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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 1 year ago

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[Dave Whamond]

* * * *

The Associated Press ran a story yesterday underscoring a facet of the presidential election that’s familiar to regular readers of the Editorial Board. While Donald Trump is popular with the Republican base, and while his nomination is all but assured, his weakness is increasingly on display.

The former president has galvanized support in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Followers are “overwhelmingly white,” over 50 and without college degrees. But this, the AP said, is very different from the US electorate. “He’d have to appeal to a far more diverse group and possibly win over supporters of former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley.”

Not only must he expand the base, the base itself has gotten smaller. The AP: “A large portion of Trump’s opposition within the Republican primaries is comprised of voters who abandoned him before this year. … At least 2 in 10 of the voters in South Carolina’s Republican primary and the Iowa caucuses said they won’t back Trump in November, while approximately 3 in 10 in New Hampshire felt that way (my italics).

But the more he accepts Russian aid, the more Russian aid will change the Republican Party, making it unrecognizable to actual principled conservatives and “that female independent suburban voter,” who are now leaving the party and making their way toward the Democrats.

Finally, there are the suburbs, “where the plurality of general election voters live,” the AP said. Voters there were not “particularly welcoming to him in this year’s GOP contests. He split the suburban vote with his opponents in Iowa and New Hampshire and won the suburbs in South Carolina by a smaller margin than in the state as a whole.”

This double trouble – the need for expanding the base even as it’s shrinking – has been understood among Republicans who are good at politics. (Trump is bad at politics.) This is why there’s a “growing chorus” of allies urging him to focus less on “grievances” and more on issues, or “hitting” Biden, to bring back GOP voters who’ve strayed.

But either he isn’t listening or he can’t help himself. (Actually, it’s both). Recently, Trump sat with Fox host Bret Baier, who asked: “What do you say to that female independent suburban voter to win her back?” Trump: “First of all, I won in 2020 by a lot. Let’s get that straight.”

While that clearly works with most Republicans, it doesn’t work with all, because, to these holdouts, it sounds like he’s “talking about being a victim,” as Haley said last week. “At no point has he ever talked about the American people. All he’s doing is talking about himself. And that’s the problem — it’s not about him. It’s about the American people.”

But even if Trump were to stick with campaign issues, like the “crisis at the border,” there’s a problem. He doesn’t care about them strongly enough to remain focused on them. He cares about defeating his enemies, to be sure, especially Joe Biden, whose administration is “victimizing” him. But actual problems? No. He doesn’t care. Problems are for exploiting to gain power to liquidate enemies, not for solving.

Republicans who are good at politics, and who are urging him to “pivot” to the general, also know who their party’s presumptive nominee is. He can’t adjust, won’t adjust. He’s running the same campaign in 2024 that he ran in 2016, only it’s a thousand times more dictatorial. Even when coaxed oh-so-gently into adjusting, Trump reverts to form. During a recent interview involving a question about government secrets found at Mar-a-Lago, Fox’s Sean Hannity suggested that he wouldn’t really commit crimes, would he? In essence, Trump said, ‘Sure, I would.’”

All the above is why Trump needs the Russians. His base is shrinking. He’s alienating “that female independent suburban voter.” He can’t adjust, won’t adjust. He doesn’t care about problems enough to solve them. All he can do – the one thing he’s good at – is hold steady while the Russians, in coordination with the Republicans, attack Joe Biden, smear him, wear his people down, “flood the zone with shit,” as advisor Steven Bannon once said, in a nihilistic act of “voter suppression.”

Indeed, as MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow pointed out recently, 2024 will be the third election cycle in a row in which Vladimir Putin’s saboteurs are once against attacking American sovereignty and interfering with our democratic decision-making, Meanwhile, GOP leaders will either stand by and watch it happen (as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell did in 2016) or participate (as the House Republicans are now by pursuing an impeachment inquiry against the president, or as Joe Conason put it, by pursuing “a bogus case invented in Moscow.”)

[John Stoehr]

#The Editorial Board #John Stoehr #election 2024 #Dave Whamond #editorial cartoon #Russian disinformation campaign #TFG

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mouthfulloftoothpasterry · 3 years ago

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Can I request princess y/n and guard!harry? She’s very aloof and shy but known for being super sweet and Harry’s grumpy gaurd but they have a secret relationship in the kingdom

OKAY IM DOWN TO ADD THAT TO MY CONCEPT TROPES BC THATS SO CUTE :(((

Yk I don’t know much about being a princess or all that royal stuff but I’ve always wanted to write something about it :(

So I’m so happy you brought it up

The way I said I was gonna sleep and now I’m up writing this

Fuck a good sleep schedule

ANYWAYYSSS :)))

SOOO she’s in her early adult years now (like twenty or something) so that means she’s finally allowed out to do thing and not shoved up in the giant mansion all day

So she’s out in the gated yard, annoying the guards, maybe hanging out with a friend or something

And she’s trying to see if the guards will break and laugh or get mad at her

So she does anything, making stupid silly faces, trying to whisper jokes, or tickle their noses with a feather

And Harry was the only guard to break just to say “Stop acting immature. I’m trying to work, princess.”

And that would shock her because 1) no guard had ever talked to her before and 2) none of the other guards broke character

So she’s so shocked and instantly gets embarrassed “oops, I’m sorry for bothering! I’ll go back inside.”

And Harry really never talked to her or really cares to because he knew the way her mother was (well say the mother is her queen to make it easier) and she could be pretty stuck up, so she just assumed Y/n was the same way until he talked with the other guards on a lunch break or something

And he tells them about what happened and tells them how it was rude and it annoyed him and saying something about her being as stuck up and arrogant as her mother

And the guards are like “princess Y/n????”

“She’s the sweetest, she always gives us the nicest Christmas gifts and makes us homemade cookies each year” and maybe Harry was a new guard so he didn’t know about that

And when he heard the stories about how kind the princess is he changes his mind

And something changes once he meets her again

Let’s say he was working in the hallway where her room is (idk how that guard stuff works I’ve only seen stupid hallmark Christmas movies where they are princesses and stuff 😢 so forgive my ignorance) and she comes home super late and really upset, crying, her little heels in her hand while walking back and she’s just a crying mess

And she bumps into him like “I’m so sorry, I didn’t even see you. I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”

And of course he has to break and talk “I’m fine, dear. Why don’t you get yourself back to your room”

And she can’t stop crying so eventually he’s like “let me walk you to your room.” So he walks her in and makes sure she’s okay and she keeps apologizing for wasting his time and bumping into him and burdening him with her silly emotions

So he gets curious and asks what’s wrong

“Just boy problems.” Because maybe she was seeing a boy outside of a royal family, just an average Joe

And he sold a story about her or something, some nasty stuff that was completely untrue

So she tells him about what happened and of course he’s like “oh my god. I’m so sorry. You don’t deserve that.”

And they get to talking and she leans in to kiss him after he dabs off her tears from her cheeks and as soon as the kiss is over she’s apologizing and beating herself up over kissing a guard

And that’s kind of where their relationship blossoms

And every time he has a night shift she’s pulling him into her room and they are making out, and it takes her a couple months to finally sleep with him

Letting him carefully peel one of her gowns off before he lays her out of her big fancy canopy bed and makes love to her

But then it becomes a regular thing where she pulls him into her room and they have a quickie before she has to let him go and work before someone notices

And if he was working inside she would sit in that hallway and talk to him and anytime someone walked past she would hurry up and shove herself in a closet

And she would tease him so much for his grumpy attitude towards everyone

But once they got more serious she would be sneaking out in the middle of the night to go over to his fist to stay with him before she had to run back at 5:30 am before her mother was up

And I could see the paparazzi snapping photos of her when she runs to Harry’s flat and they start writing crazy articles about her

PLEASEFHT her mother would be furious

Guessing she’s with absolutely anyone before she jokingly says she’s with a guard and y/n’s body language shifts and she gets awkward

And her mother is like “oh my god you’re with a guard?!”

And her mom tires to fire Harry once she find out which guard it is and y/n is like “you can fire him for this but he’s not going to be working for us any longer since we’re getting married 😌”

Okay okay I think I got a little ahead of myself but that’s all I got so let me know your thoughts :)))

#random #princess!y/n #harry styles

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serenata-your-neighborhood-lefty · 4 years ago

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Reddit bankrupts at least one hedgefund: An explanation by AoShin

Alright kids, sit down while I tell you what on earth is happening. It's a once in a lifetime historical event. It's insane. At least 1 hedgefund has gone bankrupt, thanks to a group of average joes on Reddit. By the end of the week, there will be a line of bankruptcies.

So let's start at the beginning:

First of all, stocks are pretty simple, when they go up in value, you make money, because it's worth more than you bought it for. Stock goes up- you make money. Stock goes down- you lose money.

Short selling is the opposite. Short selling makes money when the stock goes down in value. Short sellers borrow someone else's shares, and sell them, with the goal of buying them back later, and pocketing the difference as profit. So, Tim borrows Bob's shares in GME, and sell them for $10, he pays Bob $1 to do this, and promises to give all of Bob's shares back. Then, if the stock goes down to $5, Tim buys the shares back at a cheaper price. So Tim's profit is $10-$5-$1 = $4 profit.

So that's where we start. A hedge fund tried to force down the price of Gamestop, and short the stock. It usually works fine. It's been done thousands of times, with no problems. So they shorted Gamestop (GME) from $20, to $10, to $4. Their greed kept compounding. They kept doing it again, and again, for months. Making billions of dollars, and almost bankrupting this company.

Enter Wallstreetbets. A trading/investing subreddit.

Someone noted that these hedgefunds shorted 140% of all shares available. These hedgefunds were so damn greedy, they borrowed more shares than actually existed. That's how arrogant and dumb they were. They borrowed 140% of all the available shares. It was literally impossible for them to buy them all back. So someone on Wallstreetbets realized this, and told everyone. Now, the rule with short selling is that ALL those shares that they borrow, MUST be paid back. And so we reach our main story of how the hedgefund's greed ruined them.

Realizing that these hedgefunds shorted GME by a ridiculous amount, these Redditors (a bunch of regular Joes like you and me), bought every share they could get their hands on. Driving the price up as much as possible. Why? Because these hedgefunds eventually (within a few months) HAD to buy all those shares back, at whatever price they could get them. They didnt have a choice.

So if they borrow a million shares, and sold them for $10. They made $10 million in immediate profit. But eventually, they HAD TO buy those million shares back. They didn't have a choice. That was the deal they made when they borrowed the shares.

So these Redditors bought the shares, driving the price up, forcing these hedgefunds to buy back at crazy prices. Yeah, the hedgefund sold and made $10 million, but now they had to spend $147.98 million getting those same shares back. A HUGE FUCKING LOSS of $137.98 million.

So eventually, the due date for when these hedgefunds need to return the borrowed shares comes closer.

And what do they do? They double down. They short MORE. Because they're sure that they can manipulate the stock enough to get it to crash, thereby saving themselves.

Fastforward a few days, every attempt to crash the stock fails. Oh it works temporarily, but not enough for them to save themselves. Everyone knows what theyre trying to do, so people keep buying the stock. And with every additional bit of media attention, more and more people are buying the stock, destroying the greedy hedgefund in the process. Eventually Melvin Capital- a multi billion dollar hedge fund, needs a bailout, because it has lost so much money shorting GME. They borrowed billions off another hedgefund. That was yesterday. The stock price was $76.

Today, the stock ended up at $147.98 for every share. Up from $4. These hedgefunds are STILL shorting the stock, at 130% of available shares. That's how fucking greedy these guys are. All those millions of shares STILL have to be paid back.

And that's where our story picks up. Hedgefunds are crying on CNBC. on CNN. on FoxNews. On literally every every platform they can get their hands on. They want the government to stop trading. They want this reddit forum investigated and banned. They're screaming ''market manipulation'', when in reality these hedgefunds were the ones manipulating the stock, but they got caught, and are now trying to take their ball and go home.

Now, if you haven't realized it yet:

With a normal investment, when buying stocks normally, the maximum you can lose is your original investment. When short selling, your losses are theoretically infinite. Because you HAVE to buy back at whatever price is available. So while these hedgefunds are on every news channel, every investing segment screaming about Reddit and Wallstreetbets, they inevitably draw attention to themselves, and what's going on.

Enter the ''whales''- individual investors who can make a splash and impact the stock. Millionaires and billionaires that have a bone to pick with hedgefunds and short sellers. Elon Musk famously despises short sellers, because they tried to cripple Tesla so often. With a single tweet, Elon sent the share price skyrocketing from $147.98 to $230. And along with Elon Musk, a huge number of wealthy ''whales'' have started to jump in. Buying up HUGE amounts of stock, at crazy prices.

But these investors don't care. They don't care how expensive they buy the stock for. Because they KNOW these hedgefunds MUST buy the shares back. For many of them, they don't actually care if they lose money. They just want to watch these hedgefunds burn.

Does this mean you should buy GME? I'm not gonna answer this question, because you obviously shouldn't be listening to strangers on the internet when it comes to your money. There's a lot of upside to buying GME, but there's also a crazy amount of downside. Tomorrow the share could go back to $4 and you could lose everything. These shares are obscenely overvalued, and the only reason they keep going up is that people are gambling that the hedgefunds will buy them for a higher price (they likely will, but up until what point?). It's a game of chicken. When the game ends, the house of cards will crumble, and people will lose millions.

The only thing I can recommend is that you grab a beer, and keep an eye on GME and enjoy the fireworks.

- AoShin, here

#our economy is just a really shitty casino #wall street #gamestop #late stage capitalism #usa #america #politics #billionaires #1%#leftist #anti-capitalist #leftblr #progressive #socialist #anti-capitalism #left #eat the rich

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scp-10000 · 3 years ago

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Massive Au

Yes, here I am again using this as my daily writing, and flexing my creative muscles on a fandom au instead of actually writing my own danmed book. Oh well.

This is my Hermitcract, Empires, Truly Bedrock, Evo, 3rd/Last Life, Afterlife au that formed after I watched Gem’s Afterlife Sereis; Everyone has 1 life and 1 origin.

-Since I ended on Martyn last post, let’s start with Netty. She’s a bush baby standing about 2 and a half feet tall(or shorter than the 1 full block/meter I give to woodland creatures like the trash pandas) who nursed Martyn back to health in her treetop home when he first arived. She also fought off Ly when Zlonathan sent her to go see what’s up with the new stranger who fell from the sky. Netty made Ly to back off with her longsword skills.

-Big B, Ren, and Shubble are dogs. Not wolves, domestic dogs. Or more like half feral dogs. They don’t really need to live by villager civilizations, but it is easier. It’s also easier to build a house over the existing village and put a window and a couch by the front door just for all 3 of them to bark at visitors. There was also that one time Zloy corrupted them and made them netherhounds, dogs who can breath fire and cast horrable spells on prey. Luckally Martyn kicked Zloy’s ass for that one and lifted uncorrupted them.

-Joey’s a reaper. He was a regular villager before he died, but when he did a reaper gave Joey his job and screwed off to an afterlife not even Joey knows about. Joey guides dead things to the afterlife they go to, and he does a decent job at it. One thing he doesn’t enjoy about the job is seeing the ocasional undead thing crop up.

-There are two branches of Mentalist, those with powers like telekenesis, hypnosis, and mind reading, and those with the ability to physically absorb knowledge and beam it directly into peoples’ brains. Hypno is the former, and Joe is the latter. Hypno has no problem using his telekenesis and hypnosis to mess with people(ask xB, Keralis, or Jevin), but he’ll usually stay out of people’s minds. The only exceptions he made were with Joe, who he later tried to force to sleep cause Joe hasn’t slept in days, and both the dragon gods, which caused a mental overload that Joe had to drain out. Remember when I said Hypno tried to get Joe to sleep? That didn’t work because on the simple factor Hypno’s branch of Mentalist can only use their mind reading powers on Joe’s branch. Hypno’s self care telekenesis and hypnosis did not work on Joe. However, they did work on Joey. You see, Joe knows a way to avoid death that doesn’t involve becoming undead, and Joey’d kill to keep that secret. Joe’s not decide what he wants to do with it, but one day he died. Joey was this close to reaping him when Hypno came in and begged hypnotised Joey into not taking Joe. And it worked. Joey walked away, and when he was far enough Joe came back to life, and he was not able to be harvested that day.

-Since Hypno’s hypnosis is based both on looking him in the eyes and hearing his comands, it might not work so well on Jimmy. Jimmy is a Warden who paints eyes on where eyes should be in an attempt to not scare people. When Warden Jimmy was young, he lived in a cave closer to the surface. One day while was playing he found the surface. The young Warden tottled around experiencing the new sounds when he found an group of people who got scared of him and chased him deep into a cave...with an ancient city...where like 5 Wardens lived. Needless to say the mob was slaughtered, and their life force was used to feed young Jimmy before he burrowed with the rest of his kind. Wardens are incredible parents who regularly leave the cave to hunt for their children, pretty much always play with them, and will fight to the death for their young, and we’re talking the death of a creature that’s really hard to kill. When Jimmy left his parents to find a habitat of his own, he met the Scott and friends and did not get a fraction of the respect his parents showered on him.

This next section is for nether creaturs who are now living on the overworld due to a massive ongoing disaster. I want yall to guess what that disaster could be before I tell you about it.

-Silent was a piglin wandering the nether gathering gold. Not once in his life would he have ever considered walking through a nether portal into the strange cold world. However, the disaster showed up and he had to choose between death and the portal. He went through the portal, and supprise it also had death. He died and became a zombie piglin wandering around Zloy’s redstone basement. Zloy just let him live there, and in about a week he understood redstone and made his first noise machine just to annoy Zloy. Zloy wasn’t sure weather to be proud or annoyed.

-Joel and Tango are Blazeborn who both hate rain and half wisdom as a dump stat. They also spooked each other one dark night in the woods and caused a massive forest fire, but that’s another story. I would also be lying if I say “aside from that they’d be upstanding citizens”. Tango will absolutely prank the hels out of people for messing with him, and Joel will mess with people just cause. Despite the water, the overworld is more welcoming than the nether with the disaster still going on. Tango discovered redstone and was left to his own devices, and Joel married Lizzy and swore he would help her take her thrown as the true trash panda ruler.

-Impy is a strange creature. He’s an Impmallow, a little nether imp shaped like a squishmallow, and no one understans how he flutters around on his little wings. He even looks adorable when he’s mad, with his little pout, stamping his little feet and waggling his little scorpion tail. The only scary thing about him are the noises he makes. Impy can mimic any noise he ever hears and makes custom noises a lot. It’s almost like the little guy has a Goxlr in his throat. Honestly, even without the disaster going on, he’d have a hard time living in the general nether cause of how many other things that would attack him for being small and cute, so living in the overworld is great for him. It’s also funny watching them freak out whenever he sneaks up on them and makes weird noises.

Did you guess the nether disaster yet? Well if you haven’t I’m gonna tell you.

-The nether disaster’s name is Xisumavoid. X is a normal dude in the overworld, but his origin is based off The Doom Slayer. He loves tea, curry, music, and having conversations, and he would not attack unprovoked in the overworld. In the nether if you’re a nether mob or your origin is one, it’s on sight. He will try and kill you. He’s even been seen going after striders and impmallows, so being passive is not going to help. He also regains health, armor durability, weapon durablity, and/or ammo after each kill, so there’s that.

#3rd life smp #Minecraft Evolution #hermitcraft #empires smp #truly bedrock #nettyplays #bigbst4tz2 #rendog #shubble #joey graceffa #hypnotizd #joe hills #jimmy solidarity #silent whisperer #smallishbeans #tangotek #impulseSV #xisuma

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bettycanavosio · 3 years ago

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hope you were serious about that "i'd read a novel if you sent one" comment cause i've got more on henry realizing his priorities and getting frustrated with his career choices. i always figured he probably wouldn't want to be a capo even if he had the chance, because he seems to hate like...managerial shit and planning and being responsible for other people. he comes off as super disinterested when he's giving orders ("they should be there somewhere, ask her yourself, that's your problem"), he leaves joe to explain the plan in ch4, he wants the jobs done quietly (presumably so there won't be outside consequences), and i don't think he'd be suited for the pressure of having other people answer to him/being responsible for their safety; on the other hand he seems way more excited about the hit in ch5 when he's a part of it and he's planned it all out–he strikes me as a very "give me a target and a gun and i'll figure out the rest" type, not at all as a leader. in fact, the level of detailed with which the job in ch12 is planned seems very out of character compared to earlier in game, so clearly something's changed.

then he has that whole "you can spend the next thirty years breaking your ass for eddie and carlo before you either wind up dead or back in the can" thing. he spent twenty years working for empire bay's premiere shitbag only for it to all go up in smoke and leave him completely out of work and afraid for his life–all that loyal soldier shit for nothing, and now carlo's trying to start a war and henry's probably afraid of it being "same shit, different family." he's tired of working for people who don't give a shit about him (something i think he especially realizes with the knowledge that vito and joe do care about him) and not having anything to fall back on.

so i don't think the drug thing is just about cash; it's about freedom and a sense of security, and tbh reminds me a little of sammy robinson in m3 saying the money from the heist will help them get out from under sal's thumb. henry doesn't want to rise through the ranks, he just wants to quit being a pawn, and since he's way too jaded to consider going legit, he decides to go rogue instead. hell, the fact he says "let's just get through today" when joe mentions the idea of it becoming a regular thing makes me think he's maybe just trying to prove to himself that he can do it, that he's not completely beholden to carlo. he's just as tired as vito is, the difference is in the way he deals with it (especially because he can't see himself as anything but a gangster, a conclusion vito evidently comes to as well later on). and he wants vito and joe to come with him, because they're probably the only people in years who've actually cared about him, and the only thing he knows how to do in return ("after today, none of that [his past fuckups] matters") is to bring them in on the job so they won't get fucked over the same way he has for 20 years. he's trying to take care of them the only way he knows how.

god this is just where i argue with myself and go off topic for a solid five paragraphs i’m so sorry in advance

i genuinely got excited at that intro lmao i was so serious!!!! i think freedom is a massive part of it, but i also don’t believe he’s completely detached from the idea that money = success = happiness since that’s a difficult thing to break out of if it’s all you’ve ever known. i also think he just hates being alone, even if he’s characterised as this reserved calm collected wise guy who only cares about himself. that’s just how vito presents him to us. he didn’t have to bring vito and joe in on the deal, but he did. as a result, what he really wants and what he’s been taught to want get in the way of his main desire—freedom—which leads to the inevitable tragedy we got.

i like to think he was offered the opportunity of being a capo at some point and probably rejected it—he didn’t seem hungry for power, but maybe purpose. he’s only ever been thrown about: go to america, work for a family friend, you have to, you don’t have a choice, you were made for this. so he does. then when it’s all over with clemente, it’s like he’s been in a cage all this time and he’s only just been given a key to the door. does he leave? it’s all he’s ever wanted, but will it all go to shit if he does? is it safer to stay in the cage?

a funny (not so funny) thing to think about is how his pride quite literally killed him. well. depending how you look at it. he probably could’ve disappeared to another state and restarted his life like lincoln in that one ending if he wanted, but he’s too fixed on the idea that the life is the only thing for him—he stayed in the cage and starved in it. or got cleaved to death or whatever but that makes the metaphor sound like shit. sorry. anyway! i mean, joining a family and betraying them immediately? not that i blame him—as you say, same shit, different family—but jesus he had some balls to do it. i guess he wouldn’t consider going legit anyway. why would he? he doesn’t want to be good the way tommy does, the way tommy knows—he just wants liberty. it’s also strange how he says the whole thirty years speech as if he won’t wind up dead or in the can dealing drugs with his two inexperienced (in comparison) friends. i guess that’s more confirmation than any that it’s about freedom and his friends more than any of the other factors.

it’s interesting to me how he doesn’t have this thirst for power like most of them do (joe saying being a capo was “everything he’d ever wanted” surprised me to some degree. sort of didn’t. but that’s another story), especially as it would give him purpose. maybe he doesn’t like taking responsibility for other people because of something that happened in the past… maybe something to do with betty….. idk i’m just speculating (and going off topic)!!!! but now he’s found his purpose, and it’s to be loyal to the people who won’t use him, the only genuine people he’s known in decades. like you said, working for clemente was like carrying a bomb until all that loyalty blew up in his face.

the last part of what you said is so real and insane because if it is the only way he knows how, it also means he doesn’t know if it’s actually helping vito and joe at all. (insert dead bird in the cat’s mouth thing…) and like, of course he wouldn’t. i think he probably grew to recognise his father sending him away as some great honour rather than the death sentence it became. not that his other options were much better, but you know what i mean. in the end, the deal makes everything a million times worse, which makes the whole thing more tragic: henry never intended for things to go south for everyone else like he’s accused of, but instead acted out of kindness. (the whole “henry is a rat” bullshit really pisses me off because it’s totally illogical but again. that’s another story!!!!) it’s even more ironic because in wanting to grant them freedom, he only trapped them in the life forever. (joe working for leo, vito in new bordeaux… christ.) he can’t even defend himself in death. not that he’d ever admit it to their faces, but you know. at least he’d have a chance at trying. then again, i wouldn’t blame vito and joe for growing to hate henry as years went on—what did he do for them, really? he knew they were being scammed by clemente, he got vito a 10 year sentence, all their jobs went to shit. the only good thing henry did was try to be a friend. he just tried and tried and tried. to be honest, i think that’s enough for them. we’ve seen how forgiving they are, but idk. sometimes i wonder.

#this was. not coherent #in my defence i’m half asleep #ht #a*#harry

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mostlysignssomeportents · 4 years ago

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Facebook thrives on criticism of "disinformation"

The mainstream critique of Facebook is surprisingly compatible with Facebook’s own narrative about its products. FB critics say that the company’s machine learning and data-gathering slides disinformation past users’ critical faculties, poisoning their minds.

Meanwhile, Facebook itself tells advertisers that it can use data and machine learning to slide past users’ critical faculties, convincing them to buy stuff.

In other words, the mainline of Facebook critics start from the presumption that FB is a really good product and that advertisers are definitely getting their money’s worth when they shower billions on the company.

Which is weird, because these same critics (rightfully) point out that Facebook lies all the time, about everything. It would be bizarre if the only time FB was telling the truth was when it was boasting about how valuable its ad-tech is.

Facebook has a conflicted relationship with this critique. I’m sure they’d rather not be characterized as a brainwashing system that turns good people into monsters, but not when the choice is between “brainwashers” and “con-artists selling garbage to credulous ad execs.”

As FB investor and board member Peter Thiel puts it: “I’d rather be seen as evil than incompetent.” In other words, the important word in “evil genius” is “genius,” not “evil.”

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1440312271511568393

The accord of tech critics and techbros gives rise to a curious hybrid, aptly named by Maria Farrell: the Prodigal Techbro.

A prodigal techbro is a self-styled wizard of machine-learning/surveillance mind control who has see the error of his ways.

https://crookedtimber.org/2020/09/23/story-ate-the-world-im-biting-back/

This high-tech sorcerer doesn’t disclaim his magical powers — rather, he pledges to use them for good, to fight the evil sorcerers who invented a mind-control ray to sell your nephew a fidget-spinner, then let Robert Mercer hijack it to turn your uncle into a Qanon racist.

There’s a great name for this critique, criticism that takes its subjects’ claims to genius at face value: criti-hype, coined by Lee Vinsel, describing a discourse that turns critics into “the professional concern trolls of technoculture.”

https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5

The thing is, Facebook really is terrible — but not because it uses machine learning to brainwash boomers into iodine-guzzling Qnuts. And likewise, there really is a problem with conspiratorial, racist, science-denying, epistemologically chaotic conspiratorialism.

Addressing that problem requires that we understand the direction of the causal arrow — that we understand whether Facebook is the cause or the effect of the crisis, and what role it plays.

“Facebook wizards turned boomers into orcs” is a comforting tale, in that it implies that we need merely to fix Facebook and the orcs will turn back into our cuddly grandparents and get their shots. The reality is a lot gnarlier and, sadly, less comforting.

There’s been a lot written about Facebook’s sell-job to advertisers, but less about the concern over “disinformation.” In a new, excellent longread for Harpers, Joe Bernstein makes the connection between the two:

https://harpers.org/archive/2021/09/bad-news-selling-the-story-of-disinformation/

Fundamentally: if we question whether Facebook ads work, we should also question whether the disinformation campaigns that run amok on the platform are any more effective.

Bernstein starts by reminding us of the ad industry’s one indisputable claim to persuasive powers: ad salespeople are really good at convincing ad buyers that ads work.

Think of department store magnate John Wanamaker’s lament that “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Whoever convinced him that he was only wasting half his ad spend was a true virtuoso of the con.

As Tim Hwang documents brilliantly in his 2020 pamphlet “Subprime Attention Crisis,” ad-tech is even griftier than the traditional ad industry. Ad-tech companies charge advertisers for ads that are never served, or never rendered, or never seen.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/05/florida-man/#wannamakers-ghost

They rig ad auctions, fake their reach numbers, fake their conversions (they also lie to publishers about how much they’ve taken in for serving ads on their pages and short change them by millions).

Bernstein cites Hwang’s work, and says, essentially, shouldn’t this apply to “disinformation?”

If ads don’t work well, then maybe political ads don’t work well. And if regular ads are a swamp of fraudulently inflated reach numbers, wouldn’t that be true of political ads?

Bernstein talks about the history of ads as a political tool, starting with Eisenhower’s 1952 “Answers America” campaign, designed and executed at great expense by Madison Ave giants Ted Bates.

Hannah Arendt, whom no one can accuse of being soft on the consequences of propaganda, was skeptical of this kind of enterprise: “The psychological premise of human manipulability has become one of the chief wares that are sold on the market of common and learned opinion.”

The ad industry ran an ambitious campaign to give scientific credibility to its products. As Jacques Ellul wrote in 1962, propagandists were engaged in “the increasing attempt to control its use, measure its results, define its effects.”

Appropriating the jargon of behavioral scientists let ad execs “assert audiences, like workers in a Taylorized workplace, need not be persuaded through reason, but could be trained through repetition to adopt the new consumption habits desired by the sellers.” -Zoe Sherman

These “scientific ads” had their own criti-hype attackers, like Vance “Hidden Persuaders” Packard, who admitted that “researchers were sometimes prone to oversell themselves — or in a sense to exploit the exploiters.”

Packard cites Yale’s John Dollard, a scientific ad consultant, who accused his colleagues of promising advertisers “a mild form of omnipotence,” which was “well received.”

Today’s scientific persuaders aren’t in a much better place than Dollard or Packard. Despite all the talk of political disinformation’s reach, a 2017 study found “sharing articles from fake news domains was a rare activity” affecting <10% of users.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aau4586

So, how harmful is this? One study estimates “if one fake news article were about as persuasive as one TV campaign ad, the fake news in our database would have changed vote shares by an amount on the order of hundredths of a percentage point.”

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.31.2.211

Now, all that said, American politics certainly feel and act differently today than in years previous. The key question: “is social media creating new types of people, or simply revealing long-obscured types of people to a segment of the public unaccustomed to seeing them?”

After all, American politics has always had its “paranoid style,” and the American right has always had a sizable tendency towards unhinged conspiratorialism, from the John Birch Society to Goldwater Republicans.

Social media may not be making more of these yahoos, but rather, making them visible to the wider world, and to each other, allowing them to make common cause and mobilize their adherents (say, to carry tiki torches through Charlottesville in Nazi cosplay).

If that’s true, then elite calls to “fight disinformation” are unlikely to do much, except possibly inflaming things. If “disinformation” is really people finding each other (not infecting each other) labelling their posts as “disinformation” won’t change their minds.

Worse, plans like the Biden admin’s National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism lump 1/6 insurrectionists in with anti-pipeline activists, racial justice campaigners, and animal rights groups.

Whatever new powers we hand over to fight disinformation will be felt most by people without deep-pocketed backers who’ll foot the bill for crack lawyers.

Here’s the key to Bernstein’s argument: “One reason to grant Silicon Valley’s assumptions about our mechanistic persuadability is that it prevents us from thinking too hard about the role we play in taking up and believing the things we want to believe. It turns a huge question about the nature of democracy in the digital age — what if the people believe crazy things, and now everyone knows it? — into a technocratic negotiation between tech companies, media companies, think tanks, and universities.”

I want to “Yes, and” that.

My 2020 book How To Destroy Surveillance Capitalism doesn’t dismiss the idea that conspiratorialism is on the rise, nor that tech companies are playing a key role in that rise — but without engaging in criti-hype.

https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59

In my book, I propose that conspiratorialism isn’t a crisis of what people believe so much as how they arrive at their beliefs — it’s an “epistemological crisis.”

We live in a complex society plagued by high-stakes questions none of us can answer on our own.

Do vaccines work? Is oxycontin addictive? Should I wear a mask? Can we fight covid by sanitizing surfaces? Will distance ed make my kind an ignoramus? Should I fly in a 737 Max?

Even if you have the background to answer one of these questions, no one can answer all of them.

Instead, we have a process: neutral expert agencies use truth-seeking procedures to sort of competing claims, showing their work and recusing themselves when they have conflicts, and revising their conclusions in light of new evidence.

It’s pretty clear that this process is breaking down. As companies (led by the tech industry) merge with one another to form monopolies, they hijack their regulators and turn truth-seeking into an auction, where shareholder preferences trump evidence.

This perversion of truth has consequences — take the FDA’s willingness to accept the expensively manufactured evidence of Oxycontin’s safety, a corrupt act that kickstarted the opioid epidemic, which has killed 800,000 Americans to date.

If the best argument for vaccine safety and efficacy is “We used the same process and experts as pronounced judgement on Oxy” then it’s not unreasonable to be skeptical — especially if you’re still coping with the trauma of lost loved ones.

As Anna Merlan writes in her excellent Republic of Lies, conspiratorialism feeds on distrust and trauma, and we’ve got plenty of legitimate reasons to experience both.

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/09/21/republic-of-lies-the-rise-of-conspiratorial-thinking-and-the-actual-conspiracies-that-fuel-it/

Tech was an early adopter of monopolistic tactics — the Apple ][+ went on sale the same year Ronald Reagan hit the campaign trail, and the industry’s growth tracked perfectly with the dismantling of antitrust enforcement over the past 40 years.

What’s more, while tech may not persuade people, it is indisputably good at finding them. If you’re an advertiser looking for people who recently looked at fridge reviews, tech finds them for you. If you’re a boomer looking for your old high school chums, it’ll do that too.

Seen in that light, “online radicalization” stops looking like the result of mind control, instead showing itself to be a kind of homecoming — finding the people who share your interests, a common online experience we can all relate to.

I found out about Bernstein’s article from the Techdirt podcast, where he had a fascinating discussion with host Mike Masnick.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210928/12593747652/techdirt-podcast-episode-299-misinformation-about-disinformation.shtml

Towards the end of that discussion, they talked about FB’s Project Amplify, in which the company tweaked its news algorithm to uprank positive stories about Facebook, including stories its own PR department wrote.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/22/kropotkin-graeber/#zuckerveganism

Project Amplify is part of a larger, aggressive image-control effort by the company, which has included shuttering internal transparency portals, providing bad data to researchers, and suing independent auditors who tracked its promises.

I’d always assumed that this truth-suppression and wanton fraud was about hiding how bad the platform’s disinformation problem was.

But listening to Masnick and Bernstein, I suddenly realized there was another explanation.

Maybe Facebook’s aggressive suppression of accurate assessments of disinformation on its platform are driven by a desire to hide how expensive (and profitable) political advertising it depends on is pretty useless.

Image: Anthony Quintano (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mark_Zuckerberg_F8_2018_Keynote_(41793470192).jpg

Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

#pluralistic

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thenextcelestialchapter · 3 years ago

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Predictions for the next upcoming season of “The Boys” (Spoilers for previous seasons)

Okay, I figure someone else probably guessed this, but what the heck, I might as well throw my bone too. XD

I’ve been watching some videos on youtube explaining some of the differences so far between the comic book and amazon prime version of “The Boys” and some of the things that happened in the comic version. So now I think I have a pretty good guess for what Homelander is going to do in the next season and how he might even die.

Apparently in the comics Homelander leads a whole army of Supers against Neuman, who is gender swapped and the president. I think this is going to happen in the next season too but in a totally different way and with a totally different outcome.

All those people that were cheering for Homelander at the end of the last season, instead of getting together a bunch of other existing Supers, I think Homelander is going to recruit the most zealous of that lot and give them Temp-V for the riot. I think this for several reasons. I think there aren’t enough Supers that would willingly do what Homelander wants, but there’s more than plenty regular “mud people” that would love the chance to get to be like their favorite gods for a few days. I don’t know if Homelander would tell them the truth about Temp-V being fatal but honestly, I think even if he was completely honest about that, he’d still be able to put together his own army of willing regular Joe Shmoes who would literally die to get to be a Super for just a few days of their life and do some crazy amazing-sounding, history-changing mission for Homelander...

I think in particular Todd is going to be one of those guys and if he gets his hands on powers, I’m guessing M.M. is gonna be like, “*Chuckles* I’m in danger!” XD;;

The problem that is going to cause the snag that ruins/saves everything is that video of Homelander letting that flight go down and killing everyone on board. The show probably expects us to forget that because Homelander said that he doesn’t really consider it a threat anymore because if it’s released he’ll just go on a rampage. That plus that fact that all these people just supported how he killed that guy is going to warp Homelander’s head into thinking they support it all the time. All these new obsessed people cheering for him every time he kills someone they don’t like is going to lull Homelander into thinking they’ll support him no matter who he kills or what he’s done. I have a feeling Homelander is going to project his need for a family onto these new obsessive fans, and him giving them superpowers is also a way of recognizing the most loyal of them.

I think that the video of Homelander letting that flight go down IS going to be eventually revealed, there’s no way they’d tease us so much with something so important and not have it pay off. I think that it’s going to be released during the riot when Homelander has his army of temporary Supers attacking with him. They’re all going to see what he really is then, in the moment that they all have superpowers like him. He’s not going to even try to deny it, he’s going to assume they’re still going to support him.

He’s going to be Dead Wrong. :)

And bc drama, there’s gonna HAVE to be at least one guy in that army of Temp Supes that had a family member or kid that was on that plane. I have a feeling it might be Todd. Like wouldn’t that be messed up if before becoming Janine’s stepfather, Todd’s wife and kid was on that plane, his daughter was the one who Homelander was begged just to save her? And Todd has looked up to Homelander all this time thinking that he tried to save them?

I know a lot of people want Butcher to finish Homelander, but I just dunno. He’s gone too far. I think it would be more rewarding to see Homelander’s own hubris become his undoing, and to have one last “Family” betray him before he gets done in is just what he deserves. And if he didn’t tell them about Temp-V being fatal, revealing that plus the flight video would definitely make even his most diehard supporters turn on him and want him dead.

If 4-5 Supes working together stood a chance of taking down Homelander, then yeah, I think an army of them united in being pissed off against him would do the job. Butcher might be able to get the last finishing shot in with that last bit of Temp V that Hughie didn’t take, but otherwise I think he’d be happy to at least see Homelander get taken down once and for all.

#the boys spoilers #the boys #the boys homelander #the boys butcher #the boys amazon

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feelingbluepolitics · 4 years ago

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/23/robert-kagan-constitutional-crisis/

Much of this article is trash, written by a mewling conservative trying to distinguish Republicon policies and Republicon ideology as beyond and separate from "trump precursors" for "the last 30 years." Try 60 years, or more. Go all the way back to them with their fury and screams over Social Security as an evil Communist plot.

Kagan is a Never-trumper attempting to sound reasonable despite being a mental conservative, who thinks -- much like poor, beleaguered Joe Manchin -- that Democrats "need to let good Republicons" help them save the country.

He's one of those types of fools who, when he speaks of officials with integrity, is alluding to Mr. Anti-vote Raffensperger, who is to voting like so many white male Republicons are to immigration -- none too happy about illegal or legal. His hero Raffensperger is also one of the leading architects of the Republicon rash of Jim Crow 2.0 laws which Kagan points to as a prime symptom of Nazi-type fascism threatening American right now...but logical consistency fares extremely poorly on the Right.

However, there are some useful points in this article. The criticism leveled toward the Right by a [pre-trump] insider is one. And the insistent urgency of our nation's crisis is another.

"The United States is heading into its greatest political and constitutional crisis since the Civil War, with a reasonable chance over the next three to four years of incidents of mass violence, a breakdown of federal authority, and the division of the country into warring red and blue enclaves. The warning signs may be obscured by the distractions of politics, the pandemic, the economy and global crises, and by wishful thinking and denial. But about these things there should be no doubt:

"First, [t]rump will be the Republican candidate for president in 2024. The hope and expectation that he would fade in visibility and influence have been delusional. He enjoys mammoth leads in the polls; he is building a massive campaign war chest; and at this moment the Democratic ticket looks vulnerable. Barring health problems, he is running. [Or legal problems. Or even better, in order to be a bit safer, both].

"Second, [t]rump and his Republican allies are actively preparing to ensure his victory by whatever means necessary. [t]rump’s charges of fraud in the 2020 election are now primarily aimed at establishing the predicate to challenge future election results that do not go his way. Some Republican candidates have already begun preparing to declare fraud in 2022, just as Larry Elder tried meekly to do in the California recall contest.

"Meanwhile, the amateurish 'stop the steal' efforts of 2020 have given way to an organized nationwide campaign to ensure that [t]rump and his supporters will have the control over state and local election officials that they lacked in 2020. Those recalcitrant Republican state officials who effectively saved the country from calamity by refusing to falsely declare fraud or to 'find' more votes for [t]rump are being systematically removed or hounded from office. Republican legislatures are giving themselves greater control over the election certification process. As of this spring, Republicans have proposed or passed measures in at least 16 states that would shift certain election authorities from the purview of the governor, secretary of state or other executive-branch officers to the legislature. An Arizona bill flatly states that the legislature may 'revoke the secretary of state’s issuance or certification of a presidential elector’s certificate of election' by a simple majority vote. Some state legislatures seek to impose criminal penalties on local election officials alleged to have committed 'technical infractions,' including obstructing the view of poll watchers.

"The stage is thus being set for chaos.

..."Most Americans — and all but a handful of politicians — have refused to take this possibility seriously enough to try to prevent it. As has so often been the case in other countries where fascist leaders arise, their would-be opponents are paralyzed in confusion and amazement at this charismatic authoritarian. They have followed the standard model of appeasement, which always begins with underestimation. The political and intellectual establishments in both parties have been underestimating [t]rump since he emerged on the scene in 2015. They underestimated the extent of his popularity and the strength of his hold on his followers; they underestimated his ability to take control of the Republican Party; and then they underestimated how far he was willing to go to retain power. The fact that he failed to overturn the 2020 election has reassured many that the American system remains secure, though it easily could have gone the other way — if Biden had not been safely ahead in all four states where the vote was close; if [t]rump had been more competent and more in control of the decision-makers in his administration, Congress and the states. As it was, [t]rump came close to bringing off a coup earlier this year...

..."Where does the Republican Party stand in all this? The party gave birth to and nurtured this movement; it bears full responsibility for establishing the conditions in which [t]rump could capture the loyalty of 90 percent of Republican voters. Republican leaders were more than happy to ride [t]rump’s coattails if it meant getting paid off with hundreds of conservative court appointments, including three Supreme Court justices; tax cuts; immigration restrictions; and deep reductions in regulations on business.

..."From the uneasy and sometimes contentious partnership during [t]rump’s four years in office, the party’s main if not sole purpose today is as the willing enabler of [t]rump’s efforts to game the electoral system to ensure his return to power.

..."With the party firmly under his thumb, [t]rump is now fighting the Biden administration on separate fronts. One is normal, legitimate political competition, where Republicans criticize Biden’s policies, feed and fight the culture wars, and in general behave like a typical hostile opposition.

"The other front is outside the bounds of constitutional and democratic competition and into the realm of illegal or extralegal efforts to undermine the electoral process. The two are intimately related, because the Republican Party has used its institutional power in the political sphere to shield [t]rump and his followers from the consequences of their illegal and extralegal activities in the lead-up to Jan. 6. Thus, Reps. Kevin McCarthy and Elise Stefanik, in their roles as party leaders, run interference for the [t]rump movement in the sphere of legitimate politics, while Republicans in lesser positions cheer on the Jan. 6 perpetrators, turning them into martyrs and heroes, and encouraging illegal acts in the future.

..."Even [t]rump opponents play along. Republicans such as Sens. Mitt Romney and Ben Sasse have condemned the events of Jan. 6, criticized [t]rump and even voted for his impeachment, but in other respects they continue to act as good Republicans and conservatives. On issues such as the filibuster, Romney and others insist on preserving 'regular order' and conducting political and legislative business as usual, even though they know that [t]rump’s lieutenants in their party are working to subvert the next presidential election.

"The result is that even these anti-[t]rump Republicans are enabling the insurrection. Revolutionary movements usually operate outside a society’s power structures. But the [t]rump movement also enjoys unprecedented influence within those structures. It dominates the coverage on several cable news networks, numerous conservative magazines, hundreds of talk radio stations and all kinds of online platforms. It has access to financing from rich individuals and the Republican National Committee’s donor pool. And, not least, it controls one of the country’s two national parties...

"The world will look very different in 14 months if, as seems likely, the Republican zombie party wins control of the House. At that point, with the political winds clearly blowing in his favor, [t]rump is all but certain to announce his candidacy, and social media constraints on his speech are likely to be lifted, since Facebook and Twitter would have a hard time justifying censoring his campaign. With his megaphone back, [t]rump would once again dominate news coverage, as outlets prove unable to resist covering him around the clock if only for financial reasons.

"But this time, [t]rump would have advantages that he lacked in 2016 and 2020, including more loyal officials in state and local governments; the Republicans in Congress; and the backing of GOP donors, think tanks and journals of opinion. And he will have the [t]rump movement, including many who are armed and ready to be activated, again. Who is going to stop him then?

..."[Republicons] have refused to work with Democrats to pass legislation limiting state legislatures’ ability to overturn the results of future elections, to ensure that the federal government continues to have some say when states try to limit voting rights, to provide federal protection to state and local election workers who face threats, and in general to make clear to the nation that a bipartisan majority in the Senate opposes the subversion of the popular will. Why?

[They, just like trump, want and intend to be in power at all costs.

..."We are already in a constitutional crisis. The destruction of democracy might not come until November 2024, but critical steps in that direction are happening now. In a little more than a year, it may become impossible to pass legislation to protect the electoral process in 2024. Now it is impossible only because anti-[t]rump Republicans, and even some Democrats, refuse to tinker with the filibuster. It is impossible because, despite all that has happened, some people still wish to be good Republicans [sic] even as they oppose [t]rump. These decisions will not wear well as the nation tumbles into full-blown crisis."

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haworthiaace · 5 years ago

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Magic Misfits AU

Ok so basically we made an au based off of the fact that Scar kept calling his village the village for magical misfits. Scar finds out that he somehow ended up on a server for magical misfits, and now he’s created a sort of safe haven within the server, so naturally they flock to it. Some hermits don’t surprise him, the ones that don’t really bother making an effort to hide their magic, or the ones who can’t hide it. But some hermits deeply confuse him. Chaos ensues.

TLDR Scar becomes a magical therapist for the hermits

Scar is a wizard, he doesn’t really specialize in anything besides his crystals, which is why he’s able to help with a variety of magical issues. He ends up becoming the one entrusted with everyone’s secrets and problems, which makes him Stressed, but he enjoys helping his friends.

Both Xisuma and Evil Xisuma are shapeshifters, with the ability to change their appearance, but not their size. X keeps his appearance hidden from the hermits, which of course inspires wild theories ranging from eldritch abomination to biblical angels, but X won’t reveal if any theories are true. The only ones that know are Hypno (explained later) and Scar. Scar found out when Xisuma showed up hurt at his doorstep, without enough energy to keep another form. Scar was sworn to secrecy afterwards, and he deeply enjoys listening to other hermits pester him for answers. X actually just looks startlingly average, to the point that he’s unwilling to reveal himself solely because people expect him to be something a little more intimidating, and especially now with the ridiculous rumours the hermits have started.

EX doesn’t hide his true form (which is identical to X’s), but of course the hermits don’t believe him, thinking that it’s just another disguise, and EX won’t confirm or deny because he thinks it makes them more afraid of him. (It doesn’t) He’ll also frequently try to impersonate hermits to destroy the server from the inside out, but he is a terrible actor (so is X) and rarely gets far in his plans.

Mumbo and Grian are fairies, but they’re originally from different communities (courts? I really don’t know much about fairies) so they don’t know the other is a fairy until Grian’s hermit challenges initiation. They can shrink into a smaller form that has wings, but it takes quite a bit of effort to switch between forms. (also fun fact: if mumbo is a fairy that means hermit challenges is a magically binding contract)

Iskall is just. Completely human. His prosthetic eye is powered by magic, (and maintained by Scar!) but other than that he’s just a dude. However, he has very strange things happen to him all the time because he’s befriended not one, but two fairies, and he hasn’t noticed either one. He finds that he often has abnormally good luck, and his lost objects will mysteriously turn up as soon as he complains to his best friends about it. He asks Scar if he knows anything, but Scar, not wanting to break Mumbo or Grian’s trust, has to play dumb while also helping Iskall with his ‘problem’.

Now this might come as a shock but. Ren is a werewolf. It may not be unique but it is fitting. One full moon near the beginning of season 7, Ren showed up at the village around sunset, and frantically insisted that Scar let him stay the night in an unoccupied house. So Scar let him stay, and the next morning Ren explained his Situation. So now Scar helps Ren be as comfortable as possible on the night of his transformation and the day after they just chill together.

Stress has her potion brewery, and she’s the first one on the list to fall into the category of Not Having Frequent Magical Emergencies; she just goes to the village to hang out because hey why not? It’s cozy, plus Scar helps her brainstorm potion recipes over cookies and hot chocolate. Scar comes to her often needing a potion (usually of the healing variety) because someone Fucked Up.

Tango is also human, but at some point he was cursed, and his vision started to literally turn red until it was all he could see. The curse was halted thanks to Zed and Impulse, but the red eyes still remain. (Though thankfully his vision returned) They aren’t sure what the curse would have done if it wasn’t stopped, and they’d be happy to never find out.

Zed is an elf, and while he does have a little bit of magic, it wasn’t enough to stop whatever was afflicting Tango, so he turned to more demonic methods. When Tango’s sight got really bad, he summoned a demon (Impulse) and offered his soul in exchange for a cure to the curse. Impulse did the best he could, restoring Tango’s vision but leaving the red eyes, and then left with his price. Zed’s health slowly started declining: he had basically no energy or life due to the separation from his soul. So Tango summoned Impulse back and asked for Zed’s soul back, but it couldn’t be returned without reversing the deal, and Zed wasn’t willing to do that. So Tango ‘asked’ Impulse to stay with them for a while so Tango could convince Zed to back out of the deal. It turns out that being near his soul (kept by Impulse) returned Zed’s energy, and Impulse decided he liked these two so they became a trio, and joined hermitcraft soon after.

Quite often 2 members of team ZIT will wake up Scar in the middle of the night because they accidentally did something to the missing member (banished Impulse, sent Tango to the shadow realm, etc.) and they don’t know what to do. Scar has a ZIT protocol. It’s used far too often. They also constantly try to figure out what the more human looking hermits are. They do not often succeed.

At night, Bdubs turns into a sleep paralysis demon looking creature, and he (unwillingly) curses people to sleep for a completely random amount of time. After an Incident with Wels in season 6, (that’s the reason for his ‘nap’) he makes sure to sleep as early as possible every night. He thankfully isn’t affected by this while in the End or Nether.

Alright lads here’s the angsty one. Beef has the midas touch, meaning everything he touches turns to gold. It works much slower on living creatures than on inanimate objects, but it still works on living things so that’s Not Good. He makes sure to wear special enchanted gloves that block his curse while wearing them. At some point he goes to Scar in a panic because he accidentally touched Etho with his bare hands, (Etho handles this surprisingly well) and Scar helps him fix Etho. (It’s minecraft rules. They just cut his arm off and it comes back.) After that they put a curse of binding enchantment on Beef’s gloves.

Cleo is still a zombie, and she sometimes gets Scar to help her with Zombie Problems when Joe isn’t available. The first time she showed up outside Larry with her (severed) arm held in one hand Scar nearly jumped out of his robes, but he’s pretty used to it by now and will just go inside to grab a needle and thread.

Joe certainly is something! Nobody is quite sure, even Scar. All Scar knows is that Joe knows way too much about everything, and yet he keeps asking Scar to help him translate Galactic. (Joe is secretly trying to teach Scar the language because he feels that it’s important for magic users to know, especially ones so versatile like Scar) Joe is some kind of oracle who receives visions of the past, present, and future, which is why he knows so much, and he’s also at least dabbled in almost every kind of magic there is. He’s a bit of a cryptid.

The local mad scientist is Cub, who does all sorts of weird experiments, and makes inventions that combine magic and technology in disturbing yet wonderful ways. He also got cursed by his pyramid, so now he has comically bad luck. It doesn’t usually cause any serious harm, just shenanigans. He of course embraces this and finds it funny as hell.

On top of Doc’s regular strangeness, (creeper hybrid, cyborg, goat whisperer?) he also for some reason attracts a frankly unreasonable amount of kitsunes. Nobody knows why, but he can be seen in the shopping district being trailed by no less than two foxes with varying amounts of tails. It’s really very cute, and the mystery of it infuriates the more investigative hermits. (Cub and team ZIT mostly)

Etho is a demigod, although nobody knows what god he’s descended from. (including Etho) He has the fun ability to grant others’ wishes, but because of his personality he chooses to twist these wishes and turn them into fun little pranks that technically give the person what they want, but not without annoying them first. He also doesn’t reveal this ability to the others, leaving them even more confused whenever he uses it, which isn’t often because it does drain him quite a bit.

False, being the badass she is, is a valkyrie. She towers over most of the hermits, and between her height, wings, and blazing sword she’s quite intimidating. Despite this, she’s still very sweet, and would never seriously hurt her friends on purpose, but enemies are a whole different story.

Hypno at first seems totally human, but he actually comes from a world full of magic, each person having their own individual ability. Hypno’s ability is to absorb/ cancel out magic, which means that no magic can affect him, and he can also choose to stop any magic by touching the target of the magic. This got him exiled from his world, but he found a new family in the hermits. Because he isn’t affected by magic, he can see through Xisuma’s disguise, but he just assumes that he sees the same thing as everyone else. He hangs out with Beef when he needs comfort because he knows Beef can’t accidentally hurt him.

Jevin is,, slime. Not a minecraft slime, he’s just a pile of sentient slime held together by magic. (Necromancy? probably) Hypno likes to mess with him by touching small parts of him and disrupting the magic so a chunk of his arm falls off. Scar then has to fix it, but it’s still funny.

Keralis has the power of hypnotizing people by looking into his eyes. (Nothing but his eyes) He of course uses this power for mischief, although nothing actually bad. Usually uses it to ‘convince’ people to buy a book or seven. He also sometimes does it on accident, in which case he drops them off at Scar’s until they snap out of it. Team ZIT keeps asking him to hypnotize X so he’ll reveal his true form, but Keralis doesn’t want to force him to reveal that, plus he finds their attempts at figuring it out entertaining.

XB is an unfortunately forgetful selkie, and most of his visits to Scar are because he lost his coat in one of his shulker boxes again. On one memorable occasion he arrived in a panic after losing his coat again, and Scar had to spend about 5 minutes trying to suppress his laughter enough to tell XB that it was on him.

TFC doesn’t have magical crises, much to Scar’s relief. He’s just a humble earthbender living in the mines, occasionally coming out to the village to ask Scar for a crystal to help his back pain, or to give the poor man an afternoon of peace. In fact, Scar turns the tables by asking TFC for magical help with terraforming, which he’s glad to offer in exchange for all that Scar does for everyone.

Wels is a bard, which makes his sea shanties even more powerful than they already are. When Hermitgang came out, a hole was blown in the G team base, much to the surprise of everyone inside at that moment. Hels is also a bard, but he prefers rock music over sea shanties. Diabolical was an actual magical duel, and it probably looked sick as hell.

Bonus: Jellie is secretly a powerful eldritch being, and is the only one with magic that can affect Hypno. It’s a good thing she’s interested in getting pets and treats rather than destroying the server, because she probably could. She casually hops between worlds whenever Scar isn’t around, going on delightful little adventures. Scar takes quite a while to figure this out, and loses his shit when he does. When she got struck by lightning, she just turned up totally fine the next day and Scar didn’t question it too much.

I’d like to thank the discord for helping with ideas, ya’ll are so creative and i appreciate you all <3 ( @skywillsometimeswrite @bigbadantianti @justletmeplayminecraft @badtimeswithscar @aceacebaby12345 @litabattoir @icewolfstar @burntmagicc @dicerxll @dioritegang @cut-the-string @anntonka @shadeswift99

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argumentl · 4 years ago

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The Freedom of Expression Ep 49 - Ioka Kazuto's New Years Eve tattoo problem.

K: Hi, this is Dir en grey's Kaoru with this week's episode of The Freedom of Expression. Joe san, Tasai san, welcome again this week.

T: What is the celebratory sake for?

K: Well, this is our first recording of the new year..

J: Yes

T: Happy New Year

J: Happy New Year. By the time this is broadcast it will already be well into January though.

K: Yes, so..for good luck.

J: Ah, that would be welcome....but Im not gonna drink it.

K: Why?

J: Um, I've said this a few times before, but my resolution for 2021 is to not go so crazy when drinking alcohol, to not get too carried away.

T: Hahaha

J: I've already decided on it.

K: Don't you always say that?

J: No, no, no. Um, recently...was it on the 27th? After the live broadcast? I left afterwards with Tasai.

T: Oh, yeah.

J: We left together, we got a taxi. Then when I arrived home, it was about 2am, right? When I tried to get in my house, I didn't have my keys.

T, K: Eh?!

T: Really??

J: I didn't have my keys..what could I do? I think i actually left them somewhere before i arrived here, and I hadn't been drinking before that. But in the end, I went to a hotel in my neighborhood...like, please let me stay here, I'll pay so please let me stay. So, I woke up the next day and called the real estate agent to ask if they had a spare key..they didn't. They said they'd given all the keys to me. So, I called around a few other places, and by about lunch time I managed to get hold of a key. But I had to go and do a live radio broadcast in this kind of messed up state, so..

T: Eh?!

J: Well, I mean, it wasn't the fault of alcohol this time, but I have lost my pocket wifi before while I was drunk, and my glasses...and Im constantly telling dirty jokes while drunk...so this year..., well, I will drink alcohol, but Im not gonna go wild.

T: Hahaha

K: Thats impossible!

J, T: Hahaha

Kami: Joe san, Joe san...

J: Oh, Kami? What is it? Kami's here.

Kami: Joe, you've become a boring guy.

J, T: Hahaha

Kami: You're trying to play it safe.

J: No, no, no. Can I really carry on? Drinking and going crazy this year too?

Kami: You need to be free. Please don't hold yourself back.

J: Haha

T: When we were going home in the taxi, you said, 'I think I've messed up'...

J: I was doing a bit of self-reflecting.

T: Your true voice slipped out.

J: I think it did.

K: What? Why, what happened again?

T: Yeah, what was it again?

J: Well, I think it was me just going a bit wild. It felt like I got carried away.

T: You felt that in yourself?

J: Well, I do, don't I? When I drink alcohol?

K: Well, yeah.

J: Kaoru, we've done a lot of events together, right?

K: Yeah, most of the time I'm like, 'Joe, calm down!'

J: And Im supposed to be the moderator!

T: You change places!

J: Right!

K: Also, he had to read out things written in Katakana and stuff, but he couldn't read the difficult words*1

J: There are a few reasons for that. After I've had a drink, I can't read difficult kanji, and also I have bad eyesight. Katakana has loads of spaces in it, right?

T: Maybe we should have let Tasai do it.

T: Yeah, I should have done the reading.

J: Kanji just turns into clumps.

K: Ok, well, today...Tasai, could you get us started?

T: Yes, this is about the big match on last New Years Eve. Its boxing news. It was the WBO super flyweight title match between Ioka Kazuto and Tanaka Kōsei. Ioka won the match, but this news deals with a slightly different aspect. Ioka's tattoos were visible during the match. The boxing commission have said this is a violation of the rules, and are considering imposing a penalty. Questions have been arising on social media like, 'Isn't this a mistake?', and, 'What about individual freedom?' Did you watch the match, Kaoru?

K: No, I didn't, but I saw it on the news.

T: Yeah. And, Ioka had actually covered his tattoos with foundation to hide them before getting in the ring, but sweating made the foundation come off.

J: I see.

T: So, its become a bit of a talking point, what to think about this.

K: This isn't the first time he's done this, right? He covered his tattoos before in other fights?

T: Yeah, to stop the foundation coming off he...

K: But foundation?...can you really hide them with foundation?

J: Haha, yeah, maybe not. They are too solid. So, he went ino the ring without foundation this time?

T: No, he had it on, but it came off with sweat.

J: Wouldn't that happen anyway?

K: If it did, that means its come off everytime up to now.

J: Right? Its not like its only come off this time. Its hard to understands why the JBC are raising this problem only now?

T: Well, its in the rules. The rules for matches are...in the rulebook, Match management section 4, conditions for boxers article 86, it says for things that make spectators feel uncomfortable, such as tattoos...if a boxer has tattoos, they must not appear in the ring.

J: Oh, thats written?

T: Yes, thats written in the rules. There have been cases in the past of boxers getting tattoos surgically removed in order to be able to compete in the ring.

J: Im not sure about this. Feeling uncomfortable just by seeing a tattoo...?

K: Regular people do though, don't they?

J: Do they?

K: Not people like us here, regular people are different.

J: Haha, of course.

K: But its Japanese people...foreigners have seen tattoos as pretty normal for quite a long time.

J: Right. Their police even have tattoos.

K: But we havn't got there in Japan yet. They are still thought of as scary. Even me, if I see someone with tattoos walk in, I don't say anything to them, but I do notice and look at them if they have tattoos.

J: Well..

K: You look though, right?

J: Well, I would think 'oh, they have tattoos'.

K: Yeh, but you would say ????*2

J: Well...

K: You would!

J: Would I? But...this is boxing, right? The spectators have come to watch people hitting each other.

K: Well, yeah, thats right.

J: For example, if a kabuki actor suddenly revealed tattoos all over their body, I have a feeling it wouldn't go down well with people who are going to see traditional arts, but if they are going to see people punching each other, would they be that bothered about tattoos?

K: Its because the rules havn't changed since a long time ago.

J: Yeah. Hmm, Im not sure about this. What's it like overseas?

T: Its totally fine overseas.

J: Its ok, right?

K: They don't mind if foreigners have them.

J: Ah, foreign boxers with tattoos are allowed to fight in Japan?

T: Yes.

K: So I think this is good. It could change how we do things *3

J: Yeah, it creates a stir, because there are quite a lot of people who know about this old rule. Um, even at events and stuff (I MC at a lot of events), some guests are instructed to wear long sleeeves when they attend. This is what Japan is like with tattoos.

T: But I think I read somwhere that the NBA also has the rule to cover tattoos. Like, they will wear armbands and stuff to cover them.

K: Even in baseball, the Giants have banned facial hair.

J: Have they?

T: The Giants have an unwritten code, let me think who had a beard....do you remember Ogasawara Michihiro/Gatz?

J: Oh yeah, the left handed player?

T: Yeah, when he joined the Giants he shaved it all off etc. That type of thing still happens, even now. Have a look next time the Giants play, none of them have facial hair.

J: I don't think foreign players will like these rules that Japanese have. This seems like its against the Constitution. It really does.

Kami: Its discrimination, right?

J: Yes, I agree.

Kami: Nishinari people are sensitive to discrimination.

J: Yeah, I mean, if they are gonna have this rule, they should ban tattoos for everyone in boxing, but to say its ok for foreign boxers but not Japanese ones.. its a bit...

Kami: Its unconstitutional. Its discrimination.

J: Yeh, I think its discrimination. But looking at some of the comments, some say that although its written in the rules, it can't be helped these days.

Kami: Its not fair though, letting Ioka get this incredible win, and then afterwards saying, actually, no.

T: Yes, thats right.

Kami: When I was younger I won at pachinko..

J: Haha, all of a sudden..

Kami: I had quite a babyface, and would get mistaken for being underage. They never said anything to me when I lost...

T: But when you handed in your tickets they told you no because you're underage?

Kami: Yeah, yeah. Even though they said nothing to me when I was losing. Its like they come to stop you after you start winning.

T: I see.

Kami: They will take all the benefits, but when it starts to get unfavorable...I sense that unfairness.

T: Ah, yeh. Well, its true that the boxing commission already knew that Ioka had tattoos. And they asked him to take part.

J: Yeah. Its not like he got the tattoos right before this match.

T: Thats right. Incidentally, he got this particular tattoo in America in 2018, September, to show resovle and determination for his comeback fight. And this time, he has also added his son's name as if to say 'lets fight together'.

J: Oh, thats a nice meaning....Sue them!

T: Sue them?

J: Yes, Tokyo Sports should sue them.

T: Why just us? haha. We should together.

J: ???*4

K: I wonder how this will turn out though.

J: Yeah. Is Ioka following the boxing commission then?

T: He is still waiting to see what they decide.

J: Ah, ok.

T: He is still waiting for their judgment.

J: So like, it will depend on the level of punishment he gets.

K: They'll just say its the rules.

T: In that case, he might just go to America, if he can't fight any matches in Japan.

J: Well, yeah.

T: I think this would be a bigger problem if it happened outside the ring. But its happened within the ring. Its still a fact that tattoos are seen as scary in this culture.

K: It seems so to me, speaking as a person who has tattoos.

J: Thats what you have felt from experience?　Exactly.

K: But you could say that he knew this when he got the tattoos. He knew they would tell him to stop.

T: Like, boxers definitely understand this.

K: He knows it, but he is still appearing in the ring, so if he has determination and resolve, its great. If he doesn't, its no surprise if he gets complaints.

J, T: I see.

J: Well, considering he did try to hide it, but the covering just came off, I wonder what will happen. Its not like he can wear clothes over it, right?

K: He could have put tape on it.

J: Oh, right, you can hide it like that too?

T: Yeah, there might be something like skin coloured tape.

J: Kami, can we have a last word from you on this?

Kami: Well, whatever the rules, making them only apply to Japanese is strange, right?

J: Well, yes, thats true. We'll have to keep a look out for what happens with this from now on.

K: Well, yeh.

T: To see how it develops, yeh.

K: Yeah. Kami seemed a bit lacking in vitality today, didn't he?

J: Yeah, he seems down. Kami, did something happen to you at new year time?

Kami: No, no, Im fine! Don't I sound it?

K: You sound like you are lacking a bit of punch.

J: With it being boxing, you'd expect him to have more 'punch'.

K: He just seemed a bit...regular.

J: Yeah.

Kami: Regular? haha.

K: He's laughing, haha.

T, J: Haha

J: The staff are making me laugh.

K: Ok, shall we finish here for today?

J: Yes

K: Ok, please subscribe. Thank you very much.

*1, 3 Not sure this is right.

*2, 4 Couldn't make out

#dir en grey #the freedom of expression #tfoe #kaoru #薫

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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Lilo and Stitch Crossovers: “Morpholomew” (American Dragon Long): Stop Trying to Make Am Drag a Thing (Commisson Done For WeirdKev27)

Hello all you happy people! And welcome to a brand new retrospective/story arc/thing from yours truly, comissoned directly by WeirdKev27. If you’d like to comission your own review or set of reviews like this one, it’s 5 bucks. Just contact me via my ask box or direct messages on this very blog or my discord technicolormuk#6550.

With Shadow Into Light in the books, Kev decided he wanted to comission something not duck related and a bit smaller as a buffer before the next big arc, ALL of three arcs from season 2 of Ducktales, and decided to go with something he suggested to be a while back as a possible future retrospective: The Lilo and Stitch Crossover episodes!

That’s right for the next three weeks, with TWO reviews this week since I had a spot open up and Kev paid for this one in full and way in advance, we’ll be taking a trip to Hawaii to visit everyone’s faviorte little girl, her best friend/pet/killing machine as they try to find homes for his 625 cousins.

I loved Lilo and Stitch when I was a kid: Disney admitely got their hooks in me on that one with their cool prequel comics in disney adventures. These comics set up the movie, showing Jumba creating Stitch and the events leading up to both getting captured. The movie did not disapoint with cool character designs, a drop dead gorgeous recreation of Hawaii, and a really heartfelt, heartbreaking and heartpumping story of loss, family, and ving rahmes voicing one of the few heroic child services workers i’ve seen in a medium, a refreshing change of pace. The film is a masterpiece and I really do need to watch it again sometime.

Given the series was a huge hit and that thsi was before the big lull in the late 2000′s and early 2010′s where Disney refused to make any tv shows based on their movies, a series followed, given a lead in by the direct to video movie Stitch.

The movie set up the basic premise; 624 capsules containing Jumba’s previous experiments, cousins as Stitch calls them, ended up raining over Kauai, awakening when dropped into water or any other liquid. Lilo and Stitch, with help from Jumba, his live in boyfriend Pleakley, her tought but fair sister Nani, and her boyfriend David, who dosen’t show up as much as i’d like but is my boy so he gets a mention here. But anyways our heroes try to reform the various engines of distructoin who all have unique powers and find them their one place they truly belong.

So yes the show was a Mons-type show clearly captalizing off pokemon.. but the slice of life setting as opposed to the shonen style of most shows following in pokemon’s wake, gave it it’s own unique feel: while our heroes did fight, it was more about shenanigans, adventures and what not with these unique creatures and the purpose is very heartflet: Lilo simply wants to give these guys the same kind of love and support she’s given Stitch and a chance to do good.

Opposing them is Gantu, the shark bounty hunter from the first film who, now out of a job, is working for Dr. Hamstervile, an imprisoned sceintest and a character I really don’t like that much as he’s not funny or a genuine threat or both and feels like a waste of time. Thankfully he’s not the focus and Gantu is instead partnered with 625, my faviorite Lilo and Stitch character. 625, as the name suggests, is stitch’s immediate prototype.. but unlike Stitch is too lazy and peaceful to be a real threat and isn’t even really a villian despite being on Gantu’s side. He’s busy making samwitches, his calling to the point when he gets a name in the finale movie it’s naturally Ruben, and snarking at gantu. He’s sadly not in this one but hopefully it’s JUST this one.

As you can tell I liked this show a LOT at the time. I haven’t watched it since, mostly because disney scarely replayed it after it’s run, but it was vibrant, fun and intresting and a nicely laidback and creative take. The fact I came into the franchise with the comics and thus 625, who was introduced there in fact, and had a hunger to know more about the other experiments certainly helped. It was great fun.

But while I grew up with the show and the four shows it teamed up with, i’ve never seen these episodes before these reviews. I wondered why for years as I caught the tail end of the kim possible one and saw images ocasionally, but never saw them.

Turns out it’s because in general Season 2 got screwed over. While Season 1 was pushed out the door fast and aired at a rapid pace Season 2.. was portioned out over several years, and the Recess crossover one, the last one aired and the last one i’ll be covering never even got to Disney channel, only airing on ABC kids, DIsney’s saturday morning block at the time I rarely watched. I did watch it’s predecessor one saturday morning though. Good stuff.

Since I couldn’t find any making of stuff for why these episodes happened, my best guess is DIsney wanted some cross promotion, and the shows used were chosen because they were the most popular at the time and honestly all 4 represent some of disney’s best, with Recess being in heavy reruns at the time, hence i’ts conclusion despite the show being finished before Lilo And Stitch the movie came out, let alone the series.

So yeah i’m taking this ride for the first time.. but I was happy to. While Kev pays for a lot of my work, I still have to accept the idea.. and this was a great one. It allows me to cover 5 amazing series and gage how much people would want to see reviews of said series on this blog in one fell swoop.

So to kick us off we have American Dragon: Jake Long, a series I waited forever to come to Disney + as I loved it at the time, badly need to rewatch it (Been busy ), and find it genuinely great: It’s a great teen superhero story about the magical protector of new york, with a charming lead, a great setting and horrifcally great villians in the violently racist magic creature hunting huntsclan.. and their top agent who happens to be jake’s love intrest Rose. It’s really excellent and i’m glad it’s now widely avaliable for all to see. I will say ahead that all four shows in this crossover arc are excellent, and were fine choices for this.

So what happens when an action comedy about a hip hop teenage dragon meets a slice of life show about aliens? Find out under the cut.

So we open at a fancy hotel where Lilo’s bringing lunch to her sister Nani when she runs into.. Keoni Jameson.

The second I remembered this kid all the hate just came flooding back, coursing through my veigns. Just pure liquid hatred for this little perosnalitiless little punk. Keoni is Lilo’s crush and local “stupid white audience stand in”. He has no real personality other than “generic cool kid” and “likes skating”, and just sucks the air out of the room anytime he’s in an episode. Keoni is part of a recurring problem in cartoons across the ages, one that’s slowly going away: the bland love intrest. Intorducing a character whose only traits are being cool for the lead to fawn over with usually no intent of either getting the two togehter or just ending it. IT’s annoying, it was in a good chunk of my childhood, I wish it’d stop. I cannot tell you how many shows used this trope. There were exceptions, American Dragon Jake Long actually used it well by not only making Rose a fleshed out character.. but making her jake’s nemisis in their other lives, and thus making things increidbly difficult on both once the truth comes out, with Jake grappling with if he can trust her or not and Rose grappling with the slow relization eveyrthing she was taught her whole life was wrong.

And again I have seen GOOD storylines using this as a tool: Dipper and Wendy ended with her having been aware teh whole time, but simply not knowing how to let him down given the age gap, and Regular Show rebounded the best from it: it turned the stop and start relatoinshpi of Mordecai and Margret’s relationship into a character flaw for him, openly explored it.. and ended up having him work past it and actually date her for a bit. Before she moved away, he got an even better love interest, then they destoryed the relationship in the worst way posisble and I wil lbe getting to that at some point. Some point.

So yeah even at the time it was done better, hindsight haas only made it worse and it made watching the first few minutes tough because I had to keep pasuing because I hate him so damn much. He just adds NOTHING to the show and is a blank yanwing void from which no good came out of and I was terrified he’d be in the rest of the episode. Thankfully while he drives the plot he’s only in this scene.. but it’s still one more scene than both 625 and Pleakly got. yeah both are missing, as is nani.

I did uncover one fun fact that made things a bit easier though: The crew ALSO hated Keoni. No really. Disney forced the character on them as they wanted an audience surrogate, and this abomination is what popped out. They DID NOT want him here and likely only used him as mcuh as they did because Disney forced it on them. And Disney would NOT learn from this as Star Vs got saddled with Alphonso and Ferguson soley because of network mandate. The two aren’t TERRIBLE characters but they aren’t great and feel as tacked on as they were. And part of this does fall on the crew: you CAN twist a stupid mandate like this to work well: Joe Murray was asked to add “A female character with a hook”, as in some sort of dumb gimmick to Rocko. He used those words, meant to create a superfical girl power cardboard cutout.. and created the wonderful Dr. Hutchenson, a bright cheery doctor, the series best sidecharacter.. and someone with a hook hand. But I won’t go too hard on them: they probably didn’t have as much room to manuver and the fact Keoni was sitll being shoved into episodes in season 2 tells me they likely had a set number of episodes he had to show up. I’m suprised they didn’t demand they have characters ask “Where’s Keonie?” any time he wasn’t in an episode. He was unecessary and it comes across with a massive chunk of unforutnate implications: that they didn’t think a series with a mostly hawaiann cast would work, that they wanted at least one other “nice” white character to offset myrtle instead of having the only major white character be a bully and antagonist, and that they thought tehir mostly white audience coudln’t enjoy a series without a white character, which as someone who was in the target demo at the time, I call bullshit on. As I said I hated him then, I hate him now and his involvement is the worst aspect of this episode.

So after Lilo fawns over him for a bit we find out this chonk of wood’s purpose in the episode: to set up the plot. There’s a massive Skate Competition coming to town with the prize being a really cool skateboard. This plot point itself.. I don’t mind. Jake is a skater, it’s part of his character and one of the things he loves doing in what minsicule spare time he has. And while it was a common trope at the time having a character skateboard really dosen’t harm most works. We’ve gotten great characters like Jake, Jackie Lynn Thomas, Branwen and Ronnie Anne Santiago out of it, and it feels like natural parts of the character, and frankly An Extremley Goofy Movie wouldn’t be NEARLY as awesome without having skateboarding bizzarley attached to the plot via the college x-games. Granted somtimes you get Rocket Power out of the deal but that’s the price you pay for the good stuff. I only regret it’s involved because Keoni has to be there and I had to pause multiple times to get through his scene. He’s just a sampler platter of terrible decisions made in 2000′s cartoons and he irritates me more than this guy.

And anyone whose read my Loud House reviews can tell you that is a high bar to clear.

So naturally Lilo wants to enter the Hawiann X-Games to get the board for Keoni. Though I will give the writers credit for having Stitch voice their thoughts and the audiences thoughts by having him take Keoni’s picture and throw it in the garbage. Where he belongs.

Lilo’s not great at it as they practice.. and said practice naturally ends up waking up a new experiment, 316.. who i’m just going to go ahead and call Morpholomew. Stitch eventually catches him though like many of the experiments he’s not actively malevelolent and is easy enough to get home.

Jumba gets to his schitck of breaking down what the experiment of the week does: In this case Morpholomew is a shapeshifter though he has a VERY intresting twist on those powers: while he can naturally morph himself into anything he’s seen or has a picture of, he can do the same to anyone he touches. It dosen’t effect their voices, but otherwise it’s a perfect recreation.

So Lilo instead of finding him a home right away.. decides to wait until after the compettition because we need him for the plot.

So at the Skateboard Competittion Lilo tries to enter, but finds she’s too young.. but since she has a picture of Keoni, which is a nice way to use her photo hobby from the movie for plot reasons and thus dosen’t feel like an ass pull. Why Keoni’s not in town to skate is as his dad left because it’d be too crowded.. even though the event is at the resort he owns.

So while Lilo commits identtity theft, our guest star appears. He’s cool, he’s hot like a frozen son, he’s young and fast he’s the chosen one, people i’m not braggin, i’ts the American Dragon. Jake is here for two reasons: the first is that Grandpa Long got reports of magical creatures out in the open, so naturally they need to look into that. It’s a clever way to get him, along with Grandpa, Fu, Trixie and Spud, over to Hawaii. The Dragon Council would defintely be suspcious hearing about this, and my guess to why they hadn’t sent another dragon over is they simply dont’ have one on the islands. As for why the Huntsclan didn’t get involved in any way, it’s simply too public for them. With the magical community in new york, they don’t have to worry about exposure because neither side wants it, so neither side can out the other. Here with a bunch of creatures out in the open it runs the risk of the Hunstclan being dragged into the light.. and given the populace dosne’t care about the “magical creatures” alongside them, it would make them look like the monsters they are.

Spud and Trixie tagging along also makes sense besides “they needed them for the plot”: While they’d obviously want to come to Hawaii, the skate competition is likely Jake’s cover for why he’s there, as well as one for why it’s just him and grandpa going with a couple of his friends so they don’t have to deal with manuvering around jake’s dad. That sad them never TELLING jake’s Dad is it’s own can of worms as it feels cruel, made things harder for jake and there was no real reason not to. At worst he’d want Jake to stop for his own saftey but given ther’es an active threat in the huntsclan for the first season and a half, NOT helping people would be the right thing and I feel he’s a sensible enough man to understand eventually.

And it’s stuff like this that already makes this crossover really work for me: they don’t really have to strain to get Jake over there or tell the audience heavily, the blanks fill in themslves. Or I am but that’s because it’s my job and I love doin it.

So everyone goes off to their corners; Jake to do a few practice runs, Foo Dog to bet on his friend because of course, Trixie and Spud to go to the beach (even though Spud’s terrified of sharks so I question why Trixie needs him for this), and in a delightfully adorable subplot, finds a lady to woo: local fruit stand vendoer and crankly old lady Mrs. Hasagawa.

I am here for this subplot: While Grandpa not focusing on the mission is weird for him that’s the entire point.. and their just really cute together. He’s smitten with her entirely because he sees her chewing out one of the people running the contest for making her sign too small. And he performs one hell of a romantic gesture by, while everyone’s back is turned, using his dragon fire to make an add for her on the skate ramp itself, and they have a lovely montage of their time together.. which also weirdly includes grandpa using his dragon fire on stage inf ront of everyone which makes no sense for his charcter but is so cute and does feature david I really don’t care. The writers of Lilo and Stitch probably weren’t deeply familiar with the show and likely just wanted a fun gag. Could be wrong there but it’s cute. He continues to act grossly out of character by trying to avoid going home at the end.. but again I find it simply because he’s in love, they have genuine chemstiry and I like to think they stayed in touch and he retired out there at some point once Jake was old enough to handle things himself. This may not be a ship I expected to support going in but I will die for it going out.

So back to the main plot, Lilo uses Keoni’s body to imitate him which... she’s only loosely called out on and realizes is bad by the end only because she gets stuck in another body. And that’s not even getting into the fact she BREAKS UP WITH KEONI’S GIRLFRIEND. Yes really.. she just does that to get her out of the way. She comes around and realizes she was wrong and tries to fix it which would be fine.. if hte episode didn’t try to cop it out by revealing “Oh she’s not his girlfriend, she’s just someone who keeps telling people that”. It just feels lazy and dumb and a way to keep Lilo’s crush on Keoni for reasons I DO. NOT. GET. But the identity theft is just brushed aside by everyone: Keoni never finds out, and Jake just brushes it off. The real issue is more her trying to bribe keoni into likng her which while something kids need to learn is not the only thing she did wrong here. It feels like they didn’t think all the implications out here and it hampers the episode

Speaking of which as Gantu captures Jake, he sees him transform into dragon mode and assumes he’s the experiment, Jake’s charactization is pretty shallow. And why yes it DOES feel weird writing sentences about a character with the same name thank you for asking. I wasn’t expecting a deep character piece or anything: This is a guest spot, the writers here are not the same normal ones for American Dragon. That’s fine. The problem.. is that they clearly did not get Jake. Grandpa being partly out of character is half the joke, Trixie actually gets a really nice moment towards the end, and Spud.. is eh. But out of them Jake just feels like a basic character description: He likes hip hop, he likes skateboards, he calls himself Am Drag despite that sounding like a good name for a drag act but a terrible name to shorten your title, he fights.. that’s it.

While jake is all of that in the main series, he’s also a kind young man who while sometimes irresponsible does the right thing when the chips are down. He’s someone weighed down by a responsiblity he didn’t ask for, often makes his life more difficult and often finds himself in trouble because his mother and grandfather won’t bother to tell his dad he’s a dragon. Yes that part still bothers me, and I don’t see why we couldn’t just have a superhero show where both parents know. But regardless this just dosen’t feel like Jake , like they just watched the intro and that was it. Jake feels more like a plot device in his own crossover.

That being said there is some good stuff: The minute Jake realizes some Sci Fi stuff is going on instead of hte normal magic stuff he tells him “The am drag’s show isn’t about sci fi” a nice meta bit and then breaks out. Meanwhile Lilo takes on his form.. and ends up stuck after badly botching her run again, as Gantu finds the real shapeshifter.

We get the best stretch of the episode from here though: Lilo awkardly tries to play jake and like jake we get a nice meta nod to how diffrent their show is as she’s worried about his belief in magical creatures.. and is startled out of her charade when Foo Dog talks, a really nice bit especially since it’s tame compared to the weirdness he deals with. Spud and Trixie have questions... only for Jake to show up and his agressive behavior leads to the best bit of the episode: Jake Vs Stitch. The catlyst is understandable: jake has no idea why Lilo’s taken his identity and Sttich is just protecting his best friend from harm. The animation is fluid, the fight is fun and quick and uses both’s powers stellarl. Whle “two heroes get into a misunderstanding and then fight” is a well worn cliche at this point, it’s moments like this that show why: you get to see two heroes who in this case never have interacted before or sense, duke it out, why each is special and it’s fun to watch.

Lilo breaks it up, and admits to the whole thing.. including the whole give Keani the board stuff. While Jake and Spud, being awkard with girls and a loveable moron don’t see the problem with that Trixie gets a moment to shine. As far as I can remember she really didn’t get much on the show proper so it was a nice suprise to see her mentor lilo her, telling her trying to give someone gifts to love you is not okay, she should just be herself all that good stuff. It’s a nice character stuff and tha’ts the kind of character interaction this episode needed more of.

With the misunderstandings washed away our heroes team up and storm gantu’s ship leading to another great sequence as Stitch rides on Jake’s back while the two keep him busy and Lilo gets turned back, Trixie complimenting her dress “Thanks I have 10 just like it at home”. It’s such a sweet and genuine moment” They head back out and gantu semeingly grabs morpholmew from where they hide.. only to find out when he gets back it’s spud, our adorable little blob monster transforming Gantu into a bunny and our heroes leaving. How does Gantu get out of being a bunny?

But it’s a nice enough gag. So we end the episode. We get another nice gag as grandpa had himself and his lady transformed to try and avoid going home, and Jake is fine with having lost out on the board what matters is he made a friend. Sadly we did not get a followup in ADJL., but spud does name our experiment, Morpholomew.

We end on Morph getting his home: a costume shop where he gets paid in fried chicken, he was shown to enjoy it throughtout the episode and changes people into things. It’s a nice little button to the episode and one of the funnest parts of the show was figuring out where the experiment would end up at the end.

Final Thoughts:

This episode is a really mixed bag. There is some good character interactions, two tremendous fight scens and Trixie gets a chance to shine for once if only for a scene or two, and the clashing genres end up making for some great jokes> The shows do go well together as while Lilo and Stitch is more laid back both have slice of life elements. And hasgawa X Grandpa is just oto cute for words.

The episode is held back by Jake and Lilo’s lackluster characterizatons: Jake is simply the theme song as a character, which in theory is awesome because that theme song slaps but in practice is pretty lame, and Lilo is selfish and irresponsible even for her in a way that dosen’t feel at all convincing. It drags down what’s otherwise a fun crossover and Morpholomew is truly a unique and wonderful experiment. Still if you like either show it’s worth a watch even if you have to suffer through Keoni for it. It’s worth it.. I just wish it was better and hopefully the next 3 will keep the good parts but take out the bad. Granted this was produced last so I could be wrong, but here’s hoping. Oh this episode also featured Miranda Cosgrove as the girl who claims to be Keoni’s girlfriend. This is also Keoni’s last episode meaning I do NOT have to worry about accidently running into him. Thank fucking christ.

Next Time On American Dragon Jake Long: Jake’s dad drags him and his friends on a camping trip and Jake ends up encountering the Jersey Devil. Now all they need is a sexy lady devil cake to lure it out... what it worked for the Cake Boss. And yes that happened, Allison Pregler did an episode on that episode. Check it out.

Next Time On Lilo and Stitch Crossovers: It’s the family, the family, proud familllyyy as the Prouds take a vacation at Peakly and Jumbas bed but not breakfast and we get some kind of squirrel demon for our experiment of the week. We also get Wizard Kelly appearing...

See you at the next rainbow.

#lilo and stitch #american dragon jake long #Lilo Pelekai #Stitch #experment 626 #jake long #luong lao shi #fu dog #trixie carter #arthur p spudinkski #gantu #crossovers #reviews #disney channel #morpholomew

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gumnut-logic · 4 years ago

Text

Two Birds with One Stone (Bit 6 and The End)

Bit 1 | Bit 2 | Bit 3 | Bit 4 | Bit 5 | Bit 6

I finished it! Yay! Still @godsliltippy ‘s fault. I’m just happy to have this one off my plate because yesterday I wrote 2000 words of a new fic! I’m incurable, I have to say ::headdesk:: Like I have so many waiting to be finished ::wails::

But lookie! I finished one ::distracts all with this single finished fic waving it around with glee::

Many thank to @tsarinatorment @scribbles97�� and @janetm74 for all their support through this fic and of course to Tippy for sparking it in the first place with this glorious piece of art!

I can actually archive something cos it is finished! Yay!

I hope you enjoy it...cos it is finished! It’s a miracle!

-o-o-o-

“A combine harvester?!”

“Totally cool sounding, don’t you think? I’m adding it to my list.”

Virgil stared at his brother. “You have a list? Of what?”

“Dramatic stuff. Near misses. Things worth bragging about at the bar.”

Virgil blinked, fortunately with both eyes this time, since the swelling was starting to go down.

He was sitting up in bed, surrounded by flowers. Grandma had gone all out this time with two boys in the hospital. Fortunately, they wouldn’t be in much longer.

Alan had dragged in one of Virgil’s sketchbooks and to Virgil’s surprise, he had found the energy to draw for a little while, though his head wouldn’t take much.

And his head was more than one problem.

He was missing half his hair.

And he looked stupid.

Worse, there was a jagged slice in his scalp where apparently a piece of that combine harvester had made it through his helmet and nearly sliced him in half.

The thought was downright alarming and he shunted it to the back of his mind with not a little terror.

He would examine it later.

Later.

But the problem at the moment, apart from the bandages that conveniently hid the issue temporarily, he only had half a head of hair and it looked stupid.

He had to appreciate that Gordon hadn’t laughed. In fact, none of his brothers had laughed at him. He couldn’t fault them for that.

Though there was a sparkle in Gordon’s eye that foretold at least one comment in the future, even if it was fond and caring.

Besides…

He kept waking up to find Gordon sitting on the end of his bed.

It was done with nonchalance and a smile, but Virgil was beginning to suspect an underlying cause. Not that he couldn’t acknowledge that he was happy to see his little brother and sharing a room with him in hospital was actually a boon to the medical process, but honestly, Virgil was beginning to worry.

“Don’t you have a list?”

Of course, a fish without a pond tended to be a bored fish.

“No, not really.”

“You don’t count successful rescues?”

“John and Scott keep records. I don’t like to dwell.”

His little brother shrugged. “I get that.”

There was silence for a while and Virgil let himself settle back into his pillow. Dosing was a rare pleasure.

“So, you don’t take advantage of being a hero even a tiny bit?”

Virgil blinked and frowned. “What?”

Gordon rolled over holding his injured arm and settled so he could see Virgil clearly. “You know, leverage a little heroism to start a conversation? Get one up on the stiffs at parties?”

He stared at his brother. “Are you having trouble at Penny’s charity functions?”

“Nooo.”

Okay, that meant yes. “You should talk to her, Gords.” He shrugged. “Need a wingman? I could come with.” Though he had to admit, he could see where Gordon was coming from. Some of those attendees were definitely stiffs who had never lifted a finger to help anyone but themselves in their entire lives.

“I can handle it.”

Okay, Virgil was definitely filching an invite to the next one. Could even drag in Scott. Big bro would torch the social scene. He wasn’t a fan, but he could play...to every other man’s detriment.

Or Virgil could ask John. Having a genius brother in orbit who had a daughter who had been told off several times already for influencing the stock market was an advantage.

“Virgil, stop the plotting. It is fine. I’ve got this. I just flex a little muscle, mention a few scars and spin a few tales. Joe WallStreet, or whatever they call it in London, doesn’t stand a chance.”

He eyed his brother. The urge to step in was strong.

Gordon smirked. “It is fine. Besides, you won’t be going anywhere anytime soon with that hairstyle.”

It was an obvious subject change, but it still earned Gordon a blistering glare. “Shut up.”

A snort and Gordon capitulated. “Don’t worry, bro, it’s cool. Shave the other side, get yourself some tatts and no one will ever question you on a rescue ever again.” The second snort was almost a giggle.

If only he could reach Gordon, clap him up the head.

There must have been something in his expression because Gordon burst out laughing, rolling on the bed, holding his arm to his side.

“You’re an ass.”

“And you, my dear artist bro, are entertaining.”

“Shove it.”

But at least Gordon was smiling.

Virgil would take that any day.

-o-o-o-

Gordon was up and about long before Virgil and took to disappearing from time to time into the depths of the hospital, often with one brother or the other and on several occasions, with Penelope.

Virgil didn’t get out much. He still had headaches and occasional dizzy spells, a lead on from a massive concussion and was the reason why they were still in hospital. Virgil had no doubt Gordon could probably have gone home, but was hanging about just because Virgil couldn’t.

If it pinned Gordon under medical observation and not in the ocean after such a serious injury, Virgil wasn’t going to argue. But it was frustrating that he himself wasn’t very mobile and he was sick of staring at the ceiling tiles.

They always bugged him as his artistic brain always constructed designs out of them and they always lacked symmetry.

Grandma, Alan, John, Scott and even Kayo were regular visitors. The Tracy clan had parked themselves in a nearby hotel, no doubt fueling both news agencies and the local economy.

Virgil just wanted to go home.

And Scott was out of sorts.

Scott was always out of sorts when a member of the family was injured, but this was different. And it was bugging Virgil.

Between his own injuries and the inability to pin his brother down due to interruptions and the lack of alone time, whatever it was that was bugging Scott was festering.

Topeka hospital was a familiar place to all of them. It had been their local major hospital for much of their formative years and considering the tornado seasons and IR responses, a regular delivery point for rescuees. There was a rooftop garden that had been sat in on several occasions in the past and it was with some conniving that Virgil spoke to Kayo to arrange for a corner of it to be secured so Virgil could go and sit up there for a bit of fresh air and privacy with his big brother.

He had no doubt that Scott knew he was being railroaded, but the lack of protest just emphasised how troubled his big brother was.

The sounds of the city below were no longer familiar and Virgil found himself longing for the ocean and the quiet of Tracy Island. It was evening, the sun having just set and the sky was a welcome sight after being confined to ceiling tiles for a few days, but the stars were dim, hidden by light pollution and a touch of smog.

It made him even more homesick.

“You okay, Virg?”

Scott had pushed him up here in a hoverchair. Virgil still needed it due to the dizzy spells and it ticked him off to no end. “Just homesick.”

Hi brother sighed. “Won’t be long. A couple of days and I’ll take you down to the beach and you can lay on the sand and stare at the stars to your heart’s content.”

Virgil shot him a glare. “I’m not John.”

“But you miss the stars anyway.”

Virgil grumbled. “I’m just used to seeing them.” He waved at hand at the sky. “It’s not the same.”

“Uh huh.” Scott was smiling in that condescending big brother knows better way he was so good at.

“Shut up.”

Scott didn’t stop grinning, he just dragged the ‘chair backwards until it nestled beside a park bench and then sat himself down beside Virgil.

They sat in silence for a while and Virgil let the soundscape seep into him. It was quieter up here than inside the hospital. There was a breeze with the scent of farmland under that pervasive smell of the city and cooling concrete. The breeze spoke of a possible storm in the distance. Virgil hoped it wasn’t a supercell. He had had enough of tornadoes for some time.

He missed the scent of the sea.

A sigh. He was being pathetic and falling into the doldrums over nothing. He was getting better. He would be home soon.

And screw it, he would plant his butt on a beach and drag Scott with him just to piss him off.

“You okay?”

Huh? Scott was peering at him, that worry ever persistent in the darkness of his eyes.

“It is you who I’m worried about.” So, it was defensive, big deal. Needed to start the conversation somehow.

“Me? I’m not the one who took on a combine harvester and nearly lost.”

“It wasn’t exactly a choice, you know.”

“I know.” It was quiet and Virgil knew he had hit the nail on the head.

“Talk to me, Scott.”

“About what?”

Virgil flat-eyed glared at him. “About whatever has been bugging you the last few days.”

“I would have thought that was obvious with two brothers in the hospital.” Definitely defensive.

“No. This is more.”

“What? There are degrees? I don’t need analysis, Virg.”

Virgil pressed his lips together. “You’re hurting. You’re not talking. What other recourse do I have?”

“Do you need one?”

“Of course, I do! You’re you! Whatever this is, it’s weighing on you and I hate to see you in pain.”

“I’m not in pain. It’s you who was injured.”

“If you’re trying to tell me that doesn’t affect you, you’re either lying through your teeth or I should be even more worried because you’ve obviously suffered brain damage of some kind and are no longer the Scott Tracy I know. Perhaps I should check you for a holographic disguise.”

Scott let out an annoyed scoff and shot to his feet, his actions agitated. “Virg, it’s nothing.”

“Bullshit.”

“Goddamnit, Virgil-“

“Talk to me!” And yelling apparently hurt his head, because it throbbed in protest. He grit his teeth and glared up at his brother. Please, Scott, for both our sakes.

“It was close, okay? Too damned close.”

Virgil swallowed. He knew that. “Not the first time.”

“So, I should be used to it by now?” Despite the darkness, Scott was lit up with internal fire.

“No.”

But he had finally triggered the avalanche and Scott spilled it all over him.

“Do you have any idea how close this was? Millimetres and you wouldn’t be here anymore, Virg.”

“Again, not the first time.”

“But it was so senseless!” Scott’s hands shot out palm up, desperate for understanding. “You weren’t even in the middle of a rescue. The sky just opened up, stabbed down a twister and threw a chunk of farm machinery at you. It lasted mere seconds and it nearly took both of you. Why? If you had landed a few metres further away, if you had been a few seconds later in arrival, hell, the margin for error was astronomical, yet, it still happened. I nearly lost you and Gordy for no damned reason whatsoever!”

“You need a reason?”

“Goddamned, I do! If I’m going to lose a brother, at least it should be for a reason. A sacrifice made for the good of all.”

“You know it doesn’t work that way.” Virgil’s heart was thudding in his chest.

“Well, it should. We do so much, sacrifice so much already, I don’t think it is too much to ask. We’ve already lost...” Scott shoved his face into his hands and parked himself back on the park bench. “Why the hell do you ask me these things?”

Ever so quiet. “Because they need to be asked.”

“I hate it.”

“I know.”

“I nearly lost you for nothing.”

“We were there for a reason. We both went in knowing the danger, you know that.”

“Doesn’t make it hurt any less.”

“I’d be worried if it did.” Virgil sighed. “We survived, Scott. Thanks to you. You were fast enough.”

The grunt and groan that made it out between his brother’s fingers was pain itself.

The hoverchair made it awkward, but Virgil reached out and snagged his big brother with an arm and hauled him in the best he could. Scott, of course, protested, but Virgil’s arms were not injured and he was always smug that he had at least one thing racked up on the achievement scale that beat his almighty big brother and that was strength.

So, Scott was dragged into a hug whether he wanted it or not.

“Still here.”

Scott grumbled something unintelligible.

“Gords is adding it to his story list to tell at Penny’s parties.”

“He’s what?”

Distraction achieved.

“Wanna drop by Penny’s next charity dinner and play wingman to Gords? You get to take a few stiffs down a peg or million. Apparently, a few asses need a big brother kicking. We can break out Johnny and Eos for extra fun, if you like.”

“Who’s been messing with Gordon?” There it was. Exactly the trigger point needed.

“The Joe Wallstreets seem to think they are better than a fish Tracy.”

“Really?”

“Uh-huh. Want to help me educate them? Though admittedly Gords was doing quite well on his own, higher education is always a good thing.”

Scott was staring at him in the darkness. It was obvious his brother knew exactly what Virgil was doing.

“I’ll be there.”

“Great. It will be good PR for whatever charity Penny is supporting. With a bit of luck we can play it to her advantage as well.”

Scott was still staring at him.

“What?”

Ever so quiet. “What would I do without you?”

Virgil swallowed, desperately ignoring all the implications and the reverse of that question. “Here’s hoping we never find out.”

Scott sighed and let his head drop onto Virgil’s shoulder.

Virgil just tugged him a little tighter and returned to trying to see the stars.

-o-o-o-

FIN.

#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds #thunderbirds fanfiction #Virgil Tracy #Scott Tracy #Gordon Tracy #thunderbirds fanart #godsliltippy

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nightswithkookmin · 5 years ago

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With the grammy bomb im more than certain that there is a strain between jikook. They do interact but in a way that is so aloof. Their habitual gravitating towards one another doesnt happen anymore. And im talking about all the recent stuff from october onwards. Jk purposefully rear towards other members and i find jimin to be only open towards namjoon. All of his other interactions on cam are to make sure that everything is fine between him and others. And jk purposefully ignores or avoids jimin and doesnt have that unrestrainable affection towards him anymore. I say all this as a longtime jikook supporter. Honestly even if they had their 'fighting' periods i have never seen jk this dismissive. At least jimin isnt as affected as before. I dont understand how no supporter is admitting the obvious distance of jk.

Why are you being mean to me though😭

Please read my blogs. I think I have talked about this topic several times now.

May be I spoke 'too soon' before the loud moments that make these things obvious to most but still, I've addressed it nonetheless.

I feel if I respond to this, I'd just be repeating myself over and over at this point and frankly it gets boring for the people that read me- I think. Lol. I mean, once I start I never shut up. Lmho. So sorry in advance.

I agree with everything you've said, as well as all the observations you've made. I'm with you on it. Except, you made no definitive conclusions I could agree on, rebut, or share an opinion on. There is a strain on their relationship..... therefore? Lol.

I don't mean this in a rude way. I just don't think it's enough to point that out without drawing conclusions- unless you are simply taking notes of those moments? Or are you concluding that the strain is a sign Jikook are fighting, having problems or that they have broken up?

Not every tension between Jikook is a bad thing if you ask me or even as a result of them having issues in their relationship. This is something I keep regurgitating in my blogs. Not to say they don't have issues, they do. Hell, I get dragged by my roots on these streets for saying they fight, or even break up sometimes like any real couple would. They are real and they have real couple's problems sometimes too like any regular joe.

I'm glad you pointed out though, that Jimin doesn't seem as affected by JK's 'dismissive' attitude as before. Shouldn't that tell you that is a sign there is nothing wrong with their relationship this time around? Jikook is not one sided. JK isn't the only party to their relationship, neither is Jimin. They have an equal and sometimes opposite reaction to each other. One person's attitude or change in attitude tends to produce a ripple effect on the other. In my opinion.

If JK were to be 'dismissive' at all, it would emotionally and physically impact Jimin and he would have a reaction to it like he did in run 106. Compared to this, he didn't seem at all affected by JK's 'attitude' just as you've pointed out.

As I said a while ago, I honestly don't think or believe they are fighting or that they are broken up either- not to me anyway. Lol. I mean you could still pretty much see the intimacy between them in that footage. Jikook don't need to engage in skinship or overt and loud interactions to show they are intimate. And most times their overt and loud skinship and interactions are devoid of intimacy. That's the thing about intimacy, you can't fake it or hide it.

Jimin turning towards JK in his fit of excitement is a sign of intimacy between them regardless of whether he actually hugged JK or not. Then later on the couch, you could see him yearning for JK.

There were three people in that room- may be more if you count staff and yet JK was the only one Jimin seemed to want an answer from.

He was the one Jimin was emotionally inclined towards. The one who's comfort and affection he sought after- bless his heart, he hit his head on some solid rock knees and everything trying to pursue his need for physical closeness and affection from JK. If they were broken up or fighting, he wouldn't go to JK for his emotional needs.

He could try and 'interact' with JK, do the fanservice bit with him but he wouldn't go to him with his emotional needs- that would be inappropriate and unfair to JK. Jimin is an emotionally intelligent guy and he has a lot of thoughts and consideration for people's feelings and he is well aware of his limits and just how much he can push or get away with.

And I cite his Log with JK, where he announced he had started developing feelings for JK and then turned to JK to ask if he was ok with him saying that much on camera.

Thus, if he is emotionally 'gravitating' towards JK then it's indication there is a level of intimacy and a mutual understanding between them that JK fulfills an emotional need and ought to fulfill that emotional need for him.

And yes, I agree. Him hesitating when he wanted to hug JK is a sign there is something stressing their dynamics which is something I pointed out when that Grammy reaction video first came out. I knew something was stressing their dynamic but I couldn't figure out what because it was a very short video with not much going on in there.

The behind the scenes however, chilee. Lol.

I mean if you consider the fact JK went from moving a distance to console Jimin when he was crying on stage during the October ON:E concert, and you look at all the moments we've had from their overt flirting in 2021 season's greetings, the sexual innuendos in the BE behind scenes video, JK sniffing Jimin's hair in the Be unboxing video to that moment on the couch when Jimin hit his head on JK's knees- that shit look like it hurt. Damn. JK what is your knees made of! Lmho.

I am uncomfortable discussing a Jikook era or phase when it's on going on. I like to simply take note of certain moments and discuss them in post by reconstructing the timeline to place content in its rightful timeframe.

I can only share with you my working theory on such moments and for the most part, like I said previously I feel Jikook- especially JK is having issues with the company. Perhaps because the company stumbled on something they weren't supposed to see.

As for Jikook's personal development, I think we all saw this development coming, didn't we? After JM's birthday fiasco? I think I hypothesized at the time that whoever was in the 'wrong' in that situation would come swinging hard on their Jikook agenda in the aftermath. And with that whole GCF Tokyo reference, signing his name to JK's name at the pop up, the stealing looks at JK during interviews, checking him out left right left, trying to make Jk 'jealous' with RM at the Be press con red carpet, it's not hard to figure out who did what in that birthday situation.

I plan on writing a blog on this very topic, because I've received quite a few Asks about my thoughts on JK outing Jimin, military service and others that I find intriguing and want to discuss but I also want to discuss Vminkook dynamics, Jikook boundaries and I don't know which one to get into first. When I'm torn between options I end up not making a choice at all. Lol.

All I can say in regards to Jikook and their on going 'situation' is that- I love it. Lol. I love their dynamics, I love where they are at in their love journey, I love where they are heading. Jikook is just beautiful in every sense of the word.

I love what JK is doing. I love where he has gotten my bias to- which is confronting himself and figuring out what he wants from their relationship. Because, honestly you can't have your cake and eat it. It just doesn't work that way.

What you are seeing is just JK asserting himself against Jimin I'm afraid. It's the push and pull thingy all over again.

I keep talking about 'the boy in love with Jungkook' being a facade and persona Jimin hides behind to love JK and most people don't understand.

JK's persona is not the boy in love with Jimin. It's the boy cold and shy who rejects Jimin- well at least that was the persona he had in their early dynamics around debut.

He has since shed that persona and the bold, fearless, assertive JK we see on the screens is him choosing to unapologetically express his love and feelings for Jimin. And jimin enjoys that.

But you take a look at Jimin, and you don't see that drastic change in his persona or the way he expresses himself with JK- I mean let's call a spade a spade.

Do I think Jimin loves JK? Absolutely. Do I think he is being authentic in the way that he expresses those feelings to JK on camera? Only to an extent.

It's obvious who Jimin is to JK or even the way he expresses himself and his love for JK is slightly different off camera than the persona we see on our screens. For one, clearly JK is not used to seeing Jimin prioritize others over him or be overly affectionate with others besides him. I mean it's been seven years. Ten, if you count the periods before. You'd think JK would get used to JM doing skinship with others or showing affection for the others especially since they've lived together over half of the time and yet here we are, frying pans away from the apocalypse whenever any member breaths near Jimin. Damn JK. Lmho.

Do I think his persona is slightly exaggerated? Yes. But I also think JM downplays his love for Jk with his 'Mr I'm available' personality, his Kumbaya attitude, and his I'm just a nice guy on the block character, which often leads to people questioning whether or not he treats JK different from the group. Don't get me wrong JK does this too.

Jimin loves JK. But at this point the question is is he expressing that love in the way that meets JK's emotional needs? Is he allowing JK to love him and express the love he feels for him in the way that makes him happy?

I think that's what the birthday fiasco is all about.

If you don't want JK openly showing and expressing his love for you in a way that he wants to and in a way that holds meaning to him and makes him feel fulfilled as well in the relationship then what is the point of him holding on to the glass closet?

Two can play that game. Lol.

It's JK's needs above the groups and I feel he is putting it right up there next to JM's needs because they are both valid.

You should have seen JK's face when Jimin decided tell the truth about his location on September 1st in that BB press interview.

I remember pointing out that when JM started that narration with the first person pronoun he was going for a well curated narrative perhaps one the group had agreed on prior to avoid confirming his location on the JK's birthday like they had tried to do during the VLive but dropped that and went with the honest truth the moment he started talking about being with Jk and using 'we' instead of 'I' in his speech.

I'm glad the interviewer from his Weverse magazine interview confirmed and pointed out this tell or habit of Jimin when he speaks,

"When he’s talking, Jimin often starts his sentence with phrases like, “I just,” “it just,” “they just …” But then he immediately goes on to open up about his feelings, always providing a sincere response."

At least now we know for sure he wasn't lying about his location- for all those who called him a liar.

Anywho, my point is it makes JK happy when Jimin expresses his love and feelings for him. But it also makes him happy when he is able to show the world just how much JM means to him.

He didn't get those tattoos for nothing. He didn't do the GCFs for nothing. He didn't nibble on his ear in front of thousands of people for nothing- had he posted for Jimin on his birthday, given how he hadn't done that for anyone in a year, it wouldn't have been for nothing either. In my opinion.

When I tell y'all Jimin is gonna wake up one day with JK's ring on his finger and he wouldn't know what hit him. Chilee. Lmho.

Listen, JK is in love LOVE with Jimin. It's my opinion and I'm gonna treat it as fact because I believe it- if you disagree keep it to yourself. I don't wanna hear it. Lol.

That boy is in love with my bias. Ain't nobody gonna tell me nothing. Lol.

Seriously though, JK loves Jimin and he loves expressing those feelings for him. He goes overboard sometimes with it to the point it's borderline outing but we don't talk about that. Lol.

He's progressed through out the years from hiding his feelings for Jimin, whispering I love you's to JM when he thinks JM is alseep, slipping matching plasters onto his finger, all the way to Rosebowl.

If you ask me, he wants to be Jimin's equal in every sense of the word and as much as he loves to be at the recieving end of JM's affections, he enjoys being at the giving end.

And if JM has the cover of 'the boy in love with the Maknae' and it works perfectly for him not just as a persona but the perfect excuse for loving Jk then you gotta wonder what cover JK equally has for loving JM the way that he does. He has none. His every move is questioned by members, by staff, by fans- why do you film Jimin so much, why not put Tae in there for clicks, why are you constantly with Jimin and other invasive questions like that.

Jimin gets away with a lot of things than JK because of his personality and his persona. People would question the things JK does most of the time while dismissing the things Jimin does as either fanservice or as flowing from his personality. Whereas JK cannot get away with those same things.

We paint JK as Jeonlous and possessive but we forget most times he acts that way so Jimin doesn't have to. Jimin has said he doesn't share his friends and yet somehow we think he is ok with sharing his boyfriend with 5 other members or those 5 members with his boyfriend- this is code, let it sink in.

There is a lot of boundaries he instills there and it's equally an expression of possessiveness. Yet it's so subtle you might not even notice.

Jk makes Jimin look cool. He takes the fall so Jimin doesn't have to. When JK takes a step back that's when you see how whipped JM is- the neediness, the clinginess- PJMs give me a break. *rolling my eyes. It needs to be said. I love Jimin too but shit, it is what is. Lol.

I think it's gonna take a while for Jk to open back up to Jimin, to get in the space where he feels safe expressing himself with Jimin the way that he was doing before Jimin's birthday.

It doesn't mean he hates Jimin or doesn't love him or doesn't want him or doesn't care. But I think Jimin needs to step up to show he is on the same page as JK because JK is all about reciprocity. He ain't about to do the one sided unrequited nonsense. Lol.

Honestly all this is part of Jikook's dynamics. This not the first time Jk's closed himself off. The last time he did it was because they had gone through a nasty breakup- I said what I said. In my opinion nonetheless. Lol.

In the aftermath of it, he was expressing similar behavior. In Suga's Birthday Vlive this year for example, when Jimin was clinging to him and had his hands on his leg he didn't take the bait either- man was it frustrating to watch. Lol. But you could see JM wanted that physical connection with him. Did you see his smug face when Jimin was all over him?

I think he is just going through a phase where he needs reassurance of Jimin's love. Jimin is a big guy and he knows his man best and I think he knows exactly what he needs to do to get him to come around. Lol.

I mean he flew all the way from Paris to see him on his birthday didn't he?

I think we have to leave them to it. Just observe them. I hate commenting on a phase like this especially when it's on going. I'd rather talk about it after it's ended and a new phase has begun for them.

Part of supporting Jikook is knowing when to give them privacy and room to just unfold their story and be human. They are a living breathing love story after all.

Jk isn't being distant. He is just not interacting with JM the way we are used to seeing him do. But I feel that's part Bighit asking them to cool off and part him just wanting reassurance from Jimin.

At this point, I want to ask why you want people to acknowledge JK is closed off? To what end? I don't think anyone is denying that they are going through this phase- well the Kumbaya tradshippers are but why do you want me to acknowledge this fact? I already pointed out that there is something stressfing their dynamics.

They have their own personal stuff going on but I don't think it's much of an issue and at the same time they seem to be having issues with their company- You have to take all of that into consideration to see how that affects their dynamics as well.

You have to be aware of the timeline too. Because content is not released in chronological order, it may seem like a rollercoaster ride when in actual sense all of this may have happened with a specific time frame.

When it comes to Jikook always assume they are much closer than you think. Jikook is fine, I believe. Just take mental notes of these things for posterity. I wouldn't be worried about them.

As usual, this has been my opinion. Don't take it too seriously. Keep supporting Jikook. Jikook is real.

Signed,

GOLDY

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