked’s Fuck Bans fund, which supports organizations working to protect vulnerable people on the ground in states that are banning care and targeting trans youth. You get the thrill of supporting organizers combined with the thrill of buying something online. It’s a win-win.
Head to https://crooked.com/store to check out the whole Pride collection.

Under The Radar

A series of investigations found that Allina Health System, a “nonprofit” that runs more than 100 hospitals and clinics in Minnesota and Wisconsin has repeatedly withheld care from patients who have unpaid medical bills as a draconian bill-collecting tactic. The network rakes in over $4 billion in annual revenue. In the for-profit American healthcare system, many hospitals are known to take aggressive measures to collect medical debt, including taking patients to court, garnishing their wages, or even seizing their tax refunds. Allina Health System, on the other hand, has an explicit policy to completely shut off non-emergency health services for patients with at least $4,500 in unpaid medical debt, and not allow them to resume receiving treatment until it’s paid off in full. At point, the electronic health-records system locks so that staff cannot schedule future appointments for those patients, even ones with chronic conditions requiring regular attention like diabetes and cancer. That confronts those patients with a choice between getting a loan approved through the hospital or filing for bankruptcy. Anyone in this country who has ever been on the wrong side of a health-insurance dispute knows how easy it is to rack up $4,500 in medical debt. Almost one-in-three Americans have medical debt, which accounts for about half of all outstanding debt in this country. Because Allina Health System is a “nonprofit” it was able to avoid $266 million in state, local, and federal taxes in 2020 alone. Another perfect day in the American health-care industrial complex!

What Else?

The Department of Labor’s monthly jobs report showed the 29th straight month of strong job growth, with employers adding 339,000 jobs in May.
The U.S. Senate passed the bipartisan ransom note to suspend the debt limit, averting what would have been the nation’s first-ever default. The bill now heads to President Biden’s desk for signature.
The Senate voted to rescind President Biden’s student-loan forgiveness program, a measure the president is (obviously) expected to veto.
YouTube will reverse its election-integrity policy, and allow election-denial videos on the platform. Great! I love when corporations sacrifice democracy to extract just a little bit more profit.
Disgraced former president Donald Trump’s lawyers have informed the DOJ that they can’t find the classified document about military operations in Iran that Trump was recorded referencing. Very likely story!
The Justice Department will not seek charges against former Vice President Mike Pence for his possession of potentially classified government documents, and the investigation has been closed.
The Fulton County, GA, District Attorney’s investigation of disgraced former president Donald Trump and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election has expanded to include activities in Washington, DC, and several other states.
More than 800 million trees have been cut down in the Amazon rainforest in just the past six years to meet global beef demand.
Gov. Bill Lee (R-TN) accused the National Rifle Association of seeking to use involuntary commitment laws “to round up mentally ill people and deprive them of other liberties,” a rare criticism of the NRA from a Republican.
An investigation into child sexual-abuse claims in Spain’s Catholic Church found 728 abusers among members of the clergy and non-clerical staff and 927 victims since the 1940’s.
A 19-year-old in the United Kingdom who converted to extremist Islam during the pandemic and planned to carry out a terrorist attack was given six years in prison.
The Canadian province of Nova Scotia is experiencing its worst-ever wildfire season, with more than 200 so far this year.

Be Smarter

The Discord disclosures of highly classified national security documents by former Massacheusetts Air National Guardsman/racist freak Jack Teixeira contain one particularly startling revelation: Iran, according to U.S. intelligence, plan to enlist militants in Syria to step up roadside attacks against U.S. military personnel, including through the use of armor-piercing munitions. The escalation is reportedly part of a broader strategic effort between Iran and Russia to drive the U.S. from the region (don’t threaten us with a good time!) but could also lead to escalating hostilities between the U.S. and Iran—and just in time for the Republican presidential primary, which will be chockablock with bloodthirsty war hawks who would happily exploit carnage in the region to revamp the GOP push for war.

What A Sponsor

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Light At The End Of The Email

A Baltimore couple, both nurses, saved a fellow passenger’s life on their flight back from a Florida vacation.
Fort Bragg, the major military base in North Carolina named after General Braxton Bragg—a Confederate general who owned slaves—was renamed Fort Liberty. Not sure why anyone thought it was a good idea to name a base after a guy who lost so many battles and is “widely regarded among historians as a poor leader who did not have the respect of his troops” in the first place!
Roberto Minuta, a member of the far-right Oath Keepers who was part of the security detail for longtime Trump adviseThe Riddler Roger Stone, was sentenced to more than four years in prison for seditious conspiracy related to his involvement in the January 6 insurrection.

Enjoy

paige on Twitter: "My 11 month-old son saw the pride merchandise in our local Target- immediately said “mama, I am woke and gay now” and then he did the worm"