(08-16-2024, 11:18 PM)Norgarth Wrote: Beware of Chicken (original flavour)
https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/beware-of-chicken-xianxia.910799/page-2003#post-104075605

The Second Flowering Of Yggdrasil: An Analysis Of The Norse Resurgence, 1710, Wrote:As the executive ruling body of the North Sea Empire, the Imperial Council was made a formal institution in 1064 after having spent the previous twenty years as a de facto but informal structure. The formalizing event used to mark the occasion was the marriage of Valka II and Olaf III, to formally unite the North Sea Empire with the Kingdom of Berk, and the appointment of the couple as the junior emperor and empress of the realm, as befitting their statuses as the elected heirs to their respective crowns.

In the ensuing decades and centuries, the Imperial Council remained mostly stable as a ruling body, consisting of five to seven members of the imperial family, with later reforms giving them ten year terms staggered at five year intervals. In line with the original makeup of the council, featuring Emperor Hiccup Haddock and his wives and King Magnus and his wife Ruffnut, and their heirs, the council generally (but not always) takes the structure of senior and junior members, with the bulk of the authority and responsibility in the hands of the senior members, while the junior members are given both training and delegated authority.

While there certainly has been strife on the council—thankfully only once rising to the level of assassinations and civil war—in general the structure of junior and senior members of the family serving on the council and sharing the stresses of leadership has allowed the Empire to weather malcontents and misfits and the occasional demagogue or Caligula who has managed to convince the electorate of the Empire to appoint them to the council.

DeadPool Wrote:Why does she always get these? And her quiet time was going so well… Now Hermione has to return a vulgar knockoff of one of her universe’s deadliest supervillains [Hey, he may have been first, but who just broke a billion at the BO? Not a ‘barely a walk-on in a stinker,’ albino-haired loser, ain’t that for sure!] back to his own… Wait, what? Stop that! Get back onto your side of the story, down into the Chapter Text! [Only for you, your Royal Bushiness. After all, sweetums, you did fall for someone who could have been me.]

Yrsillar Wrote:"How is the sect doing?" Ling Qi asked.

"Oh, you know, they're digging in and chewing on their meal," Sixiang replied. "Attitudes are kinda mixed on that. Lotta folks want to keep pushing while the cloud tribes are on the back foot."

"But wiser heads prevail," Ling Qi concluded. "The ith…"

"Yeah, that's the big one. Your girl Suyin has been working her fingers off on purifiers. I'm worried she might try to graft on more."

Ling Qi furrowed her brow. The worst part was that she could not be certain that Sixiang was joking when it came to Suyin these days.

"Please tell her to stick with that skeleton puppet limb rig she was considering," Ling Qi finally said. "Or even better, get out of her lab and cultivate her use of the threads of her mantle."

Suyin stayed inside far too much and did not cultivate her body enough, even now.

Sixiang laughed. "I’ll pass the message. I expect the reply will be a passive aggressive 'The girl who chose to get turned into a log of charcoal doesn't get to lecture me on my health.'"

Ling Qi grumbled, flexing her bandaged fingers. This was this, and that was that.

"I would say I am sure Miss Li would not do anything foolish, but my cousin did have to be stopped from attempting to graft additional limbs to herself at that age, too," Bao Qian worried.

"... I will visit Suyin soon," Ling Qi decided.

"I think she's got an open evening in a few weeks. Want me to ask?" Sixiang offered.

"Please."

"Miss Boneshaper will be fine. Gui thinks Big Sis is a worrywort." Her little brother tilted his head back to fix her with a very huffy look for a giant tortoise. "Big Sis needs to focus on her own health."

Even her sweet little brother was getting sassy with her. What was this world she had made?

Quote:…Enjoy it while you can.

In this issue, Hermione catches a break. At the least, her sector seems to have collectively decided to dial it down a notch, her home planet as well. Time for treetops, team-ups, thinking, and simply being a light amidst the darkness.

1. https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/the-taste-of-peaches-worm-au.766264/page-81#post-104199541
   
2. https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/the-taste-of-peaches-worm-au.56049/page-274#post-32509222
   
3. https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13332873/15/The-Taste-of-Peaches
   

ssjSega Wrote:We're back with this story and now continuing Pyra's descent into slowly encroaching despair! What fun!

Anyway, chapter's gonna be a bit more gruesome given Tsiehshi's whole radiation deal, so small warning before we begin, though I don't think it's as bad as either the DJD's actions from Camien Odyssey's third chapter or what Barricade did in his More Than Meets the Spy debut.

Special thanks and shout out to SwapAUAnon, Matrix Dragon, and Quantum01 for Beta Reading this chapter.

(08-22-2024, 04:26 PM)Jinx999 Wrote: https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/my-next-life-as-a-supervillain-all-routes-lead-to-doctor-doom-hamefura-mcu.1164297/page-412#post-104233294

My Next Life as a Supervillain: All Routes Lead to Doctor Doom! (Hamefura/MCU)

Yrsillar Wrote:"Am I doing a bad job, sister?" The question was quiet, barely audible over the sound of Ling Qi's bedroom door creaking open and the quiet wind blowing in through the partially open window where the moon's light shone down on the bed

"You're not, Hanyi,” Ling Qi reassured. “You've been a very good girl."

Hanyi looked back at her from where she stood by the bedside. She had a mortar and pestle in hand and was grinding the medicinal pills set there down to powder that could be mixed into water. "Then how come you're always miserable? Sis is a bad faker."

"I suppose I am," Ling Qi reflected. "It's nothing you've done, Hanyi. I know you—and everyone else—are trying very hard. I'm sorry if I seem ungrateful. I just need to keep moving. It feels painful, being stuck like this."

"I guess I'd be mopey, too, if I felt like I did with Mama at the end." Hanyi said, looking down. The pestle crunched through the broken up pill rhythmically, releasing the bitter but invigorating scent of the medicine.

"Trapped," Ling Qi murmured.

"Crushed. I like dancing, too. It's nice to feel so light."

"You're good at it. I like the one you’ve been practicing, the one with the fans. Biyu liked it, too."

"Big Sis would do that one really well." Hanyi set the pestle aside, squinting at the powder in the stone bowl. "Littlest sister isn't so bad, I guess. She's better at respecting her senior sister now."

Ling Qi smiled. Hanyi was weak to praise, and perhaps especially weak to the thoughtlessly honest praise of a child.

"Let's find a mountaintop and play again when you're better, ‘kay? Two proper ladies shouldn't spend all their time in this icky warmth."

TheInkredibleKaptainKaiju Wrote:With a clear target now in sight, BAINE prepares an attack against their latest foes.

Nationbuilding: How People Move, Talk, Think, Organize, & Structure Themselves, 1888, Amsterdam University Press,' Wrote:In broad terms, taxation is a required levy or other such contribution, in the form of goods, services, or currency, imposed by a government on those bound to pay the tax (which are often, but not always, citizens of that government). Taxation can range across a continuum from full-bore rent-seeking on one end, to merely extractive, to a tool for regulating and shaping behavior, to the far end with subsidies as a form of negative taxation. In general, the further towards rent-seeking the taxation is, the more resentful and resistant the taxpaying population will be, although there will always be outliers in both directions—even in the most subsidizing taxation environment, there will be those who claim noncompliance on the grounds that “taxation is theft” and other such beliefs, and even in the most most rent-seeking environment, there will be those who unquestioningly pay what is required. Those exceptions aside, in most populations of taxpayers, general attitudes track well with the size and quality of their perceived personal benefit from the taxes they pay. In pure rent-seeking, where the tax-payers gain minimal to no benefit from what they pay (common in feudal, dictatorial, kleptocratic, and extractivist polities), taxpayers, especially at the local level, see all of the prosperity of their home vanish into the pockets of the wealthy for their own personal enrichment, and thus question the benefits of taxation. Conversely, in environments where taxes directly fund social services and public goods, individual taxpayers can directly witness these benefits.