radio414

“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)

Is "typecast shonen protagonist" your thing or was it thrust upon you by others?

What was your favorite masquerade monster you played? What about in real life?

What was your favorite piece of candy growing up?

Melissa wondered if she was supposed to continue the thread of the “next date” while still in the middle of the first one or not. It seemed… off? Somehow? Like, she could understand talking about when they were supposed to meet next at the end, in front of one of their dorms or something, but when there was still so much more time left in the night? Ignoring everything else (and there was a lot of else -- for example, that had to be in the upper echelons of social faux pas, right?), she was worried that one of them might forget by the time the night was over. Gabriela, thankfully, soon after pivoted back to the duel, deftly guiding Melissa’s attention back to, you know, the thing they were actually supposed to be looking at. “Is he really going to rely on something like that?” she said. “A tactic like that is the absolute worst.”You would even cast lots for the fatherless and barter away your friend. -Job 6:27 (NIV) Melissa didn’t know what to think about Graceful Skull Dice, actually. Jun seemed pretty quick to accept it as part of Yushiro’s strategy, but that was Duel Team talk, probably. What about scripted duels between entertainers? She’d been hoping that she’d be able to start with those so she’d only have to focus on the “entertaining” aspect. You know, the part she was garbage at. The point was, luck-based cards like that, couldn’t those throw the script somehow? Or did each duelist just have to have a flowchart memorized, with forks at every dice roll or coin toss? That seemed… complicated, to say the least. The alternative was probably setting the number beforehand, though, which itself probably ran the risk of breaking the audience’s immersion. Could she fake surprise or disgust at the result of a die she already knew the result of? How many people could? And that was ignoring the biggest question, which was: if you were scripting out a duel, why even use luck-based cards at all? Then something clicked. She still didn’t know what to think or anything like that, but her brain had decided to ignore the question altogether and shift course to the other aspect of Gabriela’s declaration: her tone. Melissa was pretty sure she’d never heard Gabriela act with such disdain before. Sure, there was the standard air of nobility over the lower class that she had basically all the time but this one seemed different. Something personal. And Melissa was worried it was her fault. The thought wouldn’t leave either, no matter how hard Melissa tried to keep it down. So she couldn’t “ooh” and “ah” with the crowd as Yushiro pulled out a big Synchro monster. She kept her lip bit and started running through everything she’d ever said searching for something that might have offended Gabriela. Something that might have soured her mood. Was it the food? Gabriela hadn’t gotten a lot to eat at dinner and it seemed like so many advertisements were always like “Hungry people are angry people.” And that could probably be rectified pretty easily, like, the bar probably had some sort of snack and failing that, some nonalcoholic drink would at least have some calories, right? But Melissa imagined walking up to someone and being like, “You look angry, have a peanut,” like, that certainly couldn’t go well, could it? What else could it be? A thought struck her. Maybe she’d only noticed it now because she hadn’t been the best at paying attention. Maybe it had been subtler before and because Melissa hadn’t picked up on it, Gabriela had increased the intensity, and now Melissa was left to deal with the consequences. The knot in Melissa’s stomach got a little tighter. It had to be her fault -- it had to be -- and being unable to find the cause only made things worse. Something she said at dinner? No, dinner had been great. Calling out her loss to Hitomu? No, Gabriela would have said something if that were true, right? Her failure to adequately prepare for the duel they were now watching? Ashley had done most of that and… And… “I’m sorry, I think I need to use the restroom,” Melissa said. She stood up. Deep, measured breaths were starting to fail her now, which meant escape was the only option unless she wanted to ruin Gabriela’s night even more than she probably already had. She quickly shuffled past Gabriela (and gave a quick nod to Jun) and scampered off. The restroom wasn’t soundproofed at all. That wasn’t to say that Melissa expected that of her restrooms, but the noise of the crowd certainly didn’t help. Otherwise, it was fine. It had porcelain toilet bowls and sinks and smelled like it had been cleaned that afternoon. She wasn’t picky, especially not now. Her mental search had broadened. Now that she was staring at herself in the bathroom mirror, it was easy to reflect on things, and the entire day was now up for review. No, not just that day, any interaction. Every interaction they’d had. And every other moment Melissa had spent out and about. Ever. It wasn’t even gradual how quickly all those thoughts turned into a barrage, a monsoon of nitpicking and hyperanalyzing. Why did she wait until the day of to buy corsages? Why had she done the bare minimum of coordinating? Other people thought her flower looked terrible, didn’t they? Why did Jun show up all of a sudden, had she heard anything private? And Ashley… Ashley… Ashley… Everything about Ashley Rendleman and how Melissa had handled that particular encounter now flooded her memory because everything about it had gone wrong. From what was said to how it ended to the inevitable aftermath to- Someone entered the restroom and it was all Melissa could do to flee into a stall and just start sobbing. She was leaning over the toilet bowl in case something came out. Fortunately, nothing did, but it was a small fortune now. Between gasping for air and sniffling and feeling her heart pound like a drum in her chest, she could barely even think, anyway, so she couldn’t even recognize how lucky she was she hadn’t lost her din- “You’re probably too good for him anyway,” the other person in the restroom said. And there it went, between coughs and spit. Melissa flushed the toilet, but a second lurch left her staring at some remnants until she managed the strength to pull the plunger again. And even after that, the image was firmly in her mind now. She was a mess and she knew it. Why did she think tonight, of all nights, was going to be different? Melissa imagined spending the entire night there in that one stall, only coming out when the night custodian demanded that she did, before wandering in a daze back to her dorm room and never leaving. It just wasn’t worth it. If -- if -- Gabriela didn’t hate her, wouldn’t she now, after all this? And if she didn’t find out, wouldn’t she find out through Ashley Rendleman’s chain of gossip? “Watch out for that mess,” Melissa said to herself. “You don’t want to be- you don’t want to have anything to do with her.” In that moment, though, as soon as she uttered those words, Melissa experienced a moment of clarity. There was one person that both already knew and could maybe, just maybe, bring her back from this. She swiftly pulled out her phone. She was operating on blind hope now, like, it probably wouldn’t work, but she had to try. To: Elizabeth From: Melissa Hey, this is Melissa. Can we talk? I don’t want to say it’s urgent but... I’m in the restroom. It was only two messages, and they looked so small now that she had sent them. Melissa kept staring at the screen, mumbling to herself sentences like “Come on…” or “Pick up, please…” There wasn’t a read receipt yet, which meant there was still hope. But as the moments -- they were probably only seconds, unless… -- ticked on, the hope started to fade away, and nothing replaced hope quite like dread. She sent two more -- final -- messages and then the tears came back. I don’t know how many restrooms there are in this place, actually. Look for the crying girl one of the stalls. Please.

(other people have made this joke but this one is mine)

Anyway