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THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD - 1951
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The thing from another world i 1951 horrosci-fi movie starring Kenneth Tobey Margaret Sheridan, Robert Cornthwaite, Douglas Spencer and James Arness as "The Thing". Directed by Christian Nyby, or by Howard Hawks himself depending on which version of the story you believe, and produced by Hawks' own "Winchester Pictures Corporation", this movie is one of the early and perfect examples of when Hollywood films began to turn away from the classical horror movie monsters (i.e. Dracula and Frankenstein) that reigned in the 1930s and '40s, and into the realm of more science fiction based monsters.
The movie follows a group of U.S. air force personnel and a team of civilian scientists, who find a frozen humanoid alien buried under the ice in the remote reaches of northern Alaska. When the creature thaws out and comes back to life, with it's only goal being the multiplying of it's species and taking over the planet, the military men and scientist must band together to put a stop to this threat to all humanity.
We start it all off with army journalist Ned "Scotty" arriving in Fairbanks, Alaska to meet his old friend air force pilot Captain Pat Hendry, and his loyal but wise cracking flight crew. Some quick witted dialogue brings the audience to a familiar level with our characters, as they together all fly further north to a remote scientific research station, which has recently detected on radar, a large unknown aircraft crashing down into the ice in the near area.
Upon arrival at "Polar Expedition 6", Cpt. Hendry is first treated to a comically-romantic reunion with base secretary Nicki Nicholson, who's past (and possible future) history together has become the brunt of a joke amongst Hendry's men. After a quick rundown of the situation from base leader Dr. Carrington, a group of both the scientists and airmen fly out to the crash zone to investigate.
The team first finds a giant skid trail along the ice, further leading to a full on "flying saucer" at the end of the path, now buried down a few feet below the ice. When they try to thaw it out with thermite charges, the ship reacts and self destructs, leaving no evidence behind for the team to document and study, until they find a humanoid figure just a little further away, also frozen a few feet beneath the ice. Now very carefully, the group hacks out the frozen figure and hauls it back on the plane to the research station.
Back at Polar Expedition 6, the movie's themes begin to come to surface when the age old debate kicks off between brawn and brain, with Dr. Carrington wishing to thaw out the creature for further scientific research, and Cpt. Hendry insisting that this is now a military issue, requiring official military authority before carrying on with anything in regards to "the thing from another world".
"The thing" slowly starts to thaw out on it's own, finally coming back to life and attacking one of the airmen from behind, before fleeing off into the storm, and having his arm chewed off by the sled dogs just outside of the base.
Hendry and his men then form an armed search party of the perimeter and keep constant guard, giving film audiences some of the greatest jump out and scare you scenes of it's day, this being elevated by the bursting loud and terrifying theme that comes along anytime the creature appears on screen.
Dr. Carrington continuingly argues that the creature is not dangerous and must not be harmed, all while he and his team of scientist attempt to further study the creature's severed limb, finally coming to learn that this "Thing from another world" has a similar biological structure as to that of vegetable, only requiring blood other than water as the main source of nourishment for it's growth and reproduction cycle.
A secret experiment is then put into motion with Carrington actually growing these creatures from scratch in the greenhouse room closet.
But when "The Thing" then begins killing off members of the research team, most of the scientist come to agree with Cpt. Hendry and his assessment that this creature defenetely means humanity harm. A further search of the grounds unveils Dr. Carrington's mad scientist experiment, with Hendry ordering it all to be destroyed, as well as confining Carrington to limited quarters around the base.
Some practical thinking from Mrs. Nicholson helps the airmen come to realize the best way of killing this thing is by cooking it, as you do with all vegetables. This gives the special effects department their chance to shine and raise up the audiences pulses as Cpt. Hendry and his crew fight the monster, first with fire (lighting up an entire set and a record holding stuntman for it in the process), then with electricity, but not before Dr. Carrington throws himself in the middle of the "angry mob" and the creature, only to find out first hand that the creature has no interest in a mutual understanding.
But will the combined brains and brawn of the air force men and scientist, be enough to defeat The Thing from Another World? And if so, are there more out there? "Watch the skies. Everywhere. Keep looking. Keep watching the skies".
To sum it all up, The Thing from Another World (1951) is a great piece of everlasting cinema, taking us through a great storyline, with great actors, giving great performances the entire way. With such a definitive setting and great all around special effects, all rounded together by director Christian Nyby, and producer Howard Hawks, this movie remains an instant classic to any who tune into it for years to come, rivaling many of today's horror movies by far. While being remade on not 1, but 2 occasions, also helps this movie survive on through the era, but none will ever truly rival the classic.
And that's all she wrote folks. Thanks for reading.
Ryan D. Hurley.

For some reason they don't let me post in sims 4 subreddit. I think it's official from EA and they don't like anything about using mods .
I already have lots of music in the stereo with custom music, the EA music and i got a mod that adds even more stations. I don't need more music when i'm not listening to the stereo, i want some quiet. Is there a way to disable the background music that is not part of the stereo?
And i don't think setting Game options Music to 0% slider would help or would it? Because that would make the radio also not work and i want the radio/stereo to work

Hi. Sorry if i make a mistake,or offend someone that is not my goal and english is not my main language.
Right now, i live in a situation that i can't go to therapist or even can't try to treat my self in the near future. But i just need to know that i might do something about it later in life. So i am in need of external affirmation about possibility of treating myself in the future so i can stop this worry feeling in me and study for an important exam coming in two months.

I'm going to write my problems and some possible causes, hoping somebody knows it or had it and solved, so can help me identify this.

First, you should know i was always like this^{and probably got some of them from my mother} and realized these by reading online. But i still don't want to and trying not to misdiagnose my self somewhat on the way. I am not sure how should i start but here i go:
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1. Blank and/or empty mind. Aphantasia, No stream of thoughts or internal monologue and very Bad Memory. Like very bad. I am going to i will mention these later.
2. Anhedonia? As i said, i learnt these by reading online but somewhat realising this now is kind of scary. But i don't think i actually had fun all of my life. If i really know what is it.
3. Emotional Numbness. As an addition to anhedonia, I dont think i feel or felt much emotions all of my life. Maybe except stress,fear,boredom and not feeling bored.
4. I am empty inside. So possibly having No self image and No self-esteem concept. Now i am not sure should i write this or that is this even possible but because of blank mind or whatever: maybe i have it but i'm not connected to it? I'm not sure of this one but i know that i have problemed self esteem,but i don't actually know why?
5. Talking about not knowing why; Constant Stress or Anxiety. I *think***^? i have general and social anxiety b ut i don't really know why. I probably fear of something might happen like normal people, but i dont have thoughts like "what if that happens then" or "what if she think me like that" etc. Except one thing. I have one life,what if i die without living it fullfilling enouh*.*But all of that is just a feeling for me ? I think normal brain probably gives answer to these questions^{that i dont get like actually question thoughts?} rationally or already have but i cant think because of blank mind or not being me, and/or can't remember it for years becase of bad memory ?
6. Getting to the end of important problems; Auto-Pilot like feeling^? when interacting with others.

Well, i should start by explaining this; there is kind of me inside me ? that can't think etc. Me when i'm like that is actually intellectual and ethical but is like ,being held down by the situation he is in. When i am like that i can only think^? by imagining it in the future.
I might have aphantasia but i am a big daydreamer since ever, and i think my imagination is doing something in future in physical form,or having know what is something in its actual form instead of mental imagery.
So i realized i always think by imagining saying things in future settings instead of what i should think. Like a talking to talkshow,to a friend to emptiness, to something. But that imagine saying something is done by outside me which has limited capabilities.
Outside me, is when others interact me or vice versa. Like i said in 6. i go to a auto-pilot like thing when i interact with others, when i'm like that inside me nearly completetly goes away, and i start to act.
This not something like DID, but i realize what i did in the end. And still, dont get me wrong, i'm still me and i know and see and do? while doing it but i cant completely control myself,i kinda act like what others want to not get things bad or complicated, or to blend in automaticly.
I realized that i even developed a kind of reflex. When someone act someways, like laugh, even i am not in a social situation directly. And all these things are bad because i don't actually want to be like this. But i can't control it. I say i will when day starts but in the i cant control and go tell i joke i didnt really want when opportunity comes. Then kinda feel bad.
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This is it generally. I realized these not long ago and i am still looking for some answers. I searched on the reddit, internet, ^{because as i sad i cant to go a professional for a time}, typed my symptoms i saw on on the net to chatgpt etc.
And in the end,with some other reasons i did not tell yet, i might have adhd,dpdr. OR other kinds of neuroal problems ? But i reserched the disorders above there is some problem.
Let's say i have ADHD-C. Because I relate to a lot of symptoms i read. Also because of i probably got some of these things by my mother, Who might miight have ADHD-PI. I look up on the internet and not a lot of people have diagnosed with adhd have these things i say if i saw right. Instead i think generally does not shut up etc. Or not exactly have no sense of self,aphantasia or anhedona since all of their life.
I know adhd is a not a fixed, one thing applies to all others kind of disorder. But i can't see someone relating to me So i still think i might have it. I relate to a lot of symptoms. Like rocking back and forth,nd talking patterns etc, but it might not the cause of these problems.
So, Let's say i have DPDR.I saw people relating to my problems but i dont relate to dpdr symptoms a lot. And again if i got it right, people who have dpdr have it like episodic oand have it by starting with some known cause like weed/trauma etc. i had my problems all my life.
About dpdr symptoms and not relating to it; if i have dpdr, i probably have depersonalization, but i still don't relate some said symptoms as: Warped sense of time and space, sense of disconnection like 3rd person view or feeling like watching your life on tv, visiual snow etc. Instead everythink is 4k and real. I feel not aware of it when i am interacting with others though. Or when i image think i start to constantly move around, get up from my chair and contantly switch rooms, and i realize when its over. or stop imagining for a moment and realize and continue imagining.
This it for now. If you have questions, i will try to answer it when i see. If you can help, thank you. And below this i will info dump some things that might help.

1. I'm 18 y/o boy, living in a not a good country oand not a good place, not usa or europe or asia
2. i still live with my parents who i dont like and is actually abusive and ignorant. but i have plans for long term for getting my life good i hope.
3. i dont remeber my childhood except max 20 memories but i dont remember a trauma either.
4. im probably very depressed but cant tell the difference becasue i was always like this all my life
5. i live to my parents religion even if my religion is different.
6. i dont remember single affectionate moment in my life with my parents, mother, or anyone,so i might have emotional problems because of that but/and/or i started rejecting incoming affection from my parents some time on my life.

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So really in the end. I just want a wholesome, good life lived with hopefully my future partner that compatible with me and die together. But to find her and to actually be able to live things i need to be a human again or the first time so if you help me thanks!!

Hello. So my story is a little bit long but here we go.
First dizziness episode:
I am currently 25 years old. I had my first episode of dizziness in June 2019. At that time, I was already hypocondriac for a good 6 months and I just got out of surgery for a kyst. Suddenly one day I started feeling the ground moving under my feet even tho I was standing still. I freaked out. The days after, my symptoms kept getting worse: constant dizziness, lightheadedness, swaying, brain fog, muscle pain, extreme light sensitivity, blurry vision etc... I felt like I was constantly on a boat. When I was lying down, my body was moving like a boat on sea, when I was standing still the floor was moving under my feet, when i was walking it was like the ground was always soft, like a trampoline.
Fortunately it was at the beginning of the summer between 2 university years. So I went to see all the specialists available under the sun: ENT doctor, neurologist, cardiologist, ER, Rheumatologist... I did CT scans, brain MRI, EMG, ECG, blood test etc. Nothing. Everything was fine. All the doctors were telling me "it's just anxiety, it's in your head, just relax". But I was feeling worst and worst. I gained weight because I was bed ridden. I lost a lot of money going to the capital seeing doctors, but also chiropractors, acupuncters, lot of alternative medecine. I was fed up. I just wanted to die. At that time, I diagnosed myself MdDs because I had all the symptoms and I was feeling much better in a moving vehicule, which was the main factor for a MDDS diagnosis. But I went to see a ENT doctor specialised in dizziness and he told me it was PPPD or maybe a mix of both it was impossible to know for sure.
After 3 months and being still dizzy, it was time to go back to college. I wasn't sure I would be able to but I forced myself and started my 2nd year of law school. At this time, I had started SSRI medication and I was taking valium which was helping me a lot functionning "normally". By doing things, going to class, doing sports, moving myself, I started to slowly noticed improvements. Several times, I thought I was healed but then I got relapses. It was really hard but I kept going ang going. After nearly 10 months on symptoms, I was nearly completly in remission in March 2020, just at the beginning of Covid.
The three years after that, I was completly normal. I continued my studies, went in an student exchange abroad and I am now finishing my masters in corporate law.
Second dizziness episode (now):
This leads up to now. My symptoms came back 5 weeks ago. Unfortunately. I was under a lot of stress and anxiety since 1 month, believing I had brain cancer or MS because I had weird symptoms. I was almost sure I was going to die. I also suffered a hearthbreak and I am really anxious about my future. But I'm not sure it explains the come back of my symtoms. One day, 5 weeks ago, I was shopping and I started feeling dizzy in a shop. Then when I walked in the metro station, I started to notice the ground moving under my feet. I didn't really paid much attention, I didn't want to believe it. But the following day it was way worse, I was feeling extremely dizzy. The ground was moving under my feet and it was way worse when I was in a still position (standing, sitting or laying down). Walking outside, I rapidly get brain fog and lightheadedness.
I went to see all the specialists all over again (less this time because I know now what I have) and the same doctor told me after a battery of tests that I had PPPD. So I started to take back SSRI medication, valium to function normally and started vestibular therapy last week. I am really desperate because I start a very important internship in a law firm. Then I am supposed to do a preparatory class this summer to pass the bar exam on september... I feel like my dreams are crushed because of this. I wake up every morning hoping this monster is gone but I almost immediatly feel my body moving like on a boat so i know it is still there. I fight everyday. I continued to go to class, to go to the gym etc but it is very very hard. I am really anxious about the upcoming weeks as I will be sitting behind a desk 10 hours a day and it is my worst position for my symptoms. I really hope that the SSRI medication will do wonders but I am alreay on week 4...
Thanks for reading me I will try to keep you updated (and btw sorry for my bad english I am french)

Disclaimer: Some of these have unknown April dates. They are identified with a '*'
1968 - The J5 perform at a campaign rally for Richard Hatcher in Gary with Bobby Taylor and Diana Ross & The Supremes among others. Hatcher was the first African-American mayor of Gary, Indiana for 20 years, from 1968 to 1988. At the time of his first election on November 7, 1967, he and Carl Stokes were the first African-Americans to be elected mayors of a U.S. city with more than 100,000 people*
https://imgur.com/a/QPykxSx
1970 - The J5 rehearse for their first concert tour, which would start on May 2nd*
1971 - The Jackson 5 play at the Mid-South Auditorium, Memphis, Tennessee
1972 - J5's cover of Bobby Day's “Little Bitty Pretty One” is released by Motown. It is also the first song where you can clearly hear Marlon's voice. It will reach #13 on the Hot 100*
https://imgur.com/a/77uT4hU
1981- Michael does backing vocals on Carole Bayer Sager’s song “Just Friends”. Michael had previously recorded Sager's "It's the Falling in Love" for Off the Wall. He was visiting Carole in the studio when she invited him to join the session. He came up with such a special part on the Bacharach/Sager composition "Just Friends" that they happily offered him a co-production credit*
https://youtu.be/bfGtCjIgnsU
1985 - Michael and seven members of USA For Africa are on the cover of Life Magazine
https://imgur.com/a/ZnDLbeA
1987 - Michael withdraws from The Jeovah’s Witness, a step that normally means he must be shunned by family members and friends who remain in the religious sect.
A representative of the Woodland Hills congregation where Jackson belonged said that the entertainer “disassociated” himself from the congregation and “no longer wants to be known as a Jehovah’s Witness.”
The official would not state what the implications of “disassociation” are, but when asked if they are serious, he responded, “Correct.”
Though Jackson’s anti-drug stance in public appearances was in keeping with the Witnesses’ clean-living codes, the entertainer’s Grammy-winning album Thriller produced tensions with the sect leaders in 1983 because of allegations the record and short film encouraged occult beliefs*
1988 - Michael plays the last of three nights at the Civic Center in Hartford, Connecticut
https://imgur.com/a/g5555p4
The story of Anne Miner: Anne is a great-grandmother who never attended a rock concert and prefers Big Band-era music. She says she is 'excited' about going to see Michael Jackson with tickets she won from a radio station but plans on taking cotton with her for her ears
'I'm excited. It's a chance of a lifetime experience,' said Anne Miner, 70. 'How many times are you going to see Michael Jackson in concert?'
The Greenfield woman, who admitted her favorite group was the Glenn Miller Band, big in the 1940s, won the tickets in a Michael Jackson Trivia Contest sponsored by WHAI radio and the Pepsi Co.
A chauffeur-driven white stretch limousine complete with champagne were to pick up Miner and a guest at her home and drive them to Hartford Civic Center in Connecticut and back.
She even considered wearing her old black-leather coat to the concert. She intends to go with her 20-year-old nephew, Michael J. Smith.
Smith said he prefers hard-rock bands like Bon Jovi over Jackson, but still expected to enjoy the concert. 'I'm just glad (Jackson) doesn't wear that white glove anymore.'
The two were given floor seats worth $22.50 each to the concert, which sold out just hours after tickets went on sale.
To earn the tickets, Miner answered three questions:

• What's Jackson's current record label?
  
  • What's the identity of the celebrity who discovered him
  • Where did Jackson grow up?

Miner said she determined Jackson's record label was Epic by going to a record store and that she learned his hometown was Gary, Indiana at the Greenfield Public Library. She admitted she guessed that Diana Ross was the celebrity who discovered him
'I'm always winning something,' said Miner, a retired waitress of 41 years. She said she's a compulsive contest player who occasionally gambles on the Massachusetts State Lottery and always buys raffle tickets.
Miner said she has seen Jackson 'shaking around' on television and thinks he is a lot like Elvis Presley, but adds he 'looks like a girl.'
1989 -Michael is on the cover of Ebony magazine.
https://imgur.com/a/UeLPsn8
1989 - Filming of "Liberian girl" short film takes place over 2 days. Veteran video director, Jim Yukich, was brought in to help craft a memorable clip.
“CBS Epic called and Michael Jackson wants to do a video for this song ‘Liberian Girl’ and I hadn’t heard this song yet,” said Yukich. “I’m thinking like ‘Off the Wall’ or ‘Rock with You’ or just I figure it will be one of those classic Michael Jackson killer songs, right? And ‘Liberian Girl’ is not a killer song. It’s funny — what do you do? So again, we’re throwing the kitchen sink at it, and so I pitched the idea to Michael that we would have him shoot the video while all these are people waiting to begin the video, and they don’t realize it until the end is that he’s directing.”
“He loved the idea. We started calling people, and we just called in favors from friends. I had just done a television special with Richard Dreyfuss, and Richard said he’d love to be in it. He said, ‘Can I call up Steven?’ and I said, ‘Steven who?’ and he said ‘Steve Spielberg and Amy Irving, and I said, “Yeah!” So he called Spielberg and Amy, and then you start calling people saying you have these people, and I’d start naming names and it was easy. It was very easy to get people because as soon as you get a couple of big names, everybody wants to be in it.”
The shooting day basically consisted of Yukich and his crew filming all the celebrities on a soundstage as they wait for Michael to show up. The final list of guest stars served as, in retrospect, a truly strange snapshot of that year in showbusiness.Comedy writers were given the task of writing some interesting things for the cast to say on camera while they waited.
“So we just had two days, and we had the live audio with John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John doing the scene when they sang together, and they hadn’t sang together onscreen since ‘Grease’, so it was something to do that, and we just shot this grand stuff of people talking, and the outtakes are incredible because it’s just people talking. The song is not even playing! It’s just great getting all these stars in a room and you’re just filming and they’re saying, ‘What are you supposed to do?’ and we’d say, ‘We’ll get back to you,’ and you’d just mike everybody and shoot stuff.”
Yukich said that in a room filled with stars, Steven Spielberg’s uneasiness on the other side of the camera was the biggest surprise. Yukich used a push-pull camera shot on Spielberg, who was the director that made that camera shot popular, hence its industry nickname – 'The Jaws Shot'
“He was nervous. We did that push-pull move for that shot, and he was more nervous than I was, you know, being on camera. He wanted to try to do this favor for Michael because he wanted Michael for a movie.” Yukich also said that working with Michael was an amazing experience, but required some on-set preparation.
“Incredible,” he said. “I mean, at first, it was funny because he sent his handlers in first, and they check, and they said he is coming in 10 minutes. They go in all the different rooms to make sure that no bombs were there and there were no fans hanging out, and they kicked people out, and it was almost like going through airport security or something. They basically kicked people out there who weren’t supposed to be there, and they bring in a microwave oven with bananas for Bubbles the monkey and Max which was the baby monkey. It was like a real rigmarole, and then when he showed up, you know, he was unbelievably nice. Such a pleasant person and a nice guy.”
Jackson also had only one request involving the removal of a person from the final cut.“He called me a couple of times after he saw the edit. He would make us do some things, like he took out David Spade. David Spade was in the original cut. He called me up and he said, ‘Jim, this is Michael,’ and you think somebody was fooling with you, basically. You would never know if it was really him until he started talking about specifics and you could say, okay, that is Michael. So he called us up and he on a walkie-talkie phone or something, or he’s up in Santa Barbara, and says, ‘You know, in 3 minutes and 20 seconds, there’s a guy blonde here. Who is that guy?’ I said his name is David Spade. ‘I don’t know who he is, take him out.’ So Spade was out, and I’m sure Spade was, like, pissed!” (Spade had not yet joined SNL)
Yukich is still aggravated that the song, and hence the video, was never released in America.
When Jackson died suddenly, Yukich immediately thought back to the video and a conversation the two had.
“To this day, I’ve been – I guess not so much anymore, because years have gone by — but I was convinced when he died that he didn’t die. We made that video, and he said to me, ‘I would love to be hiding and see what people say about me, you know?’ I mean, having shot all that footage and then he died? It was just kind of weird.”
The video is dedicated to Liz Taylor, who is in fact not a Liberian girl *
1996 - Michael starts filming the “Ghost” short film in Van Nuys studios in California. During breaks, he visits his family at Hayvenhurst disguised as the “Mayor”*
2002 - Michael is about to start shooting the “Unbreakable” short film when Sony announces that they won’t release the single. The promotion of the Invincible album is over with only 2 singles!!! *
2002 -Michael’s former business manager Myung-Ho Lee files a $13 million lawsuit claiming that on September 14, 2001 Michael met him in Los Angeles and signed an agreement to pay him fees but he never got them. Michael’s lawyer Zia Moddaber answsers that his client never signed anything and was not even in Los Angeles on that date…
In his suit, Lee claimed that Jackson hired him in the late 1990s to put the musician’s finances in order, only to turn a deaf ear when it came to taking Lee’s advice by refusing to curb spending. Lee then claimed Jackson never paid him, instead relying on “charlatans” and “hucksters” for advice.
In his court papers, Lee called Jackson a “ticking financial time bomb waiting to explode” who owed banks hundreds of millions of dollars in loans.
Michael would countersue claiming Lee and Union Finance swindled millions from him and destroyed financial records to cover up their misdeeds.
2003 - Michael and Chris Tucker visit lawyer Willie Gary in Stuart, Florida.
2003 - Vanity Fair (#tabloidtrash) reported that Michael Jackson had attended a voodoo ritual in 2000 where a witch doctor promised that Steven Spielberg and 24 other people would die. The people noted were on Jackson's list of enemies. Jackson also wired $150,000 to a voodoo chief named Baba who sacrificed 42 cows for the ceremony. The article also reported that Jackson wore a prosthesis that serves as the tip of his nose
https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2003/4/losing-his-grip
2004 - Michael attended the Ethiopian Embassy in Washington DC to support The African Ambassadors' Spouses Association (A.A.S.A.). He was accompanied by the ambassador of Niger's wife, Haoua Piatta, and Mazie Green Holland. He watched a children's group dance before being awarded the Golden Elephant award for his worldwide humanitarian efforts, particularly the fight against AIDS in Africa.
https://imgur.com/a/HEpLUIO
https://youtu.be/gFBUiPkfisU
2005 - Trial Day 24
Michael goes to court with Katherine & Joe. Testimonies of Jeff Klapackis, Jack Green, Larry Feldman & Jesus Salas.
Larry Feldman, the attorney who first interviewed Michael Jackson's accuser testified that he was never asked to file a lawsuit against the singer.
However, he did acknowledge under cross examination, that the boy and his younger brother could file civil lawsuits until they turn 20 years old, the accuser being 15 years old now.
The prosecution had called Feldman to explain how the alleged molestation came to the attention of the authorities, but the defense used his appearance to try to show its belief, that the accuser and his family were out to get money from Jackson.
Jackson's defense lawyer, Thomas Mesereau grilled Feldman about the the impact of a criminal conviction, whether or not it would make a financial judgment easier.
"If Mr. Jackson was convicted of felony child molestation in this case, (the boy or his brother) could use that case to win a civil case alleging similar of same facts against Mr. Jackson, is that correct?" asked Mesereau.
"That is correct" said Feldman.
The two lawyers sparred over the exact requirements of a civil suit, and Feldman denied accusations of encouraging the criminal action, in an attempt to avoid incurring costs involved in preparing a civil lawsuit.
However, Feldman insisted that there would still be litigation expenses.
DA Tom Sneddon asked Feldman whether he was planning a lawsuit at the time, that he referred the accusing family to Santa Barbara prosecutors, to which Feldman replied "There was no lawsuit and there were no plans to file a lawsuit. It was up to you to investigate"
Feldman was permitted to tell jurors of a previous accusation against Jackson in 1993, where Feldman represented another boy, who won a monetary settlement. Jurors were not told how much the boy was paid, but Feldman said there were no trouble collecting it. An amount which has been reported to be millions of dollars.
Sneddon projected a photograph of the boy from the previous allegations on a courtroom screen, and asked Feldman to identify him.
"He was much better looking at that age. He was adorable," Feldman said, a remark which the judge ordered stricken from the record.
The picture showed a boy who many believe bears a striking resemblance to the current accuser.
Feldman said that while he met with the current accuser's mother many times after he ceased to represent her officially, he has "never been asked to file any lawsuit against Michael Jackson"
When Feldman walked outside the courthouse in an afternoon break in testimony, fans yelled "liar", "tell the truth" and "you're making money off the backs of these people"
Feldman said, he was first contacted by the family because of a dispute over the boy's appearance in the documentary, Living With Michael Jackson where he appeared holding hands with Jackson. Feldman then referred the family to psychologist Stan J. Katz "to make out some heads and tails of what was being told to me by the family"
Katz reported suspicions of molestation to authorities after interviewing the family.
Also on the stand Friday, was an an investigator who testified that linens seized by police from Michael's bed, had failed to yield any DNA linked to the teenage accuser or his brother.
In other testimony, Sheriff's Lt. Jeff Klapackis defends the scale of the effort, when 69 investigators served a search warrant at Neverland on Nov. 18, 2003.
The large number of investigators were needed, he said, because they had only been allowed one day to carry out the search, because the district attorney didn't want to "burden the ranch and its employees with our presence longer than that," Klapackis said. He also said that there were large buildings to search at the 2,800-acre ranch.
Klapackis also said, that they took all bedding during the search, because that is where the accuser and his brother claim to have frequently slept, and where they allege the molestation took place.
During cross-examination, Klapackis said authorities did not test bottle and glasses containing alcohol for fingerprints - found in Jackson's bedroom as well as the home's wine cellar and kitchen. Nor did investigators test furniture, boxes, mannequin toys and rails along Jackson's stairwell, or his bedroom doors for fingerprints.
When asked on redirect why, Klapackis said, "It didn't enter in the investigation at the time."
However, they did test pornographic magazines. The boy's brother testified how Jackson showed them magazines. A fingerprint analyst has testified earlier, that the prints of Jackson and his accuser were recovered from the same magazine.
Jack Green, president of a Ventura telephone systems company, testified that he had inspected Neverland's phone systems. He explained that it had a function to allow someone to listen in on other's calls, but there was nothing to prevent anyone from calling 911.
Prosecutors allege the family's calls were monitored by Jackson, whereas the defense say the family could have called for help, if they truly were captives.
https://imgur.com/a/DNEfibQ
2005 - Whoopi Goldberg defends him on Real Time With Bill Maher
https://youtu.be/wwDmVnXIT2Q
2009 - Michael has a business meeting with Dr. TohmeTohme at the Bel Air Hotel
https://imgur.com/a/XEhBA68
2009 - Miko Brando, Michael Bush, Dennis Tompkins & Karen Faye are back on the MJ team*
2014 - The album Xscape was made available for pre-order on iTunes, Amazon and MichaelJackson.com.

Before beginning this whole text of a heckhole, I want to mention: I am aware that I am the bad guy to an extent.
I think I want to start this whole ordeal from the beginning. I (20 F) am a second-year university student, studying an asian language. I was born in the capital city of our country and most of the closest maternal family members live there as well. Due to my paternal family living 2,5 hours away, and my father wanting to help them out, we moved to the countryside where my brother (18) was born.
I remember that around the time my brother was about to be born, I think I felt neglected and there are stories about me getting jelous over stuff with him, which also continued well into our teenager years. That's not particularly important, but I wanted to mention this, because the feeling of jelousy also came from the neglect that I might have gotten from my parents. My father wanted to have kids but he didn't really tend to us physically, nor mentally. I understand that there are people who just can't deal with kids and their world, the way they keep talking etc. Around the time my brother was born, my father went abroad to work there, and continued to come home every weekend. Due to the language barrier, which he continuously tried to close, he didn't have much of a patience. My mother had a very deep depression after my brother was born, which came down to me, a very outspoken little girl being quite annoying. My first trauma might have come from that, and also, my father didn't even try to help my mother get out of depression as far as I'm concerned, only my maternal parents (who moved with us to the countryside) were taking care of her.
Either way, I always felt that my brother got everything he asked for, while I always had to work really hard and even then I was always reprimanded that I have to take care of my brother while our parents are away (me 5-8, my brother 3-6), have to grow up, have responsibility towards my actions. Due to this I always felt like I wasn't really able to understand and get into the fun groups of my peers.
Backing up a bit, we had the old school discipline, slaps sometimes, verbal abuse sometimes, but the main things that I remember are stuff like: I was around 4-7 and wanted to play with my father. He said no multiple times but I really just wanted to connect with him and play. After maybe the 3-6th no, he got really mad and he shouted at me to get out he didn't want to play. Another time was when my mother asked me to give our dog (house with big garden, so dog lived outside) fresh water, but instructed me that the season being winter, I have to get the ice out with warm water and then give the dog a not so cold, nor warm water (maybe?). Either way, I did it the good way, however my father was outside the whole time, when I just finished changing the water he got there, misunderstood the whole situation and slapped me saying "what are you giving to the dog" or something along the line. A couple of seconds later I somehow communicated to him that I did it the right way so...yea.
I wanted to be fun to be with, to make lasting relationships, to be important to others. That's why at the age of 10-13 I got into a group of girls with whom I spent my time, etc, and also on whom I spent money. Foolish, yes, but I was desperate and wanted affection and appreciation. Someday I just realized that those same girls were whispering about me and blatantly looking at me while doing so. I became really sad and mad, which escalated into a shorter period of depression. (I have been going to therapy for another thing in the past 2 years, but recently my psychologist made me do a test about depression, so yes, the result came out pretty high which made me realise that even that event and before that I had some sort of depression, I/we just didn't realise that)
My mother was the first one to notice something was wrong and made my father (with whom I really didn't want to speak) give me a speech about how I should never think of myself as nothing and that I should just study and get better than everyone else. This was in 7th grade. That speech gave me motivation and my grades became much much better, I got into my desired high school, after which came uni. No, that experience of bullying was not in the least good, but without it I wouldn't be here, where I am.
Putting that aside, I wasn't really allowed to go to my classmates' parties etc, but I was almost fine with these during primary school. Getting into high school, I became friends with two groups of girls and I really enjoyed my time there. However my private life, my parents relationship to be precise, got worse. They argued a lot and in 10th grade, one night I was going to shower, my brother was locked up in his room, while our parents were arguing in the kitchen. I was already crying but I suddenly heard a thud, picked up a towel and finally went out to a scene where my mother was sitting, crying, my father standing next to her, one of his hands holding hers, the other one just up in the air as if trying to hit. I shouted to stop, my brother rushed out of his room the same time I did from the bathroom. It took a couple of seconds but my father finally looked at us and I swear I could see a kind of cloud getting out of his eyes. I mean I almost saw the rage cloud... I don't remember what exactly happened after that but that was one of the scariest things I have ever witnessed in real life.
Another major thing before getting into the present is that, (I am a summer child) I was 16, when 5 of us, all girls thought about going to the beach for one day. There's a lake around 1-2 hours away with train, we would have just gone for 6 hours at most. I asked my mom (nail artist) and her client where it would be allright to go, since out of 5 of us, it was only my father who maybe wouldn't have allowed me to go. My mother actually wanted to rush me out and just go, she was so happy haha. So everything was set, now I just had to call my father up and ask him so I did. He said that "I know you are a cool, strong girl, I believe in you but I think we should wait until you are 17" (literally 1,5 month away. I said okay, but later he said no again. I got over it pretty quickly but after about a month my mother told me that he actually called her up how it would be bad, what if I got a boyfriend, got pregnant and ruined my whole career and life, etc. She has been fuming for a while, but after knowing this, I immediately became even more reluctant of wanting to just not talk, interact with my father in any sort of way. Basically not even be near him. Nothing.
Fast forward, it was the week of exams, I got sick, so couldn't attend the math exam, so I had panic attacks wich stayed (and stay) with me for a long time after that. My father basically didn't even care, thought it was nothing, etc. But in the end, I graduated, it was all fine.
I moved to the capital for my studies and finally felt... Alive? Definitely a bit safer and much free than before. Like a dog finally getting out of leash haha
Depression and anxiety have been with me since childhood, but this time it got the best of me so the first semester of uni is the one I'm not very proud of. Didn't attend much of the classes, didn't study, and so on.
Now I'm in my fourth semester, my parents decided on buying an apartment near a bigger train station so that me and 2 other girls could live here. Since it's not yet complete, only I live here, but even though I live near the station, even the university is 30 minutes of transportation away, I do not under any circumstances want to go home. I'm an introvert, to be honest, I don't even have the motivation and energy to go to university sometimes. I do go, and I enjoy it very much, but I feel like I'm a huge failure of a human, can't study, I'm not fun to be with and so on. The exams, the stuff we have to learn and the homeworks are just so much I can barely keep up. Finally I managed to create a fairly good schedule when to do homeworks, relax a bit etc, but all I care about is the university with the homeworks because that's everything I have energy for.
I forget calling my parents, and to be honest, I don't want to talk with them because i feel like if I do, I always get back into the controlled situation. I get nervous, and even with my mother and brother I get very awkward.
To sum it up, I didn't have a normal childhood, always had to take responsibility and my subconscious just wants to live through that phase now. I want to be free, call my relatives when I feel I have enough energy for them and aside from that, just live life. But this "not even having a conversation" situation is why my parents say I'm a brat, unfaithful and so on. Yes, I have been brat like for a long time, that is true.
(Sorry for the long story!!)
Am I The [email protected]?

**EDIT: many people are telling me to leave him and go back to my home country. I will most likely be facing societal repercussions (living with a man before marriage, losing my virginity while not married, living on my own as a female in a western country). I am not that religious so I thought it didn't matter since we are already engaged and I won't be going back. I already learned his country's language to a near-work/academic level and tried to assimilate as much as possible. Currently I am just hoping he will have a change of heart. He is aware of the situation and tells me to just "not care what others think".
Some background: Me (24) and my fiancé (27) have been together for a little over 4 years and are expected to marry in the summer. We also live together since we got engaged. I immigrated to his western country for him from a middle eastern country in which i was a minority (Christian in a non-christian country).
After having a LDR relationship for 1 year we decided it’s best if i move to his country and had a plan: I will come on a student visa and my family will pay the first year’s tuition fees. He was supposed to graduate his Masters in the middle of the first year’s semester, get a job and apply for a partner visa (we don’t need to be married for it) causing me to get full coverage healthcare and get half of my very expensive tuition fees back (my tuition will become the same as local ones while I continue my BS. currently my tuition is 6 times more expensive than local tuition).
He ended up getting a job just to quit it 2 months before he was eligible to be my legal sponsor (my legal purpose of stay in the country) causing me to pay very expensive tuition fees again for the following academic year. Now i am in my last year of my education (graduating in July), he has a different job and can apply for the visa but chooses not to and tells me “it wont add anything to his life” yet he doesn’t want to cancel the engagement (he proposed in October) or break up and gets upset if i bring it up. His family supports him and calls me a passport digger and compares me to the women on 90 days fiancé.
Him being my legal sponsor won’t change anything for him (he doesn’t have to care for me financially, my family sends me an allowance every month and will continue to do so) yet it will change my entire life drastically as i will be able to stay, work, full coverage healthcare, and normal rate tuition fees.
Now, i’m in the last year of my education and my legal stay is still uncertain and i need to leave the country by September unless we apply for the visa OR i continue to a MS which costs around 80k in total (including living expenses) and pay 40k upfront. I am also not eligible for any scholarships OR student loans.
So reddit, AITA for expecting my fiancé to be my sponsor (legal purpose of stay)?

I was swimming around the pond with my friends. While swimming it is always nice to bump into each other once in a while. A little chuckle comes along whenever that happens. I like to look around while I am swimming. There are few water lilies near the rocks on which few kids were playing. They had something shiny in their hands and as I was looking at them the object in boys hand fell into the lake. I wanted to help him retrieve the object and started swimming towards it. When I reached near it, I could see someone else in the object. Wait a minute let try again.
Yeah, there is someone else in it. One of my friends pointed out that the person inside the object was looking just like me. I went ahead and had a look into it. All my friends had beautiful golden skin and I always thought I looked the same. But here in this object I could see I was not same. I went ahead and asked my friend are you sure?
My friend answered “Yes, it is you in the object.”
I could see I had blue and black spots over my golden skin. My fins were in shiny silver. Well, “I am different yet pretty.”

This happens to me often as I both live and work near different train station.

I decided na gusto ko na maging active physically this year and introduce some discipline in my life. I'm looking for a group of friends I can join in and befriend. yung mababait pls saka di nang ggate keep sa sport. I'm near mendiola or espanya so I would appreciate it if di kayo super malayo but I'm down as long as kaya ng angkas.
Here's a little something about me. baka makatulong if vibe ko ba tayo or not. - Freelance Illustrator ako - I'm into video games, anime, manga and other weeb stuff - I've been working out for about a year now - UST grad - pang bardagulan yung personality pero pwede din sa chill. kaya mag adjust at super down to earth lang. - Di ako kupal - mahilig sa rock, hard rock, nu metal, alt rock. pumupuntang gigs paminsan and mahilig din ako sa really old songs.

https://www.reddit.com/IGSRep/comments/cg1p8marcoxnt93s_igs_rep_page/
Humble Turkiye-Syria Earthquake Relief Bundle leftovers
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Regular Human Basketball x 2
Rencounter
Renoir
Return to Mysterious Island
Resort Boss: Golf
Rym 9000
Seraph
Shooting Stars!
Silence
Sky Break
Space Pilgrim Episode III: Delta Pavonis
Space Pilgrim Episode IV: Sol
Spandex Force: Champion Rising
Steel Rats
Super Daryl Deluxe
Sword Legacy Omen
Taxi
The Adventure Pals x 3
The Deed: Dynasty
The Emerald Maiden: Symphony of Dream
The Spiral Scouts
The Uncertain - The Last Quiet Day
Tiny Troopers
ttv2
Twilight City Love as a Cure
Two Worlds: Epic Edition
Tumblestone
Unhack
Unhack 2
Viking Saga The Cursed Ring
White Noise Online
World Keepers Last Resort
Zombie Party x 2

​
Humble Turkiye-Syria Earthquake Relief Bundle leftovers
​
Ticket to Ride
Strange Brigade
System Shock Enhanced Edition
Pilgrims
Flynn: Son of Crimson
Into the Pit
Worms Rumble
Backbone
119 Operator
211 Operator
Calico
X-Morph: Defense Complete Pack
Zombie Driver HD Complete Edition
Space Crew: Legendary Edition
Monaco
Death Squared
Lust from Beyond – M Edition
Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones
Remnants of Naezith
Planet TD
Firegirl: Hack 'n Splash Rescue DX
XEL
Little Orpheus
Detached: Non-VR Edition
Agent in Depth
Meow Express
Arcade Spirits
Non-Stop Raiders
The Inner World
The Amazing American Circus
Soulblight
Stacking
Hack 'n’ Slash
MirrorMoon EP
Cosmic Express
Cris Tales
Orbital Racer
Symmetry
Guilty Gear X2 #Reload
Alchemist’s Castle
Soul Searching
Doughlings: Arcade
Doughlings: Invasion
Quadrata
Rym 9000
stikir
Cats and the Other Lives
Soulflow
Izmir: An Independence Simulator
Guns & Fishes
Pill Baby
Project Chemistry
Pixross
Frick, Inc
Sunlight
​
​
​
​
TIER 0
Back 4 blood eu
Destiny 2 Planet of Peace Exclusive Emblem
Dirt Rally 2.0 + 3 DLC
F1 2012
F1 2019 Anniversary
Grand Theft Auto Vice City
Remnant from the Ashes
Road to Guangdong - Story-Based Indie Road Trip Driving Game
the wolf among us
​
TIER 1
Absolver
Bloodstained Ritual of the Night
borderlands Game of the year enhanced Edition
Borderlands: The Handsome Collection EU
Chernobylite Enhanced Edition
Darksiders genesis
Deep Rock Galactic
Doom Eternal
Duke Nukem Manhattan Project
DUSK
Elex
Endless Space 2 – Deluxe Edition
friday the 13th
Geometry Wars 3 Dimensions Evolved Mystery
Genital Jousting
Grid Autosport
Grid ultimate edition
Golf With Friends
GoNNER BLüEBERRY EDiTION
guild wars 2 heroic edition
guild wars nightfall
Hitman Absolution
House Flipper
Just cause 3 XXL
Kingdom Rush
Kerbal Space Program x 2
Legend Of Grimrock
Lego Marvel 2 Deluxe
Little Dragons Cafe
Mafia III: Definitive Edition
MAIN ASSEMBLY
Maneater
Mordhau
Orn the tiny forest sprite
Outward US x 2
Overcooked 2 + Surf and Turf + Too Many Cooks
pathfinder wrath
PGA TOUR 2k21 x 2
Phantasmagoria
Portal Knights
Pro cycling manager 2019
Project Cars
Project CARS 2 + Japanese Cars Bonus Pack
Risen
Sairento VR
Scum
Second Extinction
Sonic Forces
Spyro Reignited Trilogy x 2
Starbound
Star Trek Bridge Crew
State of Decay 2
streets of rogue
Summer in Mara
Superhot VR
Tales of Zestiria
Team Sonic Racing
Tekken 7
The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion GOTY
The Division + DLC US
Tomb Raider GOTY
Total War: MEDIEVAL II – Definitive Edition
TRINE 2 Complete Story
TRINE 3 The Artifacts of Power
Tracks - The Train Set Game
WARHAMMER 40,000: Gladius- Relics of War
Warhammer 40000 : Mechanicus
Wasteland 2 Directors Cut
Wasteland 3
valkyria chronicles IV Complete
X-com 2
​
​
TIER 2
ABZU
Armello x 3
asterix obelix xxl3
Band of Defenders
batman arkham knight
Battle Chasers: Nightwar
Beyond Blue
BioShock Infinite
Book of Demons
CHAOS CODE -NEW SIGN OF CATASTROPHE-
Choice Chamber
Chess Ultra
Cities skylines
civilization IV Complete Edition
Civilization 5
Dead by Daylight
Death and Taxes
Degrees of Separation
Drake Hollow
Driftland: The Magic Revival x 2
Endless Space 2
Europa Universalis IV
eXperience 112
FEZ
Flying Tigers: Shadows Over China - Deluxe Edition
Forced
From Space
Gamedec
Gato Roboto
Golf With Friends
Gunman Tales
Hotshot Racing
human fall flat
Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1
Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition
Just Cause 3
Killing Floor 2
King's Bounty: Crossworlds
King’s Bounty: Warriors of the North - The Complete Edition
Last Oasis
Manhunt
Megadimension Neptunia VII
Men of War: Assault Squad 2 - War Chest Edition
METAL SLUG 3
Metro Last Light Redux
Miscreated
MO:Astray
Morphopolis
Motorcycle Mechanic Simulator 2021
Natural Selection 2
NecroWorm
Neo Cab
NEOVERSE
Not For Broadcast
Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty
Odyssey - The Story of Science
OF MICE AND SAND -REVISED-
One Step From Eden
Opus Magnum
Overcooked
Overgrowth
PATHOLOGIC 2
Pillars Of Eternity
Phoenix Point Year one edition
Planespace Torment Enhanced Edition
Plunge
Quantum League
Quest of Dungeons
Railroad tycoon 3
Rise of Industry
River City Melee Mach
Roarr! The Adventures of Rampage Rex
Sanctuary RPG: Black Edition
Scribblenauts Unmasked
Scythe Digital Edition
Serious Sam 3 BFE
Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut
Shing!
Skullgirls
Sinking Island
Slinger VR
SNIPER GHOST WARRIOR CONTRACTS
snk anniversary
Sonic All Stars Transformed Collection
Sparkle 2
Sparkle Unleashed
Starbound
Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds Saga
STAR WARS Jedi Knight - Jedi Academy
STAR WARS™ Jedi Knight II - Jedi Outcast
STAR WARS The Force Unleashed Ultimate Sith Edition
Star Wars Kotor 2
Star Wolves 3: Civil War
stick fight the game
Still There
Stronhold Crusader 2
Struggling
Styx Master of Shadows
SUPER TIME FORCE ULTRA
Surgeon Simulator: Experience Reality
SurrounDead
Surviving Mars x 2
Swords of Gurrah
Tannenberg
THE KING OF FIGHTERS XIII STEAM EDITION
The Technomancer
tilt brush
Titan Quest Anniversary Edition
The Bard’s Tale IV: Director’s Cut
The Beast Inside
The Gardens Between
The Incredible Adventures of Van Hesing
the long dark survival Edition
The Stillness of the Wind
The Swords of Ditto: Mormo’s Curse
The town of light
The walking dead the new frontier
The Wild Eight
Train Valley 2
Trüberbrook
Tropico 5
Tsioque
Unto The End
Valfaris
Voidship: The Long Journey
volcanoids
Wargroove
WARSAW
West of Dead x 2
Wizard Of Legends x 3
Worms Clan Wars
Without Within 3
XCOM: Chimera Squad
Yooka Laylee
Zwei: The Arges Adventure
Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection
​
​
TIER 3
112 Operator
911 Operator
Acorn Assault: Rodent Revolution
Ageless
AI War 2
Alan Wake's American Nightmare
Alien Shooter 2 Conscription
Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs
Amnesia: The Dark Descent
angry video game nerd
Arcana Hearts 3
Armada 2526 Gold Edition
arma X
As Far As The Eye
Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation
Atari Vault
AVEN COLONY
Before we Leave
Belladonna
BLACKHOLE
Blitzkrieg Anthology
Boomerang Fu
Bomber Crew - Deluxe Edition
Boreal Blade
Borealis
Bridge Constructor Playground
Broken Age x 3
Brothers – A Tale of Two Sons
Bunker Punks
Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood
Cally's caves 3
Callys Caves 4
Capitalism 2
Carmageddon Max Damage
Cast of the Seven Godsends
Cepheus Protocol
Chaos Reborn
City Siege: Faction Island
COLT CANYON
Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?!
Crazy Belts
crazy machines 3
Creeping Terror
Crowntakers
Crying Suns
CTU: Counter Terrorism Unit
Cybarian: The Time Travelling Warrior
Cyber Hook
Dad Quest x 2
Dark Heritage: Guardians of Hope
Darkness Within 2: The Dark Lineage
Darksiders Warmastered Edition
Dark Strokes The Legend of the Snow Kingdom Collectors Edition
Dear Esther: Landmark Edition
Death to Spies: Moment of Truth
Death Squared
DESOLATE
Detached
Deus Ex: Invisible War
Dimension Drifter
Distrust : Polar Survival
Double Dragon IV
Draw Slasher
Duke Nukem Forever x 2
Dungeons 3
Dungeon Siege II
DV: Rings of Saturn
EarthNight
EarthX
Eliza
Enforcer: Police Crime Action
ENSLAVED™: Odyssey to the West™ Premium Edition
Epistory - Typing Chronicles
Etherborn
Etherlords I & II
Evergarden
evoland
F1 2018
Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Remastered
Farming World
Fire
Fort Triumph
Fury Unleashed x 2
Garfield Kart
Gas Guzzlers Extreme
Goat simulator
Golf Gang
God's Trigger
Go Home Dinosaurs
Going Under
Gone Home + Original Soundtrack
Grim Legends 2: Song of the Dark Swan
GRIP: Combat Racing
Guilty Gear Sign
Gunscape Standard Edition
Hacknet + DLC
Heaven’s Vault
Heavy Burger
Heroes of Annihilated Empires
Hexologic
Hidden Object Bundle 5 in 1
Hidden Object 6in1 bundle
Hive Jump
Hopiko
HORACE
Hue
Hyperspace Invaders II: Pixel Edition
In Between
Innerspace
INMOST
Inside My Radio
Iris and the Giant
Iron Fisticle
John Wick
Just Die Already
ken follet
Kingdom: Classic
King Oddball
Knights of Pen & Paper 2
Knight's Retreat
Labyronia RPG
Labyronia RPG 2
Laser Disco Defenders
Leisure Suit Larry 7 - Love for Sail
Lemuria Lost in Space
Levelhead
LIBERATED
Little Misfortune
Livelock
Lostwinds
Lovecraft’s Untold Stories
Lust from Beyond: M Edition
Lust for Darkness
Luxor 3
Mages of Mystralia
Magrunner: Dark Pulse
Masquerade: The Baubles of Doom
Medieval Kingdom Wars
Mini Ninjas
MirrorMoon EP
Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine
Moon Hunters
MotoGP 15
Morkredd
MOUNT & BLADE
MXGP - The Official Motocross Videogame
My Memory of Us
Mystery Loss
Narcos: Rise of the Cartels
Nba Playgrounds
Neon Chrome
Newt One
Nex Machina
Neverending Nightmares
Neverout
Niffelheim
Night Call
Nowhere Prophet
Odallus: The Dark Call
Of Orcs And Men
Offworld Trading Company + Jupiter's Forge Expansion Pack
Omen Exitio: Plague
Orbital Racer
Out of Space
Overload
Overlord II x 2
Pac-Man 256
PAC-MAN™ CHAMPIONSHIP EDITION 2
Paper Fire Rookie
Paperbark
Paradigm
Particula
Pathway
Pawnbarian
Payday 2
Peaky Blinders: Mastermind
Perfect Universe
Pesterquest
Pickers
Pikuniku
Pirate Pop Plus
Pixel Heroes
Pixplode
Planet Alpha
Planet of the Eyes
Police Stories
port royale 3 gold
Post Master
POPUP DUNGEON
Prehistoric Tales
Quantum Conundrum
Radio Commander
Rapture Rejects
Rebel Galaxy
red orchestra 2
Re-Legion
REMOTHERED: BROKEN PORCELAIN
Remnants of Naezith
RESIDENT EVIL HD
Rezrog
Retimed
Ring of Pain
Road Redemption
ROCK OF AGES 3: MAKE & BREAK
Röki
Roombo: First Blood
Rover Mechanic Simulator
RRRR
Rustler
Sakura Agent
Sakura Angels
Sakura Beach
Sakura Beach 2
Sakura Fantasy
Sakura Magical Girls
Sakura Shrine Girls
Sakura Spirit
Samorost 3
Serial Cleaner
Seven enchanted edition
Sigma Theory: Global Cold War
SIMULACRA + SIMULACRA 2
Sins Of The Demon
Shadowrun Hong Kong Extended Edition
Shoppe Keep
Shoppe Keep 2
Smile For Me
SKULLY
Smoke and Sacrifice
Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing
Soulblight
Space Pilgrim Academy: Reunion
space run galaxy
Speedrunners
Spellspire
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky
StarCrossed
State of mind
Stealth 2: A Game of Clones
Stealth Bastard Deluxe x 2
Steamburg
Still Life 2
Storm Of Spears
Strider
Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones
Sudden Strike 4
Sundered
Super Hexagon
Supraland
Super Mutant Alien Assault
Super Panda Adventures
Swag and Sorcery
Syberia
Syberia II
Syberia 3
System Shock: Enhanced Edition
Tabletop Playground
Tales from Candlekeep: Tomb of Annihilation
Teleglitch Die More Edition
Telefrag VR
Teslagrad
Testament of Sherlock Holmes
Time Mysteries 3: The Final Enigma
The Amazing American Circus
Tharsis
The Ball
The Deed
The dropping of the dead
The Dwarves
The Hex
The King's Bird
The Last Door: Season 2 - Collector's Edition
The Lost Crown
The Purring Quest
There Came An Echo
The Haunted Island, A Frog Detective Game
The Signal From Tölva
Think of the Children
This War of Mine
ToeJam & Earl Back in the Groove
Tomb Raider IV: The Last Revelation
Tomb Raider V: Chronicles
Tomb Raider Legend
Tomb Raider Underworld
Tooth and Tail
Train Station Renovation
Treasure Hunter Simulator
Tropico 4
Turok 2: Seeds of Evil
Underhero
Unrest
Valnir Rok Survival RPG
Vane
Velocity Ultra Deluxe
Vertiginous Golf
Viking Saga The Cursed Ring
Wanderlust: Travel Stories
Wandersong
warlock 2
war tech fighters
Werewolf: The Apocalypse — Heart of the Forest
Without Within 2
Whispers of a machine
Wings of Vi
Yoku's Island Express
Youropa
Zoo Park
​
​
TIER 4
Acceleration of SUGURI 2
Age of Wonders III
Alien Spidy
Almost There: The Platformer
Angvik
A New Beginning – Final Cut
AtmaSphere
Battle vs chees
Circuit Breakers
Corridor Z
CreaVures
Cubicle Quest
Dagon – The Eldritch Box DLC
Dashing Dinos
Death Fungeon
Drawful 2
DungeonUp x 2
Earth 2150 Trilogy
Enclave
Endless Space – Collection
Evergarden
Formula Car Racing
Fluffy Horde
Gorky 17
Guts And Glory
Hacknet Deluxe Edition
Haegemonia: The Solon Heritage
HIVESWAP: Act 1
Holy Potatoes a Spy Story
Homefront
Horizon Shift
Joggernauts
Journey of a Roach
Learn Japanese to survive Hiragana Battle
Left in the Dark: No One on Board
Leisure Suit Larry 5 - Passionate Patti Does a Little Undercover Work
Leisure Suit Larry 6 - Shape Up Or Slip Out
Little Racers STREET
Lock Parsing 2
Love is Dead
Midnight Mysteries 3: Devil on the Mississippi
Memoria
Moss Destruction
NAIRI: Tower of Shirin
NeuroVoider
No Time to Explain Remastered
One Finger Death Punch
OneShift
Out of Reach: Treasure Royale
Pesterquest
Purrfect Date – Visual Novel/Dating Simulator
Raceland
Regions Of Ruin
Regular Human Basketball x 2
Rencounter
Renoir
Return to Mysterious Island
Resort Boss: Golf
Rym 9000
Seraph
Shooting Stars!
Silence
Sky Break
Space Pilgrim Episode III: Delta Pavonis
Space Pilgrim Episode IV: Sol
Spandex Force: Champion Rising
Steel Rats
Super Daryl Deluxe
Sword Legacy Omen
Taxi
The Adventure Pals x 3
The Deed: Dynasty
The Emerald Maiden: Symphony of Dream
The Spiral Scouts
The Uncertain - The Last Quiet Day
Tiny Troopers
ttv2
Twilight City Love as a Cure
Two Worlds: Epic Edition
Tumblestone
Unhack
Unhack 2
Viking Saga The Cursed Ring
White Noise Online
World Keepers Last Resort
Zombie Party x 2

​
Humble Turkiye-Syria Earthquake Relief Bundle leftovers
​
Ticket to Ride
Strange Brigade
System Shock Enhanced Edition
Pilgrims
Flynn: Son of Crimson
Into the Pit
Worms Rumble
Backbone
119 Operator
211 Operator
Calico
X-Morph: Defense Complete Pack
Zombie Driver HD Complete Edition
Space Crew: Legendary Edition
Monaco
Death Squared
Lust from Beyond – M Edition
Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones
Remnants of Naezith
Planet TD
Firegirl: Hack 'n Splash Rescue DX
XEL
Little Orpheus
Detached: Non-VR Edition
Agent in Depth
Meow Express
Arcade Spirits
Non-Stop Raiders
The Inner World
The Amazing American Circus
Soulblight
Stacking
Hack 'n’ Slash
MirrorMoon EP
Cosmic Express
Cris Tales
Orbital Racer
Symmetry
Guilty Gear X2 #Reload
Alchemist’s Castle
Soul Searching
Doughlings: Arcade
Doughlings: Invasion
Quadrata
Rym 9000
stikir
Cats and the Other Lives
Soulflow
Izmir: An Independence Simulator
Guns & Fishes
Pill Baby
Project Chemistry
Pixross
Frick, Inc
Sunlight
​
​
​
​
TIER 0
Back 4 blood eu
Destiny 2 Planet of Peace Exclusive Emblem
Dirt Rally 2.0 + 3 DLC
F1 2012
F1 2019 Anniversary
Grand Theft Auto Vice City
Remnant from the Ashes
Road to Guangdong - Story-Based Indie Road Trip Driving Game
the wolf among us
​
TIER 1
Absolver
Bloodstained Ritual of the Night
borderlands Game of the year enhanced Edition
Borderlands: The Handsome Collection EU
Chernobylite Enhanced Edition
Darksiders genesis
Deep Rock Galactic
Doom Eternal
Duke Nukem Manhattan Project
DUSK
Elex
Endless Space 2 – Deluxe Edition
friday the 13th
Geometry Wars 3 Dimensions Evolved Mystery
Genital Jousting
Grid Autosport
Grid ultimate edition
Golf With Friends
GoNNER BLüEBERRY EDiTION
guild wars 2 heroic edition
guild wars nightfall
Hitman Absolution
House Flipper
Just cause 3 XXL
Kingdom Rush
Kerbal Space Program x 2
Legend Of Grimrock
Lego Marvel 2 Deluxe
Little Dragons Cafe
Mafia III: Definitive Edition
MAIN ASSEMBLY
Maneater
Mordhau
Orn the tiny forest sprite
Outward US x 2
Overcooked 2 + Surf and Turf + Too Many Cooks
pathfinder wrath
PGA TOUR 2k21 x 2
Phantasmagoria
Portal Knights
Pro cycling manager 2019
Project Cars
Project CARS 2 + Japanese Cars Bonus Pack
Risen
Sairento VR
Scum
Second Extinction
Sonic Forces
Spyro Reignited Trilogy x 2
Starbound
Star Trek Bridge Crew
State of Decay 2
streets of rogue
Summer in Mara
Superhot VR
Tales of Zestiria
Team Sonic Racing
Tekken 7
The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion GOTY
The Division + DLC US
Tomb Raider GOTY
Total War: MEDIEVAL II – Definitive Edition
TRINE 2 Complete Story
TRINE 3 The Artifacts of Power
Tracks - The Train Set Game
WARHAMMER 40,000: Gladius- Relics of War
Warhammer 40000 : Mechanicus
Wasteland 2 Directors Cut
Wasteland 3
valkyria chronicles IV Complete
X-com 2
​
​
TIER 2
ABZU
Armello x 3
asterix obelix xxl3
Band of Defenders
batman arkham knight
Battle Chasers: Nightwar
Beyond Blue
BioShock Infinite
Book of Demons
CHAOS CODE -NEW SIGN OF CATASTROPHE-
Choice Chamber
Chess Ultra
Cities skylines
civilization IV Complete Edition
Civilization 5
Dead by Daylight
Death and Taxes
Degrees of Separation
Drake Hollow
Driftland: The Magic Revival x 2
Endless Space 2
Europa Universalis IV
eXperience 112
FEZ
Flying Tigers: Shadows Over China - Deluxe Edition
Forced
From Space
Gamedec
Gato Roboto
Golf With Friends
Gunman Tales
Hotshot Racing
human fall flat
Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1
Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition
Just Cause 3
Killing Floor 2
King's Bounty: Crossworlds
King’s Bounty: Warriors of the North - The Complete Edition
Last Oasis
Manhunt
Megadimension Neptunia VII
Men of War: Assault Squad 2 - War Chest Edition
METAL SLUG 3
Metro Last Light Redux
Miscreated
MO:Astray
Morphopolis
Motorcycle Mechanic Simulator 2021
Natural Selection 2
NecroWorm
Neo Cab
NEOVERSE
Not For Broadcast
Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty
Odyssey - The Story of Science
OF MICE AND SAND -REVISED-
One Step From Eden
Opus Magnum
Overcooked
Overgrowth
PATHOLOGIC 2
Pillars Of Eternity
Phoenix Point Year one edition
Planespace Torment Enhanced Edition
Plunge
Quantum League
Quest of Dungeons
Railroad tycoon 3
Rise of Industry
River City Melee Mach
Roarr! The Adventures of Rampage Rex
Sanctuary RPG: Black Edition
Scribblenauts Unmasked
Scythe Digital Edition
Serious Sam 3 BFE
Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut
Shing!
Skullgirls
Sinking Island
Slinger VR
SNIPER GHOST WARRIOR CONTRACTS
snk anniversary
Sonic All Stars Transformed Collection
Sparkle 2
Sparkle Unleashed
Starbound
Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds Saga
STAR WARS Jedi Knight - Jedi Academy
STAR WARS™ Jedi Knight II - Jedi Outcast
STAR WARS The Force Unleashed Ultimate Sith Edition
Star Wars Kotor 2
Star Wolves 3: Civil War
stick fight the game
Still There
Stronhold Crusader 2
Struggling
Styx Master of Shadows
SUPER TIME FORCE ULTRA
Surgeon Simulator: Experience Reality
SurrounDead
Surviving Mars x 2
Swords of Gurrah
Tannenberg
THE KING OF FIGHTERS XIII STEAM EDITION
The Technomancer
tilt brush
Titan Quest Anniversary Edition
The Bard’s Tale IV: Director’s Cut
The Beast Inside
The Gardens Between
The Incredible Adventures of Van Hesing
the long dark survival Edition
The Stillness of the Wind
The Swords of Ditto: Mormo’s Curse
The town of light
The walking dead the new frontier
The Wild Eight
Train Valley 2
Trüberbrook
Tropico 5
Tsioque
Unto The End
Valfaris
Voidship: The Long Journey
volcanoids
Wargroove
WARSAW
West of Dead x 2
Wizard Of Legends x 3
Worms Clan Wars
Without Within 3
XCOM: Chimera Squad
Yooka Laylee
Zwei: The Arges Adventure
Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection
​
​
TIER 3
112 Operator
911 Operator
Acorn Assault: Rodent Revolution
Ageless
AI War 2
Alan Wake's American Nightmare
Alien Shooter 2 Conscription
Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs
Amnesia: The Dark Descent
angry video game nerd
Arcana Hearts 3
Armada 2526 Gold Edition
arma X
As Far As The Eye
Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation
Atari Vault
AVEN COLONY
Before we Leave
Belladonna
BLACKHOLE
Blitzkrieg Anthology
Boomerang Fu
Bomber Crew - Deluxe Edition
Boreal Blade
Borealis
Bridge Constructor Playground
Broken Age x 3
Brothers – A Tale of Two Sons
Bunker Punks
Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood
Cally's caves 3
Callys Caves 4
Capitalism 2
Carmageddon Max Damage
Cast of the Seven Godsends
Cepheus Protocol
Chaos Reborn
City Siege: Faction Island
COLT CANYON
Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?!
Crazy Belts
crazy machines 3
Creeping Terror
Crowntakers
Crying Suns
CTU: Counter Terrorism Unit
Cybarian: The Time Travelling Warrior
Cyber Hook
Dad Quest x 2
Dark Heritage: Guardians of Hope
Darkness Within 2: The Dark Lineage
Darksiders Warmastered Edition
Dark Strokes The Legend of the Snow Kingdom Collectors Edition
Dear Esther: Landmark Edition
Death to Spies: Moment of Truth
Death Squared
DESOLATE
Detached
Deus Ex: Invisible War
Dimension Drifter
Distrust : Polar Survival
Double Dragon IV
Draw Slasher
Duke Nukem Forever x 2
Dungeons 3
Dungeon Siege II
DV: Rings of Saturn
EarthNight
EarthX
Eliza
Enforcer: Police Crime Action
ENSLAVED™: Odyssey to the West™ Premium Edition
Epistory - Typing Chronicles
Etherborn
Etherlords I & II
Evergarden
evoland
F1 2018
Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Remastered
Farming World
Fire
Fort Triumph
Fury Unleashed x 2
Garfield Kart
Gas Guzzlers Extreme
Goat simulator
Golf Gang
God's Trigger
Go Home Dinosaurs
Going Under
Gone Home + Original Soundtrack
Grim Legends 2: Song of the Dark Swan
GRIP: Combat Racing
Guilty Gear Sign
Gunscape Standard Edition
Hacknet + DLC
Heaven’s Vault
Heavy Burger
Heroes of Annihilated Empires
Hexologic
Hidden Object Bundle 5 in 1
Hidden Object 6in1 bundle
Hive Jump
Hopiko
HORACE
Hue
Hyperspace Invaders II: Pixel Edition
In Between
Innerspace
INMOST
Inside My Radio
Iris and the Giant
Iron Fisticle
John Wick
Just Die Already
ken follet
Kingdom: Classic
King Oddball
Knights of Pen & Paper 2
Knight's Retreat
Labyronia RPG
Labyronia RPG 2
Laser Disco Defenders
Leisure Suit Larry 7 - Love for Sail
Lemuria Lost in Space
Levelhead
LIBERATED
Little Misfortune
Livelock
Lostwinds
Lovecraft’s Untold Stories
Lust from Beyond: M Edition
Lust for Darkness
Luxor 3
Mages of Mystralia
Magrunner: Dark Pulse
Masquerade: The Baubles of Doom
Medieval Kingdom Wars
Mini Ninjas
MirrorMoon EP
Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine
Moon Hunters
MotoGP 15
Morkredd
MOUNT & BLADE
MXGP - The Official Motocross Videogame
My Memory of Us
Mystery Loss
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“The lover carves into his soul the model of the beloved. In that way, the soul of the lover becomes the mirror in which the image of the loved one is reflected.” - Marsilio Ficino, Commentary on Plato's Symposium
Nietzsche’s criticisms of Hegel are often conflated with Schopenhauer’s. Often by people who type things like, “I’m in the Schopenhauer camp when it comes to Hegel and his ilk.” In a series of Beeps-and-Boops they copy-and-paste Schopenhauer’s loathing without any of Schopenhauer’s substance (which would require actually engaging with Schopenhauer and Hegel) instead these Thinkers exists as little framed photos on a candle covered shrine in Geocities. Even if they’re correct they’re still wrong and worthy of immediate scorn and derision. We must express the most profound sense of Christian Pity and Charity at the sight of their nakedness.
It’s easy to spiral on this particular subject but unbecoming, revealing, even damning. What they don’t seem to process, is that the seethe and the scolding and the tantrums are in their manner the highest form of compliment either philosopher could muster. That the younger Schopenhauer’s response to Hegel’s semantic blunder should be a kind of ecstatic fury that propelled his career as a philosopher. That Schopenhauer is endearing when he puts pen to paper and writes:
“May Hegel's philosophy of absolute nonsense - three-fourths cash and one-fourth crazy fancies - continue to pass for unfathomable wisdom without anyone suggesting as an appropriate motto for his writings Shakespeare's words: "Such stuff as madmen tongue and brain not," or, as an emblematical vignette, the cuttle-fish with its ink-bag, creating a cloud of darkness around it to prevent people from seeing what it is, with the device: mea caligine tutus. - May each day bring us, as hitherto, new systems adapted for University purposes, entirely made up of words and phrases and in a learned jargon besides, which allows people to talk whole days without saying anything; and may these delights never be disturbed by the Arabian proverb: "I hear the clappering of the mill, but I see no flour." - For all this is in accordance with the age and must have its course.”
Tempestuous little man. Without Hegel’s error what would’ve become of Schopenhauer? Would he have attempted to actively compete against Hegel? Hegel as the Phantom of Eric Roberts in the Killers Miss Atomic Bomb music video? The Other-Ghost, Hegel’s Smirking Geist cucking Schopenhauer, Sophia in his arms, Schopenhauer casts the wedding ring to the ground and runs away. As was the case in respect to Kierkegaard. Cucked out of marriage by the Ghost & Machine. “And it’s all in my head, but she’s touching his chest now, he takes off her dress now, LET ME GO. And I just can’t look it’s killing me. And taking control.”
An error is a wound is a mercy.
Nietzsche is different. Unlike Schopenhauer he doesn’t pretend to create a superior metaphysical system (the Platonic Carnivalesque) to rival Hegel’s.
I think the spirit of a Nietzschean critique of Hegel is best exemplified by aphorism 317 in Daybreak,
“The judgment of the evening. - He who reflects on the work he has done during the day and during his life, but does so when he has finished it and is tired, usually arrives at a melancholy conclusion: this however is not the fault of his day or his life, but of his tiredness. - In the midst of our work we usually have no leisure to pass judgment on life and existence, nor in the midst of our pleasures: but if we should happen to do so, we should no longer agree with him who waited for the seventh day and its repose before he decided that everything was very beautiful - he had let the better moment go by.”
Hegel as a Christian Nihilist and the Dialectic as Slave Morality. All finite forms of life attain their truth in the process of self-overcoming. Hegel uses Negativity to pacify an excess of Negativity. Hegel’s System annuls the Abyss. The Truth of any given determination is realized in its exhaustion. This Truth is what Remains. As part of a Whole. Eternal. Defeat for Hegel is what brings us to our Truth. That the subject’s defeat should purify it of its particularities and its impositions. My thoughts are already part of reality. This Knowledge leads to renunciation. I’m no longer attempting to impose or enforce myself on reality, to shape it in the heat of my perverse gaze. I look up at the stars and recognize a series of sores oozing out a brilliant light. In the Beggar’s Eye I see Christ. Saint Lazarus draped in indigo rags surrounded by dogs. In the Eyes of the King of the World, Christ. In the Illness the Cure. In the Poison the Medicine.
Hegel stands next to his student, the student looks up at the starry sky in awe. “They are the abode of the blessed.” Hegel grumbles, “The stars, hum! Hum! The stars are only a gleaming leprosy in the sky.’” Like Lorde, he never watches the stars because there’s so much down here. As he puts it in one lecture,
“The human being is this Night, this empty nothing which contains everything in its simplicity - a wealth of infinitely many representations, images, none of which occur to it directly, and none of which are not present. This [is] the Night; the interior of [human] nature, existing here - pure Self - [and] in phantasmagoric representations it is night everywhere: here a bloody head suddenly shoots up and there another white shape, only to disappear as suddenly. We see this Night when we look a human being in the eye, looking into a Night which turns, terrifying. [For from his eyes] the night of the world hangs out towards us.”
Let us then briefly think with Hegel whose underling problem is, from the very beginning of his thought, that of love.
What is Blue?
According to Goethe in his Theory of Colors,
“As yellow is always accompanied with light, so it may be said that blue still brings a principle of darkness with it.
This color has a peculiar and almost indescribable effect on the eye. As a hue it is powerful — but it is on the negative side, and in its highest purity is, as it were, a stimulating negation. Its appearance, then, is a kind of contradiction between excitement and repose.
As the upper sky and distant mountains appear blue, so a blue surface seems to retire from us.
But as we readily follow an agreeable object that flies from us, so we love to contemplate blue — not because it advances to us, but because it draws us after it.
Blue gives us an impression of cold, and thus, again, reminds us of shade. We have before spoken of its affinity with black.
Rooms which are hung with pure blue, appear in some degree larger, but at the same time empty and cold.
The appearance of objects seen through a blue glass is gloomy and melancholy.”
Goethe and a defense of Goethe’s critique of Newton’s Opticks unites Hegel and Schopenhauer. That color is produced by light and by what stands against it. Goethe who said that were the eye not of the sun how could we behold the light. Brilliant in the poetic continuity this expresses. A golden chain from Empedocles to Plato and Aristotle to the Stoics and so on. Summarized here elegantly by the physicist Arthur Zajonc, “the interior light coalesces with daylight, like to like, forming thereby a single homogenous body of light. That body, a marriage of inner light and outer, forges a link between the objects of the world and the soul. It becomes the bridge along which the subtle motions of an exterior object may pass, causing the sensation of sight.” Aristotle proposed the existence of a Proton Organon or Primary Instrument, an organ of congealed pneuma, located in the heart, that reconciles the division between the sensible and the intelligible. The Stoics would go on the rename this Mercurial (both volatile-subtle and fixed) Instrument, the Hegemonikon, the synthesizer or icon-maker. Whose function is to produce phantasms. The instrument through which the soul transmits all vital activities to the body and also the body’s way of capturing the sensations from the five senses and translating them into phantasms or images that could be understood by the soul.
The Lover longing loving unrequited. Smiling like she means it. Being-thrown into this World. Never fully at home, refracted, out of joint. That this affliction is our common inheritance. I think this is our patrimony. We are the heirs of this Abyss. It is to some degree I think fundamentally "Western" fundamentally "Romantic". Regardless of political opinion or alignment. It speaks to us. Through us. Perhaps it's because the Republic of Letters is largely comprised of Melancholic Perverts. Nostalgia or homesickness, as a longing for a reality which can only be possessed through the imagination and through the dream, the genuine site of anamnesis or recollection in the unreal. Evoking for us the movement of the soul described by the Venetian Magician-Philosopher Guilio Camillo; descending through the Lunar Gate of Cancer (of man), drinking from the cup of Bacchus and, depending on how much one imbibes, forgetting about all the things ‘up there’ before making our way back through the Saturnine Gate of Capricorn (of the gods). Tightrope walking to Luna. I see her so very clearly. My Corporeal Dasha, Giordano Bruno would rebuke me harshly, that I should Simp as I do for "these eyes, these ears, this blush, this tongue, this tooth, this hair, this dress, this coat, this little shoe .. . , this sun in eclipse, this crazy person, this slut, this stench, this deathbed, this privy, this mensturation, this corpse... which, by means of a superficial appearance, a shadow, a phantasm, a dream, a Circe-like charm in the service of procreation, deceives us by taking the form of beauty." Fuck it. Yet there is an Image behind the Image, a Woman behind my woman. The Platonic Dasha. Daria the Luminous Homunculi. Madonna Intelligenza who has served as a guide throughout this journey. “Keep your eyes on me.” I wobble on the tightrope, your eyes are what kept me, you and your rose-wreathed heart lit. A Unity-of-Opposites. Georges Bataille writes in The Sorcerer's Apprentice, “The image through which, in an instant, destiny has become alive thus finds itself projected into a world foreign to everyday agitation. The woman toward whom a man is draw, as to his human destiny, no longer belongs to the space that money controls. Her sweetness escapes the real world, through which she moves without allowing herself to be any more imprisoned than a dream. Misfortune would ravage the spirit anyone who lets himself be possessed by the need to reduce her.”
On Love Hegel writes, “Since love is a sensing of something living, lovers can be distinct only in so far as they are mortal and do not look upon this possibility of separation as if there were really a separation or as if reality were a sort of conjunction between possibility and existence. In the lovers there is no matter; they are a living whole.” That the Unity of Love is informed precisely by the division or difference between the Lover and the Beloved. The Union of Love, “…can remain so only as long as the separate lovers are opposed solely in the sense that the one loves and the other is loved, i.e., that each separate lover is one organ in a living whole.”
Here we might ponder Hegel’s Philosophy as a Philosophy of Death. The vespers-born melancholy conclusion is perhaps being that all Love is Unrequited. As Marsilio Ficino notes in his Commentary on Plato’s Symposium, “Insofar as it is death, it is bitter, and insofar it is voluntary, it is sweet. He who loves dies; for his consciousness, oblivious of himself, is devoted exclusively to the loved one, and a man who is not conscious of himself is certainly not conscious in himself. Therefore, a soul that is so affected, does not function in itself, because the primary function of the soul is consciousness…. Therefore, the unrequited lover lives nowhere; he is completely dead.”
Blue the color of Sulfur ignited. Blue the color of the Ocean of the Dead, of Dasein. The blue knees of a prayerful lover and the blue lips of the lovelorn fool, “Here’s to my love - O true apothecary! Thy drugs are quick. - Thus with a kiss I die.” That the smell of bitter almonds should remind the good doctor of unrequited love.
Such a melancholy conclusion can only be produced by a proper melancholic. Melancholy was regarded by Ficino as one of seven exemptions in which the bond between body and soul was weakened, allowing the soul to take flight and acquire the gifts of premonition and clairvoyance. Saint Albertus Magnus writes of the two kinds of melancholy. Hot melancholy and its two primary effects on the subject’s phantasmic activity he describes thusly,
“The first consists in the mobility of the phantasms within the subtle organism: the second, in the great capacity of phantasms to stay impressed upon the pneuma. This brings with it, besides a prodigious memory, an extraordinary capacity for analysis. This is why, Ficino tells us, 'all the great man who have ever excelled in an art have been melancholic. Either because they were born so or become so through assiduous meditation.”
Philosophy begins with this Unhappy Consciousness. The Alienated Soul lithe and loveless, which is the consciousness of self as a divided nature, a doubled and merely contradictory being. Dissatisfied with its Self and the World it retreats inward, like a Nymph fleeing Pan, fleeing into Reflection, which might likewise take the form of a fleeing into Nature (think Thoreau’s Walden). Herein is the mirk. This Narcissistic dialectic between Subject and Phantasmata. The Ouroboric Narcissism of the Beautiful Soul.
Another affliction associated with Melancholy is Hysteria. The Psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan refers to Hegel as the most Sublime Hysteric. The Hysteric asks questions because they experience their own desire as if it were the desire of the Other.
The Spirit retreats into a pre-rational state of life, a Life of Feeling, that this feeling expresses a movement in which the soul is no longer simply natural, but able to realize a mastery over itself.
“Finally, in the “feeling of self,” the individual becomes “a sensitive totality.” But the gradual formation of the ‘I’ is paradoxically accompanied by a loss of fluidity, leading to “ruin and disaster within the conscious spirit.” This crisis results from the fact that the subject, being constituted in a free relation to the self, feels at the same time like ‘another’, and this tension pushes it into a state of ‘trembling’ (durchzittern).” The Future of Hegel, Plasticity, Temporality, Dialectics, Catherine Malabou.
How does Hegel escape? Or perhaps more accurately how can we escape this trap? This Pneumatic Mirror-World. Of Subject-Mirror-Phantasmata. The Romantic Prison? Of one who learns of Love in order to be Loveless? Hold that thought.
Returning to the color blue, the psychologist James Hillman writes in Alchemical Psychology,
“This is the realm of the alchemical (kyanos, blue; kynos, dog); blue takes on a dog-like quality: hangdog and dirty dog, both. Why does depression seek porn? For arousal? For Eros and Priapos and Venus to come to life? Rather, I think, to maintain the depression, to re-direct the verticality of desire downward and backward (doggy fashion), clipping the wings of eros. Pornography - an opus contra naturam, a counter-instinct of the psyche, perverting the conventionally natural, enslaving, torturing; an erotics of despair.
To translate these esoteric references into the blue dog’s perverse obsessions we discover this: Invisible Hades appears in the world as Dionysus. There is a divine (i.e., invisible, unfathomable) impulse that seeks to enter ordinary life. It wants to know the soul in the Biblical sense. Carnal knowledge, intimate knowledge, knowledge of intimates. (Hence the innumerable images of copulation throughout alchemy.) The soul longs for this copulation, and sings its longing in the blues, blueing its own flesh, drawing the divine down into the ordinary body. (Hence the blues’ libidinous mood.)”
My Cup Overfloweth.
Pure thinking-subjectivity is phantasmological or hauntological. The role of the Phantasmata in the context of medieval philosophy, is described exquisitely by Mauricio Loza in The Hounds of Actaeon. The Phantasm or Phantom is understood “as a mental image with effects reaching not only the level of perception but that of social construction, the phantasm exists in the twilight between the objective and the subjectivity, the material and the immaterial, a zone of indistinction between reality and unreality. This is why the phantasm pulls us towards the twilight from whence it comes: Its central action is to drag us into the shadow of the world.”
Minerva’s Owls unfurls its wings only with the falling of dusk.
For the great Persian scholar Avicenna, sensory phantasms were processed through five virtues or powers corresponding to five cavities in the cranium; phantasy or common sense, imagination, cogitative virtue, the estimative virtue, and finally the reminiscent virtue. According to Georgio Agamben in his work Stanzas: Word and Phantasm in Western Culture, Avicenna conceives of this gradation through the inner senses as a "progressive 'disrobing' (denudatio) of the phantasm from its material accidents."
Material accidents in this instance, evoking the etymological origins and proliferation into common speech of the word "accident" itself.
Ad - 'towards to' and cadere - 'to fall'. The Latin Accident - 'happening' used in late Middle English to refer to 'an Event'. Used to refer to the parts of the sacred bread and wine that remained after the transubstantiation through the sacrament of The Holy Eucharist,
“Thus, throughout the history of Scholasticism we have to do with a sort of triangle of intellectual forces: Realism and Nominalism fighting a five hundred years’ war, and the Church, in its official capacity, anxiously endeavouring to hold the balance between them. One wonders whether the three parties to this ancient dispute may not have found symbolic expression in Tweedledum, Tweedledee, and the ‘Monstrous Crow’ of nursery legend. But it is no disparagement of the intellects of that day to say that to us the chief interest of their polemics lies in the many new and accurate instruments of thought with which they provided us. The common word accident is an excellent example. We use it every day without realizing that it was only imported from Latin by the indefatigable efforts of the Schoolmen to reconcile the doctrine of Realism with the Catholic dogma of Transubstantiation. The accidents, when they first came into the English language, meant that part of the sacred bread and wine which remained after the substance had been transmuted into the body and blood of Christ.” History in English Words, Owen Barfield
Here we see a process of Pneuma returning to Pneuma through this process of Rising and Falling. That the Absolute Idea is a Radiant Star. That the Phantasm undergoes a kind of purification process, from the sensible to the spiritual to the mnemonic. That this purification entails a kind of excremental remainder. A material accident. An excess which goes?
This brings to mind the question that the Sophist Parmenides (in Plato's Parmenides) raises to Socrates, which forces Socrates to admit to his own limitations. It utterly stumps the Apostate Tragedian. That being whether or not there is an eidos or Pure Idea of the lowest material things. Things like excrement and dust and I might add these eyes, these ears, this blush, this tongue, this tooth, this hair, this dress, this coat, this little shoe .. . , this sun in eclipse, this crazy person, this slut, this stench, this deathbed, this privy, this mensturation, this corpse...
The Ghost and The Star
Recall the episode with Hegel comparing stars to leprosy sores. This got out around town and Hegel found himself having to address this controversy,
"It has been rumoured round the town that I have compared the stars to a rash on an organism where the skin erupts in an countless mass of red spots: or to an ant-heap in which too, there is Understanding and necessity. In fact, I do rate what is concrete higher than what is abstract, and an animality that develops into no more than a slime, higher than the starry host."
The rock is a rock.
Hegel defines the Domain of Art as the “sensible appearing of the idea”… or the Idea given expression in Sensuous Form. This is to be understood as The Star shining through The Ghost. This opposition between Form and Content. This Contradiction is what animates the Motion of Spirit. From Art towards Philosophy.
She is and is not. Ah wait. I'm not her. But in this regard I am the same and suddenly the Ghost is Concretized.
Alexandre Kojève in his Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit writes,
"It is known that Hegel asserted that his knowledge is circular, and that circularity is the necessary and sufficient condition of absolute truth - that is, of complete, universal, and definitive (or "eternal") truth."
The Hysterics quandary finds some resolution. The question of the Other is reflexively transformed into the answer to the question.
"In the Wise Man's absolute Knowledge, each question is its own answer, but is so only because he goes through the totality of questions-answers that forms the entirety of the System. Likewise, in his existence, the Wise Man remains in identity with himself, he is closed up in himself; but he remains in identity with himself because he passes through the totality of others, and is closed up in himself. Which (according to the Phenomenology) means, quite simply, that the only man who can be Wise is a Citizen of the universal and homogeneous State - that is to say, the State of the Tun Aller und Jeder, in which each man exists only through and for the whole, and the whole exists through and for each man."
We return to Self-Consciousness. We're not the same. We're different. Tonight.
Eros pins Pan. Chronos clips Eros’ wings. Compulsion is overcome by Love. Love is overcome by Time. Love can only be actualized and concretized through Time. When it must Dwell in a given Space. This is the Poetic-Plasticity. This is the Commitment.
“Desire has reserved to itself the pure negating of the object and thereby unalloyed feeling of self. This satisfaction, however, just for that reason is itself only a state of evanescence, for it lacks objectivity or subsistence. Labour, on the other hand, is desire restrained and checked, evanescence delayed and postponed; in other words, labour shapes and fashions the thing.” (Phenomenology of Spirit)
We begin with the Problem of Love and in the Problem find the Solution. Love is the Answer to the Question of Love. Loving is to give what one does not have.
Our Unrequited Love is Mutual,
“In fact, there is only one death in mutual love, but there are two resurrections, for a lover dies within himself the moment he forgets about himself, but he returns to life immediately in his loved one as soon as the loved ones embraces him in loving contemplation. He is resurrected once more when he finally recognizes himself in his beloved and no longer doubts that he is loved. O, happy death, which is followed by two loves. O, wondrous exchange in which each gives himself up for the other, and has the other, yet does not cease to have himself.” Commentary on Plato's Symposium, Marsilio Ficino.
To be Overcome is to Animate. This is the Labor of Love. Productive Labor as Art.
You understand why Hegel is so very frustrating? In his System. In the Movement from East to West back East. We find the Heiros Gamos, the Sacred Matrimony of Eros and Sophia, and in this Unity of Opposites the philosopher becomes the Sage. In the production of this Heiros Gamos, Hegel's System becomes the Perfect Pneumatic Circle.
​
I make of Nietzsche a traveling companion through Hegel’s Aesthetics. Why? Because The Birth of Tragedy is crudely Hegelian. Here we find ourselves encountering what is so very frustrating about Hegel and his Pneumatic Circle, his method and his system. From the occultists perspective this is because Hegel’s System is an Artifice of Sacral or Mythic Time, of Cyclical Time. The genuinely infuriating thing is realizing that the Artifice, the “Copy” is in fact the original. This is why some speak of the feminizing effect of Hegel. Feminizing in the way Achilles’ is feminized by Scamander. That not only do we never step in the same river twice and that the river is the site of the Doom-driven Hero’s self-fulfilling prophesy.
As Nietzsche himself puts it, “one cannot refute an eye disease.” I thought it would be stimulating to read The Birth of Tragedy through the lens of Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics. Framing Nietzsche and his insights within a Hegelian Tableaux. Nietzsche who denounces Metaphysical Systematization. Demurely objecting he says, “unhand me woman,” with a little blush. Does he mean it? I don’t think it was Hegel’s Dialectical Method or Logic that Nietzsche objected too. Denouncing instead the refraction between the Philosopher and the Logic (an ironic detachment)… that the Philosopher and his Logic are not two separate beings. That for him the Philosopher is Alkahest or Universal Solvent. Body and Soul collapse into a singularity, Art and Artists. No, in a sense Nietzsche celebrates the animating antagonism at the Heart of Hegel’s work. That this refraction is what results in the System which Nietzsche saw as modeling contemporary German Bourgeois fearfulness and timidity simply solidifies into Consensus. “I’m old and I don’t want to be alone.” That the System should be a kind of Metaphysical Prison concretized around the Fiery Pneuma, the brilliance of Hegel’s Esprit.
The application of the Dialectical Method is evidenced throughout The Birth of Tragedy; The Apollonian thesis, the Dionysian antithesis, the Tragic synthesis. Or perhaps in a manner more accurate to Hegel; The Dionysian Abstract, the Apollonian Negation, the Tragic Negation-of-Negation, and the Socratic Concretization.
The section dedicated to a retrospective appraisal of The Birth of Tragedy in Ecce Homo, Nietzsche concludes that all the good things he had ever written about Richard Wagner were actually about him. He was talking about himself the whole time without even realizing it, “"Even psychologically all decisive traits of my own nature are projected into Wagner’s - the close proximity of the brightest and the most calamitous forces, the will to power as no man ever possessed it, the ruthless courage in matters of the spirit, the unlimited power to learn without damage to the will to act.” Poor Nietzsche he who was too high-strung for his own good. Comes to a conclusion paralleling Hegel as it concerns Art, specifically Music. Perhaps one day, there will be Dionysian future for music. But for now, the Pneuma roils through space-and-time, and it culminates in Nietzsche or Zarathustra, as the Last Philosopher or the first Tragic Philosopher. Who despite all the aristocratic pretensions cannot help but write in a popular and accessible manner. Writing into motion the conditions for the Dionysian resurgence he had once thought was being spearheaded by the compositions of Richard Wagner.
He goes so far as to be both Beethoven and Goethe’s response to Beethoven in the anticipation of his works and in the need for them to remain ‘exclusive’ despite their undeniably popular character. Goethe in his old age weeping softly to Beethoven’s sonatas, proclaims “If such music were performed by a large orchestra, it would destroy everything around it.”
The stylish and inspirited Vitalism of Nietzsche’s ruminations is Pneumatic. A red dot in the center of a dark blue sphere.
Dialectics reveals an Infinite Spiral. The Circle divided by a straight-line. Containing the spiral. The straight-line breaks through the circle. Above and Below. Revealing three other spheres. Above the configuration one spiral. Beneath it two spirals; one winding up and the other winding down. On a Hegelian theological note. God the Father and God the Holy Spirit proceed from God the Son. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John 1:1.
Here we might locate the Traumatic Temporality of Christianity. The introduction of History. Time as Chronos. With God the Son. Without the historical personage of Jesus Christ, there wouldn’t be a Trinitarian Unity and Division. From God the Son proceeds God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. In this wound we are brought to an awareness of another Time. A Timeless-Time or a Time sans History. “In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” a time in which God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit had always been. The Triune God. Whether or not, in this Aionic Time, God the Holy Spirit proceeds from God the Father or from God the Father and God the Son, is the division between East and West.
This Times overlap and nowhere is this more evident than in the anachronisms or perhaps more accurately, the Archeo-modernity, of the romantic painting. Or perhaps further still, in the Ethiopian depiction of Christ, in the Korean depiction of Christ, and in the Italian depiction of Christ. Black Jesus, Asian Jesus, and European Jesus.
As that obscure note by Nietzsche produced by Gilles Deleuze in his work Nietzsche and Philosophy goes, “Universal chaos which excluded all purposeful activity does not contradict the idea of the cycle; for this idea is only an irrational necessity.” Here we see Nietzsche approaching something akin to the Infinite Dialectic realized and developed in Mao Zedong’s contributions to Dialectical and Historical Materialism. As Mao writes in On Contradiction, “The universality or absoluteness of contradiction has a twofold meaning. One is that contradiction exists in the process of development of all things, and the other is that in the process of development of each thing a movement of opposites exists from beginning to end.”
The stylish and inspirited Vitalism of Nietzsche’s ruminations is Pneumatic. Being Pneumatic it is Phantasmic. Here we locate the Girardian critique of Nietzsche. As Nietzsche proclaims in Ecce Homo that everything his was praising Wagner for is in fact praise he was unconsciously directing at himself, at his values or innate dignities, the obverse is true. For Nietzsche every great philosophical work is a confessional, an involuntary and unconscious autobiography. He invents the Overman and by extension the Last Man. Will to Power and Ressentiment. One cannot exist without the other and in Nietzsche they collapse into a singularity (a point worth keeping in mind when we eventually venture into Deleuze and his Anti-Hegelianism). The Last Philosopher. In sum Girard’s contention is that in the production of these Phantasmata, Nietzsche ends up offering to his audience another Scapegoat. The Man of Ressentiment and the Slave Morality. Obviously within Nietzsche the potential for this is treated triumphantly. Nietzsche refuses to have his Poetic Revelry stifled by timorous considerations. That stupid people might read his works and take it as an excuse to persecute Christians or to locate the Man of Ressentiment in their political adversaries. That they might completely forget the contradictions inherent to the very office of “Tragic Philosopher” and how the Vagabond and the Prophet are a singular figure, hybrid and lovelorn and glorious. “If I had power I’d know how to immediately and brutally exercise it.” None of this concerns Nietzsche. People will misinterpret you regardless. Still the points are well worth reflecting on and prove stimulating as we move from the Symbolic-Classical to the Classical-Romantic.

The school bell rang, and Damien left with George to the bakery down the road to buy two coconut strawberry cakes, they found Lucy there, buying a Pepsi and chicken vegetable pie, “thank you” she said, moving to leave the shop, giving Damien a deep sideways look tainted with love, “wait” he said, “what,” “we are going into the woods after this,” it was 5.33pm, he and George had left school late after staying back in the library to finish their biology homework for the week, “sure,” she said, one black pant covered leg crossed over the other above cute AF1s with ruffle socks, twirling side to side, they left with the cakes, and walked through the train station to a secret entry on the other side through a small gap in trees down into a wide drainage system protected from sight by trees and apartment buildings, running through a large, graffiti littered pipe they existed the other side and jumped over rocks in a stream to a thick patch of trees and out into the woods, Lucy found her tricycle behind a thick moss-covered log, “when are you going to learn how to ride the bike without those training wheels,” “when you die,” she swung her leg over the bike and pushed it off through the trees, Damien and George in tow, Damien on the bike he left behind the same log, Damien on foot, the other two were soon far ahead of him, “I have to go guys,” George said, “ok, see you tomorrow” Damien said, he watched George’s form fade into the darkness and shifted his attention back to Lucy, she gave him a seductive smile, and pushed onward, she was the baddest girl in their sister school, wing eye-lined green eyes, dark hair falling off her perfectly symmetrical head in curls.
The moon was now full, just below the majority of bottom branches, bright orange eyes peeking out of halloween lanterns, and green light flickering from candles through green-stained hexagonal metal-glass containers hung on branches throughout the woods, casting a green-orange hue through the woods, Lucy’s tricycle squeaked through the night, Damien behind her on his two-wheeled bike, “I like your ass” he said, observing the soft expanse of her ass going up to a thin waist beneath the short black shirt she took out of her bag, she slowed down on her bike, pulling over next to a large tree, “oh yeah” “you wanna see it” “yeah” he said, blushing, she pulled the sides of her pants down, and stepped out of them, leaving an hourglass in a short black shirt and AF1s with ruffle socks alone with him in the dark woods, she walked to him and dragging her hands down his arms, putting his hands on her waist, she moved up to kiss him, he put one hand behind her neck, pulling at a chunk of the skin on the back of her waist with the other, ecstasy beginning to flow heavily through his body, a crack of twigs sounded behind her, she gasped and looked behind, his hands still connected to her, a pair of neutral appearing solid-orange circular eyes grew through the night toward them, they shifted through space up to them, a pair of sharp white teeth streaked with dark purple-black veins slowly coming out of its black face, a sharp black hand nearly imperceptible against the night reaching out and wrapping around her head, slamming it against the tree at a nearly imperceptible speed, leaving a bloody-bony splatter on the tree, and a body from the neck down on the ground.
The demon levitated backwards, “run” it said, Damien’s eyes widened in fear, turning to run directly away, he sprinted between trees with the demon shifting through space behind him, orange eye the only hint of its existence, each shift sending a cold wave of anxiety through him, a large dilapidated, wooden house came into view ahead, hope filled his eyes, he ran up the stairs, slamming his shoulder into the door, knocking it over and stumbling through into the house, he saw a door at the back and ran toward it, seeing a hallway to the right and a kitchen to the left he threw his bag into the kitchen and began to creep through the hallway on the right, going through an open door into a bedroom, he threw himself beneath the large ruffled blanket on the bed, next to a large teddy bear, lying flat, he heard a shift of wind near the door, and felt a darkness fall over the room, animalistic breathing sounded from the demon, Damien opened his eyes and saw two orange circles come over him, horrid breath seeping through the blanket, it took all his mental effort not to move, the eyes shifted up slightly and a sharp pain stung the bottom of his chin and top of his head.

"About time!" Lu t'Cca thundered at her. "Split find hiding spot!
Najia backpedaled, giving the irate Split prisoner plenty of room to get past without coming into arms' length of her. At least he seemed to get that this was a prison break, and he made no move for her or her firearm, darting well clear of her, and out from the cell block.
Axiom's voice cut the sudden quiet that was otherwise punctuated only by her racing heart. "While you two were chatting, I've found a way to temporarily disable security in the hangar. That's where we'll hitch our ride. Head for the second level; the Ministry seems to have installed more switches. They'll require some adjustment, but I know you love a good puzzle." Najia snorted. She did, in fact, love a good puzzle, but breaking out of a prison was not the time to indulge in that. Usually. Unless one looked at the prison as the puzzle. She shook her head, huffing, and drew her pistol again. There was no marked pathway this time, but she made better time; it was reckless, but she jogged, since the place was seemingly totally unguarded. And, if it wasn't, chances were that Lucca would run into the guards first, and she'd hear the struggle ahead. She passed the lift, glancing towards it, and hurrying past in the other direction she hadn't been yet, coming to a door. Slowing, she closed enough with it that it opened automatically.
Najia let out a huff; Lu t'Cca was on the other side, but so was Axiom. She stepped forward, and looked from Axiom, who nodded to her, to Lucca, who snarled. "Creature reveal Split hiding spot! Creature nothing better to do?" This is a hiding spot? Najia shook her head; the two of them were literally standing in the middle of an intersection, in front of an airlock with two branches off on either side. She huffed, looking at Lu t'Cca. "Hey, Mellerd said -"
"Split not talk about friend-foes!" Lucca ranted. "Kriss went against family! Betrayal followed petty betrayal! Way of Windfall, yes. Way of some Split, maybe, but not how real warriors do revenge!" He made a guttural sound of anguish, shaking his head vehemently. Kris? He was on a first-name basis with her? The fact that Ace had spoken so frankly of xenosexual encounters popped into her head, the constant talk of betrayal, pettiness, personal matters, and suddenly it was obvious; somehow, this was personal. Personal; and none of her damn business. She held her hand up placatingly, holstering her other pistol, trusting to Axiom's physical presence to keep peace between her and Lucca. "Fine. I'll leave you to it," she said. "Split thought so," Lu t'Cca spat, looking back to Axiom. She looked to Axiom as well. "Switches, Wildcard. Get to it."
Najia nodded, and darted down the left-hand branch of the intersection, fuming all the while. It ran into a dead-end, and she uttered "ah fuck," turning and sprinting in the other direction, slaloming between Maestro and Lucca. At the end, she dead-ended there, and exasperated raised her voice, "the hell?!" Back in the middle, she examined the airlock carefully; she could see that it connected to nothing, which is why she discounted it previously. Carefully she moved into the airlock, her hand on her pistol just in case Lucca tried to kill her by cycling it, but he and Axiom seemed to be in the process of discussing old times.
Exasperated, Najia stepped back out of the airlock. "Axiom, where are these buttons you're talking about? How are we supposed to get out of here?" "Er..." Axiom blinked, tri-ocularly, at her, and looked around. He looked at his datapad. "They should be... Through..." He let out a discontent rumble. "Oh my. That is not obvious on a computer systems diagram schematic." "They're on the other side of the frigging airlock," Najia said. "You're probably already aware that humans can't survive in vacuum, let alone maneuver in it, right?" She snorted, her sarcasm at least getting a sheepish shuffle on his long legs out of Axiom. "Can we get out the way we came back in? Even if it means abandoning the Raven?"
"No," Axiom said gravely. "The tampering I did to activate the cell block doors will be caught by someone sooner or later - probably later than sooner, but sooner if we try to leave the cell block." "Split has been implanted with a tracking device," Lucca growled. "It will raise quite the ruckus when Split leave the cell block!" "If we're leaving by... Unconventional mechanisms, that will be no trouble," Axiom noted. "But if we enter the lift, it will lock down and security will be summoned immediately."
"Outstanding," Najia huffed. "Let me double-check something, see if I can think of something." She turned and left the way she had come from. She bypassed the lift; she had no intention of simply bailing on them. But now, she had two options. Neither was good, but one was significantly less good, so she hoped the other option worked. She opened a channel to Boso Ta. "Boso Ta, I hope to hell you've been listening in." "I have, Assistant!" Boso Ta's voice came through loud and clear. "You are in quite the conundrum. I hope you see a manner in which I may be able to extricate you, for I do not." "You and the Professor have been upgrading teleporters with the ability to upgrade themselves. To do so, you've been transporting equipment, right?" "Hai!" Professor Nakagawa's voice cut in. Clearly he was on the line. "This capability is within our grasp. What is your proposal, Takio-San?" "Can you teleport my EV suit to me?"
There was silence for a long few moments which felt like an eternity. "Potentially," Boso Ta broke the silence. "Have it placed in one of our lifts." "I'll get right on that," Marta cut in on the line. Najia smiled to hear her voice. "Any other requirements?" "If this will work, we will need very precise measurements," Professor Nakagawa said. "The teleporter is more your project than mine, Boso Ta. My thought is that it will require at least three triangulating vessels, and a beacon, and a substantial amount of open space." "Will an empty cell block do for that," Najia asked, hustling down the corridor. "It should yes... Yes! That will work." Rei Stringer cut in on the call, and Najia blinked as she saw Rei's comm-code. "I can arrange the fly-by," she said. It had been awhile since Najia had heard from the friend she had left in charge of the Eighteen Billion Terran-tech construction supplies factory, and generally, in charge of Eighteen Billion affairs. "There's a patrol of Katana in the area already, it won't look suspicious if they do a swing-by of Wormwood Scrubs."
Najia set her datapad down on the floor in the middle of the cell block. "I put my datapad down on the floor. Is that beacon enough," she asked. "Hai, Takio-San," the aged professor's voice informed her. "But I would endeavor to be in another room when the teleport takes place. This is... Highly experimental." "Vacating the room," Najia said, sprinting out into the hallway and down it. "Tell me when it's gonna happen."
"In... About twenty seconds," Boso Ta informed her. "You might want to cover your ears, assistant." Najia didn't even bother to complain about being called 'Assistant' again, she simply crouched and closed her eyes, covering her ears and tried to become one with the railing. She counted to thirty, then opened her eyes. "Did anything happen?" "Your EV suit and EMU aren't in the lift anymore," Marta said to her. "Better go check."
Najia did, and she laughed heartily. Her hardshell carapace EV suit and EMU were sitting on the floor of the cell block. "A perfect teleport! I didn't even hear anything." "Fantastic," Boso Ta said. "You had best hurry, Assistant."
One fast donning later, Najia opened the door to where Axiom and Lucca were still standing around, chatting like old gossips. They both started when they saw her, and she held her hand up. "Easy, guys, it's me." She was hauling her EMU with her. "Split wonders where creature was hiding that," Lu t'Cca said, pointing at her. "Ancient secrets," Najia flippantly answered, as she hefted her EMU into the airlock, and sat in it, strapping in. "Right, let's do this." Reaching up, Najia slapped the airlock cycle button. The door behind her hissed shut; air was evacuated. Her suit indicated a total drop of external pressure, and the airlock's A-grav let go, letting her float free, and so she pushed off the floor.
"Excellent!" Axiom crowed at her, over the comm. "Level 2 is right through there. That exhaust fan may impede your movements, but it won't make our mission impossible. See those alcoves? There's where I'd hide if I were you, whenever the fan is blowing at full speed."
Exhaust fan? I'm in vacuum! Najia carefully maneuvered out. She was in vacuum and microgravity; but she was also inside a large, cylindrical space. Below her was something like a massive fuse-box with a big holographic turret outline, and she jetted down to examine it, but could see no obvious way to tamper with it without most likely setting off major alarms, so she looked back up - just as a synthesized alert klaxxon sounded.
I hate this place, Naija thought, as she saw a fan at the top of the cylinder spin up. At a guess she thought, perhaps it was something like an exhaust, which struck as horrifically wasteful in space, but she could only grit her teeth, watching it spin. At the bottom of the cylindrical space, she only felt the slightest of buffeting; it might have been substantially stronger closer to the top. I am very confused, very frustrated, and I just want to get the hell out of here, she thought. She was seriously considering revisiting her first plan, which had been to simply teleport herself, Axiom and Lucca to Ace's ship.
But now, though, she was pissed, and she wanted to poke something spiteful in Mellerd's eye herself. So she jetted to the top of the cylinder, looking around. As she did, Axiom popped up in her comms. "These airlocks are shut, so you'll need to find a way to bypass their locks." She responded with only a quick "roger," looking around. One airlock, contrary to Axiom's words, was hanging open, but the lights next to it were red. She tried it anyway; but for once, Axiom was spot-on. The airlock door might have been open, but its functions were locked out, the panel totally nonresponsive. She returned below, and looked around; there was an open airlock opposite Axiom and Lucca, so she tried it, and it worked for her automatically.
"Well, let's see what's down this way," Najia muttered to herself, slipping out of her EMU and leaving it in the lock. She unholstered the pistol that was now clamped to her hardshell-clad thigh, and started to look around again.
To her surprise, she found only another cell block - it was a dead end! She was about to hiss in frustration, when she heard someone call to her. "You there! You! Hey! You are not supposed to be here!" Najia turned to face the Teladi voice, her pistol half-raised, when she saw that the figure in question was imprisoned. She lowered her aim to the floor, and appraoched the bars. Standing within was a Teladi, who looked rather forelorn. Najia's shoulders slumped. Well, this is awkward, she thought. When the Teladi seemed to realize she wasn't a guard, she started to ask, "Oh please, please, please! You cannot leave me here! I am friends with Urgu... Ugusa... I can help you make profitsss! I promise."
Najia sighed at the pathetic display, but she understood the Teladi's desire for freedom; though, on the balance, she also had no idea what this Teladi had done to become imprisoned. Knowing Kriss Mellerd, it was a total crap-shoot; she might be a real scum-bag, or she might be being shaken down. Axiom cut in on her. "I sympathize with the little lizard, really I do, but we cannot compromise this mission in the name of charity."
Najia huffed out a sigh, and looked around. Frustratedly, she slapped the door panel on the imprisoned Teladi's cell, and to her surprise - and the prisoner's surprise - it opened. The prisoner looked around, confusedly, and Najia was glad that her mirrored helmet hid her gaze. "That's the best I can do," she said, resignedly. "You'll have to effect your own escape from here, if you can. Good luck." Turning, she huffed back into the airlock, slapping the button to cycle it as the Teladi prisoner looked around in tentative confusion, taking a few steps out of her cell.
Najia pulled her EMU's straps back on. "Well, that was a fucking bust," she snarled. "I'm about to start lasering shit," she muttered, floating back into the massive vacuum cylinder, and back up towards the locked airlocks. She found a third floor of airlocks, but they only offered some shelter from the fans starting up. After waiting that, frustratedly she flew back out again, and started looking around. "Axiom, there aren't any switches here!" "My diagrams say there are switches, Wildcard. Look more carefully - and swiftly."
Najia let out a guttural growl of frustration, and switched to her cutting laser. Giving in to a pique of frustration, she hit her Mk.2 thrusters, blowing past level 1 to the sub-level, coming up level with the big fuse-box. "Right, let's see what this does," she said with a snarl, and targeted her suit's cutting laser on the big set of what looked like fuses.
She blazed a neat line down the middle of them, and, gratifyingly, the 'Turrets' hologram switched to a big red repair icon... She looked around for a moment. Nothing happened. Najia smirked. "On the one hand, this place is frustrating, confusing, and I kind of want to blow it up out of spite by now. But on the other hand, the gross criminal negligence on display is really working in my favor. Fuck it. Lasers for everything," she said, snarling and going back up the shaft. There were a bunch of unmarked panels, and, giving in to the frustration she felt earlier - which she had barely restrained herself from allowing herself to hold Lu t'Cca at gunpoint - she started lasering the panels like a schoolgirl hooligan on a vandalism spree.
"Your new laser is low-powered, but if you keep it aimed at the lock, it will break eventually," Axiom said. Najia blinked. New laser? This is my laser and I've had it for a while, and... Oh, piss on this! She laughed, however, as she saw that one of the panels had indeed fractured.
One deeply-cathatic vandalism spree later, every panel had been opened, and had revealed that inside the two panels nearest the top-level airlocks were two further, smaller panels, with similar mechanisms. With the fan starting up again, Najia took shelter in one of the alcoves at the top, just under an airlock, and, deciding to use her time productively, she lasered the opposite airlock's control panel. After holding her laser on the box for awhile, it was a glowing ruin, and Axiom commed her. "Partial access to level two established," he informed her.
Najia nodded. She didn't even bother to sarcastically snark at him, though the phrase no shit, Sherlock ran through her mind. Rather, she charitably assumed he was reporting to her something he was learning electronically, and turned around. This is gonna be bright, she thought, as she trained her laser at close range on the near access box, and closed her eyes. She held in the firing stud, and held it - counting in her head to seven, when Axiom's comm made her let up off the laser. "And just like that, we have free reign over level two! They can't stop you now!"
Najia grinned, and opened her eyes to behold a molten, glowing hole drilled into the electronics she had blasted. "Right. Let's get this show on the highway."
On the level above her, in the half just above, she slipped in, and found herself facing a door to another cell block, just through the airlock. She went in and looked; no prisoners. Walking out, she huffed, and decided to walk the half-circuit around the big cylinder again. To her surprise, she found a console, just attached haphazardly to a railing. Really? Najia examined it, and snorted; it looked shoddy, ad-hoc. She tapped the console's screen, and it simply changed color. Axiom piped up. "Magnificent! That'll give you access to half of the switches! There must be another console nearby that will let you remove the second cover."
"Got it. Moving on," Najia said. Back to the airlock she went, after checking the other half of the crescent hallway she was in; without any luck, she just floated across to the other airlock on her EMU. Predictably, she found that, on the opposite railing in the other half of the level, was another console haphazardly attached to a railing, and she rapped it quite firmly with her knuckles. It flashed. "How's that, Axiom?" "Both covers confirmed open," Axiom informed her. "Let's flip some switches. Get back into your spacesuit."
"Never got out of it. Who has time to undress four times? Anyway, switches, yaaay switches," she snarked, as she cycled the airlock again, strapping her EMU back on. "Whoever designed this place is both a madman and criminally negligent."
Once the airlock cycled through again, Najia saw that the two panels she had manipulated had caused five boxes that she had previously taken as unimportant junction boxes to slide their panels open. She groaned to herself when she saw that there were five more lock-like switches within. "Great, time for more vandalism, yay." She lasered the first of the boxes' interiors, the one that was lit, and held it for a long few moments.
"Something's not right," Axiom said, comming her. She had a sinking feeling. "The switches are also setting the state of their neighbors," he declared. Sure enough, she had blasted the leftmost switch, and the second had lit up. Worryingly, the leftmost switch did not look damaged in the slightest. "You'll have to find a combination which turns them all off," Axiom said, as Najia groaned. "I don't think a game of whack-a-mole will get you there," Axiom continued. "Though... Actually, it might!"
Najia groaned, and briefly considered calling for a five-hundred-some member boarding party attack from two capital ships instead. "What tail-hole thought this was a good idea," she bitched. "Who dreamed this up? Why install it like this? Don't anybody answer that, those questions were rhetorical," she snarked, as she set about the process of shooting the junction boxes like they were a juvenile 'turn them all off' game.
About eighty seconds and the false start of thinking she could shoot an inactive switch to switch it on and switch its neighbors states (it transpired that she could only make an active switch toggle neighbors' states), all five boxes were dark, and Najia snarled, bristling with outrage that this was evidently considered part of a high security system and not a child's game.
"You got it, Wildcard!" Axiom commed her. "Access to Level 3 established. And it turned off the darned fan! Off to the hangar, then." Up one level, Najia cycled herself into the airlock, and groaned. She was getting mightily tired of this, and she rolled her shoulders. "I am going to need a massage and to soak for an hour in the shower," she griped to no-one in particular. She hefted her EMU half-over her left shoulder, unholstering her pistol, just in case. The EMU was very heavy, but her EV suit had a fairly substantial low-profile power assist mechanism. Not enough to turn her into a super-soldier by any means, but enough to let her heft a 150kg load like a bulky and cumbersome backpack. She was tempted to leave it behind... But it was a good thing she didn't. The corridor she found was only a straight shot to - and she groaned - another airlock. As she approached it, Axiom unhelpfully congratulated her. "Excellent," he said. "Yo're approaching the internal hangar now. Our getaway ship is right over there." Cycling through, she passed into the deep well of an internal ship hangar - and groaned.
Najia was looking at a Magpie. That was the big, innovative, unique ship?
"If we want to make it out of here, you'll have to destroy the clamps on the hangar doors," Axiom informed her. Najia groaned, sighed, and rolled her shoulders. "Right. I can do that. All this for a..." She seethed, and looked back at the ship.
No, it wasn't a Magpie, but it sure as hell looked like one. It was clearly a derivative design, but it had not the Magpie's massive cargo pods; rather, it had smaller pods, and a lot more gubbins - antennae, dishes, and the like. Fan-dabbie-dozie she thought balefully to herself as she set about finding and destroying the lockdown clamps. As she did so, she also saw a couple more panels that had a turret hologram over them, and, thinking, why the hell not, fried them, too. Moments later, the lockdown clamps fell, too, and she saw a red light glare through one of the hangar windows.
Axiom piped up, "Holy triangle, that's the station alarm! Lucca and I are going to make a run for the ship!" She blinked, looking up - two EVA-suited figures, with full EMUs, cycled through the airlock she had come through.
What, she thought. Where... I... What... Where...? In a moment of dumbfounded confusion, she stared openly, unmoving, before both of them dipped between the ship's large thrusters, and headed for its belly, while Axiom said, "approaching the dock. Be with you in a moment!" Fearing being left behind, Najia abandoned the question of where they had gotten EV suits, let alone EMUs, in favor of making haste to join them.
As Najia negotiated into the airlock, Axiom and Lucca reported that they had boarded, and Axiom was working on powering up the ship's systems, and Axiom was transferring the ship's ownership - and hence, control - to her. They were trying to talk over one another, making it confusing, but, as she got into the ship and shed her MMU, running for the seat, Axiom noted, "This prototype ship does not appear to have an emergency eject system. I assume it was supposed to be added later." "Great," she snarled. "This is going tits-up and I'm in a little ship with no ejection system." "Split been moving into position," Maestro informed her, in a bit of good news. "Alarm must have mobilized more Ministry forces than Split anticipated."
"Thrice blasted!" Axiom roared from the back. "Mellerd deployed a capital ship to head off the Arcadian Endeavour!" Najia groaned, checking her map. A Pheonix-class vessel named Rolling Rock was engaging the Arcadian Endeavor.
As Najia got the Raven's struts up and pushed it forward, she got a comm from the Rolling Rock itself. She snarled as she saw Kriss Mellerd in her comm pane. "Thank you for leading the old man, and his crew of clowns, right to my doorstep. Crossing them off the Ministry's list will do wonders for my career advancement."
Najia gawped at her, in shock at the sheer gall on display, as Mellerd laughed. "You just stumbled into this whole affair, so I will offer you a one-time chance to get out of this. All you have to do is dock at my ship and hand over the pirates youy are currently harboring. You won't be able to keep the ship, but -"
Najia cut her off, snarling in anger. "You just love the sound of your own voice, bitch. Even if I was inclined to take an 'out,' though, nobody can trust you. For anything." Najia switched the comms to her ships, as she powered the Raven up to full. It seemed to be armed with two cannons; she test-fired them by holding in the trigger. They didn't fire immediately, but when she let go, they let fly. "Woah. These must be those Teladi charger things," she muttered. "Whatever. Ladies? This bitch cannot be trusted to keep her word. End her rightly!"
The Rolling Rock was already exchanging fire with Arcadian Endeavor, while Ace nipped at her heels, firing off shots from that launcher and the frontal cannon. Shiv and Kunai - the name chosen for the Paramerion - lifted from the Jackdaw and Arcadian Endeavour respectively, while Jackdaw and the Snapping Tortoise broke from formation with it to engage.
"L beam turrets... Problematic," Najia muttered to herself. "Let me see what I can do about that," she added, as she set the Raven prototype in motion. She could only hope, at least, that Kriss was at least rethinking her decision, now that the odds had tilted decidedly against her.
She dove into action against Rolling Rock, testing out the Muon Chargers, as the ships with her split and attacked. The destroyer was big, and problematic, but it seemed rather... Awkward to control, in fact. Ponderous, its turrets, even the lasers, seemed slow to respond. She nipped around it, firing a few times, as her four ships slipped past it. A plasma bolt struck her shields, and she yelped, diving to evade. "That's it," she heard Rei - not over the open comms, but in her earbud. "I am not letting you get your ass killed like this. I'm dispatching help," she said, and Najia winced.
Great. So this is how the war with the Ministry starts? And yet, oddly... There was no sign of Ministry reinforcements. Najia fled from the immediate vicinity to recharge her shields, coming in close to the Arcadian Endeavour, and watched as the Eighteen Billion Katana squads roared in. She winced as she saw that Okayama and her defense fleet had also been dispatched - a Destroyer squadron was going to bear down on Rolling Rock... Eventually. And yet, the Ministry was doing nothing.
It hit her suddenly; Kriss was rogue. Was doing this on her own. She snarled and grinned. The Ministry might be mad, when this shook out, but they'd have a hard time proving her involvement. Especially if she could play it as her ships responding to a distress call because a rogue vessel with an unaffiliated transponder had attacked a ship. It was flimsy... But it was enough. "Bear down on her, ladies. Tear that thing apart." Najia crowed, as she pulled the Raven in to touch down on the Arcadian Endeavour's landing pad. She looked back. "Axiom, they're gonna need you in the engine room. Lucca, you're not gonna wanna be on this ship!" The back ramp was dropping as she settled down; neither waited for her to have landed fully, they dropped from the ship and sprinted past, to the lift.
"So, you've decided to go down with the sinking ship? One less loose end for me to tie up later!" Mellerd crowed at her, and Najia smirked; of course she knew she couldn't trust Mellerd. "You're worse than a pirate, Kriss. Nobody can trust you," Najia said. "Prepare to kiss your ass goodbye."
Maestro was rattling on in her ear, but Najia could barely hear him over the combat calls. She hoped he was smart enough not to fire upon the T.E. vessels responding - it would be awkward later, and they were joining the fight on his side, after all. He was saying something about escape, and turrets. Najia snorted. "Actually, we're just going to blow this thing up," Najia declared. "We can't leave someone like Kriss Mellerd at our backs."
Things seemed to be doing well at first; the Rolling Rock was handling clumsily, awkwardly, as if she was critically undermanned. That gave Najia an odd hope that she might actually succeed at boarding her; the responding vessels were quickly tearing down her turrets and shields.
Then, everything went dramatically pear-shaped. Najia yelped as lasers tickled the the Raven's shields down and she got them back up again; again and again this happened, each time the hull started to fracture more and more. She made attack runs, damaged a surface element, and then things got worse. Where were those lasers coming from?
"Missile. Incoming missile." She slapped the countermeasures button, only to see the screen flash ammo empty. "Fuck!" A missile slammed into her, followed by a fly-by from a starfighter. She didn't catch it, but she took a pot-shot at it as it went past. Things were going from bad, to worse, when she heard someone howl, "Jackdaw's taking heavy fire! Jackdaw's... Oh fuck!"
Najia felt a moment of total disassociation. Numbly, her hand drifted over the stick, trying to maneuver the clunky ship like a starfighter, whilst fighting through mental fog.
Marta.
"We've got them!" Rei stringer called out, over her line. "I've got the crew of Jackdaw at the depot, but now we're under attack by a Ministry warship!" Najia gasped, shoving her stick forward, hard. Her ship was flying apart around her, and she snarled. "Someone get these motherfuckers!" "We're coming in," she heard - both the first, and last, person she wanted to hear. "Fenrir, engaging!" "Okayama, engaging." "Kagawa, engaging!" "Ark Royal, moving to engage!"
Najia laughed, incredulously. That was four fleets. Four fleets that most definitely were not supposed to be engaging to support the Arcadian Endeavour. One of them the Teladi wasn't even supposed to know about - Alarms blared. The Raven had taken a nasty hit, and a Ministry Kea was lining up on her six. She tried to pull away - she wasn't going to be fast enough - the ship jerked - the world went white.
Najia crashed forward to the deck, yelping, arms up to guard her head. She looked up; a Marine was standing next to her, offering her hand to Najia. "Better get to the skipper, ma'am," the Marina said. "We're Koshirae." Najia laughed, taking the proffered hand and climbing to her feet, hustling down to the bridge's main deck. Selaia Kevlin was standing in the middle like the Maestro, calmingly barking out orders with command presence. She looked up at Najia, briefly, smirking at her. "Does the owner have the conn?"
Najia shook her head, laughing. "Fight the ship, captain. I've got to coordinate this clusterfuck." Selaia laughed at her and nodded, barking out, "bring us up ninety, show her our broadside. Turret gunners, you are cleared to engage."
She hustled down to the fleet coordination console; the crewwoman at it hopping away for her. "This is Takio," she said, hopping on the controls. "Ladies, clear my skies of red. I don't know what the hell has gotten into the Ministry, attacking our stations like this, but if it's hostile out there, we kill it."
Rolling Rock was not having a good day, and it was getting exponentially worse. Her engines had been disabled, and Najia heard Maestro call out over the pirate channel, "Her engines are disabled. Now is the time to get away! But, where is Wildcard?" Najia winced. How was she going to explain that? Did she even want to? "This is Snapping Tortoise," Raleen, the captain of her pirate Baku called out. "We are picking up the crew of Jackdaw and Raven. Let these big bruisers fight, we'll get back to you."
"No!" Kriss Mellerd called out, yelping. "I don't wanna die!" Rolling Rock was coming apart under the growing tide of fire it was enduring, and more ships were still arriving. Najia snarled. Part of her wanted to bid Kriss a bon voyage to the afterlife, but she looked up to Selaia. "If anyone gets out of that ship, I want them. And we don't tell the Ministry."
"Roger that," Selaia said, and barked out orders to the helm to move closer to Rolling Rock. Najia looked back - a Ministry Razorbill was thoroughly engaged, and another had just blown up, attacking the construction depot.
She gritted her teeth, snorting hard. There was going to be hell to pay for this later. Righteous indigation - no, fury - was going to be the order of the day. Her ships had responded to a distress call from a Windfall trader, by an unidentified vessel. It was attacking relentlessly, wasn't on-record as being anything official. Then Ministry vessels, apparently heeding the aggressor's pleas, had jumped in, attacking Takio Enterprises assets, and the inevitable happen.
That was the tack she was going to have to take, and she clenched her fist. Outside, Rolling Rock came apart in a dazzling blossom of red that polarized the bridge windows for a long several moments. When they cleared, the ship was a debris field. Part of her hoped that Mellerd was dead; part of her hoped she wasn't. There was going to be a butcher's bill for today, and she tried - probably vainly - to make peace with that.
"Get us close enough to the Ministry Wharf to make contact," Najia said, looking to Selaia. "I've some barking to do." Selaia smirked at her. "After this? They should know damn well your bark isn't nearly as bad as your bite. They should be happy to get barked at. You should put on a respectable jacket at least." Najia let out a huff of exasperation, hurrying to do just that.
Najia needed to work to summon the righteous indignation she required for the bluff, but she reminded herself of the fate of Ace's mother to do so; the Ministry were assholes, even if they were also the lawful authority; and they had attacked her. She had clear and convincing evidence that Mellerd was up to no damn good. Not that she waas going to reveal it to anyone.
Hence, she found herself with eyes coldly blazing over the comms to the Ministry Police Kea craft which had departed from the wharf to intercept Koshirae. "Enough is enough," she snarled over the holo, standing in the conference room. "My ships responded to an attack upon a free trader from a destroyer that was not transmitting appropriate Ministry codes - not that the Ministry should be allowed to attack random traders, either."
"Your ships fired upon Ministry vessels," the captain of the Kea shot back, clearly outraged - but also, like the pilot who had followed her through the rift - terrified at being massively outnumbered and outgunned.
"Let me be clear, on the record, so there is no ambiguity," Najia said, leaning forward, placing her fist on the table. The effect was to lean closer to the hologram - and on the little attack ship's screen, her face would loom larger. "My ships responded to a distress call from a ship being attacked by an unknown vessel not transmitting appropriate ID. The Ministry, for whatever reasons, chose to respond to the event by siding with the aggressor and attacking my ships. Takio Enterprises warships responded by destroying the Ministry vessels." Her heart was thumping in her chest, but she narrowed her eyes. "If this is the gratitude of the Ministry of Finance, for all that Takio Enterprises has done here in Eighteen Billion, in Grand Exchange and at large, for the Ministry and the company, up to and including constructing facilities and securing neutral diplomats to mediate the dispute between the Company and the Ministry... Well, you might want to check with your superiors before you write a check they have to make good on. To be absolutely clear, this is a threat; you are the highest-ranking Ministry combat officer in Eighteen Billion. It is your decision whether this conflict continues or ceases, here and now. Ah - ah! Shut your fucking muzzle and listen to me carefully," she snapped, as the pilot opened her muzzle to retort.
"If you say anything but words to the effect of 'this was a horrible misunderstanding and we should deescalate the situation' - if you, personally, choose to escalate the situation, the first step I will take will be ordering all of my shipyards to stop producing vessels for the Ministry. The second step will be that I shall cripple the Ministry's ability to replace vessels by destroying the Ministry Shipyard and Wharf here in Eighteen Billion. I shall then proceed onward to prosecute this destructive and pointless war - a war chosen by you, pilot, here and now - by destroying each and every Ministry of Trade station I can find, until someone with some competent authority asks me to please stop doing that. You can see the weight of tonnage I have here, you know the Ministry does not have the tonnage to stop me. The choice is in your claws, pilot; war, or peace. War, or peace. Escalate, or deescalate. Your call."
The Kea pilot visibly shrank backwards in her command chair, obviously struggling to attempt to retain composure and command respect in the face of an overt and direct threat to bring fire and flame directly to the Ministry of Finance. Finally she steeled herself, straightening up in her chair. "This has obviously been a dreadful misunderstanding, miss Takio. The Ministry is undoubtedly going to demand reparations for our lost warships, but such matters are the purview of the financiers, not myself. If you will cease giving offense, we too shall cease attacks upon your vessels."
"Thank you," Najia said, leaning back. She fought not to visibly slump and sigh in relief, or to show how badly her heart was racing. "As for the reparations, they can take that up with the diplomat I have on payroll. Out." She cut the channel, and collapsed back into the chair behind her.
A moment later, the comm lit up again, and she flicked it on. It was a huge conference call, with the commanders of her fleets, the captain of Koshirae, Marta on the Snapping Tortoise with a small bandage on her forehead; Rei Stringer on the 18B construction depot, Tsukiko Peterson back at the headquarters, Professors Nakagawa and Okoye - whom Najia realized with a pang of guilt she hadn't yet formally re-introduced herself to -, Boso Ta,, and Ace. Najia let out a heavy sigh of relief. "Please for the love of god tell me we didn't lose anybody," she said, first off.
"Nobody from Jackdaw, Marta confirmed. "I took a headcount. We got lucky. "That seems to be a recurring theme," added Captain - probably should be Commodore - Xiaowen Kapoor - one of Najia's older friends, and currently the commander of T.E.S. Fenrir. "It helps that we responded with overwhelming firepower. My fleet is reporting no fatalties; thirteen casualties, mostly caused by haste in the heat of battle."
That proved to be the recurring theme; all of her responders reported sustaining injuries, mostly 'workplace accidents' incurred whilst in the heat of battle, but though some were serious, none were life-threatening.
"Najia Takio," Professor Yoriko Okoye - an aged-but-not-venerable, steel-haired professor-turned diplomat said, with the same tone of voice that she had used when reproaching Najia in class. "You are now, as ever you were, charmed, lucky, and reckless. You choose to act with passion first and foremost. This is a fine mess that I'm going to have to clean up, you understand. Can I expect this sort of thing to deal with in the future?"
Najia took in a breath, glancing around at her fellows. Barring a few, they were all young - Tsukiko was the third-oldest and Najia knew she was closer to thirty-five than forty - barely. Most of them looked grave, but not mutinious. She sighed, and smiled, wryly. "While I don't plan to go to war with the Ministry, there may be future... Rough spots to smooth over, yes. If you'd like to resign and go home -" "Not yet," the aged professor said, sharply. "But for dealing with this, I am going to require a pay rise!"
A chorus of chuckles surrounded her, and Najia sighed, face-palming and smiling. "That's fair, professor. We're going to have a fine time untangling this. Ace, how are the Curs?"
Ace looked into her eyes, then looked away for a moment, then back to her. "Secure in Windfall, awaiting your hopefully-safe return." She trilled, and Najia nodded. "Next stop, then."