#caveman explanation

[wild-saber1337]

CAVEMAN MAKE NUKE PART TWO

[local-sourchild]

I have new oc lore but i'm too lazy to properly write it so yeah Gabrielle was kinda tortured when 6y old and has heavily homophobia internalized because she was called as a witness against her mom so to her lesbian = bad thing and she has ptsd with fire so heavy that she cannot physically leave the house sometimes thinking everything will burn down also oh i have a new oc she's called annelise idk where she comes from but yeah basically rov insert oc and she's Oscar's protege so i guess new sibling? i made her for an otome game but i giess she became a new character now anyways this is her and her future wife drawing isn't mine it was a comission and yes i play my candy love let me be cringe and free

anyways beaides her uh i guess gabrielle has an ex husband now? he's just my old oc leonard i guess and he's married to vivienne aka eze and svea's ex lover and i technically have more new pretty women ocs but they don't have a story yet i was mostly deep into gabrielle's lore and ah for y'alls infelicity michael is now arromantic as well and NO, he STILL LOVES KLARA as an arromantic person idk how to really explain it but well michael represents the worst part of me so he represents my selfish love as well but dw he still loves klara very much he's just even more of an asshole and let me see i might be doing an wpic rewrite with gabrielle and kame cause to me they are odypen coded idc i changed their lore so you don't know about them so you wouldn't really know how it fits but well i guess that's it overall-

[moonlight-alphafemale]

Idk, I just have an inkling that when Pickle was born, he was cross-eyed and over the years (birth-4 years old) it just kinda corrected itself...

[batsandbirdbrains]

I want a season 1 yj Dick who just does odd shit. He doesn’t necessarily do it on purpose, he’s just a strange little fella, and Bruce has never told him to knock it off or do things differently because he too was a strangle little guy (now a strange big guy) and so he sees nothing out of the ordinary.

So you have Robin meandering around the kitchen at Mount Justice after training one day making his favorite post-training snack: a tortilla covered in peanut butter and chocolate sprinkles wrapped around a banana. It’s a real treat. He can only have it at the mountain because Alfred has told him he has to have proper meals after training, and Alfred always knows when Dick tries to disobey that rule.

You have the team watching fascinated as Robin gnaws on a steak, holding it up like a lollipop, after he said he needed some protein. Because protein bars are gross and bad for you and they are strictly for when you’re in the field on a mission. They’re a last resort. You won’t catch him eating one of those things willingly, they taste like cardboard. They tell him he’s acting like a caveman. He just tilts his head and asks, “Is that a bad thing?”

You have a Robin who hangs from the rafters by his knees, arms dangling below, body swaying slightly, because that’s how he thinks best. They’re trying to figure out how a bunch of intel works together for a case, trying to connect the dots, and once he figures it out, he drops from the ceiling and does a flip(or two or three or four) before launching into an explanation. He accidentally startles M’gann so bad she squeaks. He gives her a shy little wave as an apology, but doesn’t slow down in his explanation.

You have a Robin who climbs to sit on Superboy’s shoulders when he wants to tell him a neat fact he learned at school, because that’s what he does when he’s with Bruce, and Bruce has never once complained. To be fair, Conner doesn’t complain either, but mostly because he’s just confused about why Robin can’t tell him this from where he was just standing on the ground next to him. It ends up becoming one of Conner’s favorite things to look forward to when Robin visits Mount Justice, even if the fact Robin tells him is something Conner already knows. He just like show excited Robin gets, how animated he is, how much he moves his hands around while he talks, sometimes gripping at Conner’s hair if he starts to lose his balance from getting over-excited.

You have a Robin who communicates in grunts and hand signals when he doesn’t particularly feel like talking, because that’s what Bruce has taught him. Sometimes Dick just doesn’t feel like talking. He’s having a bad day. He’s not actually as chatty as everyone seems to think he is, and so Bruce helped him find a workaround. It takes the team a few weeks to decipher all the different hand signals and types of grunt before they just ask him what he’s trying to say. Dick gives them a spiral bound guide the next day. When he leaves to go back to the batcave, the team sits together and studies it like they’re going to be given an exam. When Robin notices them all perfectly understanding him the next time he’s feeling quiet, his smile is so dazzling that it makes them all nearly melt.

Idk I just like when Robin is a strange little bird and it sort of unnerves everyone around him while also making him incredibly endearing at the same time.

[cfangi-art]

UPDATE 3- This year and next year’s art resolution

1)Transformers sketches

40% off the top of my head, 60% looking at a reference for 5 seconds before winging it… I tried I really did 🙇 (as always words further down)

^^Okay who do we have here?: Shockwave, Knockout, Jazz, Blaster, Two, count ‘em, TWO different Soundwaves, Arcee, Cliffjumper, Bumblebee, Windblade, STARSCREAM, Crosshairs, a small Thundercracker and lastly Nitro Zeus (??kinda??)

2) The explanation:

-that no one asked for…

I mentioned in a previous post that I was working on a ‘project’, this is it. One of my art resolutions this year was to start learning/improving how I drew mecha/robots for one of my ocs. Well I started all late 🧍so now it’s next year’s resolution too

I’m only sticking to Transformers for now since to my caveman brain it just seems like the easier option. it’s probably not. I guess if I get good at drawing something like Optimus Prime then I can definitely perfect my oc… right?

Transformers, Gundums, Voltron, and Pacific Rim have been some (amongst thousands) of my hyper fixations since forever though I only ever drew Transformers, Sonic, and Power Ranger fan art as a kid, not surprisingly they SUCKED 😭 regardless I decided to take out some of my old attempts -that weren’t destroyed- and redraw them in my current style

Which I may or may not post, they’re kinda cringe

Do I understand Cybertronian anatomy? No. Do I feel confident enough to draw them? No. Am I open to request? Sure why not. If you’ve actually read this (for one, thank you) feel free to send me your favorite TF character and I’ll see what I can do. No promises tho

Byee~ ✌️(>ω^)〜✨

[lordadmiralfarsight]

Tarrifs, shmariffs, what do ?

Grrrrreeeting my dear Tumblr users, it is I, random economy oriented Tumblr User that was onces convinced his blog was gonna be about ships (and not those on water).

I come to you bringing explanations on tarriffs, what they do, what they bring and what their consequences are, since they are kind of a big topic right now, what with Trump and all. "But Mr. Rando, I already know!" you say, and I believe you, and I am proud of you, but much like in my irl class, not everyone has the same knowledge base, so even if it's a bit tedious for you, we have to cover the topic so everyone is on the same page. Alright ? Swell.

So, what is a tarriff ? A tarriff is a tax levied on importations. AKA, you buy something from out-of-country and get it into the country, you pay the tarriff. Many of you will have seen the memes and viral posts, and will triumphantly point at the part where I say the importer pay the tarriffs. And you are right to do that, it's kind of very important. It's the main point, even.

Why is it the main point ? Easy : if outside stuff cost more, inside stuff better choice. Or, in non-caveman speach : the increase in cost on foreign products and resources will either increase the competitivity of domestic products and resources, or level the playing field. At least that's the idea.

"So", I hear you ask, "are you going to be the Nth user here to tell us that tarriffs are going to fuck the average US citizen over? Because we already know that."

Well, yes, but also know. Also, I'm not sure you have the nuance on the topic, and I do love me some tasty, tasty nuance. And custard. But alas, custard is not the topic of today. Economic nuance is. Now, onto the topic :

The main question to ask here is "what is getting hit by the tarriffs ?" Because the impact will vary a lot depending on what gets hit. To give a simplified framework, there's 3 types of economic goods : raw resources, transformed goods and finished products.

Raw resources are ... raw. Iron ore, lumber, clay, wheat grain, lithium ore, water, dirt, raw oil, you get the idea. Those resources tend to have razor thin profitability margins, because so much is produced.

So, what would be the goal of tarriffs on raw resources ? Well, that would be protecting or developping in-country extraction/production facilities, whether those be mines, farms, fishing fleet or lumber mills.

And that's where a tiny little factor comes into play : economic viability, AKA whether a given activity in a specific region is economically interesting.

Like I said, raw resources tend to have razor thin profitability margins, this means that overwhelmingly, raw resources are extracted in regions that allow lower costs.

Some of those costs can be reduced in costlier economies, like environmental or safety costs, with some good ol' deregulation ... up to a point. Even the notoriously protest-averse USA would face some degree of protests if all safety regulations disappeared and industrial accidents jumped 5000%. Poorer countries tend to be more lax on those regulations, and/or not really enforce them, or both.

On the other hand, there are costs that can't be reduced all that much in a given economy, like the cost of manpower. Due to the cost of living, there's a limit to how low you can go with your offered wages. For instance, offering $12 a day in the USA will yield fuck all in terms of recruitment, but $6 a day in the poorer parts of Africa will cause a flash mob of eager-to-work candidates.

And these are the two big factors of the equation : can the reducible costs be lowered enough that the irreducible costs aren't that much of an issue anymore ? And when the answer is inevitably no, can the tarriffs bridge the gap ? Well, uh ... that's gonna depend a lot. But overall, I would lean more on "no". African iron will be cheaper than US iron every day for the foreseeable future, unless you impose a fucking ungodly amount of tarriffs.

Some resources that cost more will see better results from tarriffs, but far from all. Like, tarriffs on iron, copper, tin, etc ? Bad idea. Tarriffs on helium, lithium or other rarer and costlier resources ? Could protect or help the national production indutry.

In the cases where, even with tarriffs, outside product remain more competitive, there's just going to be an increase in cost down the line, and wealth is just going to exist the country more. In the cases where the inside product becomes more-or-as competitive, then perhaps wealth can remain in the country and help the economy. But, well, we'll get to it later.

Raw resources, done. Two more to go.

Transformed goods (henceforth TG for simplicity) ! They are everywhere and they make up the bulk of international trade. Phone parts ? TGs. Flour ? TG, mostly. Tires ? Eyup, TGs. Radars ? TG. Ink? Oh you bet it's a TG.

So, what would be the aim of tarriffs on TGs? Protecting national industry, giving it room to develop or maybe even forcing multinationals to relocate/create the industry inside the country.

So, TGs are where globalization starts clashing really, really bad with tarriffs. Because you see, with globalization, there's been a global dispatching of production facilities. So you'll have part A that's produced in Italy with resources from Greece, part B that's made in Australia with Indonesian resources, part C that's made in Brazil with stuff from Zambia, etc.

the funky stuff happens when you need to combine parts A and C in a US plant, but then have to send the result over to Mexico to weld part B on top. And then you have to get it back into the US. Double tarrifs, you say? Yepperino, my dear student, double tarrifs. On this incredibly simplified exemple. Imagine what that looks like when there's 3 or 4 more parts involved.

At that point the question is : is it cheaper to pay the tarriff conga line or to just send the US parts of the production line overseas ?

"That sounds like the opposite of the stated goal" you say, with the blazé impassivity of someone that saw it coming a hundred miles away. Yes, yes it does. That's why tarriffs have to be manipulated very, very carefully, especially on transformed goods and intermediate steps of the production process, because it can stack up real fast, real bad.

Sometimes though, paying the tarriff conga line IS the better option, especially for sensitive processes that require a well-trained workforce with in-depth theoretical knowledge of very specific fields and access to training for cutting-edge machines, which is only found in the United Staaaaa ... what do you mean, Europe ?

So yeah, very sensitive, tarriff with care. And in either case, expect cost increases, which WILL be recouped with increased sale prices, leading to a domino effect.

And now, the finished products. The end of the line. The consumer targeted stuff. What you buy online and in shops.

What's the aim of tarriffs here ? Same as before, protect native industry, give it room to develop and force multinationals to relocate the production plant into the country.

At this level, you'll see similar considerations as with the TGs, with one tiny added funky detail : the costs of the two previous steps pile up here. Indeed, the tarriffs on TGs and raw ressources are liable to eat up the profit margins of the finished products, and since profit margins are sacred and must be preserved at all costs, well the simple solution is to simply increase the price of the end product in proportion to the other cost increases. And that means shit costs more for people.

"Well, that's awful" you say, and you are right. But we're getting started. It's time for another trip through early 2000s deviantart, say it with me : INFLATION !!! Except instead of your favourite character being turned into a balloon, we're talking about the content of your wallet losing value. And it's going to hit every industry that has to suffer those tarriffs. At which point the entirety of society faces a dillemma : do we increase salaries accross the board (with the associated widespread price increases) or are we chill with a global reduction in the amount of shit people can buy ?

And that's where it starts getting funky (derogatory, fear inducing), because if enough industries are hit with tarriffs, either choice is bad.

Increase salaries ? You speed up inflation and reduce confidence in your money, making exports admitedly more interesting but imports far less so, and when you are a globalized economy where there are imports everywhere at various levels, it gets spiky really fast.

Going the "tough luck fucko" route ? Well first off, rude, second off : congratulations, you are reducing the overall economic activity in your country, creating unemployment and poverty, reducing confidence in your economy and, if things go really, really poorly, starting a recession (WHOOOOO!!! Who wants to sleep under a bridge ?).

Now, is this a doomer prophecy ? No. No it's not. We have to keep in mind that systems, including economic systems, can adjust their course after starting in a new direction. It's rather unlikely that everything will consistently go bad in the worst way possible. But.

A lot of that is dependant on precision political decision-making, and the person soon-to-be in charge of these decisions in the USA has made it clear that he does not intend to listen to outside opinions or do precision. And considering his last go at it, I believe him. So I'm not optimistic. I don't think the US economy will collapse, that would be absurd, but I don't see the US having a good time either.

It's going to be very, very complicated, and it will depend a LOT on what fields are actually affected, in what proportions, etc.

And keep in mind, I haven't even talked about retaliatory tarriffs (from the people whose products you put tarriffs on). Or political tensions inside the US, that's something I don't feel qualified to talk about. Or the non-economic effects on geopolitics. Or the effects on the global economy.

If I had to make a prediction, I would guess that quite a few production lines will be reorganized to either have long stretches inside the USA or to be entirely divorced from them for as long as possible. Some products may become economically non-viable when it comes to the USA. Some US companies may find themselves no longer economically viable due to reliance on tarriff-affected outside goods and resources. It's hard to guess how large the impact will be, but there WILL be an impact, and most of it will likely be felt by the USA. Because tarriffs aren't paid on expedition, they're paid on reception.

So, as a French, all I can say is : bonne chance.

[loulou-land]

Touch You Once, I’ll Touch you Twice

rockon | smut, possessive behavior, semi-public sex, hand jobs | 1.8k words | also on ao3

written for @cull3nblaze thank you for the prompt ❤️✨❤️

Deacon stands near the back offices with Luca, taking a short breather before they have to get back to schmoozing and shaking hands. SWAT is hosting one of those fundraiser events again—where the city’s elite can roam through HQ, cocktails in hand, checkbooks at the ready pretending they understand their tactical gear and demonstrations while deciding how much to donate like it’s a silent auction for public safety.

He understands the importance. He really does. Donations mean better equipment, more training resources, and smoother operations. But that doesnt mean the whole thing isn't mildly frustrating. Everyone’s got a part to play, memorized spiels and demonstrations to rotate through. Right now, the team’s scattered throughout headquarters, fulfilling their roles.

Deacon scans the room automatically. Hondo’s holding court with a lively group. Tan’s leading a tour toward the gun range. Street’s posted by the boxing ring, surrounded by a group of tittering women eating up every word he says. Deacon shakes his head, then spots who he’s been looking for all along.

Rocker.

He’s over by the main computers and he’s not alone.

There's a guy beside him. Short, dressed in an expensive suit that probably costs more than Deacon’s monthly salary. The kind of man who wears entitlement like a cologne. He’s practically clinging to every word Rocker says, laughing too loudly at something that clearly wasn’t that funny. Rocker looks bemused but continues with his explanation, polite and professional.

Then the guy’s hand lands on Rocker’s forearm.

And stays there.

Rocker doesn't move it. Just keeps smiling, effortlessly charming, still explaining something about the main hub systems.

Deacon’s eye twitches. Something twists in his gut. A low churning feeling brews in his stomach—foreign, and uncomfortable.

“Earth to Deacon. Deacon!”

“What?” he snaps, jerking toward Luca.

“I've been calling your name for, like, a full minute,” Luca says, lifting an eyebrow. Then he follows Deacon’s gaze and grins. “Oooh.”

He practically lights up. “You’re jealous.”

“I'm not,” Deacon replies, too quickly.

“Uh-huh.” Luca crosses his arms, blue eyes gleaming with mischief. “Calm and collected Deacon’s got a green-eyed monster in him. Who would've guessed?”

Deacon exhales slowly through his nose, sending him a pointed look. “I have nothing to be jealous about.” He hates how much it sounds like he's trying to convince himself. He's not jealous. He's never been the type. But he can't ignore the way his stomach keeps twisting itself in knots.

“Right. Totally,” Luca says breezily. “Well, good thing, then—because someone's feeling up your boyfriend's arm like’ he’s on the menu.”

Deacon whips his head back toward them just in time to see the guy’s hand slide higher, squeezing Rocker’s bicep. He looks like he's considering going for his chest next.

Deacon’s jaw clenches. “Excuse me,” he mutters.

Luca cackles behind him as he strides away.

He’s not really thinking. Just moving. Something about that guy touching Rocker like that, as though he has a right—it feels wrong. Off. It sets something ablaze in his chest.

Rocker spots him approaching and immediately lights up, his smile crinkling the corners of his eyes in that special way that always hits Deacon a little harder than it should. It goes a long way to soothe the sharp and irrational burn clawing inside of him.

“Hey, Deac,” Rocker says, bright and easy.

The guy drops his hand but doesn’t move away, eyes flicking to Deacon with a touch of curiosity.

Deacon keeps his expression neutral, clinging to professionalism like a lifeline. Growling like a damn caveman probably isn’t the best move here. It wouldn’t do to alienate the people they’re trying to gain support from, even if they look like smarmy assholes. Besides, not everyone knows about them yet—and this? This isn’t how he wants it to come out. Rocker deserves better than that.

“Sergeant Kay,” he says coolly, nodding to the man. He doesn’t offer his hand.

“Joshua King. I own—”

“Nice to meet you,” Deacon cuts in. Then, turning to Rocker: "Can I have a word?”

Rocker straightens slightly. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah. Just need your help with something real quick.” He jerks his head toward the locker room.

Rocker gives a polite nod to the man. “Nice talking to you. Hope I didn't bore you with all the tech talk.”

“Oh, the pleasure was mine,” King practically purrs. “And not all, it was fascinating. Come find me later. I’d love to talk some more.”

Deacon snorts, barely disguising it as a cough. He steps just slightly closer, positioning himself between Rocker and the other man. He catches the aborted movement of King’s hand and feels a satisfying flicker of triumph roll through him.

Rocker shoots him an amused glance but follows Deacon without question.

As soon the locker room door swings shut behind them, Deacon’s on him.

He backs Rocker against the lockers, the metallic clank echoing in the otherwise quiet room.

Rocker gasps in surprise, but Deacon swallows the noise, kissing him hard, fierce, and with a hunger that surprises even him.

They separate briefly, both of them breathing harshly, the air between them thick with heated tension. Rocker’s eyes flick over Deacon’s face—wild, wanting—and then he fists his shirt tight and yanks Deacon back in.

Their mouths collide again in a scorching teeth-clashing kiss. Rocker bites down on Deacon’s lower lip, the pain-pleasure dragging a guttural groan from his chest.

“Deac,” he gasps into his mouth, needy and desperate in a way that makes Deacon’s blood pulse faster. He almost feels lightheaded with how quickly it’s rushed south.

Deacon slips a leg between Rocker’s, pressing his thigh up against the hard line in Rocker’s pants. The noise Rocker makes—sharp, stifled—is fucking addicting. And Deacon wants more. Wants to hear Rocker moaning and gasping his name.

Rocker’s hands drop to Deacon’s waist, trying to pull him closer, grinding down on Deacon’s leg eagerly, chasing friction. Deacon grips his hips, anchoring them together. Rocker tilts his face up, and Deacon is caught, completely hooked by the curve of his neck.

He buries his face there, sucking hard at the sensitive skin just below Rocker’s ear. Something possessive and primal unfurls in Deacon’s chest as he marks him. Branding him with his lips and teeth.

“Fuck, yeah…” Rocker moans, hips jerking against his thigh. “Deacon, I—”

“What do you need, baby?” Deacon rasps against his neck, lips brushing over flushed skin.

“Need you to touch me,” Rocker breathes.

Deacon grins. “I’m already touching you.”

Rocker pulls back, one hand fisting in Deacon’s hair, tugging until their eyes meet. He hisses in pleasure at the strong grip. Rocker tries to scowl, to give him that signature bitchy look—but it's wrecked by his parted pink lips, the flush blooming across his cheeks and neck, and the blown pupils swallowing up the blue of his eyes.

“You know exactly what I mean,” he pants. “You dragged me in here, got me all hot. Now do something about it.”

Deacon’s lips twitch, amusement and desire flooding through him at the demand. “Sir, yes sir.”

He notices the hitch in Rocker’s breathing. Hmm. That's something they'll have to explore later. But for now, he slips a hand between them, popping open Rocker’s pants and shoving past the waistband until his fingers wrap around him—hot, thick and already leaking.

Rocker moans, head tipping back with a sharp gasp. “Yes.”

“Mmm. Already so wet for me, princess,” Deacon murmurs, thumb teasing the tip of Rocker’s cock, slow and torturous. Gathering slick before stroking down his length just to watch Rocker twitch.

Rocker’s hips stutter. “Just for you, Deac. Only for you.”

And fuck, doesnt that just do it for Deacon. The jealousy he'd felt earlier burns hotter—focused now, not bitter or angry, but electric. Entirely narrowed on making Rocker feel good. Making him fall apart under his hands, his touch. He crashes their mouths together again, his free hand dragging Rocker’s pants lower.

Rocker in turn doesn't hesitate. His hand moves just as fast, unbuttoning Deacon’s cargos with a practiced flick. He slips his hand inside, groaning into Deacon’s mouth when he finds him hard and already twitching against his palm.

They stroke each other in tandem, gasps and curses shared between sloppy, open-mouthed kisses. They match each other, grip for grip, a flick of the wrist here and a hard pull there. The locker room is filled with the sound of skin on skin, the slick slide of hands, the creak of boots shifting for better leverage, belt clips clinking as they come together, and the metallic clang of lockers echoing in their rhythm.

Rocker’s breath stutters. “Gonna—Deacon—I’m close.”

Deacon speeds up his pace just slightly, thumb catching under the head, before he moves his hand over it on an upward flick and Rocker whines. He slumps forward, biting down on Deacon's shoulder to muffle his sounds.

“God, you look so fucking good like this,” Deacon growls. “Sound so good panting in my ears. Letting me touch you. Where anyone can walk in and see.” His hips stutter into Rocker’s tight grip.

“Deac—nghn—ahh.”

“Want everyone to see how good you are for me. All mine, yeah?”

“All yours,” Rocker moans against his throat. “Always.”

Deacon doesn't last long after that. “That's right, sweetheart, all mine. Just like I'm yours.”

They fall over the edge together, bodies trembling. Breath mingling as they come, warm release spilling over their hands.

For a moment, it’s just the sound of their heavy breathing and the thrum of their satisfaction hanging in the air. Then Rocker lets out a breathless laugh against his neck.

“So…” he says, voice still hoarse. “You gonna tell me what that was about?”

Deacon huffs, brushing a kiss to his temple and shrugs. He opens up his locker and pulls a towel, cleaning up Rocker—and then himself.

“Uh-huh,” Rocker mutters, as they both fix their clothes. “For the record, jealousy looks damn sexy on you.”

Deacon sighs, chuckling. Of course Rocker knows. He searches his face for anger or resentment and finds nothing but teasing amusement. He leans in to nip at his jaw.

“Don't get used to it.”

Rocker hums, “Sure.” Not convincing at all.

The locker room door opens suddenly. Both their heads snap toward it—just in time to lock eyes with Tan’s expression of confusion, then dawning horror as he takes in their flushed faces and still-rumpled clothes.

“You know what? The locker rooms aren’t all that exciting. Let’s check out the kitchen instead,” Tan says, backing up and slamming the door shut before the rest of his tour group can catch a glimpse.

Deacon and Rocker stare at each other for a beat—then burst into laughter.

“We're never going to live that down,” Deacon groans, already lamenting the teasing he's going to get from his squad.

“Nope,” Rocker grins. “Tan’s going to make us pay for that one.”

Deacon looks at the satisfied smile and the happiness shining in those blue eyes, then leans in and kisses him.

And he thinks, totally worth it.

[leonsliga]

miss mam, what tf was going on with that red hair? Do you know the lore?

I wish I did because WHAT IS THAT

Judging by the cast on his hand, I’m guessing it wasn’t too long after he picked up that hand fracture, but just long enough that it was before he started getting playing time again. Apparently he just casually had a midlife crisis during his time off, because that’s literally the only explanation I can think of for that ginger hair (which I guess could just be the lighting, but it’s the principle, ya know?) and the caveman beard 😵‍💫 the poor man couldn’t play his footy so he decided to do the next best thing and grow a football pitch on his face

I stand with Sebastian Brune—may he never let himself go like that again 😂❤️

[maxwell-grant]

Since it's been going around, how would various pulp heroes take on the Death Note murders, and would they survive the ordeal?

A couple of clarifications:

There is a possibility that Ogon Bat, who is a "God of Justice", is either already some kind of shinigami, or at least able to speak with and interact with Ryuk just fine.

The Golden Amazon and Emilia the Ragdoll could definitely kick Kira's ass and solve the case, but they absolutely should not be aware of the existence of the Death Note, that would just make things worse.

You'd think The Monarch / The Blue Morpho getting his hands on the Death Note would be an equally apocalyptic scenario but I don't think he'd even know what to do with it. He very clearly just wants to get one guy, and became the Blue Morpho so he could kill everyone standing in the way of getting that guy, and he's very clearly been putting off killing that one guy for years now. The Death Note is the solution to a problem he defines his life around trying and failing to solve. He'd be stumped.

Doc Savage, well on one hand of course he would solve the case, he's Doc Savage, if Kira was in a Doc Savage story the whole Shinigami business would have been smoke and mirrors perpetrated by criminals with access to a heart attack inducing machine with a perfectly logical explanation. On the other hand, Doc Savage is one of the only guys in here who is globally famous with his full name and face on the papers, so realistically Kira would nail him very quickly. I'm gonna split the difference by saying Doc would solve the case either way.

Nick Carter does most of the things Doc Savage does except he actually does regularly encounter weird fantastical kitchen sink bullshit on the regular, so I think he'd have a much easier time wrapping his head around the Death Note's particulars.

The Spider would not intuit the mechanics of the Death Note, he probably would not be aware of there even being a thing as a Death Note, but by the end of the story in the last paragraph he would have killed Kira one way or another, very possibly by accident. Same goes for the sword-n-sorcery characters featured there, they would have gotten their kills by the end of it (Spear would probably have the easiest time, he's just a caveman with a giant tyrannosaurus on his side and neither of them have names Light can use to kill them, he's fucked)

Six-Gun Gorilla does have a name that Light could use, but A: He would never find out, B: He would never think a gorilla would be his undoing, and C: There's a decent chance Ryuk would let the gorilla hunt and kill him because it's funny and so would be handing Six-Gun Gorilla the Death Note.

Nyctalope would probably survive Kira's usual method of execution given his heart is artificial, but I don't think he'd be able to crack the case, he's not much of a detective. A lot of these characters were chosen because they have different skillsets that don't make them as suited for uncovering this case regardless of how smart they are.

There is a decent chance that Hugo Danner would figure out Kira by complete accident, and most likely beg Light to find a way to kill him.

Nick and Nora Charles would not solve it but they'd be okay, the case would probably solve itself and they'd laugh it off.

I could also put Blue Morpho, El Sombra, The Whisperer, Black Bat and Hugo Danner in a "Would somehow make the situation worse" category.

Putting the names of the characters below the cut:

Can intuit the mechanics / Can solve the case -The Shadow, Arsene Lupin, Sherlock Holmes, Mexican Fantomas -Heiji Zenigata, Ogon Bat, Thomas Carnacki, Silver John/John the Balladeer, Sar Dubnotal -Nero Wolfe, Tom Strong, Tesla Strong, Nick Carter, Captain Harlock, Golden Amazon -Ducky (Lavender Jack), Rufus Carter, Theresa Ferrier (Lavender Jack), Emilia the Ragdoll, Carmen Sandiego, Rocambole

Can intuit the mechanics / Could not solve the case -The Spirit, The Phantom, Edison Hark (The Good Asian), Lavender Jack -G-8, Green Lama, Peter Cannon, Jules Grandin, Wesley Dodds, Judex -Indiana Jones, Spider-Man Noir, John Blacksad, John Thunstone, Nyctalope, Tintin, Solomon Kane

Cannot the mechanics / Can solve the case -The Spider, The Avenger, Doc Savage, Honoria Crabb -Assane Diop, Conan the Barbarian, Lobster Johnson, Tarzan, Dick Tracy -Flash Gordon, Professor Challenger, Red Sonja, Scrooge McDuck, Imaro -Byomkesh Bakshi, Six-Gun Gorilla, Spear (Primal), Black Terror, The Blue Morpho

Cannot intuit the mechanics / Could not solve the case -Moon Man, Green Hornet & Kato, Lone Ranger, The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh -Phillip Marlowe, Domino Lady, Rocketeer, Miss Fury, Hugo Danner, John Carter -Zorro, Black Bat, El Sombra, Shaft, Sailor Steve Costigan -Darkman, The Whisperer, Nick & Nora Charles, Crimson Clown

[wild-saber1337]

CAVE MAN MAKE NUKE PART ONE

[dutiful-wildcraft]

I've been watching a lot of I'm on Observation Duty/Spectator playthroughs and I'm feigning for spooky season. Have a little thing~

Just some fluff and humor, not edited 🎃

Price × Plus size OC

Price watches as Ruby prepares for one of her favorite nights. Autumn had  slowly replaced the muggy summer heat, shifting the leaves golden and leaving the nights pleasantly crisp.  

His sweet girl had been practically buzzing all week, excitedly explaining the history of Game Night.  But not just any game night, no, horror game night. 

Not played by her or course, but Darren, who excelled far more than she did.  It was a past time they'd both had since they were kids and Ruby far preferred to watch the playthroughs rather than struggle with the buttons. 

Price can easily imagine it, his sergeant perched in front of an old box television, his baby sister dutifully sat beside him, helping him solve puzzles, cheering him on with the monsters. It was adorable to see her still so excited about it.

She’d laid beside John in bed the days prior, asking about the rest of the 141’s favorite snacks. Should she do beer or soda? Does anyone have allergies? Tapping notes out in her phone like it was her job. 

She’d spent the day baking and making goodies. Putting up her little spooky knick knacks and pestering Price into sniffing themed candles. (He’d settled for cinnamon apple, after having a rather befuddled and then hardy laugh over the mashed potato scented candle she’d snuck in his hands).

As the sun set they piled into the living room. A makeshift nest built onto the floor where Gaz and Darren were sat shoulder to shoulder, square in front of the tv. Simon and Johnny piled onto the side couch, the bulk of them barely fitting as the pair practically inhaled the caramel covered popcorn Ruby had made. 

John was never one for video games, but having his soft girl beside him and his team laughing? He would spend every night like this.

The game isn't terribly graphic, really more of spooky spot the difference. Something all of them could join in on. Settings of graveyards, rundown hospitals and haunted homes. They're tasked to go through rooms and report any anomalous activity.  

Price had anticipated something fairly cheesy, maybe even a little boring. But the game had proven more challenging than any of them truly anticipated. The small group huffing and puffing as they failed again and again to report enough anomolies on time. 

I told ye tha’  cup was on the left and the remote on the right!!

I know that pillow wasn’t that color, you think it’d be that subtle?

Quit clickin’ through the rooms so fast!!

The fock they mean we missed an intruder? 🤨

Check all the corners sergeant.

It'd actually become pretty amusing. What had started out as articulate explanations as they bounced from room to room slowly devolved into caveman-esque shouting.

MUG BIG!

LAMP MOVE!

DOOR OPEN?

HEAD IN THE SINK!!!!!

John’s favorite however, was his brave thing slowly but surely scooting closer and closer to him the creepier things became. She'd been determined at first, pillow in her lap, leaning forward, just her knee brushing against his thigh.

The jumpscares had her flinching bodily, slowly sinking back into the couch cushions and hugging the pillow as a soft shield. Squinting at the screen with sour suspicion.

The next scare had her latching onto him. Pillow abandoned in favor of his arm, soft cheek pressed against his bicep. 

She's not scared of course, just protecting him from the digital danger. (Obviously).

The rest of the boys took pleasure in making up stories for the various intruders. Truly disturbing ghosts and monsters made silly.

Ah he prolly just forgot his wallet

Yeah, looked like you were havin a hard time shitting yourself mate, thought he'd help out.

Maybe he's just shy?

That's just how Simon hangs out.

…It's true.

A particularly harsh scare had her squealing, pointing frantically at the screen as the speedy intruder barreled toward them on the screen, breathing into the camera with sharp jaws. 

Darren naturally took this time to admire it, much to his siblings dismay.

“Report is Darri, report it Darri, report it Darri.”

“Now this is a specimen, you don't get monsters like this every day”

“DARREN”

“Ru, what animal ya reckon this was based off of?”

“It's about to be based off my foot in your ass.” she hisses, face tucked into Price's shoulder, refusing to look any longer. 

Price can't help but chuckle at her, pressing a kiss to her hair before shaking her off and curling his arm around her, tucking her snuggly against his side with an appreciative pat. 

The rest of the night goes similarly. The team becoming quite good at navigating the anomalies, and instead attempting to scare each other at any opportunity.

Ruby makes the mistake of slipping off into the bathroom down the conveniently long dark hallway.

Only a moment passes as the bathroom door swings open, followed by a loud scottish growl, a frantic gasp, and the dull thud of Ruby's fist connecting with the drywall instead of Soap's skull as he scampers out of the hallway laughing his ass off. 

“John Mactavish I will hunt you for sport.” his angel snarls, barreling around the corner after Soap, sore fist clutched in her opposite hand. The rest of the boys giggle furiously. 

Price is already out of his chair. A. to hide his own laughter, and B. to fetch the small med kit in case she hurt herself.

“All of you twats” she hisses the word with a faux english accent “better sleep with one eye open.” 

She continues her glaring as Price fusses with her hand. A little red, but she'll make it. He presses a bristly kiss to her knuckles, instantly drawing her attention back to him. He preens at how easy it is. Just his touch enough to have her smiling at him.

“Ready for bed?”

Even if she wasn't, she'd go with him regardless.

Price leaves the rest or his men to tidy up as he leads her off to bed. Waits patiently as she does her own little security ritual, double checking the lock and avoiding the mirror on her vanity. She even subtly checks the window, fussing with the curtains to appear nonchalant. 

Finally she crawls in beside him, curling against him snuggly and tossing a warm thick thigh over his hips. Clinging to him like a big soft octopus. 

He peppers her face in more kisses, easing away the mean pinch between her brows and easing it into something more serene. 

As her eyes flutter closed and her breathing evens out he murmurs against her hair.

“I've got an idea on how we can scare the piss out of Soap.”

[local-sourchild]

I have new oc lore but i'm too lazy to properly write it so yeah Gabrielle was kinda tortured when 6y old and has heavily homophobia internalized because she was called as a witness against her mom so to her lesbian = bad thing and she has ptsd with fire so heavy that she cannot physically leave the house sometimes thinking everything will burn down also oh i have a new oc she's called annelise idk where she comes from but yeah basically rov insert oc and she's Oscar's protege so i guess new sibling? i made her for an otome game but i giess she became a new character now anyways this is her and her future wife drawing isn't mine it was a comission and yes i play my candy love let me be cringe and free

anyways beaides her uh i guess gabrielle has an ex husband now? he's just my old oc leonard i guess and he's married to vivienne aka eze and svea's ex lover and i technically have more new pretty women ocs but they don't have a story yet i was mostly deep into gabrielle's lore and ah for y'alls infelicity michael is now arromantic as well and NO, he STILL LOVES KLARA as an arromantic person idk how to really explain it but well michael represents the worst part of me so he represents my selfish love as well but dw he still loves klara very much he's just even more of an asshole and let me see i might be doing an wpic rewrite with gabrielle and kame cause to me they are odypen coded idc i changed their lore so you don't know about them so you wouldn't really know how it fits but well i guess that's it overall-

[zithcavooris]

Local legend says that the wealthy Von Mark family share some kind of spiritual connection with their land. Explanations range from them being gifted their land by God, to them buying it from the devil, to them being descended from an immortal caveman filled with the life force of the Earth itself. It doesn’t matter. Facing pressure to sell their ancestral property, the family patriarch sought to determine if there was any truth to the legend that might help them. He hired Dr. Helga Jace to run some experiments.

Of course, Von Mark didn’t want to subject his aristocratic family to painful experimentation. But they were able to track down an illegitimate daughter, Tara Kovicz, living orphaned in the gutter. Jace approached the girl, and got her to agree to testing by promising to introduce her to her father. A trial-and-error series of chemical and radiation treatments enhanced what had laid dormant, and Tara gained the power to control the earth. Confident she could recreate the effect in a trueborn Von Mark, Jace abandoned her.

Back on the street, Tara grew angry and bitter, turning to drugs and street fighting to quiet her demons. That’s when she was approached by Deathstroke. The mercenary had a score to settle with the Teen Titans, and he offered to fund Tara’s addictions if she helped him do so. She agreed.

Thus Tara infiltrated the Titans as the hero “Terra”. For months she fought alongside them, learning their secrets. At times she would feel guilty, betraying the only friends she had ever known–especially Beast Boy, with whom she was developing a mutual crush despite herself. But Deathstroke would always tempt her back to his side, playing on her desire for a father figure as well as her schoolgirl attraction to him. Plus the drugs.

Finally the day came to spring a trap on the Titans. Terra dutifully carried out the assault, then she and Deathstroke handed them over to his employers. But deep within HIVE HQ, Terra’s conscience finally got the better of her. Letting the Titans (and sadly, Deathstroke) escape, Terra used her powers in a final act of self-sacrifice to bring the entire facility crumbling deep down into the earth. No ruins nor bodies were ever recovered.

[mitigatedchaos]

The Low-Friction Moment

Post for September 16, 2024 ~4,000 words, 20 minutes

Tumblr user max1461 wrote:

I'm contemplating the tradwife shit again, I'm coining the term "bioconservative turn" for the present cultural moment (evidently the term bioconservatism is already in use for something else... perhaps "biotraditionalist turn" will do instead?). The tradwife shit, the raw diet caveman testosterone shit, the wombyn born wombyn shit, all of it. It's characterized by a couple of things I think:

If this is a real trend, where is it coming from? One theory someone could float would be that this isn't a unified, general trend, but rather a bunch of smaller trends resulting from responses to more specific issues. If it actually comes together, it's going to do so as a political coalition and will remain ideologically incoherent in practice.

I would like to propose a more general cause, or rather, a shared source of influence (not responsible for 100% of causal share): people are sick of computers.

More below the read-more.

Max continues (numbering mine)...

(1) An ever-present awareness (or pseudo-awareness) of biology, an interest in biological specifics such as testosterone levels, and an appeal to "biological essence" or "biological purpose" as a source of authority.

(2) A conservative, although not necessarily politically right-wing, outlook: "modernity is essentially flawed and we need to return to our roots in order to reconnect with what really matters".

(3) A particular focus on health as an ideal; per the above a sense that modernity is above all else unhealthy.

(4) A conceptual shift away from the mind and towards the body as the most central part of the human being, commensurately a great political concern with the nature of bodies, and an attribution of society's faults to the wrong-treatment or wrong-usage of bodies.

(5) A generally somewhat quietistic bent, although by no means apolitical. A focus on individual right behavior. Perhaps contrary to expectations, not necessarily characterized by eugenicism to any great extent.

Obviously these different components will be expressed to different degrees in different cases, but I think this circumscribes it pretty well.

I think this emerging perspective has a couple of distinct influences that are being syncretized to varying degrees. [...]

...and adds:

Please note that I am not here to argue some stupid shit, or to do base guilt-by-association of this or that ideology. I don't like this biotraditionalist turn very much, but the reasons I don't like it are thoughtful instead of vapid. I would be interested, though, to hear others' opinions on this trend, if they think it's a real thing and what they have observed about it, because I've been contemplating it a lot lately. At least, I'd like to hear from people with novel sociological observations or commentary to provide, rather than boring polemics.

a - The Axis

To the degree that this is a real thing, I suspect that this is about computers. Computers and virtual reality are low dimensionality, high disembodiment. Whether with video games or with social media (posts on a flat surface), it's possible to get completely absorbed in the virtual environment and forget one's physical body for a time - thus the overrepresentation of transgender individuals and furries online. (The pro-trans perspective would be that this relieves gender dysphoria, while the anti-trans perspective would be that this disembodiment creates transgenderism. One person reported doing hard math to distract from thinking about their body, so I'd lean towards the former explanation. I've discussed this matter previously in terms of the relative influence of movements.)

Transgenderism represents a weighting of the mind over the body. If the mind says 'M' and the body says 'F,' then 'M' is correct and 'F' is wrong.

Rationalism is partly about weighting the conscious mind over the subconscious mind and the instincts of the body. Transhumanism is about the use of the capital-forming power of the mind to replace the body (either by uploading the brain into a computer, or by replacing flesh and blood arms with cool robot arms).

It isn't surprising that we would see, in terms of one causal factor, the rise of rationalism, transgenderism, and transhumanism, during the 1990-2020 era, a time of profound and transformative change driven by rapidly-expanding computing power and rapidly-expanding accessibility of computers.

However, rationalists, transhumanists, and pre-normalization transgender individuals all tend to be the sorts of people who get their opinions by thinking about them individually, rather than socially.

b - The Problem 1

Computers, the Internet, and social media, especially the consolidation of social media into a small handful of sites, created a very low friction environment.

For the rationalists, or someone like me, this wasn't that much of an issue directly. I intuitively evaluate ideological systems for loops, and have a good feel for logical fallacies, so when someone tries to pose as higher status but makes a terrible argument, I feel pressured to contradict them rather than to obey them.

For people who primarily get their opinions socially, I think this has been a disaster.

As you may remember, my model of the Republicans is that they pick a guy and then they rally around him as their leader. In the 2000-2008 era, that was George Bush, which lead to a steadfast refusal to question the Iraq War, and likely contributed to the mishandling of the War in Afghanistan.

Now, The Guy is Trump. This represents a decline in the reliability of information about the details, but a correction on some of the fundamentals.

QAnon is pretty bad, epistemically. A loss of trust in institutions contributed, as did the lack of administrative political skill by Trump himself. He's also hardly a model of general epistemic virtue; his advantage is mostly not being invested in some of the bad choices the US political establishment made previously.

Did the reduction in friction contribute? I think so. Without a reduction in friction, we would expect QAnon to manifest in a dozen different conspiracy theories, rather than come together into one more unified whole.

(One of the chief problems for the red tribe is that they aren't a "complete ethnicity." They're largely a slice of the white American personality distribution. This limits the number and scale of their institutions, which reduces their ability to build an independent knowledge base using personnel aligned with their interests.)

Meanwhile, my model of Democrats is that they're more based on a perception of consensus. They are hierarchical, and they do value authority. Many conservative complaints about "unprincipled" progressive behavior are actually about progressive deference to tribal authority; the progressives involved assume that the authority "knows better" than they do, and so assume the right-wing criticism cannot be true (or is true but irrelevant).

The reduction in friction caused a two prong problem.

First, in an environment where information moves more slowly, it may be easier to build a consensus around truth, since truth is observable everywhere and remains fixed over time. (Yes, yes, specific artifacts and events, I know. But you get what I mean.) You can't be sure if the guy over at the other newspaper or other university would go with the same partisan message that you would, but if you try to keep your message relatively close to the truth, then the two messages won't be discordant. [1]

The system of blue checkmarks for institutional actors under pre-Musk Twitter enabled a rapid formation of consensus, without a need to coordinate indirectly using the truth instead of communicating directly.

It was easy. It was cheap. It meant making fewer compromises with the interests or desires of the coalition. They could coordinate around whatever dumb message they wanted to, regardless of its relation to the truth.

Second, the people working inside the institutions were exposed to the low-friction environment. From the outside, they could be identified and targeted by activists, who would be able to call down large numbers of people on the institution. From the inside, their coalitional loyalty meant that many of them adopted the lower-epistemic-quality ideology. At the same time, there was a significant decline in employment in some knowledge-generating industries, like the newspaper industry. (It doesn't help that the positions are prestigious, even if they aren't the highest-paying.) This combination promoted ideological infighting, causing a misalignment of the broader institution with its mission.

Institutional missions can be used to build supermajority support, insulating institutions from politics. If an institution has 75% support, then an attack generally can't get a solid majority even from the party with the greatest opposition to it. If an institution falls to 50% support, then it can be dismantled or defunded for votes. Since in the two-party system, each party wins about half the time, that's a risky position to be in.

Other people don't think exactly the same way I do about this, but there are similarities in their perspective on this matter.

c - The Problem 2

Because developing true information is so difficult, it's also a fragile process, thus the replication crisis. Even a slight tampering with each node in the process will screw up the outcome.

Activists generally want to exclude results that are unfavorable to their causes, and include results that are favorable to their causes. (They would justify this from a moral perspective - "protecting the weak," for example.) Without error, this results in bias that leads to a distorted view once the information undergoes lossy compression. (Imagine a 500,000-word book reduced to a 500-word summary - all of the qualifiers and hedging will, by necessity, be trimmed out.) Error can introduce favorable-seeming information that is mostly or entirely false, causing a report to go from merely omitting unfavorable information, to being entirely fake.

The more complex and multi-stage the knowledge-generating process, the more information that will be lost across the whole process from activism. People have a limited amount of time and attention, so they'll typically only look at the output of the prior stage, and not account for drift from activism in stages before that. This can happen with multiple people, or just with one person working on a multi-stage process. With research, for example, deciding what question to research is an initial stage which can introduce bias even if every other step is followed meticulously. At the end stage, if the peer reviewers are all activists, they may decline to heavily investigate a paper if it seems favorable, even if the author made an error by accident. (The replication crisis suggests that peer review is having trouble even without activism.)

Above relatively small percentages of activism, activism + research will tend to reduce to activism, activism + journalism will tend to reduce to activism, and so on.

Suppose there is some industrial chemical, the usage of which will save 10,000 humans, but potentially kill 10 whales. If there is an activist who says whatever they think will help to save the whales, rather than what is true independent of saving the whales, then you can't ask them about the trade-offs. If they think telling you the chemical is super-lethal and will kill 10,000 whales will save the whales, then they'll tell you the chemical is super-lethal to whales. If they think telling you it won't save the humans will save the whales, then they'll tell you that it won't save the humans.

Estimates vary, but let's say that English has about 250,000 words. Each unique word can be encoded using 18 bits. This is all a very rough estimate.

At a low percent activism, we get...

[chemical][kill][ten][whale][save][ten][thousand][human]

This comes out to about 144 bits of information.

Words can be used to reduce the space of possibilities. For example, "ten" is used to exclude every number less than 10, and also every number greater than 10.

Because the activist is willing to say that the industrial chemical will kill 10 whales or 10,000 whales depending on what sounds more convincing, "ten" from the activist represents "ten or ten thousand." That is, it doesn't reduce the space of possibilities by as much.

One way we can think about this is that the vocabulary of political operatives in general is effectively reduced. In a standard binary encoding, with 18 bits you can write any number from 0 to 262,144. In the reduced vocabulary, any number 0 to 262,144 is only used to represent { "none," "one," "few," "many," "more than," "less than" }, a total of six options, which can be represented with 3 bits.

The correlation between the words and the state of the world is reduced. The words no longer divide the world into as many categories. Thus, the number of bits of actual information transmitted per symbol declines. [2]

At a high percentage of activism, any message that might possibly benefit whales rounds off to group affiliation.

[me][pro][whale]

This comes out to 54 bits.

In my opinion, the reduction in friction has shifted members of the left and liberal political coalition towards activism, and towards group affiliation messaging, and away from more costly truth-seeking and independent thought.

The overall complexity of the world-model has declined, and the amount of genuine information transmitted per word has declined as well. [3]

That is my personal assessment.

d - Things to Hide From - The Cyberspace Layer

One of the big differences between 2008 and 2024 is the proliferation of smartphones with cameras and internet access.

This has resulted in the presence of an ubiquitous "cyberspace layer" which spread across most of the planet. Anyone, anywhere, is now vulnerable to being recorded on video, and that video almost instantly getting delivered to people on the other side of the planet.

As I have noted before, with reports that satellite internet access will be extended to 5G smartphones, the cyberspace layer will soon extend to nearly the entire planet.

Did you know that major retailers are still selling disposable film cameras in physical stores, alongside record players? Some people are arguing that film grains are irregular enough, and screens are low-resolution enough, that photo-negatives can be used to prove a picture is relatively more 'real' rather than AI-generated, but I don't have enough knowledge to say whether that's true or reliable.

e - Places to Hide - Private Chatrooms

Although Discord is not truly private, because the platform operator has access to everything the users post, we still see a lot of discussion moving there. Why?

I think there are two big reasons. One, it allows tighter control of who enters a space. That cuts down on spam. Two, because it's not exposed to the public internet, it's less vulnerable to what political scientists call "norm entrepreneurs." (That would be the guy that's trying to raise his social status by coming up with new social rules which he enthusiastically attempts to punish you for not following.)

If someone tries to start a mob to punish you for not agreeing to "rewild" your cat, you can throw him out on his ass.

Overall, information moving from public forums to private chatrooms represents an increase in friction, including higher information acquisition costs. This will likely reduce the overall wealth of humanity and emphasize social connections over raw intellect.

f - Breaking it Down

Alright, so with that background, I'm going to break it down.

(1) An ever-present awareness (or pseudo-awareness) of biology, an interest in biological specifics such as testosterone levels, and an appeal to "biological essence" or "biological purpose" as a source of authority.

Loss of trust in left-leaning institutional authority, partly due to the institutions themselves, partly due to activists misrepresenting what institutions or research actually say, and partly due to the shift of the granola-eaters to the right due to progressive restrictions on granola-eater behavior.

Biology contains a huge amount of physically embodied information, gathered over many millions of years. In this vein, it isn't surprising to use it as a source of authority.

(2) A conservative, although not necessarily politically right-wing, outlook: "modernity is essentially flawed and we need to return to our roots in order to reconnect with what really matters".

Fertility is collapsing to below replacement in all industrialized countries. In some places, like South Korea, the situation has become quite dire. Something is wrong.

I think the cyberspace layer is also stressing people out. They can be socially ambushed by like 50,000 people at once, pretty much at random.

People move around a lot. They may not know as many people in person for the duration of their lives. Modernity itself depends on more distant, thinner, lower-dimensionality relations, including working with impersonal bureaucracies, which some people may find uncomfortable.

I think people would also be a lot more comfortable if the pace of change was about half of what it currently is. If feels like from the mid 20th century to today, each decade should "really" have taken about 20 years, to allow people to get comfortable with the technology before it changes again.

Overall, I think going faster has been worth it due to improved medical treatments, but I have to wonder what the alternative branch might look like given the rising youth suicide rate compared to the low of 2007.

(3) A particular focus on health as an ideal; per the above a sense that modernity is above all else unhealthy.

Health is a wellspring from which many other strengths, and even virtues, may flow. Health is quite core. In terms of the trade-off, it isn't just a matter of wealth or health - it's difficult to have wealth without health.

The genetics industry are beginning to cure the blind, but the price for their services range from the price of a house to a typical worker's total lifetime economic output. Wealth has only a limited ability to buy health.

Minus housing prices, people may be feeling wealthy enough that they'd like to trade some wealth for some health.

From the other direction, people have a great deal of difficulty assessing the health value of products. They depend on institutions to do that. If they lose faith in institutions, they'll want to fall back to something, and that leaves perceived biology, "traditionalism," and so on.

(4) A conceptual shift away from the mind and towards the body as the most central part of the human being, commensurately a great political concern with the nature of bodies, and an attribution of society's faults to the wrong-treatment or wrong-usage of bodies.

Yes, this could be a reaction to the relatively high emphasis on the mind associated with the computer era.

Additionally, because a body is a thick, heavy, and difficult-to-change matter of substance, there may be leverage in a politics rooted in bodies and in the interests of bodies.

However, concerns about contamination of bodies have been around for a long time. People have fretted about what they eat for as long as I have been alive. After all, food isn't just fuel, but also materials. How can you build well using poor-quality materials?

(5) A generally somewhat quietistic bent, although by no means apolitical. A focus on individual right behavior. Perhaps contrary to expectations, not necessarily characterized by eugenicism to any great extent.

In an environment in which collective action can produce larger societal gains, it makes more sense to engage in collective action.

In an environment in which larger political forces have become unresponsive to reality, it makes sense to reduce the scope of your behavior and investment to one in which you can still gain traction.

You can't control what the US government does, but a sound mind and a healthy body will help you in nearly all situations - and a healthy body contributes to a sound mind. Further, the relationships of a family, especially between parents and children, are also more likely to survive changes in the nature of the state or the economy, than forms of support that depend on the well-functioning of the state itself. (Of course, this may lead to opposition to families from political operatives.)

There is little point to pursuing eugenics in such a context. It's effectively a declaration of war on some fraction of the population, and if you don't devise sound general principles, it's also a declaration of war on yourself.

I would also little to propose a little inversion - the life one lives demonstrates the biology that one has. Therefore, to live well is proof that one is worthy, regardless of the specific fine-grained biological details.

g - Rejecting the Oppression Model of Disability

There's another aspect at work here, which is the progressive model of disability. Progressives argue that everyone is equally capable in order to argue that they are equally morally worthy. In the progressive model of disability, if someone is wheelchair-bound, the fact that they don't have the same mobility as someone who can use two legs is because something is wrong with society, not with the wheelchair-user's body.

Of course, the world doesn't work that way. The underlying physical reality of mountains is not socially constructed, and adding wheelchair access to a mountain takes additional labor, energy, and materials compared to leaving the mountain solely accessible by foot.

In the progressive model of disability, if the government refuse to build a wheelchair ramp to the top of a popular mountain, they are oppressing wheelchair users. Some of the ideology you have described may be based on rejecting this frame.

h - The New Classy

Personally, I think the vibes that you're picking up on are somewhat faint currently, but they are there.

I think we are going to see some rejection of electronics and computers by higher-class individuals, or individuals from the subset of society that will come to be perceived as higher class over time.

Probably around 2015, when the number of notifications on my smartphone began ticking up, to the point that I noticed I was ignoring text messages because I assumed they were social media or app messages, I began aggressively limiting notifications.

Later, I began experimenting with the idea of a "social media hiatus," usually for a week or two. I found that somewhat difficult to stick to, because I have a lot to say. On the other hand, those hiatuses were actually too short. I've now switched to a Monday queue, so that posts only go up one day of the week (unless the President gets shot or something).

That has been relatively successful. This corner of Tumblr is a medium-length discursive space, so it's usually fine if a post shows up five days later. I post probably half or even a third as much, but that's fine. I've found that I'm mostly able to stick to it, which is good.

On Twitter, I have long had notifications turned off for every account except those I follow. When I want to check for replies, I go read the with_replies tab of my own account, and scroll down as far as I want to check. I don't even know the replies exist until I check; as such, they weigh less heavily on my mind, being only "possible replies" rather than "known unanswered replies." Eventually threads fall below the distance I'm willing to scroll, and I never see another reply on them again.

More recently, I've been running an experiment of no computers and no TV for one day of the week. (Calling and texting are still allowed.) It's still too early to talk about the results, but one thing I noticed almost immediately is this kind of twitching reflex to check the Internet on my phone (or computer).

Taken together, this can be considered "taking control of one's attention environment."

This requires a certain amount of power, wealth, or time, and also a certain amount of willpower (although it's about managing limited willpower to greater effect). For example, one must be able to opt out of certain software if it's a low-return attention hog ("low [monetary|insight|relational|positive emotional] returns to attention"), which might not be feasible in certain industries or for certain workers.

Gambling is trashy. Alcohol is trashy. Drugs are trashy. Sex addiction is trashy. In the future, it is likely that electronic over-stimulation will be considered trashy. The meltdowns people have been having on Twitter over the past 10 years have been spectacular, to the point that they're eroding public trust in expertise itself. If you want to give off a serious (and not trashy) and timeless aura, you can't allow yourself to be deranged by Twitter, or by filter bubbles.

-

[1] This is a new bit of theory I've been waiting for the right opportunity to post.

[2] This is also one of the issues with using nothing but bombastic rhetoric.

[3] Same as [1].

[copiouscouples]

Just an Off-Tangent Ramble

I really enjoyed season 2 especially in the first half. In my opinion, it’s better than season 1. What kept it from being a top-tier season for me was the absolute momentum killer of watching Edwina decide to crap or get off the pot. We didn’t need that. 

Then, there was also the lack of sexy times pay off. For some less thirsty than I, the garden scene hit the spot and to those people I say, congratulations for not being a thirsty hoe. But I needed all that passion and longing and pent-up frustration to culminate in a beautiful, passionate, romantic steamy scene. And it just didn’t happen.

My Theories as to Why Season 2 Had Sexy Times Slim Pickins:

The Powers That Be were trying to go a different direction and see if the audience would be ok with less sexy times. (We were not OK.)

The actors weren’t comfortable doing those type of scenes. That’s a valid reason. Just because you’re an actor doesn’t mean you should have to do something that makes you uncomfortable.

When it came to editing, the scenes didn’t look good and so were cut. I had heard that they’d filmed a lot of sexy time scenes that never made it into the show - if that’s true - not sure why. Nicola was talking about how they did the kissing scenes and what felt good didn’t always look the prettiest so maybe some of the Kanthony scenes didn’t meet the aesthetic.

When it comes to Jonathan Bailey, he is very boisterous and great at showing passion and humor. I was impressed with his physical humor in the falling in the water scene. That’s not an easy scene to do. He is the perfect pick for Anthony.

That said, he can only do roles like Anthony. I don’t think he could do a believable soft boy Colin like I don’t feel like Luke N could do an Anthony. They just bring different things to the table acting wise. And I’m glad for that diversity.

I feel like Luke has shown that you don’t have to yell to show passion and desire. You can communicate it in soft boy ways like looking longingly and following the girl you love around like a puppy dog and having a one-sided beef with another man.

And when Colin does yell, people pay attention. Eloise was so completely taken aback by his anger that she apologized like at two different points afterwards. I think that’s what is gonna make that one scene so 🔥 because he’s driven beyond his breaking point that he has to raise his voice.

Like we’re never going to get soft, earnest, endearing moments from Anthony. But we are for sure getting them from Colin. We got the “I want to tear your clothes off” (except they didn’t, BOO!) passion from Anthony and Kate. Now, we get the whole let’s be so besotted with each other that we go too far and then giggle afterwards. 

Kate and Anthony had angry, frustrated passion. Colin and Penelope have joyful passion.

The Colin and Penelope of it all just feels more real and authentic to how a lot of relationships are. I also kind of love the awkwardness of their new beginning.

And those steamy scenes! Season 3 has won hands down with just that carriage scene alone. It was so much better than anything we got in Season 2. I think a huge part of it is the willingness of the actors to be vulnerable and commit 100%. Nicola in particular especially.  Kissing and pretend humping is one thing, but boob touches/kisses. If I had a say, I would probably not let a fellow actor do those things. I’m glad she was OK with it because it made that scene HOT. 

And this is subjective, but they’re just pretty kissers. Their faces look good smooshed up next to each other. I really can’t explain why. (Please someone feel free to break down in a point by point explanation as to why their kisses look so good).

Season 2, realistically, could’ve been my favorite. I do love a brooding, angry caveman but something about the sweetness and earnestness of Polin. It’s winning me over as best season so far.

[rock-and-compass]

Angel Season 5 - Episode 16 - Shells

(I wrote this series of essays many years ago, probably around the time that the season 8 comics were being published. The were originally published on my LiveJournal and I'm reposting them here, mostly for personal archival purposes.)

When examining episodes with the Buffyverse you can do worse than start with the title; ‘A Hole in the World’ worked as a title for the previous episode not only because it was poetic but also because it was poignant. On one level there was the Deeper Well, a literal hole in the world that nobody even knew existed. Then there was the hole that Fred’s loss punctures into the world of Angel and co. And finally, there are other unspoken holes in the world, gaps in information, missing explanations, Connor, Cordelia and memories wiped. ‘Shells’ is the same. ‘Shells’ is not so much about the creature that has arrived to fill the Fred-shaped shell; it’s about the other shells that are left behind, the ones on whom Fred’s demise has such a devastating impact.

Shells are, in nature, protective armours that house particular organisms; snails, turtles, oysters, the list could go on… But once the creature inside dies the shell becomes almost pointless beyond ornamental purposes. They are empty, hollow, without substance. They are much weaker than they were while life was inside. Thus, when we talk of somebody being a ‘shell’ it is usually describing someone who is struggling with pervasive emptiness. This is certainly an apt description of the remaining members of Team Angel. They have paid the price for going to Wolfram and Hart – nothing comes for free, and the debt has been paid in blood, with Fred’s life and it has left them all with a painful void inside, a little less than they were before. Oh, but it’s not just Team Angel - no one avoids a lesson in this episode…

ILLYRIA

Let’s begin with the new arrival, the interloper. Illyria hatches and instantly assumes that it is still all that it was – a great and fearful demon king and that its plans have finally come to fruition after millennia upon millennia of planning and waiting and biding its time. It looks at humans as insignificant, beneath it, disgusting. Illyria is surprised and dismayed to discover that they haven’t yet died out, that they number as cockroaches and dominate the earth. But it’s not all bad news; the humans are also “stupid and weak” and it knows what it has to do – win back control of this world through force. It is Illyria; nothing will stand in the way of its desires. It learns quickly, it understands that the world is not as it left it but it can fix that…

Illyria’s first act is to reclaim Knox, it's Qwa ‘ha xahn (a high priest of sorts) and its second is to get some spiffy new threads. It is unimpressed by the pathetic stand made by Angel and company in order to try and control it:

Illyria: Two half-breeds and a band of primitives. This is all that challenges me now?

It is not intimidated in the slightest; it has tricks up its sleeve. Illyria is strong – it throws Angel out the window with consummate ease. It can also manipulate time and is able to make its escape with Knox while Angel is still falling to the ground and Wes, Spike and Gunn are virtually frozen in action. Angel’s campaign is unimpressive; Illyria is right to feel confident. These people cannot halt its plans for supremacy. Nothing stands in its way.

 Illyria and Knox go to open the Demon King’s temple, the seat of its power, to recall the Illyrian army that will enable it to reclaim the world as its own dominion. It seems all too easy. Illyria remarks that the humans are fragile (after it’s just killed one) and wonders how they came to rule:

Knox: Opposable thumbs. Um, fire, television. What they lack in strength they make up for with extraordinary sneakiness.

Sneakiness. What he really means is that the ability to think, plot, plan and dream has raised the humble human from being a cavern dwelling caveman to a heaven-soaring astronaut. The ability to think makes the humans powerful. 

The gateway is blocked. 

Knox: Wolfram and Hart probably threw a lock on it. They’re big on things happening on their timetable.

So, the senior partners are happy enough to have Illyria pop by and mess with the management of the Los Angeles branch, but are not so willing to let it meddle in their own apocalypse-related plans?  Illyria observes that the Wolf, Ram and Hart were weak, barely above the vampire, back in the days when demons ruled the earth. They beefed up and they didn’t do it by being Mr. Nice Guy and giving away branches of the law firm for nothing. They are ancient and they’ve worked their way up the hierarchy from pond scum to master puppeteers. It’s a timely reminder of exactly how powerful and insinuating Angel’s benefactors really are and it highlights the futility of trying to fight them from within.

Knox performs a ritual to open Illyria’s portal. He’s been worshiping the demon since he was eleven, it stands to reason he knows a thing or two about its whys and wherefores. Before they can enter the temple, Angel, Spike and Wes arrive. A short confrontation ensues. Knox is killed; Illyria is offended that they think it would care about his death. It uses its tricks and enters the portal to its temple. 

Illyria: My army will rise. The world will be mine once again!

But…

The temple is in ruins. The great effigy to itself is broken and crumbling. Its vast army is naught but dust. It’s world is gone. 

The great and mighty Illyria is crushed, bereft. It has become a shell within a shell. Everything it depended on is gone, lost to the sands of time and it becomes irrelevant, stranded in a time and place in which it means nothing. Like a fish out of water. Illyria flees the temple but later returns to Wolfram and Hart, to Wesley. It is trying to make sense of its new situation; trying to understand the human world, the impact of grief, the importance of names and the fragments of memories that have fused in its brain while Fred was dying. Wesley is irritated, why has it come to him?

Illyria: I have nowhere to go. My kingdom is long dead…long dead. There is so much I don’t understand. I’ve become overwhelmed. I am unsure of my place. Wesley: Your place is with the rest of your people; dead and turned to ash Illyria: Perhaps… But I exist here. I must learn to walk in this world.

Illyria asks Wesley for help to find its place again, to find some substance that will give the shell meaning again… 

LORNE

Lorne is completely bereft at the loss of Fred. The sunshine has left his life. He blames himself:

Lorne: I should’ve seen it. Knox, he sang for me and I should’ve seen this… If I had concentrated harder, read him better, maybe Fred… 

He’s so sad and lost and guilty that he can’t even stay with the others and listen or contribute to contingency plans. He has nothing to give, nothing to offer, and can be of no assistance to the team. He is the one team player who never catches the infectious ‘let’s get her back’ hope that Angel is peddling. He saw what would happen the moment she sang. He knows there’s no hope to get her back. So he goes to his office to be alone and drink copious sea breezes and grieve. He is a shell. He’s empty and doubting himself. The skill he brings to Angel investigations is his intuitive gift of reading people and if he can’t do that right then . . . he’s left wondering, what the hell is he good for? 

WESLEY

Having laboured through Fred’s painful, tragic death Wes is also present when Illyria rises using Fred’s body as its vehicle. Even in the face of death, the slow, lingering death of which he witnessed the culmination just moments before, Wesley’s first question on seeing the newly reanimated body is “Fred?” 

Hope is hard to repress. Hopeless hope is no exception. But the newly reborn creature doesn’t even register the name, it completely ignores Wesley to go and examine its new form in the mirror. Wesley tries the other name. “Illyria?”

Now he gets a response, confirmation that the transaction has taken place. But a glimmer of hope, an echo, still persists:

Wesley: Who is Winifred Burkle?

Wesley wants to know if Fred is still trapped in there too, if any remnants of Fred are still tangible. The question, the name, means nothing to Illyria and hope is dashed. Fred is dead and all that is left is her shell, taken over by an opportunistic entity.  Once he confirms that Fred is truly and completely gone, Wesley tries to kill Illyria. Is he driven by a rational understanding that this unwelcome being is dangerous to the world and therefore should be eliminated, or is it an irrational drive for vengeance that only the death of the thing that murdered Fred can satisfy? Perhaps a little from column A and a little from column B…

The attack comes to nothing. The axe shatters as it hits the back of Illyria’s head, who doesn’t even flinch at the contact. And then Illyria does recall what Winifred Burkle is - it is the name the shell went by. Illyria’s unwitting attack is more successful, it pierces Wesley through the heart causing him to cry grief-stricken tears that disgust the new arrival. Wes wants it gone. This is not Fred, and it is cruel that it should walk around in her beautiful skin. So, he thinks. Physically, he can’t hurt it, but maybe words can. He uses the obvious displeasure and revulsion Illyria has for humans and their unpalatable emotions against it and tries to cajole it into going away. Humans are everywhere, as bugs across the surface of the earth; this is not the place for it. Go, leave this shell. Come back when the humans are gone. Illyria sees what is at the heart of his words; he seeks to save what is rotted through and there is no getting Fred back…ever.

Wesley heads to work. He is distracted and withdrawn. Reality has hit home. Even the knowledge that Knox is somehow involved only momentarily distracts him from his grief.

Wesley: Doesn’t matter anymore. Fred’s gone.

It is only when Knox starts expounding the ‘beauty’ of Illyria’s birth and the reason behind his choosing Fred for the great honour that Wesley’s fury is ignited. He goes in for the kill but is forestalled by Gunn: 

Gunn: Wes, don’t. We need him. I know how you feel… Wesley: Do you know? You didn’t feel her die. She was shaking with pain and terrified and so brave and she was better than anyone I’ve known and better than… and she’s gone.

All hope is lost… Until Angel returns in all his heroic magnificence, refusing to accept the finality of death: 

Angel: Now let’s get her back!

Wesley doesn’t take the bait without some resistance. He’s sarcastic about Gunn’s belated efforts to discover how the sarcophagus got into the building in the first place, and as for Angel’s plan to ‘get her back’ he can only reply that there is no Fred anymore

Wesley: I watched it gut her from the inside out. Everything she was is gone. There is nothing but a shell.

Wesley could be talking about himself here too. Fred’s death has gutted him from the inside and everything he was is gone. He is nothing but a shell. But then Angel and Spike talk of souls and filling her back up – and they would know, they’re both experts on the importance of souls and know a thing or two about cheating death, this immortal escapee from a hell dimension and his pillar of fire surviving sidekick. They know what they are talking about. They could do it and Wesley is seduced by the prospect:

Wesley: You really believe there’s a chance of bringing her back?

He’s converted. He believes even in the face of everything he’s seen, everything he’s been told. He believes because this is the deepest desire of his heart, it’s what he wants more than anything and, hey, it doesn’t hurt that it’s Angel making the promise – if anyone can make it happen then Angel can. 

Once Illyria has come and gone and demonstrated a sample of its special skills, Wesley is sent to the lab to search for clues in Knox’s files. Wes confronts the sarcophagus. He tells Harmony that Fred was curious, that she was merely interested in what it was, and wanted to know how it worked. The trait made her special, made him love her – yet it also caused her death. He hates her a little for that. Harmony tries to make him feel better, feel grateful for what he had with Fred:

Harmony: The girl of your dreams loved you. That’s more than most people ever get Wesley: I know. But it isn’t enough

It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t nearly long enough. There were no dates or romance or lovemaking or a draw at his place, a draw at hers. There was no moving in together, no engagement, no marriage, no children, no old age…no future. And that’s what it means to Wesley, that’s why it wasn’t enough – because there should have been so much more. 

A phone leads Wesley to Gunn’s doctor. Wes arrives at his surgery just in time to overhear the extent of Gunn’s involvement in the plot and that Fred’s soul is lost forever, burned up in the fires of Illyria’s resurrection. Hope evaporates into nothingness again; it was only ever a mirage anyway. Wesley is without reason. Charles bears the brunt of his wrath because his part in the scheme, although unwitting, is a betrayal to the team, to the family, to the trust that supposedly exists between them, and he can’t forgive that it was Fred who paid the ultimate price for Gunn’s brain upgrade. Wesley stabs Gunn in the gut, doing literally to Charles what has been figuratively done to him. 

Angel is not happy with the ‘stab Gunn’ addition to the agenda but Wesley is beyond caring. Nothing is right! Nothing will ever be right because they can’t get Fred back and even the great Angel is incapable of making the impossible happen. So now the focus shifts from retrieving Fred to stopping Illyria. Wes is told to suck it up, be bookman and focus on the job at hand. They find Illyria and Knox and as Angel gives a testimonial about his commitment to protecting the human race – each and every one of them regardless of worth, Wesley shoots Knox dead. His mission is not the same as Angel’s. Wesley’s mission is vengeance. Wesley kills Knox because he caused Fred’s death, simple as that. He wants to kill Illyria too, but it is a harder fish to fry, so he follows Illyria into the temple, revolver ready and though the opportunity for revenge eludes him, he is able to take malicious pleasure in the fact that Illyria’s million-year plan for world domination has come to nothing, that its world is gone. Now it knows how he feels. 

Wesley is empty. He is a shell on autopilot as he packs up Fred’s things. Illyria arrives, drawn to the place of its shell, to Wolfram and Hart, to the lab, to Wesley. There is no chance that Fred can ever return, yet… fragments, electrical pulses, her memories have fused and are accessible by Illyria. It turns to Wesley – they have things in common; no place to belong, isolation, desolation, loss. Wesley agrees to help Illyria navigate this strange new world because, God help him, of its physical form. Together they cling to what is gone.

Illyria: Is there anything in this life but grief? Wesley: There’s love. There’s hope…for some. There’s hope that you’ll find something worthy…that your life will lead you to some joy… that after everything, you can still be surprised. Illyria: Is that enough? Is that ever enough to live on?

There’s hope, for some, but not for Wesley. It doesn’t bode well for him; you can’t live life without sustenance. As he told Angel some time ago, nothing matters more than hope; it's the only thing that will sustain you, that will keep you from ending up like Number Five…or, for that matter, an empty shell. 

GUNN 

Gunn, it turns out, has not killed Knox. He’s beaten him to a bloody pulp, tied him up but not killed him. Gunn is walking a fine line; he wants to know what Knox knows yet, he doesn’t want the scientist to spill the beans on his own involvement either. Wesley informs him that Fred is ‘gone’ and that they can’t get her back. Gunn goes into instant denial:

Gunn: You don’t know that!

Fred’s death, her irretrievable state is not what Gunn wants to hear. The guilt is unbearable, that shame crippling, the despair absolute. He wants to take it all back and Wes isn’t playing the game properly. Then Angel arrives and he knows the rules, he’s the bearer of hope! “Let’s get her back” he says and it’s music to Gunn’s ears. The game is on again and he’s ready to play. He’s all too willing to believe, he needs to make it so, if only to alleviate his own conscience, get rid of that sick feeling in the pit of his stomach and undo what he allowed to happen. Then it won’t matter, and just maybe, no one will ever have to know…

He tries to reassure Wesley that they’ll get it sorted, “It’ll work out. It has to” and while his words are to Wes, the reassurance is also for his own benefit. He’s almost brought to tears when Wesley asks for forgiveness for being so harsh with him earlier:

Wesley: I’ve been unreasonable…because I’ve lost all reason. But I shouldn’t be taking it out on you. I know you’ve done everything you can. I’m sorry. Gunn: So am I

Its forgiveness and kindness he doesn't deserve…if they only knew the horrible truth. It makes him feel even more sorry; sorry that he’s created this mess, sorry that they have to even be trying to get Fred ‘back’, sorry about the whole damn thing!

Gunn goes back to see the doctor who gave him the brain upgrade, the one who had him sign that damning piece of paper to free the ‘curio’ from customs in the first place and demands to know everything and, more importantly, how to get Fred back. The doctor confirms that they can’t, but Gunn is getting desperate:

Gunn: I don’t believe that! You know a way. You have to.

The doctor explains that his part was simply to broker the deal – cognitive upgrade in exchange for the customs release. He can’t help. It can’t be done. Gunn is crushed and like millions of humans before who’ve made an error of judgement that has led to unwanted consequences, he wishes to turn back time:

Gunn: Then take it back! Everything you put in my head, the law, all the knowledge, take it back! Everything, take more, leave me a vegetable. I don’t care! Just bring her back. Please…bring her back.

The doctor can’t be moved. There is nothing to bring back. Miss Burkle’s soul was destroyed during the resurrection. Every remnant of Fred is gone. Forever. For better or worse, a deal was made and now, Charles has to learn to live with it.  Wesley, of course, overhears the last part – the irrevocable loss and Gunn’s involvement, and he is not happy. He demands a confession:

Gunn: It was just a piece of paper. I was losing it. Everything they put in my head. Everything that made me different. Special. And he could fix it, make it permanent. So I signed the piece of paper. It was a customs release form. I didn’t think anyone would get hurt.

Wesley is dubious – this is Wolfram and Hart we’re dealing with here, nothing comes for free. Gunn should have known that. He did know that:

Gunn: I couldn’t go back…to being just the muscle. I-I didn’t think it would be one of us. I didn’t think it would be Fred.

So, his explanations, his plea of naivety have been amended. In the second version he did admit to knowing there would be a consequence, but he was prepared to roll the dice because he wanted the permanent upgrade. So he told himself that no one he knew would get hurt, that it wouldn’t be one of them, but could he really be that naive? Who else would the senior partners go for? Who else were they trying to control? Who else were they trying to break? No, it was always going to be one of Angel’s team and Gunn is simply trying to justify his decision not to go back to what he was.  Wes can understand the need to change but he can’t forgive the part where he didn’t come clean with what he knew. He stabs Gunn in the gut. Charles could expect no less; he himself threatened to kill Wes ‘like a chicken’ should he ever hurt Fred, so it is hardly surprising that Wesley exercises his right of reply. 

Gunn is in hospital recovering from his injuries. He’s been temporarily relieved of his duties. Yeah, that brain upgrade, it’s really useful now. He’s sad and sorry for himself and even the technically evil (or at the very least, amoral) Harmony is kind of appalled by his behaviour and questions how he could have done it:

Gunn: Because I was weak. Because I wanted to be somebody I wasn’t. Because I don’t know where I fit. Because I never did. Because of a thousand other reasons that don��t mean a damn ‘cause she’s gone. She’s gone and she’s not coming back because of me. I did this and I’m sorry…I’m sorry.

He’s a shell. On the outside he’s all pretty and shiny; the impressive Charles Gunn, attorney at law -, but it’s just an illusion. On the inside he’s empty and hollow and now every time he uses that brain, hatches a legal strategy, answers a question, every time he thinks he’ll be reminded of the price of those thoughts, and he hates and despises himself all the more. He’s a shell – empty and useless.

ANGEL 

The inability to save Fred has cut Angel deeply.  He’s retreated into broody silence trying to make sense of it all. Trouble is Spike’s here now, yabbering on about little bottles of Jack, his inability to get drunk and the very sensible logic behind their decision not to save Fred. And Wes isn’t answering the phone, and they guess that means she’s ‘gone’. Angel wants to know what that means – that she’s ‘gone’. What does that mean in this world, his world of beatable death, this world of vampires, world-saving, soul-having vampires and resurrected vampire slayers? In this world rules can be broken, and the end doesn’t have to be the end.

So, Angel is determined to ‘get her back’. He doesn’t tell the rest of the team about the choice he had to make. He merely tells them that there was nothing they could do to save her. He doesn’t have time for blame, there’s a lot they might have done, like not going to Wolfram and Hart in the first place, and recriminations can wait. They have a job to do. They have to get Fred back, fill the shell up, pull her soul from wherever it’s residing and breathe Fred back into existence.  It’s the soul that matters. After they get her back then they can entertain vengeance.

He attempts to get hold of Willow, who knows how to re-soul, who knows how to raise the dead, but they can’t contact her. She’s off who-knows-where and Giles is acting as goal stop; so long as Angel is with Wolfram and Hart then they get no access to Slayer resources. Yup, trust is still a bit of an issue.  Angel is not deterred – sure they can’t access the one person who might help them but he’s adamant that nothing has changed – the plan is still workable. They’ll find Illyria and … and then what? He’s running on blind determination at the moment that doesn’t allow reality to speak. He doesn’t want to hear what it has to say. 

Illyria makes its presence felt at the office and Angel goes to confront it. They ask it to stand down so they can… what? Contain it till they figure out how to get Fred back? Not surprisingly Illyria declines the offer and throws Angel out the window to boot. After Illyria has made its getaway and the team has regrouped it is Angel and Spike’s job to track Illyria. Spike wonders how they are supposed to accomplish this feat:

Angel: We just do it. That’s all!

Ok. No plan. Just determination and anger, which is all well and good but as Spike feels compelled to point out:

Spike: Back in the lab, she was standing right there in front of me, but there was no scent. Nothing. It was like she wasn’t even there.

Angel knows it’s true. He smelt it too. Spike broaches the uncomfortable truth. He wants Fred back as much as any of them but “seeing her there, like that…maybe she really is-”

Angel won’t hear the next word. He cuts Spike off angrily:

Angel: No! I lost Cordelia because some “thing” violated her. It crawled inside and used her up. No way in hell am I letting that happen again!

So yes, he’s angry and upset about Fred and he genuinely wants to believe they can save her… but he’s thinking of his beloved Cordy, he’s motivated by the unjust theft of Cordelia and he’s desperately trying not to let the past repeat itself.  It's another, more concrete example of exactly how difficult and important the absence and loss of Cordelia has been for him. Angel only gives up hope of getting Fred back when Wesley tells him that every essence of Fred was destroyed during Illyria’s re-birth. He hears of Gunn’s part in the plot and then confesses the choice he had to make at the Deeper Well that condemned Fred to die. He tells Wes:

Angel: Look, I need you to bury it, Wes. Everything you’re feeling, everyone you want to hurt. I need you to put it aside and focus on what has to be done.

Angel is a bit of an expert at this. He’s taking from experience; he’s sharing his personal survival strategy. The job to be done is not Fred now - that hope is gone but Illyria is still in need of restraining. It’s a job that needs to be done.

Angel, Wes and Spike confront Illyria. Angel is pretty much in mechanical ‘champion’ mode now that rescuing Fred is hopeless.

Angel: What you’re trying to do, raise your army, reclaim your world, innocent people would die. Like Fred. I can’t let that happen.  

Illyria is intrigued that he would care and that this is his role in the world. She challenges him – would he defend Knox, the betrayer’s life? Angel’s response is sanctimonious, perfunctory, he knows it by rote:

Angel: You’re about as low as it gets Knox, but you’re part of humanity. That isn’t always pretty but it’s a hell of a lot better than what came before. And if it comes down to a choice between you and him, then yes, I would fight for his life, just like any human’s. Because that’s what people do. That’s what makes us-

Heroes? Champions? Angel never got to finish his stirring speech because Wes kills Knox. He extracts revenge. He is incapable of ‘sucking it up’ or pushing his feelings aside the way Angel advised him to. His passion for Fred, his devastation at her loss, his anger at her murderer all demand an equally passionate, devastating, angry response. It is the difference between Angel and the humans he lives with. So now Angel is becoming quite cavernous; he has so many holes in his world and Fred is yet another that he has to suck it up and live with.

SPIKE 

With Fred’s loss, Spike’s initial inclination is to get drunk. It is an old habit, his safety net in times of crisis. He seems more accepting of the death than Angel who broods and decides to try and bend the rules to get her back. Spike is supportive. He goes along with the idea, he knows better than most that it can be done, and, conversely, is uniquely aware that perhaps it shouldn’t, but he’s certainly doing nothing to rock the boat of this fledgling partnership he has with Angel. He remains supportive until the futility of the plan becomes undeniably obvious. Illyria might look like a blue version of Fred, but it doesn't talk like Fred, act like Fred, and it certainly doesn't smell like Fred! A vampire’s nose doesn’t lie. He tries to tell Angel but it’s no good. For Angel the past and present are mixed and repeating in some distorted, re-cast episode of deja vu and he doesn’t want to listen to what Spike, or his own nose are telling him.

After Gunn and the doctor’s role in the scheme have been revealed Spike is charged with getting information out of the doc. He may not be the obvious choice for such a duty, but he is the only choice. Wesley, although practiced in the art of interrogation, couldn’t have done it because then the doctor would have ended up dead, more than likely before any information had been elicited from the reluctant source. He’s too close. Passion and vengeance inform his every move. Angel couldn’t have done it either because, well, the CEO of Wolfram and Hart interrogating a pigeon? It just wouldn’t be right, and, let’s face it, it’s never safe to let Angelus, who so loved to tease, maim and torture, tug at his leash of restraint either. So, it falls to Spike, who never was one for the pre-show, but who is a willing team player, to do the deed. He succeeds in getting screams, various bodily fluids and a name. 

The duo becomes a trio as they take on Illyria. Spike understands Wesley’s need to kill Knox, he had it coming after all. One can’t help but observe that Spike and Wesley could bond on so many levels – they could commiserate with one another over ‘bots and demon lords who are unwelcome reminders of the dead women they love, of darkly seductive sexual relationships that exist for a cacophony of conflicting reasons and that don’t turn out at all the way you’d planned, and walking the fine line between good and evil, of trying not to be what you were, of redefinition, of unrequited love… Yeah, they have more in common than most would ever guess.

After the fighting is over and Illyria has voluntarily subsided, Spike tells Angel that he is not going away. Fred would have wanted him to stay, more importantly, he wants to stay:

Spike: It’s what I want. I don’t really like you. Suppose I never will, but this is important, what’s happening here. Fred gave her life for it. The least I can do is give what’s left of mine

He knows a big fight is coming – he can feel it in his bones, and he believes it is a fight worth fighting. So, for Spike the loss of the first person who believed in him since involuntarily relocation to Los Angeles, the first person to believe in him since his beloved Buffy did, results in an epiphany. He chooses to stay, not because he has nowhere else to go, not because he wants a relationship with Angel, but because he wants to fight the good fight, and LA is where the action is baby. He says he doesn’t like Angel, but his actions belie the words. He plainly does like Angel very much and Angel is surprised, though clearly relieved when Spike says he’ll stay. Their relationship is not the issue here. Spike, unlike everyone else, does not finish up as a hollow shell. On the contrary, Fred’s death has filled him with conviction and purpose and the belief that the fight they wage is one worth digging in and getting dirty for.

Next up: Angel season 5 - episode 17 - Underneath