radio414

Did somebody say CHRISTMAS MUSIC?

Elsie gave a sigh of relief as Jekyll elaborated on, well, everything. Especially Lucine and her questions, though. Survivors still existed, and covens in the area certainly would carry on, even if Hecate reclaimed a few. She wondered if she knew any of them. It was unlikely, but… But also, like, it didn’t matter, did it? Either way, she was still going to help Jekyll, kick some Fahlyn butt, and look good doing it. If any of the other Jaegers in the room were as good as she knew she was (again, one of them had slain a dragon!), what trouble could there be? And when -- not if, but when -- she saved Grimm, she wouldn't have to worry about any of that stuff. Elsie listened to the rest of the question and answer session, but those thoughts remained at the forefront of her mind. If a friend of hers was actually in trouble -- if a Fahlyn had come across a coven she’d visited -- they would have called out. Maybe not to her specifically, but she’d have known. But they hadn’t and she didn’t, so she’d be okay, right? One question stood out to her. The Jaeger with the bunny ears (did he say was Lopt? Low-pit? Whatever) had asked, “Do you really think you can do something as grand as saving the world with children?” and while Elsie did allow Jekyll to answer the question himself, she still had to wonder, what was that supposed to mean? “What’s that supposed to mean?” Elsie said as soon as Jekyll was finished. “The bit about the children and the- yeah, what was that about?” “I mean no offense, my dear,” Lopt turned to her, a little shocked, “only that... is it wise to throw someone with their entire life ahead of them into the fray? It’s a terrible thing to see someone as young as us die. Especially when many of us look so frail...” “I guess…” Elsie said. “I dunno, I’m not planning on dying any time soon.” She looked at Corbin. “What about you?” Corbin had spent the presentation similar to how Elsie had: he stared at the image of the Fahlyn and while Elsie couldn’t tell his thoughts directly, she still felt that same sort-of-fear from him that she’d felt herself. Only he just never took his eyes off of it. Even when Elsie called out to him, he didn’t flinch. “Hello…” Elsie leaned out to him and gave the table a knock. “Hey, Earth to raven. You planning on dying?” Corbin hopped almost straight up and cawed -- his own shock was of a much more physical nature compared to Lopt’s -- before landing on Elsie’s hand. “Uh, what?” he said. “No. Unless you were?” His fear rose a little. “Are you?” Elsie gave him a little scratch. “Of course not, silly.” Jekyll, at that point, had left the room, as had one of the other Jaegers, Alexandre Roi. Elsie took that as as good a cue as any to also leave. “Alright,” she said, standing up, “well, it was nice to meet you all. I’m sure we’ll all get to know each other real well by the end of this. I’m going to head to the sparring arena if anyone wants to follow? Gotta work off this breakfast somehow, I think.” With that, she guided Corbin back to her shoulder and went right out the door. Properly this time. Of course, Corbin had to ruin it. “I think you left your broomstick in there,” he said. Well, she’d embarrassed herself in front of most of them once already. What was one more, right? At least, that’s how she thought it, though she still couldn’t help but give a sheepish grin to everyone as she snuck back in and grabbed it, and Corbin couldn’t help but chirp a “We’re gonna have to tie that to you, aren’t we?” just for kicks. Elsie’s goodbye was much quicker the second time. “So, uh, yeah,” she said. “If you want to fight or talk or, I dunno if there’s something else, um, you know where to find me.”

What I Like: Less action-oriented stuff. Action and violence can still be there, but I'd rather it not be the focus of the anime. It's not a huge deal if it is, but I did want that out there. Pretentious writing because I am pretentious. A good soundtrack would be nice. What I Don't Like: Anything long. I know this was already mentioned, but my limit is 39 episodes and even that's pushing it. 26 or less (or, better yet, a single movie) is much more preferable. Fanservice. Like, it'll probably just get an eyebrow raise -- but I ask that you use your discretion. That animation style where it's clearly all 3D models but it's trying to pretend that it's 2D. I don't actually know how common this is but I've come across it two or three times now which shouldn't be possible given how infrequently I actually watch anime. MyAnimeList: I haven't seen nearly enough stuff to want to start keeping track of it all. If you want to send me something but hesitate because you think, "radio's probably seen that already," I probably haven't. And if I have, I probably won't mind watching it again. May edit in more but there's the gist.

Melissa stared at herself in the mirror. Despite feeling, you know, a little bit better about things, she still looked like a mess. And that was even if she ignored how smudged her makeup was getting. That could be washed off with enough elbow grease, and she felt like she had to wash her face anyway, but the telltale signs of a mess went deeper than that. It was apparent in her posture and her face, and the nice dress and flowers did little to conceal it. Gone was the prepared -- almost confident(!) -- girl from the beginning of the night; she’d regressed back into her natural state. What was she supposed to say to Gabriela? “Sorry. I’m fine,” didn’t seem to cut it. Not tonight, and not to her. The “sorry” part, sure, that could stay, but she didn’t want to glibly dismiss Gabriela’s concerns if she had any. If she had any. Because despite Elizabeth talking her down, Melissa still had that lingering doubt that she was mad about something she’d said. “The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’” -Luke 15:21 (NI-No, that wasn’t right either. Even if changed the wording to make it make more sense, all the other words… it still felt too dramatic for a thing she’d been trying to convince herself she hadn’t done. But at the same time, she didn’t want to imply that any of what had happened was Gabriela’s fault. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. It just happened. Her makeup wasn’t being particularly cooperative. Melissa supposed that was because of a mix of the only-tepid-instead-of-hot water and a lack of any wipes or other equipment. It was better, but it wasn’t better better, if that made sense. “People aren’t very good at showing their intentions,” Elizabeth had said. Melissa kept coming back to those words. Maybe she needed to tell Gabriela hers? Melissa mouthed the words “I’m doing this for you,” at her reflection. That’s what she’d been telling herself every hour of every day ever since Gabriela had asked her, after all. But it felt weird to say; it was starting to feel like an excuse. But that left her with nothing, didn’t it? This was something she’d spent half a week on, she had to say something, right? Right? The makeup problem was as solved as it was going to be until she got home. The other problem, well… It was strange. Now that she’d calmed down, Melissa felt both resolve and a sense of confusion. And while the confusion had been winning, she’d still managed not to have another breakdown (would Elizabeth even tolerate a second bathroom meeting or would Melissa have to pull herself out of that one?). It was the resolve, now, that guided her out the door and back into the rest of the world. The duel had finished in the meantime, and a large portion of the audience had started filing out into Kickoff’s various other areas. Melissa didn’t see Gabriela among any of the faces she’d seen so far, though. Was she still in the stands? She’d have to fight through so many people going the opposite way to check… And yet, she kept moving. It took a bit, but people seemed to flow right past her without giving her a second glance. Or maybe they did but she didn’t notice, like behind her back or something. It didn’t matter to Melissa. Her mind was made up. Melissa reached the top of the stairs and immediately spotted Gabriela, right next to- was she still talking to Jun? It felt like she’d spent days -- no, weeks -- in that bathroom and yet once she came back, well, the significantly shorter time scale finally hit her. If Gabriela was mad at her, she was probably still mad. Melissa kept going anyway, though. She finally had something to say. It started, though, when she reached her date, by not saying a word. Melissa simply pulled Gabriela aside, away from Jun and wrapped her up in as tight a hug as she could manage. The enormity of what she was doing finally hit her, and the tears returned. “Sorry,” Melissa whispered into Gabriela’s ear. “Sorry. Sorry.” She released Gabriela from the hug but still kept her close. “I don’t- I do want to talk about what happened,” she said, “but, um, I don’t know what I’m supposed to say other than that right now. I think people are setting up for the dance, though. Do you want to- do you want to still do that?”

couldn't find a good youtube video with the album art on it, sorry. just this one.

Aaaaand there Lachan went apologizing again, though at least this time maybe he had an actual reason for it? Like, it was for different things. New things. Some of them she hadn’t even known she’d been slighted -- Lachlan was apologizing for thinking Corbin was a rook or a jackdaw and how was she supposed to get angry about that? She wasn’t a mind reader. Not without the requisite spell, at least. What was clear to Elsie was that Corbin’s words had affected Lachlan to the point of overwhelming his emotions. That was a little weird. “I think I broke him,” Corbin said into Elsie’s ear where Lachlan couldn’t hear him. Elsie shushed him anyway. “The important thing- the important thing about birds, at least,” Elsie said, “is that they remember stuff like this. And they’ll let you know when they’re not happy with you, too. This one --” she gestured at her shoulder again “-- he likes you, it seems. And they’ll remember that too. We’ll certainly remember that.” Whatever other conversation they might have had was cut short by the commotion at the other end of the room. From what Elsie could pick up, it started when someone called someone else “Mommy?” Or wanted to someone to call them “Mommy?” Elsie tried not to laugh. Like that -- her calling and her being called -- would ever happen. Thankfully, Jekyll put a stop to that right there with the actual reason they were all together. But first: Breakfast! It was a veritable cornucopia of foods. Some -- most, even -- were too rich for Elsie’s taste, like basically anything with at the end involving syrup or sweetened dough, but that didn’t mean those weren’t a feast for the eyes. And it wasn’t like there weren’t a bunch of things she could eat, like the eggs or any of the greens or a roll- oh, they were out of rolls it seemed (why even bring out the extra plate?). Corbin, though, he hopped about wherever he pleased, taking nips at the various scraps left behind before hopping off somewhere else. It was also ample time to take in her fellow jaegers around the table. She’d been paying so much attention to just Lachlan, all she really had otherwise were names and faces. And some of them, like the cat woman, or the man with the cloak (wait, did Jekyll really call him “dragon slayer?” Elsie wasn’t even sure she could do that), Elsie didn’t even have that. Still, she took the opportunity finally started attaching the names she had heard to faces. The rest, well, the rest would come in time. Jekyll, meanwhile, had started his presentation. When the image of the Fahlyn came on the screen, Elsie’s eyes immediately snapped to it. Not because she recognized it (who would?), but because of the opposite. It was so… unnatural, and as someone who’d spent so much of her life in nature, well, how could she not stare at it? It was just an image, she knew that, but she still felt like she had to be ready in case it started to not be one. It had that energy to it. And when the lights came back up, the wall where the image had been suddenly did too. It took Jekyll opening the floor for questions to finally break the spell. “Are there still survivors?” someone (Lucine?) asked. That was a good question. Elsie was about to ask a follow-up when someone else spoke up. “Are there a lot, or just a few powerful ones?” the man with the cloak asked. That was a good question too! Maybe she should- “How are we supposed to be taking care of these?” Lachlan asked. Well- “What is your plan?” Okay, all of that, but, like, now that she was fifth down, her question felt a little less important. She still dutifully raised her hand and asked it: “Is it just the populated areas?” she said. “Kind of like, uh, Lucine -- Lucine, right? -- like she said, could survivors escape into the woods or wilderness?” It was a selfish question; it wouldn’t be her coven out there, but she was still a little worried about her kin. If she had that sort of reaction to just the image of a fahlyn, what would those who’d seen one in person, how would they react?

When Job’s three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite, heard about all the troubles that had come upon him, they set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go and sympathize with him and comfort him. -Job 2:11 (NIV)Melissa had gone from leaning over an open toilet bowl to sitting on a closed one, and yet even in the short time it had taken her to perform the actions necessary to transition from one to the other, she had hardly taken her eyes off her phone. The read receipt had come through. She saw it, with her own eyes, how the little text at the bottom of her screen had flickered from “Sent at:…” to “Read at:…” and now all that was left was the interminable wait. No response had come. How likely was it that one would? Like, there weren’t any other girls huddled in the stalls -- everyone else was a normal person. There were so, so many things Melissa could imagine wanting to do besides talk through a stall door at someone and yet she’d still sent the message in the bottle out there. It was stupid. It was stupid and she hated it and she hated that she’d done it. But what else could she do? Melissa clutched her phone a bit tighter. Her only relief was that, after the “You’re too good for him” girl, nobody else had come in. Nobody else had to deal with her. Until the door opened. Someone walked in. They stopped at the mirrors, though, so hopefully, if it wasn’t Elizabeth, they’d only be there for a little bit. They were probably just fixing up their makeup then. The crying girl was probably barely a distraction. Still, Melissa tried to shut up, though a few whimpers and a few gasps for air still escaped. They knocked. “Melissa? I just got your message. Are you decent? Can I come in?” “No, don’t!” Melissa said. She was decent, yes, but that didn’t mean she wanted Elizabeth to see her how she was. And yet, she was still relieved that Elizabeth had come at all. “Um, if- could you just lean against the door or, I don’t know, just be there.” In any other instance, she would have waited, but the question she’d been meaning to ask was already there, and she was ready to just get going. “I don’t- is this what you meant when you said I had baggage? I just- I keep thinking about that. I’m sorry, um, maybe it’s not related to why I’m here but I…” The sentence never finished.Elizabeth put her hands up as if she were being told to freeze in place by a bobby, in acknowledgment of Melissa's panicked request. “I, well, I'm not really sure why you're here, it's hard for me to say.” She leaned her hip against the stall door, crossing her legs, “My baggage is from emotional trauma; it's something heavy that I always carry around even if I'd rather leave it home. Hell, his face is plastered on half the walls in this bloody academy. If you've got something like that that's brought you here… then I suppose so.” She rifled through her purse, looking at the contents. She thought, briefly, about a quick dart; normally that's what she did in the bathrooms when she couldn't get outside. She figured the action would be read as insensitive though, and closed her purse again. “You don't have to answer me if you don't want to, I won't leave until you're ready, but… What happened that's got you in here?” Elizabeth heard the roar of the crowd; something exciting must have just happened. She cursed internally; the duel was ending much faster than she thought.Melissa’s outburst didn’t even miss a beat. “I don’t know!” she said. “I don’t know of anything like that. I told you that, I think, on Wednesday or something. I’m just…” She managed a few breaths. “I hoped you knew, honestly. Because you said it. “At the same time, um, at the same time if I say it, if I say I’ve got baggage, I don’t know, what does that make yours? I’m sorry, um, I shouldn’t have brought it up maybe, but you know what I’m saying, right?” She wished she could pace. Or stare at herself in the mirror. Or splash water on her face. But she also didn’t dare come out. It was the same reason she didn’t want Elizabeth to come in, really. And now that she’d said things she already regretted (and probably would at least for as long as she’d be in the stall, if not the rest of her life), that certainly wasn’t happening anytime soon. “I’m sorry, Elizabeth,” Melissa said again. “I- I wish I knew what was wrong. If I knew what was wrong, I could deal with it.” Another beat. “It’s the same answer to your second question, I guess,” Melissa said. “I don’t know. I can- this one I can kind of guess, but it’s like, am I sure? No. I’m not sure, Elizabeth. You’re, um, here’s what happened happened though:” Melissa went about describing just about everything that had happened since she’d left Elizabeth outside the Duel Team meeting. She touched on being invited to the Entertainment Club and what happened there but spent most of her time talking about Gabriela. “You’ve met, I think,” Melissa said. “Or if you haven’t, um, I think you’ve seen her? I think you’ve been in the same room a couple times at least. She was also at the Duel Team meeting. That’s why I was there, actually.” She talked about all the things she did after Gabriela asked her to kickoff. She talked about how she prepared and color matching and the corsage shopping and dinner, anything and everything that she could think of. Including Ashley. Especially Ashley. “I didn’t realize you knew each other,” Melissa said. “That you were friends. If I knew, I probably would have taken it all better. You didn’t- that doesn’t mean you should have told me, just that I wish I’d known. “That’s a lot, I know. And saying ‘you asked’ isn’t an excuse, but, like, I can kind of draw a line through it all? Because it’s happened before. But- I don’t know. I’m sorry. That’s what I’ve got. If you can make more sense of it than I can, please.”Elizabeth couldn't help but chuckle, “Christ, mine's a bit more like a cargo plane some days.” She stood up fully, “But, it's never fair to compare one's plights. I've never walked in your shoes. It would be foolish to assume you've had it better.” Then the rambling came. Elizabeth was kind, interrupting occasional points and story markers with “Yup”s, “Sure”s and “Right then”s to show she was paying attention. That was until Melissa got to her best friend, “Ashley? Heavens Melissa, you haven't got a thing to worry about with Ashley. She gets a bad reputation, but she's no more harmless than a housefly. If you're worried about showing up on every screen on campus… that's not really her game unless you're a duelist. She just likes to keep herself involved in the goings-on of campus life. She can be intense though, I get it. I've known her for years now and she's been one of the best people I've ever had in my life. When I was… bad, well, worse.” Another roar from the crowd. She leaned her head back and looked to the fluorescent lighting above in partial agony, “She never let me sink. Even when I didn't want to swim. But what's this about Gabriela? I can't say I know her. I'm sorry I can't be of much help in that regard. But of your concerns…” she thought to the struggles she and Yushiro had had of late getting on the same page, of the struggles they would have when it came to light that she had missed his duel the same way he had missed hers: something had come up. It reminded her vaguely of what Hitomu had described of his end with Tess… Beth shuddered and shelved the thought. “I've come to learn that people aren't very good at showing their intentions. Perhaps she's got some baggage of her own that she's not quite ready to share with people.”Melissa couldn’t help but imagine someone choking on a housefly, despite Elizabeth’s reassurances. Like, what if a fly flew into someone’s mouth and they couldn’t get it out? And when Elizabeth said “Unless you’re a duelist”, well, she didn’t go through the first Entertainment Duelist meeting again, but she couldn’t help but squeak out “But-” That was it, though. She didn’t actually protest, she just made the imitation of one. And when Elizabeth asked more about Gabriela, she paused. “She’s great. I thought- I think, um. I think she’s great. She puts up with me, and I know I shouldn’t be thinking like that but, like, I- yeah. You do too, at least I think, if you came in like this. I’m sorry, this probably wasn’t how you wanted to spend your Kickoff.” She was starting to feel better, though. A few more breaths and she was even willing to stand up in her little stall, and not even lean over the toilet bowl. It probably wasn’t her fault, she supposed, whatever happened with Gabriela. There was still that niggling fear, but it had gotten better. And while she felt bad that she’d pulled Elizabeth in here, that was fine for now. She was better, at least for now. The crowd roared one final time, one much longer than any of the cheers before it, as Melissa finally pushed through the stall door and collapsed into Elizabeth’s arms, embracing her in half of a hug and half of just kind of hanging on. She held it for a long moment -- probably longer than was comfortable or necessary -- and then went over to the sinks to wash her face. Before she did, though, she turned back towards Elizabeth one final time and smiled. “You can- Thanks, Elizabeth. Hope you have a good rest of Kickoff.”

“Sorry,” the man with the glasses said, which kind of threw Elsie for a loop? Like, what did he have to be sorry for? It was her familiar that caused the actual problem, and she had just said sorry to him. Saying sorry and then getting sorry back, did he expect another sorry? Was this an infinite loop of sorries? He did cover it by thanking her for saving him, though, which Elsie appreciated immensely. Like, of course he should say thanks. She saved him, after all. Plus, the fact she had already accepted fault, that was almost praise-worthy enough in itself. She didn’t have to say sorry for her familiar -- he could have been made to apologize for himself -- but she did it anyway. Hecate bless her, she did it anyway. “It’s alright,” Elsie said. “I really need to start- He really needs to remember to behave himself sometimes. All I did was what any self-respecting witch with a rowdy familiar would do.” She blew the top of the finger she’d used to spritz Corbin, which had the unintended side-effect of blowing a few drops of water on her conversation partner. “Oh. Oops! Uh, I know it’s magic, but it’s still just water. Should dry up in, like, thirty seconds tops.” There were a bunch of other things the man seemed to be half-thanking Elsie for and half-apologizing for, some of which Elsie could follow along with, most of which she could not. He did, though, eventually provide something that Elsie could call him besides “the man” or “the man with the glasses.” “Lachlan,” Elsie said, repeating the name -- albeit poorly -- back at him. “Laaaachlan.” She was probably too guttural; the “ch” seemed to get stuck in her throat, but she mentally applauded herself for at least trying. “Lach. Lachlan. I mean, I guess it’s one less syllable, right? That’s probably why people say it’s easier, huh?” “It's nice to meet you, Lachlan,” Corbin said (and he managed to say the name perfectly, of course). “And yes, I’m sorry too. I don’t know what came over me.” Another call for names went out in the room, spearheaded by someone who, well, it sounded like they had a longer epitaph than even Elsie had. “Tricky Oberon,” they called themselves with their list of titles swiftly following. Between that and Lach’s curiosity, it made Elsie wonder if she’d actually introduced herself properly. Corbin had already dissuaded her from trying again, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t- like, Lachlan had provided another name, right? But what did other people call her? There weren’t that many people who knew her outside her coven and one of them was in the room still setting something up. “I guess when I was younger my sisters called me Ellie,” she said. “Um, it only changes a letter, not a whole syllable like yours so I don’t know if that’s easier or anything, though. They also called me E., but I think that was only when they were mad at me? Like, ‘You’re in trouble now, Miss E.!’” She shook her fist in mimed anger. “I guess you all can use either of those if you’d rather.” Elsie addressed the room with that statement, seeing as some of them were already reacting to Lach’s introduction. “I don’t- I won’t mind. As for this troublemaker --” she gestured to her shoulder “-- yeah, you wanna introduce yourself?” Elsie held her hand up and Corbin hopped out to it. “I’m going to start with your assumptions, Lachlan,” he said. “It’s alright, you didn’t mean anything by it, you didn’t know, but you were only one for two and I just wanted to clear them up. You’re right, I am a male raven, but I am a raven.” It was Elsie’s turn to roll her eyes at her familiar as he continued. “The difference is small, yes, but it’s there. It’s like if you said El here was a wizard instead of a witch.” Corbin turned to Elsie. “They’re kind of the same, right?” “They’re not the same.” “They’re not the same,” Corbin said as he hopped back to face Lach. “Crows, jackdaws, rooks, magpies, ravens -- there’re a bunch of us -- we’re all the same family of bird, but we’re still different birds. And we’re- I’m, at least, proud of that distinction. Again, it’s alright. It sounds like you’ve never talked to a raven before, but it matters to me, you know?” He extended a wing out to Lach. “Sorry again. For earlier and for all that. And hey, to help prove there’s no grudge or anything, you can call me Cory if you want.” Elsie raised her eyebrows. “Really? You never let me call you Cory.” “You’ve never wanted to call me Cory,” Corbin said as he fluttered back to Elsie’s shoulder. “But Lachlan has the option now, if he so chooses.”

50 has a lot of soul/pop bangers in my opinion.

I mean, I guess? It reminded me of the song Surf Solar that I recommended a couple pages back in that it's decidedly ambient in tone even if it doesn't use the sounds an "ambient" track might use. And those are in general purposefully drawn out, so I probably didn't notice. Not contesting the score -- it's okay to not like songs (or parts of songs), but you asked so I answered. song ends before the video does by like, 5 seconds, so heads up on that.

not super sure why i was pinged but ok Anyway, best of the decade? That's a tough ask. To kind of echo what Rep said, what even were memes ten years ago? Double Rainbow? The first appearance of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party? The Game (you just lost)? Do people even remember these things (more importantly, did people know about them before I brought them up?) Like, I understand why "Best of Decade" lists are appealing. They're a closer ten times as impactful as "Best of the Year" lists, putting a lid on ten years of culture and tying it all up in a bow. It makes sense for movies, right? I'm not going to say movies haven't evolved over the past ten years, but, like, you watch something like The Master and it's like "Okay, outside of Philip Seymour Hoffman being dead, this movie could be made today." Meanwhile, there have been popular memes from even a week ago that have been forgotten now. That "plant a bunch of trees" campaign? Poof. Gone from the collective consciousness. We're moving towards an internet where the only memes that survive are the most versatile. I'm referring to notable templates like Drake and Expanding Brain, these things that spawn their own derivatives, yet still require a kernel of understanding of their basest concepts. And yet, if I'm calling these the best, I still feel like I'm discounting multitudes of other memes, some of which actually made a difference. The subset of youtube videos "X, but every time Y happens, Z" slowly morphed into We Are Number One, which actually raised cancer awareness and helped someone live much longer than they had been expected to. Various "Do silly thing for charity" challenges, popularized by the Ice Bucket for ALS challenge, genuinely raised awareness for those causes. But to go down that route also gets into this "How does one even define 'best?'" territory and I'm not sure I'm comfortable or philosophically equipped to deal with tackling that particular conversation. So instead, I'm going to just pick one. What's my quote-unquote "best?" Well, like I alluded to earlier, I'm interested in versatile subsets of memes, and if I'm picking a versatile set, I'd like to go with something so versatile that it can be used in multiple mediums. Things like the aforementioned Expanding Brain are great, but they really can only be used online, and in a space that allows images. Not all places have that. Real life, frequently, doesn't have that. Text, though, can be said aloud, and so can spread through the air just as well as any subreddit or facebook group. I'm referring, of course, to the evolution of casual dismissal in language, stemming all the way back to tl;dr and all the way to modern day's "ok boomer." They can be used to call out nonsense ("Sir, this is an Arby's"). They can be used to provide summary (again "tl;dr" in its modern parlance). They can even be used to express mocking emotion ("This is so sad. Alexa, play..."). And, in perhaps my personal favorite use, they can be used to self-deprecatingly admit they've gone on too long and might as well wrap things up. Anyway, here's Wonderwall:

More and more people filed in after her. The conference room still wasn’t, like, full full but it was certainly filling up with a number of interesting characters. Rabbits and cats and wolves (oh my!) and all that. With so many new faces since she’d crashed the door the first time, Elsie almost wondered if she was supposed to introduce herself a second- Corbin beat her to the punch. “No, you aren’t,” he said. “I’m not?” Corbin shook his head (at least ravens could do that). “Look, you’re the one that said first impressions today were important, and you already messed that one up. If you ask me, now you’ve got to just focus on the next opportunity. How’re you going to impress people who already think you’re a ditz?” Elsie gasped and put a hand on her chest like she’d just been stabbed in the heart. “Rude! Alright, Mister Know-It-All, if we’re past first impressions, what are yours of everyone here?” Corbin cawed a distinct caw that Elsie immediately recognized as a self-satisfied “I was right, you were wrong, and I’m glad we agree on that” (which immediately earned another tongue-sticking from Elsie) and started moving around the table in a mix of steps, hops, and flutters, only pausing when he was in front of someone’s seat, whereupon he just sort of paused and gave that person a once-over. He didn’t even say anything, instead broadcasting his feelings to Elsie, a decision that she sort of appreciated? Like she didn’t want him blabbing all about how the guy with the gag was probably not in Jekyll’s “trustworthy” book or how the quiet human was unlike any other Corbin had seen (if he was human in the first place), but on the other hand, she also wasn’t sure if having a raven hop up to you and just, you know, stare at you for a bit was the best look for her. But! The decision had been made and it wasn’t like Elsie was about to give Corbin any more satisfaction by calling him back early. So while she kept a monitor on Corbin’s general mood, she also started thinking about what they were even called together to do. Like, she could handle just about anything herself, right? And Jekyll could probably handle the rest if he wanted to, so why all of them together? Just to save time, maybe? Like, they’d all have just the one meeting and they’d be split up - Her thoughts were interrupted by Corbin’s, which had shifted wildly from a natural curiosity to… what was that, a mix of greed and lust? She focused back on the room and saw him frozen in place staring at a bespectacled man across the table from her. The pieces started falling into place; she’d felt that feeling from him before. Corbin was feeling that instinctive raven feeling of want. After all, you could make a raven familiar, but that didn’t mean the raven part wasn’t still there. It was marbles, mostly, or gemstones that she needed for a particularly intensive ritual, but anything with a particular glint that caught his eye could be a problem. Glasses, for instance. “Hey!” Elsie said as she dove onto the table after her raven. In one fell swoop she managed to scoop him back up into her arms, and one quick snap of her fingers later and she was spritzing him with water. “Stop it!” Corbin’s caw this time was a much more annoyed one. “Hey! Hey! Alright! I get it!” He squirmed in Elsie’s hand, trying to get free, but she didn’t let up until he’d stopped and his mood had been reduced to one of resignation. “Back on the shoulder with you,” Elsie said, and Corbin complied, though he reacted with glee when water started dripping onto Elsie’s shoulder. She tried to play it off with a smile. “You’re going to have to forgive him,” Elsie said to the man with the glasses. She took a seat closer to him. “He’s been getting better about shiny things, but sometimes he just slips, you know? Sorry about that.”

Elsie had spent the night dreaming of clear skies and gentle breezes. Because that was what happened when you had a raven familiar. If it wasn’t a dream with ominous and foreboding portents of the future, it was a dream about flying. Corbin, of course, had the same dream, and if Elsie rotated her little subconscious point of view a little to the left, she could even see him soaring alongside her. When the wake-up alarm went off, of course, everything came crashing back. Not literally, of course -- they always managed to wake up just before impact -- but they simultaneously snapped awake. Elsie even lifted herself straight out of bed and Corbin nearly fluttered right off of his perch. Still, Corbin at least managed to be chipper. “Good morning, Elsie! You want to, uh, you want to come down from there?” “Guh,” Elsie said. What was good about mornings? Corbin- sure, ravens weren’t traditionally creatures of the night, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t too. They called the witching hour the witching hour for a reason, after all, and that wasn’t because the sun was in the sky when it happened. Still, she complied, lowering herself back down into her bed before sitting up and, you know, actually opening up her eyes. “Good morning, Corbin.” Elsie’s waking-up process post-those initial moments was a little more involved than that, though it had much less that was worth recounting. That was the thing about routines -- the point of them was that they weren’t special. Corbin went through the process of preening himself while Elsie washed up and that was all that really needed to be said about that. The most involved moment was when they argued just how much she needed that little extra glamour. “You’re fine,” Corbin said. “I mean, obviously I’m fine, Corbin. That’s not the problem,” Elsie said. “But Jekyll said, ‘Jaegers’. As in plural. A plurality of jaegers. And if we’re meeting new people today, I need something that inspires that little extra awe, you know?” Could ravens roll their eyes? Elsie wasn’t sure if they actually could, but occasionally out of the corner of her eye, she’d spot something from Corbin that looked not unlike an eye roll and then was one of those times. “Do you think they were recruited like us? Or were they ‘recruited’?” Elsie mimed the extra quotes while cycling through potential options, finally settling on one that made her look just like herself, only, you know, better. A classic choice, if she did say so herself, and a good first impression. “There was a rigorous application process, I’m sure. With only one or two flashes of violence,” Corbin said. “Mm. Well, nobody we can’t handle,” Elsie said. “Not like we can’t handle just about anybody. Shoulder or broom handle?” “Shoulder today, I think.” Elsie offered her shoulder to her familiar and Corbin hopped right up her arm to perch right next to her face. She did a little twirl and a pose in the mirror, then nodded, confirming for the final time that everything was just so, and, with broomstick in hand, finally headed off. Inwardly, Elsie hoped Jekyll was serving breakfast at this announcement meeting, or at the very least, she didn’t want to show up at the kitchen later and find out somebody had poached all the rolls. When Elsie reached the conference room door, she paused, not quite sure what to do. Or rather, she knew she had to cross the threshold, but she wasn't quite sure how to do it. How she should do it. She pondered aloud, “I was thinking some smoke leaking through the bottom crack and then the door creaks open to our silhouette and I say-” Corbin quickly cut her off. “If I remember correctly, the last time you tried pyro we both agreed to never do pyro for our introduction again. And yes -- I see that look -- smoke still counts as pyro.” Elsie pouted, though even she knew it wasn't a serious pout. “Alright, classic plan B then, huh?” “Or you could open the door like a normal -” But Corbin's protests came too late. She conjured up a little extra wind for dramatic effect and aimed her heel right beneath the doorknob… ...whereupon she bounced right off and collapsed in a heap, the door still stubbornly closed. “I think it’s a pull door, actually,” Corbin said. “It’d be hazardous otherwise, right? Plus, I mean, the hinges are on this side.” Elsie so wished that she could smite her own familiar. She wondered if she’d also feel the pain or if he’d just broadcast his feelings to her of being in eternal torment. It would certainly be a step up from either two steps away from busting a gut laughing or a simple smug superiority. She settled for a “Hmph,” and readied herself for another go, this time throwing back the door and using the wind to carry it into the wall with as loud a BANG! as she could manage. “Tremble, mortals! You are in the presence of an avatar of Hecate herself. Gaze in awe at her majesty! She, one-hundred-and-eighth -” Elsie opened her eyes to an almost empty room. “Oh,” she said. Then, to Corbin, she said, “Do you think maybe you could tell me next time? You know I work better with a better audience. There’s barely enough people here to call it a crowd.” Ravens couldn't shrug either, but Elsie was pretty sure she felt the essence of one coming from her shoulder. “You seemed pretty into it, and I didn't want to spoil your fun.” Elsie suddenly realized that they’d probably heard her first attempt as well. She felt a blush on her cheeks but soldiered on anyway, even if soldiering on meant hurriedly walking over to a chair and sitting down. Corbin, for his part, hopped down off her shoulder and onto the table. Elsie manged an, “It’s nice to meet you all,” and that was that.

Gonna level with you, I don't have much Kelly Moran because I get most of these songs from various radio shows (heh) or twitch streams set up like radio shows. If I hear a song I like it gets put on a list, but the list of artists I need to hear more of is about 20 artists long and Kelly is one of the more recent additions. I can indulge this request with a quick Youtube search, though.

I’d want a bot with its own little room in each server that it’s in that when you post in there, it responds using some sort of machine learning that grows more and more human over time. There’d need be some sort of human oversight, obviously, because the internet is a terrible place (remember when Microsoft introduced a twitter bot and she became a neo-nazi in, like, a day?), but yeah. Because we’re in imagination-land, though, and because modern computing is improving all the time, why not ask for a little more? I’m not asking for, like, self-awareness or anything like that. But I do want to imagine that the bot eventually becomes really good at carrying conversations in a sort of Chinese room-styled way to perceived intelligence. Because once that happens, you could put two of the bots together in a single room, set them to respond every minute (as an example, any increment of time will do) to the most recent message, and watch them play off of each other until someone resets the seed with a new comment. I think that would be fun, to come in on a long string of mostly congruent sentences with the occasional nonsense in there. In a final burst of imaginative spirit, though, I imagine these idealized bots would also start playing off each other in a way undetectable to their human observers. Maybe the whitespace varies between words and the machines pick up on that. Maybe it’s some indeterminable code. But because it’s only known to these two bots, when the server disappears, so too will their secret messages to each other. (inspiration taken from The Jacquard Game by Catherynne M. Valente as part of her Invisible Games series. The website for it is no longer up but you can read it all here)