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whentherewerebicycles · 3 years

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some thoughts that might seem unrelated but aren’t, i promise:

— in that atomic habits book I read a couple weeks back the author talks about using a specific, action-oriented question repeated throughout the day to help you build or break habits (like “what would a physically fit person do?” or “what would a sober person do?”).

— the aging books i was reading last month noted that people who score high in conscientiousness (on the Big Five personality traits) tend to age most successfully ie enjoy the longest stretch of active years. to quote this article, conscientiousness is “a fundamental personality trait—one of the Big Five—that reflects the tendency to be responsible, organized, hard-working, goal-directed, and to adhere to norms and rules...Conscientiousness comprises self-control, industriousness, responsibility, and reliability. A conscientious person is good at self-regulation and impulse control. This trait influences whether you will set and keep long-range goals, deliberate over choices, behave cautiously or impulsively, and take obligations to others seriously.” I tend to score very high in openness but very, very low in conscientiousness. more on this in a bit...

— my sister and i were talking recently about different kinds of intelligence, and also about core values. one of hers is efficiency, a word that i have all kinds of negative associations with lol but that she explained in ways i found really intriguing. for her efficiency isn’t about, like, Maximizing Productivity for Capitalism but is about methodically searching for the most effective, least confusing or redundant, most easily-communicable-to-others way to solve complex problems. when she encounters a system that has all kinds of weird bottlenecks or inefficient, time-consuming ways of completing a task (esp if the rationale for those methods is just “well.. that’s how we’ve always done it”), she starts immediately examining the larger structures and workflows around those bottlenecks to see if the established ways of doing things can be rerouted or simplified, and then she constructs new protocols or tools for people to use instead of the old inefficient way of working. efficiency will never be a core value of mine, in part because i think my humanities-oriented brain accords more value than her STEM/medicine-oriented brain does to wandering, daydreaming, slowed-down thinking, doubling-back or retracing one’s steps, and other “inefficient” modes of thinking that slow down the process but can lead you in unexpected directions or spark unanticipated epiphanies that illuminate the larger structures differently. i think we both share a keen interest in systems-level thinking and in examining whether established ways of doing things are the most effective ways of doing things, but we prioritize different modes of thinking and problem-solving in figuring out how to alter or redesign those larger systems (which is probably a result of temperament differences + our field-specific training).

THAT SAID, i have been thinking a lot about how one area of my own intelligence i would like to sharpen/hone in both my professional and personal life is like... a mode of intelligence that is linked to rigor, a more methodical approach to problem-solving, and the ability to construct & more methodically test detailed mental schemas. not quite sure how to articulate that but i feel like my thinking has gotten a little fuzzier than i want it to. and I think maybe this sensed fuzziness in thinking is linked to some of my ongoing feelings of restless discontent re: work. I also just in general want to be more conscientious in how I approach and solve problems, or in how I tackle big and small projects.

— this is more tangentially connected but: i feel like one thing i’ve noticed this year is that a lot of the people i admire professionally are really good at seeking out & taking on lots and lots of additional challenges or commitments, and they can do this in part because they tend to be very conscientious people, ie people who have big-picture vision but are also very detail-oriented and good at managing their time effectively & doing things efficiently so they can take on multiple projects without feeling overwhelmed. i feel like my own low-conscientiousness means that i can’t take full advantage of my high-openness—often i want to take on new projects or challenges but i worry that i’ll overextend myself or that the project will become more time-consuming than i anticipate. i think is linked to a different sort of fuzziness, ie a lack of clarity about how long things take or how much time i have — all combined with a deeply ingrained sense of myself as someone with executive dysfunction issues (poor time management, poor planning skills, poor organizational abilities, etc.). i think of myself as a very inefficient and extraordinarily disorganized person, whether this is 100% accurate or not, and that can sometimes lead to me taking myself out of the running for opportunities or limiting the number of projects i take on out of a fear that i won’t be disciplined enough to see them through.

— another thing my sister and i were talking about recently is how within large families, siblings tend to get assigned a “role” or a personality within the family dynamic very early on, and then they get sort of locked into that over time. everyone in the family expects them to always behave in that way, and there’s often a lot of unconscious resistance to letting your family members change or grow or develop in ways that contradict the clearly defined family role that’s been assigned to them, or the family “story” that everyone else in the family tells about them. you can get locked into both positive and negative roles—or like, often the positive role has a negative flipside. we were talking about how within our family, i’ve been “assigned” to be the “deep thinker” ie the introspective one who spends my life writing and thinking and daydreaming, whereas my sister has been assigned the role of being most like my father, ie very methodical, analytical, unemotional, and action-oriented (and therefore not introspective or inward-looking). and we were talking about how both of these have a negative flipside: my sister feels like she doesn’t get to be a “deep thinker,” or an introspective, emotionally intelligent person; whereas i feel like in my family’s story for me i am forever in “lalaland,” as my mom always says—head in the clouds, an ineffectual dreamer, the absentminded professor who has lots of big thoughts and feelings but is incapable of bringing any of my fantastical ideas to fruition because i have very little practical knowledge or stick-to-itiveness.

— as i’ve said many times before, i feel like i can’t solve the big-picture issues with my job right now, since so many of them are linked to shitty pandemic realities. but i was thinking that maybe one way to begin laying the groundwork for this final year in my job might be to work on strengthening my conscientiousness at the micro-level, ie in small everyday habits and interactions. my hope is that maybe by practicing conscientiousness in lots of small, low-stakes situations, i can start strengthening those muscles and building trust in myself as “the kind of person who does ____” (which i feel like is necessary for me to begin challenging the family story i’ve internalized what i am like). i mean, there is a lot of truth to that family story! but i bet that those aspects of my personality are nowhere near as inflexible or as like, divinely preordained as i have often assumed they are. like, i bet that through practice & through building better habits i can actually become significantly more conscientiousness (reliable, responsible, hardworking, efficient, good at follow-through, self-disciplined, etc) than i am now. and while efficiency may never be as central a value for me as it is for my sister, i think there is probably a way for me to see efficiency and conscientiousness as linked to my own core values, if only because those qualities or traits will allow me to better enact/embody my core values. so i think i can see it not as working against the grain of my personality, but as working to build out less-developed parts of my personality to strengthen the parts of my character that i value most.

— anyway this is all to say that for the last week i’ve been asking myself aloud “what would a conscientious person do?” multiple times a day, really any time i find myself at a small crossroads where i have to make a small decision. do i pick up that piece of cardboard and put it in the recycling bin now or leave it till later? (what would a conscientious person do?) do i return that call from the plumber now or put it off until later? (what would a conscientious person do?) do i take two minutes to pay that $4 toll bill now or put it on the giant stack of “tasks i will definitely deal with when i’m in the mood to deal with them,” where it will inevitably become a $25 and then $50 bill because i forgot about it and now have to pay late fees? (what would a conscientious person do?) do i comment on that student’s draft now when i’d rather be on the couch scrolling through social media? (i could probably do it tomorrow, when i have another block of free time, but what would a conscientious person do?) i have no idea if it will work in the long term!! but it’s been an intriguing experiment so far, mostly because i think it is teaching me that many of the tasks i build up in my head as incredibly time-consuming are actually quite quick, and once you finish them you also free up all the mental energy you were putting into procrastinating on them, and are better able to move onto the next thing. i also feel like it is teaching me that uhh maybe a conscientious person is not like, a completely different species of human being, but just a person who has different habits or patterns of response to daily choices than i do. that feels important too: if we are what we repeatedly or habitually do, then changing what i habitually do can probably change the kind of person i am! i’m finding that there’s something very useful about the simplicity of the question, too. deliberately posing the question to myself interrupts my habitual, unconscious response (which is always some version of “i don’t have the energy to deal with that / don’t want to expend that energy right now -- i’ll put it off till later”) -- it requires me to stop and focus my attention on the present situation instead of sliding right past it without thinking about it. and there’s also something quite satisfying about framing it as a choice or a decision: i get to choose what to do, ie i get to exercise agency, and exercising agency makes your brain feel happy (we like to feel in control! we like making choices!). so throughout the day i get to experience lots of little bursts of whatever gets released in the brain when you make a decision and immediately follow through with it, and i think/hope that this kind of positive reinforcement is helping to strengthen those circuits and lay down the groundwork for new patterns of habitual response.

those are some thoughts this morning!! now i am going to allow myself a few minutes of sloth lol and then i’ll get up and exercise.

#mw #thinking aloud #long post

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pyreo · 6 years

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Fixing Incredibles 2: stuff I would do

Hey wanna hear some thoughts on what I’d do to tune up a movie I found slightly disappointing? There’s three main aspects I want to deal with which are

1. badly utilised new supers 2. iffy villain motivation 3. third act was a mess

So here’s a few things I’d wanna do to rework some of that

So first off, that’s a lie, there’s really 5 things that bothered me. this should not have been an immediate sequel where no time had passed. they actually had to backtrack on the character development from the first movie to have them do the same character arcs again. Helen’s back on wanting her kids to stay away from dangerous heroics. Violet’s reward for learning to assert herself, a date with Tony, is erased and she has to win him all over again. Bob, in a weird 180 from his first portrayal where he adored spending time with Violet and Dash during his training montage... suddenly struggles with caring for them, though that’s mostly the fault of Jack-Jack’s powers manifesting.

So firstly, I’d do what I always imagined the sequel would be and push it a few years forward. Allow it room to change. Have Violet be a college student with Tony as her longterm boyfriend. Have Dash be a teen who’s still eager to save the world, but needing to learn that no danger is better than stopping danger. And make Jack-Jack a child, still in need of supervision but not a total cartoonish liability who necessitates long sequences of adjustment to discovering his powers, again, a retread we already saw last time. Every character arc was a re-do and the constant burden of dealing with Jack-Jack really slowed stuff down. (this was my 5th thing) Fix this by skipping forward. (Also, Violet’s hero moment being... learning that she has to set personal glory aside and babysit Jack-Jack while everyone else does stuff? Are you kidding me?)

We now have a different angle on Helen’s worries - she’s not just concerned about putting her kids in danger. She acts like it, she tells them not to start jumping at the chance to get into heroism. She tells them to apply themselves in school and get normal lives too, in case it doesn’t pan out. But this feels familiar, because it’s what she said in the first movie, and it’s a front. She’s worried about her kids growing up, becoming adults - Violet basically is one - and how she can’t protect them if they move out. She pretends it’s about their powers to cover this. This also refocuses the movie’s main character arc onto Helen like it’s... supposed to be, instead of putting it on Bob’s learning to parent and accept his wife’s super- importance, because despite being framed as Elastigirl’s time to shine, it’s not her story when she doesn’t embody a change of character. It’s still Bob.

So, those things established:

1. Better villain ideology

Revenge because supers failed to save your parents? Basic. Also not that believable, because the reason the heroes failed to answer Daddy Business’s call is that they’d been outlawed and given new lives as normal people. They could not have come to the rescue; it was illegal. And a superhero enthusiast would have known that. And, hey, ‘criminals shot our dad and then our mother died afterwards of a broken heart’? Are you kidding me? Just have them both get shot, fuck it. Stop this ‘women dying because their man tragically died’ shit. It’s getting melodramatic at that point.

No criminals, no revenge stuff. Have the Deavor’s parents die when they were in early teens. The brother and sister had to support each other as they started to navigate adulthood. This instilled in them the philosophy that’s common to the type of silicon valley startup wizards they parody - that anyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and be hugely successful if they try hard, having come from orphans near poverty to multimillionaires.

I want both of them, brother and sister, to be the villains together. You don’t really need to twist that. They both come off as helpful fans who want to put their money to use helping supers get back in the game. After all the biggest complaint keeping supers illegal is the property damage and lawsuits, and what fixes that? Money. They also both believe, as is Evelyn’s motivation for real, that superheroes are actually causing the public to develop dependency on them.

I would set up the siblings as advocates of Randian objectivism in how they work. They think everyone can go from nothing to having everything. They think it’s a personal imperitive to be hard working, to contribute and make yourself a success, without relying on others. They think needing a safety net - superheroes, as a metaphor for social facilities - is a weakness that stops people from taking responsibility for themselves. I want to downplay the ‘tech company who makes tiny cameras’ thing, because that was far too modern day to fit in the 60s, and make it more about sheer money generation and the ability for the siblings to pay off debts and influence public opinion; essentially, that money can get you anything, glossing over the corrupt nature of that by claiming it’s doing the right thing to help the heroes.

Winston still had a childlike adoration for supers as a kid, but it was killed when he grew up without parents who couldn’t BE saved, followed by extremely hard work in the financial sector, dealing with stress, and realising that he worked just as hard, but got no media acclaim, as people who just happen to have been born with powers. Both siblings invest in personal security solutions, aiming to eventually reveal a plan to put superheroes out of business by outpacing them with technology. To use the free market to provide ways that normal people can protect themselves, without becoming complacent, relying on dubious, flawed heroes, without becoming blind to danger because they expect to be saved. Their evil motto is basically ‘don’t expect anyone to save you’, putting the burden of responsibility on the individual to take care of themselves and be solely in charge of their success or failure.

The superheroes, of course, represent altruism, saving people just because they can, just because they were given an ability and can use it to help anyone and anyone they wish. Making no judgements between rich or poor, personal backgrounds, social class... everyone can be saved just the same.

The villains intend to gain the trust of the three main heroes - Mr Incredible, Elastigirl and Frozone - and push them into good public opinion by funding everything they do or break. Destruction is paid for, claims are settled. Heroes shouldn’t have to worry about it, they say. What they actually intend is for the heroes to become dependent on their company for money, just as they see the public growing dependent on supers instead of taking steps to protect themselves. They will set up a huge, climactic battle in the most expensive part of the city, after the heroes have been encouraged to ignore the financial cost to their feats. Then they’ll withdraw support, burying the trio in horrific debt to a level they cannot recover from, while also pushing a new line of tech solutions to make money off people’s protection. Technically, they want to help people, but they need to make sure the legal battle for supers will finally crush them out of work so they can get the maximum profit from their products.

2. More cohesive new super team

It’s not that they were bad, I just felt it was jarring after the profiles Syndrome kept on his targets - all supers were completely normal people who happened to have abilities. The new guys were okay, but felt like oddball ideas and out-of-place mutants (the whole point is that supers are being pushed into normal lives and hiding their innate abilities. I dunno how you do that as an owl-man). I would make all the new guys young adults and teenagers.

One, to point out the reality of the situation with supers. The new blood is going to be young. After what Syndrome did, nearly all adult heroes have been killed. I want to point out that, in order to bring back the idea of superheroism, we have to acknowledge that the ones who are going to do that are a generation down. Elastigirl meets them (we’re keeping Voyd obviously, but they’re all nervous youngsters like her, 15-22 ish). Elastigirl get confronted by her protective instinct - legalising supers means all of these kids going into danger. But, through talking with them, she realises how much it means to them, not having to hide who they are. They’re all like Voyd is. They were all shunned, pushed away, and ultimately hid their powers while feeling like absolute shit for being abnormal. There is a very clear real life allegory here. Helen realises that legalising supers isn’t just about throwing yourself into danger. It’s about allowing people to be who they are, and not shame them for something out of their control. They’re unpractised, they’re ashamed of showing their powers to her, and Helen mentally adopts every single one of them instantly.

Helen gets a montage of training her super team to understand their powers better. She sees them become more at home with themselves after an early life full of restriction and even self-hatred. It’s not just about being cool, it’s about your identity, and Helen gets that and stops having reservations about legalising supers again. It’s bigger than her family. And the Deavors arrange and fund this, because they want as many heroes implicated as possible, they want both generations of supers wiped out and to never be able to return. Dependency is a crutch they would say, and humanity needs to learn to survive without it. We can keep Screenslaver as the fake villain setting up the big final battle, and we can keep his monologue about dependency on screens as a metaphor, but devolving into a diatribe against the nature of neglecting your personal success by vicariously watching someone else’s.

3. The third act didn’t fit

We already don’t have the dead weight of baby JJ crashing the pace of the story. He’s a young child, and we’re going to have Edna watch him (she can love it like she does in the movie, Jack-Jack can find her research enriching too). This time it’s Frozone, Elastigirl and Mr Incredible who get taken by mind control. The siblings are going to stage a fight between all three, pretending that superheroes are unstable, liable to turn on each other at the cost of civilian lives. That should turn the public against them for good, while causing massive amounts of damage. They use the Screenslaver persona to set up a showdown in the city, only to capture the three supers and turn them on each other.

Not mind controlled? Elastigirl’s recruits. They just barely manage to escape it. They go to get help from their mentor, only to find the supers gone, and Violet and Dash seeing the carnage on TV and getting suited up to find out what’s going on. The kids get an introduction and team up together, heading off to stop their teacher and parents, new blood vs old guard.

That results in six or seven barely trained supers going up against three extremely experienced ones, while they also have to try to minimise loss of life and property damage. While dealing with the trauma, for Violet and Dash, of being attacked by their own parents and not knowing why. Also, they get backup from Honey. Frozone’s wife. SHE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE IN THIS MOVIE. She was designed and then cut and that’s a TRAVESTY. She’s already popular, she was a breakout hit, let her be in this. She steps forward, no powers, regular civilian clothes, and helps the kids out with advice from the ground, picking them up when they fall, and huge vocal encouragement. She kicks ass because that’s what she fucking does. She helps direct the crowds to safety, she tells these kids to look at their super suits and believe in what they’re capable of. And it’s her who snags Frozone after his powers get strategically rebuffed, she grabs him and grabs his goggles off and fixes it herself.

With another adult on their side and better confidence the new supers manage to pull Elastigirl and Mr Incredible back to reality too, which concludes Helen’s anxiety about their capability and the passing of the torch. They did it, they were responsible - there’s no casualties and with all their powers combined, they managed to avert damage better than Helen and Bob ever did. The adults realise that the kids can be trusted to handle heroism and Helen is super proud of her trainees-slash-children.

That leaves the actual capture of the villains, which comes down to running from the combined might of all the supers who gradually cut down their ability to escape, culminating in Winston stopping Evelyn from getting away, and having a personal realisation. A resurgence of the boyish glee he once had for heroes stopping the villains. He foils his sister and turns both of them in, willingly, in a weird way fulfilling his dream of saving the day like his idols did.

To round off, thanks to the rehabilitated (and not sabotaged) hero image, and the display of capability the young supers put on, supers are legalised again. Helen and Bob now work as teachers to the kids as part of a new government program to make sure kids with powers learn how to responsibly control them, Helen of course continuing her role as mentor to her massive new family, and Bob finally able to work without restraining himself. The government agrees that encouraging kids to train properly and learn how to avoid risk and costly situations is worth endorsing. Dash befriends some of the other teens in the supergroup and has friends he can push his abilities with, without it being unfair.

Finally, it’s time for Violet to move out, because things must move on. Helen, Bob and Frozone (who gets an updated suit because come on) are accepting that they’ll eventually they’ll have to let others take their place. Violet’s going to move in with Tony and get a normal job, because she still yearns for a normal lifestyle underneath it all, but she won’t be far away and can always answer the call to join the family in the field. They all bid her farewell (”Finally maybe I can get some peace without Dash bursting into my room-” “I can run to your apartment in one minute 28 seconds, I checked!!”) but Helen isn’t worried any more, because she has renewed faith in how well her children have grown up and is accepting they don’t need has as much any more. And besides, she has tons more children who need her too and it’s up to her to help them find their true potential.

Thanks for reading this way too long exercise in figuring out what I wanted from the sequel to one of my favourite films in the world... the original Incredibles was centred around heroes also just being human, who make mistakes and have to grow up and change, and the villain’s fanboy mentality was the antithesis to that. I would’ve wanted a sequel that understood the message of its predecessor in that people have to develop and grow, one aspect of which is letting go, but what we actually got seemed too static and unwilling to move away from what we had already resolved in the first one.

#the incredibles #some creative bogus analysis I guess #this is VERY long I'm sorry??#yeah this is like.. 2.5k words what the fuck

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arcticdementor · 5 years

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So interesting that McArdle and Dougherty, both Americans, are exploring these themes and ideas not through their own childhoods in America, but through their ancestral homeland, so to speak. There a tension between the idea that one finds “rootedness” in unchosen aspects of one’s identity/heritage/past, and the reality that McArdle and Dougherty are Americans but are specifically looking at these issues through the lens of a country that they don’t live in and that they visit *as* visitors. Is America that barren a place, identity and rootedness-wise? Is it just too new? Too big? Too vulgarly materialist? Has everything here been too freely chosen? What about if one was born here and knows no other country? Is that good enough, or is “America” and “Americanness” too thin — especially now, in a multicultural society that all too often wishes to toss out much of the past altogether, or at least to insist on viewing it as tainted, suspect, and very much in need of the heavy hand and distorting lenses of the orthodoxies of our current cultural moment. I will say that I am very bothered by what I think is an injustice. Both McArdle and Dougherty are writers/pundits with very high verbal facility. They can write and express themselves about this, about the meaning of what is essentially blood ties, and avoid most or all of the minefields that lie in wait for white people when they touch on this subject. McArdle and Dougherty also can, of course, AFFORD to travel to Ireland and spend time there, even though they are not from there. But who knows how many poor white Americans there are, who never have the chance to go to, perhaps even to learn much about, places that they may have ancestry in, who only have America, or at least their part of America, in which they can conceivably be rooted, or take root in. And they of course likely do not have the high verbal facility of Dougherty or McArdle and will no doubt be much more prone to expressing themselves in a way that 99% of the ruling elites will jump all over them for — because they are evil “blood and soil” types, or “white nationalists,” or privileged white people who shouldn’t even be here in the first place, or whose roots here are stained forever by American injustices such as slavery or segregation. Indeed, McArdle in particular has done her fair share of that sort of shaming and attacking, in between writing articles about the latest $6,000 kitchen gadgets for her rich yuppie libertarian readership. The elite classes, including much of the Republican establishment, take every opportunity they can to send the message that the person in Honduras or India or China or Syria who has their plane ticket or their caravan trajectory is MORE American than people who were born here, since the immigrant is making a deliberate CHOICE to come to the USA, and the American dream belongs, apparently, to people who aren’t Americans yet but who want to be. The ruling class — again, including lots of Republicans — is 100% against this idea of rootedness, unchosen bonds, loyalty to homeland, and all the rest, and tremendous effort and energy is expended in the media, politics, education, and entertainment to communicate that message. It’s nice that Dougherty and McArdle are privileged enough to explore these questions, and smart enough to be able to explore them without saying the wrong thing and having all the bien-pensants seek to destroy them. But it *is* privilege. In previous threads, numerous commenters have said that it isn’t true that all expressions of pride in one’s ancestry are penalizing, punished, and proscribed for white people in America, because nothing stops people from celebrating St. Patrick’s Day or wearing a Kiss Me, I’m Italian shirt or whatnot. Basically, white Americans are allowed to have pride in countries that aren’t theirs but were their ancestors’. I can’t help but wonder if this is a worldview adopted by the kind of middle-class people who would write and comment on a blog like this, because it is a worldview grounded in the kind of privilege that can do what McArdle and Dougherty do — travel overseas, be *tourists* (whether they like that word or not). It re-affirms neoliberal capitalism by making even rootedness a sort of consumption item that the well-to-do can afford. Dougherty wrote, during 2016, that he had Irish passports ready for himself and his family in case Trump got elected and things went very wrong. It reminded me, quite frankly, of how in Hoellebecq’s “Submission” the Jewish girlfriend of the main character decides to move to Israel when s*** starts hitting the fan in France. *Is* this rootedness, and unchosen loyalty, or is it really something else? Are we really fooling ourselves, believing that we can achieve this rootedness by *leaving*?

Matt in VA

#quote #comments section #the american conservative #long quote #matt in va

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hillaryisaboss · 6 years

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Roseanne proves Russian propaganda worked: 7 reasons we can't allow Roseanne to normalize Trump

I hope Roseanne’s reboot is all one big satire. One big “bait-and-switch.”

What do I mean by that, exactly? What I mean is… I hope what Roseanne is secretly doing is showing us how the working-class lost its way and ended up voting for Donald Trump. And that through Darlene moving home, and presenting Roseanne with a gender-fluid grandson, she slowly starts to realize her vote for the #1 bully of all-time was a mistake.

I hope the entire 10th season of Roseanne shows this evolution in Roseanne’s character – Trump supporter realizing the errors of their thinking when presented with modern America. And who knows… maybe Roseanne herself is the only person able to reach these misguided working-class voters.

But if that’s not the case, and this isn’t one big ploy by Roseanne to change the hearts of Trump supporters, this is required reading for all Americans.

For better or worse, we all know Roseanne Barr is a bit of a bully like Trump.

Roseanne constantly fired people from her show (sound familiar?), viciously attacked critics (I can’t wait for her to read this), threatened to sue people, and thrived on constant controversy, celebrity feuds, and tabloid sensationalism. Roseanne and Donny are more similar than one might think.

Is Roseanne the female version of Trump?

Many on her show thought she was a tyrant, something Donald Trump wishes he could be in real life. Which is why all of these similarities between Roseanne and Trump make it all the more ironic and hypocritical when Roseanne attacks the bullies her grandson faces at school for wearing girls clothing.

Roseanne… you literally voted for a man that enabled the bullies that attacked your grandson. To ignore this glaring hypocrisy and lack of self-awareness is mind-boggling. Bullies across our nation were given the “green-light” to attack minorities when Trump won the Presidency. Roseanne should do some serious self-reflection and soul-searching on how her vote for Trump (the #1 bully of all-time) emboldened the very kids who bullied her grandson.

So all of this hypocrisy begs the question:

How did feminist hero Roseanne Barr go from supporting Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton during the 2008 Democratic primary (even writing a pro-Hillary article for the HuffingtonPost), to supporting Donald J. Trump (con-man and pussy-grabber) for President in 2016?

The answer is simple: Russian bots on Twitter.

After using Twitter to run for President in 2012, Roseanne submerged herself in political propaganda on Twitter (which she has since deleted).

There is no better proof than Roseanne herself that the Russians were successful with their online propaganda campaign. How else do you explain a feminist hero voting for a pussy-grabber over the most qualified woman to ever seek the Presidency?

Putin feared Hillary, and turning former supporters like Roseanne against Hillary was part of the mastermind. The ultimate con in American history to destabilize our nation in Putin’s favor.

Sadly, Roseanne is using her shows reboot to justify the unjustifiable: voting for a proud bigot who conned working-class people by scapegoating minorities and promising to return us to an America we will never be again.

So how will Roseanne go about justifying the unjustifiable?

By trying to say Hillary was an equally bad candidate – the “lesser of two evils” argument. Which was, after-all, Russia’s ultimate goal: muddy the waters so the American public thinks both candidates are equally bad.

“Neither Trump or Hillary will change anything, so why not give the finger to the establishment by voting for Trump? At least he gives the illusion of being on our side. He looks and sounds like us, right? Burn down the system!!”

This is a very petty and immature rationale from a group of people that have felt forgotten by the “establishment.” But it’s a rationale I fear far too many working-class people used to convince themselves that Trump (a 4-times bankrupt silver-spoon Daddy’s boy fraud) was somehow their guy.

Or maybe the working-class simply supported Trump in order to seek revenge against America for feeling ignored? But why is it always liberal America’s job to understand conservative America’s bigotry and ignorance? Didn’t 3 million more people vote for Hillary?

Given that blue America is the majority, don’t allow Roseanne to use her reboot to justify the unjustifiable. Never allow the minority support of bigot Trump be normalized or rationalized.

So in preparation of Roseanne’s reboot, I present to you 7 reasons why Roseanne is wrong about Hillary, Trump, and America:

1. Roseanne’s reboot tackles the skyrocketing cost of prescription medication.

Hillary Rodham Clinton fought for universal healthcare in the early 1990s, and eventually helped pass the Children’s Health Insurance Program – a program that covers 8 million children.

Hillary also secured healthcare for 9/11 first-responders as New York Senator, and President Bill Clinton passed the Family and Medical Leave Act.

I guess in addition to believing Russian propaganda, Roseanne doesn’t remember history, either.

The Clintons have been tackling the issue of healthcare for decades, and deserve credit for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the Family and Medical Leave Act. Two achievements we take for granted now days but are actually a result of the pragmatic Clintons.

Heck, while Bill Clinton was Governor of Arkansas, the Clintons helped expand access to healthcare in poor, poverty stricken communities. Around the same time, Donald Trump was being sued by the Justice Department for racial discrimination (doesn’t Roseanne have an African-American grandaughter in the reboot?).

The Clintons have a long record of achievements on healthcare. Why is this well-known history ignored by Roseanne? Did she forget?

2. Roseanne says Trump talked about “jobs.”

Hillary talked about jobs, too. But the media never covered it. Studies show that for the most part, the media only covered Hillary’s fake “e-mail scandal.”

Hillary had detailed policy plans to create jobs in 2016 America, such as clean-energy jobs. She even gave numerous speeches on her plans – speeches that weren’t covered by the media.

Meanwhile, con-man Trump promised to bring back coal jobs that will never come back to America. The original Roseanne Conner would have easily seen through Trump’s deception. Unfortunately, Roseanne Barr spent too much time on Twitter being subjected to Russian propaganda. I guess technology has unfortunate, unintended consequences?

Roseanne should have spent more time doing independent research regarding Hillary’s jobs plan rather than re-tweeting Russian bots on Twitter. Hillary promised green energy jobs of the future. Con-man Trump promised coal jobs that will never come back to America.

Oh and does Roseanne remember that President Bill Clinton created 22 million new jobs during the 1990s?

If you want to talk about jobs, let’s remember the prosperous and pragmatic Clinton Era. Meanwhile, con-man Trump shipped jobs overseas to China, stiffed American workers out of contracts, and hired immigrants rather than American workers to build his buildings.

Hillary’s jobs plan was crafted for the future. Trump’s jobs plan was crafted to con Americans into thinking we could transport back in time.

3. Roseanne says Hillary is a “liar, liar, pantsuit on fire.”

That’s only if you believe Russian propaganda and 40 years of manufactured “Clinton scandals.” Hillary was rated by fact-checking websites as the most honest politician running for President in 2016.

Furthermore – Hillary has never been found guilty of anything in over 40 years of “investigations.” I guess that would make Hillary the best liar of all-time, right? 40 years and not a single guilty verdict. Personally, I hope one day there is a book written debunking every single Clinton conspiracy theory.

Meanwhile, Trump has the all-time record for false and misleading statements. No President has ever lied at the rate Trump has lied. There is no distant second. Trump is in a league and category all on his own.

So making a joke about Hillary (who has never been found guilty of anything in 40 years) as being a liar rings hollow when you voted for a man who lies multiple times per-day (maybe even per-hour). I guess there was a true lack of self-awareness when this joke was written? Not only is it hypocritical, it proves Russian bots corrupted Roseanne’s mind.

Again – Hillary was rated by fact-checkers as the most honest 2016 candidate for President. Trump is the biggest liar of all-time. Hillary, unlike Trump, has never been found guilty of anything. Every single Hillary investigation has turned up nothing. No trial. No guilty verdict. The same can’t be said of Trump who has been found guilty or settled out of court hundreds of times.

This is yet another example of the Russians trying to muddy the waters and make Hillary seem like just as big of a liar as Trump is. Nothing could be further from the truth.

4. Roseanne says the Clintons are equally as corrupt as Trump.

Roseanne, just like Trump, consistently re-tweeted conspiracy theories about the Clinton Foundation, even though fact-checking websites debunked all of them.

Let us remember: the Clinton Foundation was given a higher charity rating than the Red Cross and provides 11.5 million people with HIV/AIDS medication – that’s more than half of all those affected by the virus worldwide.

Many of the Clinton Foundation conspiracy theories pushed on Twitter made it seem as though Hillary was just as bad as Trump. However, the Trump Foundation illegally paid off Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi to hide Trump University fraud. Meanwhile, the Clinton Foundation helps treat millions of people affected by HIV/AIDS – treating more than half of all those affected by the virus worldwide.

Furthermore, the Clintons pay 35% in taxes (what do you pay, Roseanne?). We have yet to see all of Trump’s tax returns. Who truly is the corrupt one based on tax-rates?

5. On Jimmy Kimmel, Roseanne said no American should want their President to fail.

So why did Roseanne support Trump, a man who led the racist birther movement against Barack Obama, the first African American President? And no, Hillary was not the “original” birther as Russian propaganda would have you believe.

Point is – why did Roseanne enable and spread the propaganda of those who made it their mission to make Obama a one-term President?

This is yet another example of Roseanne’s hypocrisy.

If Roseanne actually believes what she is saying, why did she enable and embolden those who wished for Obama to fail as President? The double standard is both maddening and terrifying all at once.

6. Roseanne hates Hillary’s foreign policy.

As Secretary of State, Hillary passed the first-ever U.N Resolution on gay rights (proclaiming: “human rights are gay rights and gay rights are human rights” on the world stage), and made it so trans Americans can legally change their gender on their passport. Hillary also rebuilt relations with every nation after the disastrous Bush Administration, traveling to 112 countries — more than any other Secretary of State. Our worldwide favorability rose 20% during Hillary’s tenure. Her primary focus was on women’s rights and health, bringing up issues such as forced abortion and maternal mortality rates. Hillary re-opened relations with Burma, enacted a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and killed Osama Bin Laden. She also was instrumental in putting together the Paris Climate Agreement, something Trump has since removed us from.

Roseanne supports Trump’s foreign policy because he enables Israel’s war crimes against the Palestinians. Remember: Trump appealed to all prejudices – including prejudices against the Palestinian people. As a Jewish woman, Roseanne is a hardcore supporter of Israel.

Trump’s foreign policy consists of Twitter wars with dangerous dictators. How is that better than what Hillary accomplished as Secretary of State?

7. Roseanne hates the Clintons because of NAFTA.

George Bush Senior originally put NAFTA together. Bill Clinton oversaw the implementation of NAFTA due to denying Bush Senior a second term. NAFTA was originally Bush’s baby (not Clinton’s).

Instead of only remember the negatives of the Clinton Era, let us also remember the numerous positives:

—4-balanced budgets due to the superb compromising ability of Bill Clinton—Surplus —22 million new jobs —7 million fewer Americans living in poverty —Minimum wage up 20% —Assault Weapons Ban —Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act —Northern Ireland peace process —Campaign Against Teen Pregnancy: all-time low abortion rates —Office on Violence Against Women —Violence Against Women Act —Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP): 9 million children insured —Tax-credit for low-income Americans —Family and Medical Leave Act —Incomes rising at all income levels

Didn’t Roseanne also do well during the 1990s? And yes – Roseanne’s show may have helped Clinton win in 1992. But Clinton resoundingly won re-election in 1996 due to producing results for the American people.

Incomes were rising at all income levels, 22 million new jobs were created, minimum wage was up 20%, more children had healthcare (9 million covered under CHIP), and our country had a blanched-budget and a surplus. We also passed the Family and Medical Leave Act.

Plus, in-case you were wondering, Glass Steagall had nothing to do with the 2008 financial collapse according to fact-checking websites (try blaming Republican George Bush for a change). And sure… welfare reform sucked. But that’s because we had a GOP-dominated Congress and Bill Clinton was a true pragmatist (exactly what we need in a leader).

On balance, the Clinton Era was a great era for most Americans (including Roseanne). Just look at the long list of accomplishments! Hillary’s platform would have ushered in another pragmatic Clinton era, which would be going far better than the current Administration.

The worst thing that ever happened to Roseanne Barr was her Twitter account. She was constantly subjected to pro-Trump and anti-Hillary propaganda, causing her to support the pussy-grabber over the first-female nominee for President. In her Russian corrupted brain, Hillary was just as bad, if not worse, than Trump.

It’s truly sad that a former feminist icon didn’t support the first-female candidate for President due to Russian propaganda. This former feminist icon opted instead for a well-known misogynist. (And please don’t bring up Bill Clinton as your defense because he had consensual affairs and was then held accountable for his transgressions). Trump has yet to be held accountable for his abuse of women, and a true feminist would never support a man like Trump for President.

Unfortunately, Roseanne is going to attempt to use her shows reboot to legitimize Trump and justify her vote for the pussy-grabber. However, as much as Roseanne may try, Trump is not a legitimate President. Donald lost the popular vote by 3 million votes and was elected with Russian help (treason).

I don’t care how “forgotten” you feel by the establishment – it is never acceptable to support bigotry, discrimination, scapegoating, sexism, bullying, or hatred. I will never root for this “President” to succeed so long as he is a bigot filled with hate. Because if Trump succeeds, bigotry will be validated. That is something I will never support and something the original Roseanne Conner never would have supported, either. But the original Roseanne, unlike the Roseanne of the present, wasn’t corrupted by the Russians.

Trump’s victory –aided by Roseanne/Russians on Twitter– legitimized bigotry and discrimination everywhere. Roseanne helped the very bullies she defends her grandson against. The embodiment of hypocrisy and irony.

Roseanne fell for the con-man fraud who promised to bring back obsolete coal jobs instead of researching Hillary’s jobs plan the media never covered – a plan that would have led to huge job growth, powered primarily by clean energy jobs of the future.

Roseanne is the ultimate example of the effectiveness that the Russian propaganda campaign had on Twitter. Roseanne was duped by Russian bots into thinking Hillary was as big of a liar as Trump (fact-checking websites confirm Hillary was the most honest 2016 Presidential candidate while Trump was rated the least honest). Luckily, even without Roseanne’s support, Hillary still won by 3 million votes. Roseanne will never be a member of the true American majority.

Roseanne is forever a member of the manipulated minority – manipulated by both Russian bots and a con-artist that was born with a silver-spoon in his mouth. A man who prides himself on bullying and sexism. A man who cheated working-class people out of contracts his entire life, shipped jobs to China, and hired immigrants over American workers to build his buildings. A man whose tax-plan only benefits people like himself.

The woman who always spoke truth to power and never fell for anyone’s manipulation finally did at the hands of Russian bots on Twitter. A true American tragedy.

Over 165 million Americans were subjected to Russian propaganda online saying both candidates were equally as bad. So for those that say Russia’s propaganda campaign had no impact on the election, look no further than Roseanne as “exhibit A” proof.

Roseanne preferred a “relatable” con-man over an overqualified “elitist” woman. Hillary was too “smug” for Roseanne’s taste. She preferred the pussy-grabber propaganda artist who looked and sounded like Dan Conner. A con-man who puts billionaires like himself above people like the Conners. A con-man who cheated drywallers like Dan Conner out of money his entire career.

I’m still holding out hope this is all satire and in the season finale of the 10th season, Roseanne will admit she was wrong about Trump and that she should have voted for Hillary (you know, the woman who worked for decades on healthcare and whose husband left us a booming economy and surplus). Because after 1 year of a Trump Presidency, can anyone really still say their vote was the right decision? I’d give anything to transport back to the Clinton years based on what we currently have now.

Roseanne Barr truly could do our country a great service by helping convince those who voted for Trump that they were wrong. Sadly, she’s still on Twitter submerging herself in Russian propaganda – believing that the Democrats are just as bad as Republicans. I guess that’s how Roseanne went from supporting Hillary in 2008 to now supporting Trump.

Thankfully, Hillary still won by 3 million votes despite Roseanne betraying women and supporting a sexist bigot. I’m proud to stand with the 66 million majority who voted for the slogan “Stronger Together.” Trump’s Electoral College victory will never represent me or the majority of Americans.

Sadly, I guess false promises and scapegoating can even manipulate those you once viewed as idols. Maybe birds of the bullying feather truly do flock together?

So please defend Hillary and tweet @therealroseanne when she bashes Hillary with lies on her shows reboot.

Because we need to declare once and for all: Hillary is not nor has she ever been “just as bad as Trump.” Just ask the millions of people who receive HIV/AIDS medication from the Clinton Foundation – over half of all those affected by the virus worldwide. Or look at the hundreds of guilty Trump convictions vs. the zero guilty convictions for Hillary. Or the fact that the Clintons gave us 4-balanced-budgets while Trump had 4-bankruptcies. Or Hillary’s work at the Children’s Defense Fund investigating African American juveniles being placed in adult prisons. Or the Clintons working tirelessly on the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the Family and Medical Leave Act.

Face it Roseanne: you were duped by two abusive, sexist men (Putin and Trump) into hating Hillary, the first woman to run on a major party’s ticket for President, and who will become a bigger feminist icon than you could ever dream of becoming. Critics always said Roseanne hated other women who were more powerful than her. Did Hillary take your crown, Roseanne?

The old Roseanne Conner is a true feminist icon.

The new Roseanne Conner voted for the sexist pussy-grabber, which enabled bullies everywhere (ie: the kids who bullied her grandson).

PS: Or maybe Roseanne simply wanted Trump to win so there would be a reason for her show to be given a reboot?

Never normalize the con-man bigot silver-spoon fraud.

@roseanneonabc

#roseanne #roseanne barr #sara gilbert #hillary clinton #donald trump

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maddie-grove · 6 years

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Bi-Monthly Reading Round-Up: July/August

Playlist

“Mama Tried” by Merle Haggard (The Mars Room)

“Summer of Sam” by Lana del Rey (Sharp Objects)

“Keep Searchin’” by Del Shannon (Those Girls)

“No One Knows” by Dion and the Belmonts (Fortune’s Lady)

“Unpretty” by TLC (90s Bitch)

“Everybody’s Got the Right to Love” by the Supremes (Fool Me Twice)

“Loving Arms” by the Dixie Chicks (East)

“Spare Parts” by Bruce Springsteen (Joe College)

“You Said You Loved Me” from Bloody Blackbeard (Tomorrow and Forever)

“Hot in Herre” by Nelly (Miss Wonderful)

“Growin’ Up” by David Bowie (The Charm School)

“Somebody That I Used to Know” by Gotye (The Beggar Maid)

“Henry Lee” by Georgia Fireflies (Fairest)

Best of the Bi-Month

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn (2006): Troubled journalist Camille Preaker returns to her claustrophobic Missouri hometown to report on the brutal murders of two teenage girls. The gruesome nature of her assignment is only matched by the cruelty and senselessness that fills her childhood home. Flynn marries a beautifully constructed plot with a wealth of distressingly vivid details, and the result is unforgettable. It’s like if V.C. Andrews had cared about being a more conventionally “good” writer. (No disrespect meant to V.C. Andrews, who didn’t really need to be any better, but she very much did her own thing re: plot and style.) Also, I love Camille a lot.

Worst of the Bi-Month

Fairest by Marissa Meyer (2015): In this prequel to The Lunar Chronicles, Princess Levana leads a luxurious existence on the moon colony ruled by her family, but lives in fear of her sadistic sister and believes she can never be loved because of the terrible scars hidden beneath her glamor. Her desperation for affection and validation eventually turns her into the Evil Moon Queen of the series proper, or something like that. Levana is probably meant to be a lonely, misguided girl who slowly descends into evil due to a barrage of disappointments, or else a conscienceless rapist (yes, rapist) whose suffering renders her somewhat pitiable. I honestly can’t tell, but the result is incoherent, to say the least.

Rest of the Bi-Month

The Charm School by Susan Wiggs (1999): In 1850s Boston, painfully awkward spinster Isadora Peabody decides to leave her stifling, shallow family and work as a navigator/translator on a clipper ship, much to the frustration (at first!) of its raucous captain. This is a rollicking romance with a nice Old Hollywood feel, partly because it owes a lot to Now, Voyager. Isadora’s character development is engaging, and there’s some interesting social commentary about the damaging effects of being forced to perform femininity.

The Beggar Maid by Alice Munro (1977): In this collection of short stories, Rose grows up poor and unshielded from the sordid realities of her mid-century Canadian town. Education and marriage change her life almost beyond recognition, and then she changes it again of her own volition. Munro’s descriptions are so perfect that I barely ever had to make an effort to imagine what anything looked like, and her observations about people are uncomfortably accurate. The stories become a little too sedate in the last quarter of the collection, though.

Joe College by Tom Perrotta (2000): Working-class Yale student Danny, equally at sea with his carelessly rich classmates and hostile townie coworkers, runs into even more trouble during a spring break spent driving his father’s lunch truck. Although the story takes a while to get started, it features several terrific setpieces (notably a dinner hosted by a classmate’s personally charming, politically heartless father) and has a thought-provoking ending.

Fortune’s Lady by Patricia Gaffney (1989): In 1790s England, Cass Merlin’s father is hanged as a Jacobin traitor, leaving her disgraced and practically alone in the world. Recruited/blackmailed into acting as a honeypot for a suspected Jacobin ringleader, she doesn’t expect to fall for Philip Riordan, her fellow spy, but you know how these things go. This is probably my favorite of all the Old School romances I’ve read. It has a fun if overly lurid plot inspired by Notorious, a compelling if occasionally idiot-ball-carrying heroine, and a hero who is only occasionally terrible. On the other hand, the villain is a bisexual who hates Edmund Burke, which (a) is kind of offensive and (b) makes it really hard for me, a bisexual who hates Edmund Burke, to hate him.

The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner (2018): Romy, a single mother and stripper from San Francisco, ends up serving two consecutive life sentences in maximum security prison after killing her stalker. This novel pissed me the fuck off, not because it’s bad, but because it showcases the blatant unfairness of the justice system for indigent defendants and the proudly heartless attitude that many people have towards prisoners. Kushner has a terrific style and makes lots of references to 1960s country music, which I appreciate, but she loses steam about two-thirds into the book.

90s Bitch by Allison Yarrow (2018): Pushing back against the wave of nineties nostalgia, Yarrow details the sexism rampant in the decade’s politics and media, covering topics like the Clarence Thomas sexual harassment controversy, the downfall of Tonya Harding, Dan Quayle’s war on Murphy Brown, and the watered-down feminism of the Spice Girls. Yarrow’s account is entertaining as the subject matter is infuriating, but I wish she’d spent more time establishing how the eighties were any less sexist, because that doesn’t sound quite right.

East by Edith Pattou (2003): Ebba-Rose grows up happy with her large family on their early modern Norwegian farm, until poverty, illness, and the exposure of a big lie threaten to end it all. Then a polar bear shows up at the door and offers to fix everything in return for Rose coming to live with him--an offer that Rose feels compelled to take not just out of desperation, but out of wanderlust. I’m not that familiar with “East of the Sun, West of the Moon,” but this seems to be a fairly straightforward retelling. It’s charming, though, and it really picks up after the candle incident.

Miss Wonderful by Loretta Chase (2004): Threatened with financial consequences if he doesn’t marry an heiress within a year, Napoleonic war veteran Alistair Carsington says “fuck that” and goes into the canal-building business with a friend in order to come up with the necessary cash. However, going into the canal business brings him into contact with the bewitching Mirabel Oldridge, who fucking hates the idea of a canal running through her village. This Regency romance turned out to be a lot sadder than I thought it would be--the hero and heroine spend just as much time dealing with PTSD and grief for a parent, respectively, as they do bantering--and it was a richer story for all of that. The start was pretty slow, though, and I could’ve done without the disdain for the lower class.

Fool Me Twice by Meredith Duran (2014): Desperate for safety, Olivia Holladay cons her way into a housekeeping position at the Duke of Marwick’s house, hoping to find letters that will keep her murderous stalker off her back forever. Then she becomes way too invested in the welfare of the duke, who has become agoraphobic and borderline feral after his wife’s sudden death. This Victorian romance had an even slower start than Miss Wonderful, and I never got a coherent sense of the heroine’s personality; she’s a combination of prim goody-goody and wily con artist, and those two sides never really gel. I did like the conclusion, and Duran’s style is excellent as ever.

Tomorrow and Forever by Maud B. Johnson (1980): Tricked into boarding a bride ship and brutalized by Blackbeard’s pirates, New England girl Marley Lancaster finally finds love with Captain Bates Hagen after they’re set adrift in a dinghy together. They start a new life in Bath, North Carolina, but can it survive the fact that Bates is kind of a dirtbag? I rather enjoyed this Old School romance, partly because of the unusual setting and partly because I just liked the heroine. She’s kind of weak-willed and not very good at solving problems, but she struggles through life anyway and I really rooted for her. Bates, for his part, is...not a rapist. He’s actually the least rapey man in the story, which is how it should be, right? Still, he’s a dirtbag who ditches his common-law wife in a hostile colonial town and seems affronted when she doesn’t stay put. Plus I feel like only half the rapes in the story were narratively necessary.

Those Girls by Chevy Stevens (2015): Three sisters flee their rural Canadian home after the youngest kills their abusive father, only to face more horrible violence from men. Years later, after they’ve started a new life in Vancouver, the past reemerges and, you guessed it, there is more horrible violence. I finished this book and asked myself, “Is a woman made to suffer?” Like, I obviously read a lot about women suffering (see: most of this list), but this whole story is just women suffering, briefly trying to get revenge, and suffering more because of the revenge.

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ilbronco · 6 years

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But where oh where do the Cavallone get their money from? And how did Dino manage to execute a complete turn around of their finances and propel his bankrupt famiglia into the top 3 most influential in such a short amount of time? Below the cut, you will find my humble and perhaps very novice take on it, as I myself, am not a Mafioso leader and have based these headcanons very heavily on various sources collected from media, mostly. You can probably skip the first 5 paras which are gibberish, tbh.

So, before I get into the nitty-gritty, let me preface this post by saying I’ve decided to enforce the KHR lore of Mafia over the reality of what Mafia organisations truly are for this. Mainly because, I am rping a character from fiction, so while the below may be heavily romanticised ( much like the Mafia is in KHR itself ) that’s just the route I’ve decided to go down, as an rp blog.

First and foremost, Dino Cavallone is a good person, at heart. Canonically, he is ranked 1st out of 82,263 bosses as caring most not only about his own famiglia, but the general public AS WELL. With this in mind, I don’t personally feel he’d be involved in any activity which poses direct and very harmful threats to the people who live within the boundaries of his criminal empire, or to people in general.

Of course, no underground dealings are without consequence and people do and will get hurt and perhaps even die, inevitably. But Dino would most definitely ensure that these risks are minimised to the best they can be. As much as he is the leader of a top tier crime syndicate, you just don’t get the kind of good reputation he’s earned buy cutting hands off people who can’t repay their illegal loans on time or trafficking children into the unsavoury hands of God knows who.

Good nature aside, incorporating Dino’s talents as tech savvy, business smart, numerically inclined, accountant whizz - I think it’s safe for me to cut out the baser means of earning money like escorting/prostitution. It’s a lucrative business, legal for the most part, and if handled correctly ( which it absolutely WOULD be by your friendly neighbourhood Don ) can be beneficial to both owner and workers. So in that sense it’s good, but I just don’t see it as being a ‘Dino’ mode of moneymaking.

Next comes drugs. So, according to every source in the world ever - drugs is where it’s at! Guaranteed to make the most money in the shortest amount of time with the least effort and is just HUGE on a global scale. A perfect gateway into flipping your bankrupt family back on its feet in zero time at all! Unfortunately, KHR canon says no to drugs, so I’ll stick with that rule.

Right, so what the fuck DOES the Cavallone famiglia do?? My answer to this is; a little bit of everything. Loan sharking, money laundering, protection racket, arms dealing and Dino’s specialism, good old Intel. Let me stress this again, all of the above are HEAVILY regulated. Guns aren’t just being dealt willy nilly to terrorists or kids and money isn’t being extorted out poor of buggers who couldn’t possibly hope to afford it.

I’m going to attempt to put a time line on this, so bare with me ( if you haven’t run for your life already at the hot mess of this meta ). Firstly as another KHR rper on here ( bombassbitch lmk if you want off this post! ) supplied in a group chat, things would have had to start with a total overhaul of finances. Analysis of income vs expenditure, tracking spending, adding up their debts, reviewing investment accounts, applying a strict budget and sticking to it and then of course, finding ways to make more money!

For things to have turned around and the speed they did with the Cavallone, I think arms dealings would have had to be the first and main source of income. This is vaguely backed up in one ( 1 ) single manga panel showing Dino’s involvement in weapons trafficking. Procuring illegally manufactured arms ( likely from Russian Mafiosi ) at discount prices and then redistributing them to other gangs ( heavily vetted ones ) other famiglias, the army, other businesses etc.

The next viable source from there ( you can’t really launder money or be a loan shark without owning substantial funds yourself! ) would be protection racketeer. The Cavallone famiglia is some 5000 members strong, they have a LOT of manpower they’d be able to spread all over for this. I’ll take this opening to say this would NOT be the extortion kind of racket, where the Mafia provide a ‘false’ danger themselves in order to swindle people out of their money, but genuine protection. Mostly in the black market, providing buyers and sellers security for smooth transactions as well as other businesses or groups who may need protection through credible threats of violence outside the sanction of the law.

Then there’s Intel. Dino is a consistent source of this for Team Tsuna in the manga, and there’s no reason he wouldn’t be a source for a lot of other people too. As mentioned above, he’s got a lot of men to expend on gathering and harnessing information, which he the sells on ( or gives away depending on who’s asking ). This to me, doesn’t sound quite as lucrative as a quick fix, but once the Cavallone had re-established themselves financially, it’s certainly become a very large portion of the business they conduct.

This post is already shamefully SHAMEFULLY LONG so yeah I’ll sum the rest of the pies he has his fingers in real quick! Loan sharking - Note, only to genuine persons and businesses who have a high chance of being able to repay their debt. The interest is high, but not outrageously so and the punishment for non repayments are steep, but again, not horribly so. I doubt there would be much violence involved, more a taking over the business and all of its assets for the famiglia ( much like a bank would do ) plus a little extra because there needs to be INCENTIVE for people to repay, there needs to be a Don image to be maintained. But this is where I really ham up the romanticism because I just don’t see Dino beating the shit out of people or their family and breaking bones over repayments. I’m sorry like??

AND LAST but not least money laundering. In this technological era likely through a slew of illegal online casinos and gambling, stuff like that.

I got really lazy near the end of this but YEAH, that is, how my little Dino at least, conducts all his nasty Mafia business.

#SO THIS GOT LIKE LONG #IT'S ALL OVER THE PLACE THERE'S NO RHYTHM AT ALL #but it was actually a good exercise that got me thinking more in depth about the business Dino #as opposed to the 'man' Dino which is what I usually focus on #feel free to tip in I'm open to corrections or input of any kind #like I said it's a very roughly put together meta #peace out #█ ▌♘. ʜᴄ

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marcjampole · 6 years

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From Al Bundy to Trumpty-Dumpty: The spiritual part of the war on Christmas was lost in the days Trump was failing as a casino owner

I started feeling under the weather at around Noon the day before Christmas, so I spent much of the late afternoon and early evening drifting in and out of sleep while the television blared Christmas-themed episodes of “Married with Children,” the 1990s dystopic situation comedy about a lower middle class family of selfish, self-seeking, uneducated, ignorant individuals who think only of material possessions.

All the Christmas episodes revolved around the father of the house, Al Bundy, trying to get his hands on money to buy Christmas presents, and each time coming up short. His various part-time jobs and schemes all backfire, or he fails to get to the bank in time or he gets drunk and buys drinks for the house at the bar where he ends up after a stint as a Santa, with all the other poor blokes playing Santa in Chicago. That one has a bizarre ending, as Al uses his one positive trait—his athleticism which combines strength, agility and speed—to take possession of items from the bar, all labeled “Ray,” and give them as presents to his family. Best gift: A gold necklace with the name Ray on the gold medallion to Peggy, the wife Al loves to hate and hates to make love to.

Along the way, the Bundys, and most other characters, display vile and venial behavior and say many cruel things, all of which is hilariously funny, because they form a harmless exaggeration of the real world. In none of the episodes do any of the characters consider anything about Christmas other than the tradition of buying, giving and receiving presents. Virtually all the action not in the Bundys’ seedy home occurs in the marketplace: Al’s shoe store, next-door neighbor Marcy’s bank, the department store and other mall fixtures. No spirituality. No finding the true spirit of Christmas. No affirmation of traditional values. Even the parody—no, travesty—of “It’s a Beautiful Life” in a misogynistic, misanthropic vision in which his wife and two children are all better off in every way if the miserable Al had not been born. We laugh because we recognize in the extreme meanness and venality of the Bundys a parallel to our own lives and the people we know.

In Al Bundy’s world, love, friendship and every other emotion can only be found in money and material possessions, the values of American consumerism.

Also in the world of Donald Trump. All his talk about a war on Christmas involves the public market of commerce and has no spiritual element. It’s as if anything having to do with the religious aspects of Christmas—the story and its meaning, going to a mass or other church service, volunteering to feed the homeless, even caroling—has been consumed in a miasma of commercial values.

From Bill O’Reilly in 2012 through Donald Trump this year, the war on Christmas has always reduced to the secular marketplace. Do clerks and cashiers say “Merry Christmas” and thereby manifest their religiosity or do they utter the blasphemous “Seasons Greetings” and risk eternal damnation? Do the decorations have images of the Christ child and the legend “Merry Christmas” or do they rip all Christian doctrine to shreds by interspersing “Happy Hanukkah” and menorahs among “Seasons Greetings” placards and sundry Santa Clauses, sleighs, decorated trees and colorful wrapped-and-bowed packages? Instead of letting the marketplace operate without constraints, like conservatives are supposed to, those who believe that Christians must fight back in some religious war propose to regulate the market by stressing their one holiday. The authoritarian plea is meant to intimidate other cultures by stressing the primacy of one religion as a means to establish it as a de facto, and (they hope) someday de jure, national faith. This intimidation is a kind of softening up of all minorities for other assertions of Christian dominance such as refusing to bake wedding cakes for gay weddings, making abortion as hard as possible if not illegal, buying into a global war on Islam, and tampering with science and history text books.

Many pundits have already detailed the many reasons why conceiving of a war on Christmas as a Trojan horse for a war on secular values is wrong. Briefly, we are a secular society founded by fairly unreligious rich folk. Furthermore, Christmas iconography already dominates most celebration, even if has ceased to have or never had religious significance. Moreover, making potential customers feel uncomfortable is never good marketing. As a Jewish atheist, I won’t shop in any store, online or brick-and-mortar, once someone has said “Merry Christmas” to me. I imagine many other Jews, Muslims, Hindi and Buddhists have similar feelings. The idea of secularizing Christmas in the marketplace makes good business sense, and it doesn‘t disturb the private celebrations of Christians. Let’s also consider that making “Merry Christmas” the standard greeting debases its religious connotation, because it turns the phrase into a secular greeting that everyone gives everyone.

The rightwing media has taken up the battle cry against the war on Christmas for five years, but most mainstream media has recognized it is a false issue, a fake war.

So who else but a charlatan to declare victory in a fake war? It makes perfect sense that Donald Trump would claim that he had won the war on Christmas by re-instilling Christian values in the marketplace, from which secularists (read: liberal, feminist, gay, immigrant and minority) had vanquished it. At his rallies over the past few weeks, The Donald has been patting himself on the back for bringing Christmas back. Now, a nonprofit started by former Trump aides is going to run a Christmas day commercial in which a series of everyday Americans thank Trump for what he has done since his administration took over. Among the many faces of casually dressed people in various locations, mostly white but a token number of people of color —all manifesting traits associated with working class people—is a beautiful young white girl who says, “Thank you for letting us say “Merry Christmas” again.” Someone should tell that little girl that it was never against the law to say “Merry Christmas”; it’s merely thought in polite company to be poor manners to assume someone you don’t know is Christian. Unless, that is, if she’s an actress playing the role of grateful little girl.

Of course, they don’t really care about Christmas as a religious holiday, not Trump, not Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, not Meghan Kelley (who insisted both that Santa Claus was a real historical figure and that he had to be white), nor any of the other rightwing shills who said secular forces were destroying Christmas by their continuance of the decades-long American practice of marketplace recognition of other religions. They have all proved themselves many time to be committed to the values of conspicuous consumption and consumerism. But as elitists and authoritarians, they like the idea of giving the ignorant something they can be angry at other than the greed and acquisitiveness of their corporate masters, and in Trump’s case, fellow rich folk. All of them supported the mean-spirited tax overhaul, which Trump is publically calling a “Christmas gift” to the American people, knowing full well that it only the gift to the wealthy He has admitted as much to his rich friends at Mar-a-Lago.

Here in New York, we see very little evidence of more people saying “Merry Christmas” and fewer people saying “Seasons Greetings,” no stripping signs of Hanukkah from decorations, no increased religiosity in the sentiments people express in public interactions. Beggars in the subways make sure to include everyone in their solicitations. I did see one group of young men, mostly Hispanic, in seminary garb roaming together in the East Village saying “Merry Christmas” to everyone and being greeted with typical New Yorker’s scorn by the people with whom they tried to engage. I have also seen collections of Orthodox Jews publicly celebrating their version of Hanukkah in the streets to the same reaction.

But it may be different in the hinterlands.

In any case, let Trump have his victory, a hollow one because the more that people focus their celebration of Christmas in the marketplace, the more the true spirit of Christmas suffers. That was the lesson of “Married with Children” two decades ago, and nothing has changed since then. The marketplace long ago Bundyized the celebration of Christmas.

#al bundy #trump #christmas

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fly-pow-bye · 7 years

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DuckTales 2017 - “The Infernal Internship of Mark Beaks!”

Story by: Francsco Angones, Colleen Evanson, Bob Snow, Madison Bateman, Christian Magalhaes

Written by: Colleen Evanson

Directed by: John Aoshima

Storyboard by: Mark Garcia, Matthew Humphreys, Tanner Johnson

Not really that infernal.

The episode starts with Scrooge McDuck and Glomgold in the Billionaire's Club, doing what they call a "test of vision". Dewey says it’s a staring contest, which they both deny. Neither do the animators, as Glomgold clearly blinks about three times.

Even to people who are watching this show for the first time, the episode establishes clearly that these two hate each other's guts. They even sit in what seems like a room split between them. Is there anything these guys can agree on, even including myself? Huey and Dewey are escorted outside due to not being a part of the super elites, but not before a super elite walks in, looking at his smart phone.

Huey: Is that...

Mark Beaks: (practically in response) Yup.

Enter Mark Beaks, a Mark Zuckberg-like young tech CEO. He’s about to become a billionaire thanks to people investing in his upcoming product, Project Tah-Dah. He is definitely trying to be a more modern billionaire than Scrooge or Glomgold, and this show makes this very subtle!

Mark Beaks: Allow me to take you to the future...(hits playlist)...RE-MIIIIIIX! (loud dubstep music, airhorns)

Considering this guy may be a villain according to the intro, this may be ironic. It turns out that hating the guy trying to date the show is something McDuck and Glomgold can agree on. It’s true what they say, you don't get to be a billionaire without making a few enemies.

Someone who will disagree is Huey, who is a huge fan of him to the point where even breathing the same air causes him to. Dewey isn't nearly as enthusastic, though the thought of being a young billionaire isn't exactly deterring him.

Mark Beaks shows up, muttering about how Scrooge and Glomgold do not have social media presence, and see two kids saying things that stroke his ego. As a reward, he offers them an after-school job. We haven’t even seen them go to school in this series yet. It's not important.

After the title sequence that implied that this guy is not exactly nice, Huey and Dewey go to Waddle to apply for their after-school job. We pass by a few advertisements for his company, one with a slogan not too far off from Apple's, and, of course, more stuff about Project Tah-Dah. I can think of several things that logo looks like. Like an upside down seagull drawing! Or a big bu...well, let's get going.

After giving them a tour involving It turns out, there’s only one spot for an internship. Yup, it’s one of those "two people fight for the one ticket" episodes. As for Louie, it's apparently Louie’s turn to get left out entirely. Dewey is the only character that appears in every episode so far, though it'll be his turn soon.

Mark Beaks is gloating while watching his fortunes rise and rise, until we see a falcon in a suit beating up a bunch of his security guards. He introduces himself as Falcon Graves, and he's been hired to steal Project Tah-Dah. He never reveals his employer. His first reaction to this? Do a selfie.

The main joke is that he takes this super calm, despite the fact that he’s clearly dealing with someone violent. No matter what Falcon Graves does. He even breaks his cell phone several times, only for him to pull out another one. That's pretty much it for this running joke, and it almost gets old. Not to say I didn't enjoy watching Falcon Graves get annoyed at everything, so there's that.

Meanwhile, Scrooge and Glomgold decide to have a meeting on how to take care of Mark Beaks. It may be a poor lapse of judgment on Scrooge's part to make a deal with a guy who has tried to kill him multiple times, but their hatred of Mark Beaks runs that deep. We cut back and forth between Huey and Dewey trying to get that sweet internship, somewhat literally as at least the stapler is made out of candy, and this.

One of the highlights is Glomgold telling him what his plan is, while Scrooge rolls his eyes at the unnecessary spending. Glomgold does this through a blueprint, picturing himself with giant muscles. This is the highlight of the episode. I do appreciate that they're trying to feature as many villains as possible, but scenes like this really make me look forward to more episodes with Glomgold.

There's even a twist with these scenes, and anyone can see it coming. Let the fact that Scrooge was not drawn with huge muscles be a clue. Not that anyone would imagine that.

Going back to the Huey and Dewey plot, we get a montage of them trying their best at doing their job in their own way. This shows the contrast between their new characters, the more serious and organized duck does things the more serious and organized way, and the fun-loving duck does it the more fun-loving way. For example, when trying to take lunch orders, Huey asks each person what they want, while Dewey just gets pizza for everyone, which causes a "Dewey" chant. What can I say, pizza always wins.

We learn another thing about Beaks: he is all about his schedule. He will complain when his 2:15 pm coffee comes at 2:12, giving one of the few times he doesn't react with his usual uncaring personality. He even has time for a dance break randomly in the episode, because a modern cartoon has to have at least one scene where a character shakes his butt at the camera. Yeah, I feel like I have to least mention that one. Not as bad as certain scenes I'm still trying to forget.

Thanks to that aforementioned coffee timing, Mark Beaks awards Huey with the golden cap of internship. Unfortunately for Huey, Dewey also gets rewarded for a technicality: having a briefcase with him. He decides to make Dewey the Vice President of Fancy Business, a far better reward than just "internship". No gold hat, but still better. Huey takes it very well.

Or not, as he goes coo-coo at the thought that Dewey managed to get a better position than him, ripping up papers and starting to eat the desk. I've gotten at least one ask mentioning if this reminded me of a certain other reboot, but I don't really see it. There's clearly some buildup; it's not just "how dare someone other than me win something better than me."

This is all interrupted by Falcon Graves, who is getting rather impatient. I know the feeling. We finally get to learn what Project Tah-Dah really is, because Falcon Graves is giving his new Vice President of Fancy Business no choice in the matter. I'm not going to spoil it, but if you want to know, just ask the host of Wheel of Fish. His statements may echo Mark Beaks' feelings on everyone else but him.

It's a little more than that: this was all a part of his plan to be a billionaire without having to do anything substantial. This ends up being the turning point for both Huey and Dewey, if his general jerk personality wasn't any indication. They never really make him an outright villain, despite him being a part of the rogue's gallery in the intro.

It's a turning point for different reasons, of course. While both of them know this guy is a, it seems like Dewey tries to defend him more by saying that he's just a guy who relies on smart people. It seems like more of a Louie position than a Dewey position, and it feels really odd to say that about a trio that used to be so alike that even people in the show and comics make jokes about how alike they are.

Falcon Graves decides enough is enough, and hangs Mark Beaks off of Waddle's rooftop. Mark Beaks isn't worried at all. For one, there's trampolines. His mood immediately changes when Graves takes his last backup phone, so you know what his priorities are.

Of course, because he’s only in the "slimeball" category, they decide to help him out of this situation. This doesn't come without some, especially from the duck who idolized him at first.

Huey: I'm sure your bestest friend will just fake his way through it like everything else!

Just a reminder that Mark Beaks is currently being hung over an at least five-story fall, and that doesn't seem to come up in his head. Maybe he's still that mad for not being the Vice President of Fancy Business. Dewey decides to take a note from Huey and does his own checklist. Said checklist involves asking Huey for help. A good non-Glomgold non-Scrooge joke, more rare in this episode than the usual.

Huey just throws Dewey right in front of Graves, and all he can do is try to swing his briefcase at him. As seen previously, Falcon Graves is definitely a fighter, and that briefcase ends up in his hands. After another decent gag where Dewey keeps guessing briefcase combinations, another move I would associate more with Louie, the force of the briefcase opening and a bunch of money falling out. Clearly stolen, another Louie movie.

He manages to save Mark Beaks, and he repays them by firing both of them because they know too much. Even if they did tell anyone, nobody would believe them. He is such a jerk, and not a loveable one. Glomgold is an outright villain, but at least has a likeable character. Mark Beaks has, well...

Mark Beaks: RE-MIIIIIIX! (loud dubstep music, airhorns)

That. Your mileage may vary, and maybe future episodes will make him grow on me.

But not before Dewey tweets out an embarrassing tweet, or whatever this show's equivalent of Twitter is, and throws out his last backup phone. He jumps after it, and 2030s parents have to explain to their children what #YOLO used to mean. Both Graves and Mark Beaks live thanks to his genius idea of having trampolines outside of his office. I'm glad that seemingly random jokes have an actual point in DuckTales 2017.

Falcon Graves just gives up, and Mark Beaks gets away scot-free. Though, again, it's for the best he doesn't get punished as there's more to this story. The episode ends with something that appears to be a last minute teaser, which will not be continued in the next episode. We were spoiled with the double dose of that Lena plot. And those first few episodes, come to think of it.

How does it stack up?

Much like Terra-Firmians, this is a case where the more minor part overshadows the major part. Unlike Terra-Firmians, that minor part takes up about a tenth of the episode.

It’s good to see Glomgold outside of a cameo. Honestly, I could say the same about Scrooge at this point. It's a highlight in what is a very by-the-numbers plot and not-that-funny "modern jokes" that were probably intentional. They got the young businessman down with Mark Beaks, for better and for worse.

This is the closest this show has reminded me of another reboot, though I can kind of see their tongue in their cheek. Some good scenes prevent this from being an outright bad episode, and I still found some enjoyment out of it, but it's not one of their best. Hopefully that teaser suggests this is just the calm before the storm.

That's it for the catch-up week. I'll be honest, I'm surprised I even managed to make this happen. I still have an review planned for Monday. After that...I'll think about my plans for a month with no new Puff or Duck.

← The House of the Lucky Gander! 🦆 The Living Mummies of Toth-Ra! →

#fpb dt 2017 #ducktales 2017 #ducktales #disney #fpb reviews

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jacobtmcelroy-blog · 7 years

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Batman the Animated Series: ALL Episodes Ranked

Over my lifetime, I have seen many live action and animated television programs. Out of all of those, I have never watched a show I have as much adoration for as Batman: The Animated Series. The series premiered in 1992 and could have been a cheap cash-in on the success of the first two Tim Burton movies. However, thanks to the storytelling skills of Bruce Timm, Kevin Altieri, and many others, Batman TAS was a massive success. The show was dark, mature, but still great for children and adults alike. Two episodes even won Emmy’s. So, I recently re-watched the series and decided I am going to take on the brave task of ranking every episode. Because there are so few purely bad episodes of Batman TAS, choosing the top groups was incredibly difficult. However, I did my best to complete the tall task and my hard work lies below.

The Dreadful, Horrible Tier

As I previously stated, there are very few bad episodes of the BTAS. Very, very few. However, those select few are pretty atrocious. Basically, this is the “what this show could have been with lazier, cheaper writers tier”.

102. Showdown

This episode has absolutely nothing to do with Batman. That is all. Let’s continue.

101. I’ve Got Batman in My Basement

Batman: The Phantom Menace. Seriously, these kids were as bad as Jake Lloyd Anakin.

100. Tyger, Tyger

Who thought turning Catwoman into an actual cat was a good idea? It definitely was not.

99. Love is a Croc

Odd pairing couple strategy just ended up being... odd.

98. Cat Scratch Fever

Man, Catwoman had some bad episodes. This awkward commentary on animal testing was one of them.

97. The Demon Within

This just feels nothing like a Batman episode. The evil kid is really annoying too.

96. Critters

Joel Schumacher takes over the helm of this hilariously bad episode... at least it seems like.

Of Lower Quality Than Others Tier

While not horrible and a disgrace to existence like the prior episodes listed... these are not too great either. They are at least watchable. Usually these are either uninteresting, laughably entertaining, or just REALLY mediocre. At least there’s no “I’ve Got Batman in My Basement” here.

95. Prophecy of Doom

Batman versus... Miss Cleo, the fraud psychic from the 90′s! It’s about as interesting as it sounds honestly.

94. The Underdwellers

Hey Arnold’s Sewer King episode was much more interesting. Not much else to say honestly.

93. Terrible Trio

Talk about appropriate title names. The plot isn’t terrible, but the villains certainly are. One of the show creators called this the worst episode of the DCAU.

92. Make’em Laugh

See? Even the Joker can have a bad episode.

91. Blind as a Bat

“ALFRED, I CAN’T SEE!!!” Possibly the worst delivery from Kevin Conroy for one of the most melodramatic lines of the series. The Penguin has another flop here.

90. The Cape and Cowl Conspiracy

The poor man’s Riddler takes on Batman in this underachieving episode that actually could have been interesting.

89. The Forgotten

Cool Hand Batman! If the villain wasn’t a joke, maybe I would not forget this episode as much.

88. Moon of the Wolf

Entertainingly stupid, but also stupid. Why would “advanced werewolf-ism” cure werewolf-ism?!

87. Sideshow

A bit of a controversial placement on this list, but I just don’t think Killer Croc is a sympathetic villain. He is pretty much a pure evil character. Just my opinion.

Jason Bourne Amnesia Tier..../Forgettable

We have escaped the very worst of what BTAS had to offer. The problem is there are so many good episodes of the series that some fall through the cracks. Oh, and there are also some mediocre episodes in this tier too. Especially, forgettable sequels to really good first episodes.

86. TIme Out of Joint

Basically, this is one of those. A disappointing sequel to a stellar introductory episode to the Clock King. This one also has too much of the Saturday Morning cartoon feel to it.

85. Animal Act

Mad Hatter definitely had some good episodes in this series.This one was not one of them. The writers tried to institute Dick’s circus past into this episode, but they just don’t do it very well.

84. Cold Comfort

Essentially, this is the Saturday Morning cartoon Mr. Freeze episode. Both of his other episodes were mature, dark, and tautly written. This one is not terrible, but it is just really disappointing based on his prior two.

83. Be a Clown

This episode isn’t near as bad as I remembered it to be and it actually has a nice lesson for kids and parents. However, there are some really stupid parts. Why did Bruce, Mayor Hill, Gordon, or anyone else not recognize the Joker in disguise... AS A CLOWN?! He even puts a bomb with a Joker face on the cake. Oh, and the kid is kind of annoying.

82. Fear of Victory

This is not a terrible episode either, but it feels a lot more juvenile than most episodes in the series. Comparing this to the other Scarecrow episodes makes that more obvious. Pretty forgettable too.

81. Bane

Bane’s sole appearance on his own in this series is fairly mediocre honestly. His fight with Batman is good, but Bane’s representation in this series is sort of laughable. His lines and character are ridiculously over the top and almost cringe-worthy at times. Also, Robin is a joke this episode.

80. Torch Song

I have always thought Firefly was an underrated Batman villain, but his iteration here leaves a lot to be desired. His burning the city plot is kind of cliche and the girl he is stalking is really unlikable. However, the ending has a nice “burning” feeling to it. (*facepalm*) One of the better of the series actually.

79. A Bullet for Bullock

I wish this was a more memorable episode based on the fun but complicated relationship between Batman and Bullock. However, the abrupt and awkward ending drops this episode’s quality significantly.

78. The Lion and the Unicorn

Looking into Alfred’s past and making him more involved was a good idea, but bringing back such a mediocre villain like Red Claw sure was not. Her accent is just as awful as it was the first time.

77. Fire from Olympus

Fire from Olympus is entertaining, but Maxie Zeus and his plot is honestly too cartoony and goofy for a cartoon with the tonality of BTAS.

76. It’s Never Too Late

This is not a bad episode by any means, but I forget it exists most of the time. Enough said.

75. P.O.V.

Remember what I said for the last one? Same case here.

74. Girls’ Night Out

Despite Supergirl’s appearance, Girls’ Night Out is by far the least memorable of the Harley/Ivy team up episodes. The dynamic between Supergirl and Batgirl is fun at times though.

Flawed... But Still Entertaining Tier

This next group of episodes is a decent step up from the last section due to them being a little less forgettable or at least trying a new concept, even if it does not fully work. Still, once again, these are where we are starting to venture into the decent category. (very good for most other shows...)

73. Chemistry

This episode had an interesting and much higher usagee of Bruce Wayne, which helped its cause. However, the plot feels way too similar to the superior “House and Garden” episode from the second season making it a retread.

72. Night of the Ninja

Kyodai Ken brings in elements from Bruce’s past, which I always like when the series does. However, his plot and overall character, in this episode, are just kind of boring and cliched. His fight with Bruce near the end (with a nice touch as Summer is covered by a curtain) was pretty solid.

71. The Worry Men

The Worry Men is fun and is full of fan service at the end, but its twist is just a little too predictable for my liking.

70. What is Reality?

The Riddler’s back... and he either watched Spy Kids 3, Tron, or Sword Art Online while he was gone! The use of virtual reality really has not aged well in this episode... at all. Still, it’s at least fun even if parts only sort of make sense.

69. Mad as a Hatter

Oh ho ho, another controversial placement. While almost all the established origin stories are good in this show, I have always felt this one pales in comparison with the others. Not saying it is bad, but Hatter’s first episode’s plot does not pop out to me as much as others.

68. Sins of the Father

Tim Drake’s origin episode should have been a lot better than this. The death of his father did not leave him with a single tear, which took out all the needed emotion in this episode away. Compare that to the masterful Robin’s Reckoning. Dick’s reaction after leaving the circus for the first time carried more emotion than this entire episode combined. Still, at least it is entertaining.

67. Off Balance

Off Balance is thoroughly entertaining and introduces us to Talia and briefly Ra’as. However, it just does not stand on its own well. It’s well... off balance. (Da dum tis)

66. Eternal Youth

The sight of Poison Ivy’s end plan is pretty horrifying. Alfred and a lady friend are a bigger part in this episode, which is also a nice touch. The part that bothers me is not a single person recognizes Poison Ivy’s Clark Kent disguise. She should have had a lot of media coverage after trying to kill Harvey Dent, right?

65. The Cat and the Claw

Catwoman just could not stop from being paired with either bad villains or bad villain plots, could she? The parts that focus on her and her relationship with Batman in this episode were great as most would expect. However, Red Claw and her atrociously fake accent is such a boring villain that it takes away from the rest of the episode.

64. Avatar

Batman: Raiders of the Lost Egyptian Tomb. This is sort of an out there episode for Batman TAS, but admittedly it is pretty entertaining. Bruce, Talia, and Ra’as have such an interesting relationship that it makes any episode with all three of them in it at least fun. Once again though, this just does not feel much like a Batman episode.

63. Cult of the Cat

I really do not like the re-designed Catwoman suit in the later seasons of the series. I had to say it. Besides that, Cult of the Cat is a fun Catwoman episode that lets her be slightly more evil than normal. The action is high octane and kickass here too. However, the villains are kind of stock and bland making this episode not stick out as much as it should.

62. The Last Laugh

“You Killed Captain Clown!”. What a wonderful line and moment of the series. Besides that, line nothing really stick out from the pack of great Joker episodes in BTAS. The plot is okay, but forgettable.

61. Lock-Up

This episode never reaches the heights that it should given timing of it to all of those villain reform episodes. It is entertaining, a little silly (Bruce’s smoke suitcase he borrowed from Clark Kent, I guess), but cannot land the Shoryuken it sets up before the time skip. However, the ending is brilliant and one of the best in the series.

Now These Episodes Are Good Tier

Now, this is what I was talking about. From here on out, I can say every episode it at least in the good category and would be really good for most other shows. Are episodes in this tier masterpieces? No, but while they would not be the first I would recommend, watching these will at least entertain and leave most viewers feeling mostly satisfied.

60. Paging the Crime Doctor

The creators of the show dub this episode as “the geezer episode”. Despite this moniker, the storytelling under the hood is both suspenseful and gives a different feel than many other episodes of the series. The only real downside is we never the see “The Crime Doctor” again in the series, which is a shame because he is an interesting character. It makes the episode lose some of its punch because of it.

59. Holiday Knights

While not groundbreaking, Holiday Knights is a really fun episode. In fact, it is the only anthology episode in the series, which gives it a different vibe. Of the three stories, the best one I believe is the Harley/Ivy going with Bruce on a shopping spree story. The following two are not quite as strong, but fun episode all and all.

58. Heart of Steel

Holy invasion of the body snatchers Batman! The fact this is a two part episode feels a bit odd to me, but it is entertaining despite it being way over the top. Building up Barbara’s character and her relationship with Bruce was a nice touch here.

57. Day of the Samurai

Batman meets anime. The Big O? Not quite, but we will get to that later. Day of the Samurai is a much better Kyodai Ken episode than his prior appearance, but still feels a little out of place. However, the setting and classic samurai style to the story makes Day of the Samurai an entertaining watch.

56. Zatanna

Zatanna is one of my favorite DC heroines, and her appearance here came out of nowhere for me. While the plot and Batman/Zatanna team-up is really fun, the villain is kind of average and forgettable. The flashbacks in this episode were particularly strong on another note.

55. Christmas with the Joker

“Jingle Bells! Batman smells! Robin laid an egg!”. Christmas with the Joker sure is not deep, but it is still a fun Christmas episode that I watch every year during the Christmas season. The only aspect of the episode that bothers me is that the ending is incredibly similar to The Last Laugh. Still though, nice Christmas episode.

54. Mean Seasons

When an episode like Mean Seasons only finishes mid-pack, you know you have a good show on your hands. Mean Seasons is a clever narrative on age and beauty standards in modern times in the entertainment industry. It stands up really well. However, for some reason or another I still forget about it when I do my watchthroughs of the show.

53. Appointment in Crime Alley

Roland Daggett appears in episodes all over the board in quality it seems like. While Appointment is not his best episode, it is definitely solid. The ending is another one of the best ones in the series. Once again, not much terribly wrong here, I just tend to forget about it.

52. The Mechanic

The Mechanic is a highly underappreciated episode of the show. I usually find it ranked in the bottom ten to twenty in most lists that I see. Unlike most, I think the Mechanic has great action and a nice, different twist on the origin of the batmobile and its creator, which one never really thinks about. Plus, the duck scene is one of Penguin’s most menacing of the series. Is it deep? No. Is it fun? Yes.

51. Batgirl Returns

Of all the characters who received great iterations in BTAS, one of the more underrated ones was Batgirl/Barbara. Her character is extremely likable. Combine her and Catwoman (plus a disapproving Robin) and you get a fun episode. This episode fades in comparison to her premiere episode, but this one is pretty good too.

50. On Leather Wings

The first produced episode of Batman is definitely a good one. In a rare occasion for this show, I believe the sequel to this episode is superior. However, that does not mean On Leather Wings is a bad episode. The action is great and it is a good early Batman against Bullock episode.

49. Baby Doll

Well, here comes another controversial placement. I do definitely think Baby-Doll is an emotional, zany episode with a solid ending, but it just feels too zany and unbelievable at times. Despite that opinion, Baby Doll is one of the more interesting original villains introduced in this show. She’s certainly a lot better here than in “Love is a Croc”.

48. Second Chance

While The Riddler will always be my favorite Batman villain, I personally believe Two-Face was the best and most consistently written villain in this series. All of the episodes based around him are good, but that also means some fade into the mix. Second Chance is one of those due to Judgment Day using a similar twist in a little better way. That is not to say Second Chance is not good. Because it definitely is.

47. Beware the Creeper

Woah, what a zany, fun episode. This could also be one of the most risque in the series too, especially due to the very seductive, and hilarious, Harley Quinn inside the pie mix dance for her and the Joker’s anniversary. The Creeper himself is a crazier version of the Joker, created in the same way the Joker was in the 1989 film. I did not think a crazier version of the Joker was possible, but alas here he is. While I do not think this episode reaches quite the heights it could, the Joker screaming in fear to get away from the “crazy guy” is never not funny.

These Are Really Good Tier

Well, you read the tier name. Let’s continue.

46. The Strange Secret of Bruce Wayne

Now, this is what I am talking about. An interesting plot, a great early series supervillain team up, and a hilarious twist make Dr. Strange’s lone appearance on BTAS a good one. My only real complaint is Bruce makes some uncharacteristically stupid decisions in this episode that propels the plot into motion.

45. Vendetta

Killer Croc has never been amongst my favorite Batman villains, but this tautly written episode makes the best use of (solo) Croc in the series. Besides Croc’s appearance here, the Batman/Bullock relationship is explored and is made a central focus of this episode. As one may expect, I like that.

44. You Scratch My Back

As previously stated, Catwoman had some real duds in this series. However, her later appearances tended to be solid. Teaming Catwoman up with a rebellious and somewhat angsty Nightwing was a smart move by the writers here. While I saw the twist of the episode coming, it was still really entertaining and made for one of Selina’s best episodes of the series.

43. The Ultimate Thrill

So... this could be one of the racier episodes of non-adult cartoons I have seen. Roxy Rocket mounts a rocket for a large portion of the episode, gets off due to Batman chasing her, and is half-dressed a large amount of time. I can understand why this episode was skipped when it aired later on. Besides what I mentioned, The Ultimate Thrill is a really solid episode with really nice action setpieces. It all feels a little... strange, but still a good episode.

42. Legends of the Dark Knight

Episodes like this one with so many in jokes only comic book fans would understand are wonderful. The kids’ throwbacks to the 60′s campy Batman and the gritty Frank Miller Dark Knight Returns Batman are spot on. I also love the jab at Joel Schumacher with the kid named Joel’s ridiculous description of what he thinks Batman is like. It’s hilarious. The only real uninteresting part of this episode is the frame story.

41. Riddler’s Reform

Of all of the season 2 redemption episodes, Riddler’s falls into the upper tier. Yeah, a couple we will talk about soon are definitely better, but Nygma’s reform path is a good one. I like how Ed actually sort of wants to reform in this episode but is just to obsessed with riddling Batman and Robin to actually reform. Oh, and the ending is executed really, really well.

40. Read My Lips

I have always found the Ventriloquist to be an underrated Batman villain despite how silly he is in premise. The writers of the animated series always utilized the character’s multiple personality syndrome really well and in the most realistic way possible. As one may guess, the character’s premiere episode was really good. However, (unpopular opinion) I think some of his later episodes are a nice step up.

39. Joker’s Favor

How does the average Gotham citizen view the Joker? Well, similarly to how most of us would view a homicidal maniac it ends up. Joker’s relentless torture of an average guy is an interesting idea for an episode that is well executed throughout. Another plus is this episode created Harley Quinn. So, there’s that. Oh, by the way, that makeshift bat signal would not have worked if Bruce was 100 feet further ahead.

38. Nothing to Fear

Besides one misstep of an episode, Scarecrow is another villain with a tremendous track record in BTAS. His premiere episode is a great introduction to the character and slowly introduces who the character actually is and why his motives are what they are. Crane’s later episodes are mostly improvements, so we will talk more about those soon.

37. Shadow of the Bat

As I said earlier, Batgirl’s representation in this series is well done. The way the writers introduced Barbara first similarly to the way the writers introduced Harvey Dent and Two-Face gave viewers a basis for the character early. As most two part episodes in this series, Shadow is great. The slow burn of Batgirl being looked at as a joke to a somewhat reliable ally for Batman and Robin is written well.

36. Deep Freeze

Backing up Heart of Ice was an almost impossible task. While Deep Freeze is a lesser episode in comparison to the aforementioned masterpiece, Deep Freeze is a terrific Mr. Freeze episode... even though it inspired the plot of Batman and Robin. Despite that, the emotion is still here and Mr. Freeze’s voice is still kick-ass.

35. Mudslide

Similarly to Deep Freeze, Mudslide is a small step down from its predecessor, but Feat of Clay was one of the best of the series. So, take that as it is. Mudslide continues the tragic downfall of the drug addict Matt Hagan and his yearning to become fully human again. This episode does a stellar job at showing showing what desperation can do to those most in need of a cure to their ails.

34. Birds of a Feather

The Penguin had a few major clunkers in this series, but Birds of a Feather is far from that. In fact, it is another one of the best attempts at reform episode in the series. In fact, I was halfway cheering for Penguin during the course of the episode because of his sincere effort. The ending is both tragic and fitting for character like Oswald despite this.

33. Harley’s Holiday

If one would like to watch one of the funniest episodes of Batman, look no further than here. Parts of Harley’s Holiday are hysterical. One scene (at about 1:30 here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J064TI8WDKo) where Harley recognizes Bruce’s chin and identifies him as Bruce Wayne rather than Batman is brilliant. In fact, all of Harley’s interactions with Bats in this episode are. A certain other comedic Joker episode beats this one out, but Harley shines here big time.

32. Joker’s Millions

Remember that Joker episode I mentioned one episode ago? Well here it is. Joker’s Millions is probably the funniest episode of the series. The fake Harley Quinn and tryouts to be the new Harley Quinn are possibly one of the funniest scenes of the series. (another certain Joker scene takes the cake though...). I found the twist a little predictable, but this episode is perfect if you want some Batman action and laughs at the same time.

31. House and Garden

Of the reform episodes of the series, this is probably my second favorite overall. Poison Ivy somehow becomes sympathetic and really disturbing in the same episode with a perfect mix. Without revealing spoilers, the twist is revealed in an effective, slow-burning manner. Just give this one a watch. You will not regret it.

30. See No Evil

If I had to rank the most underrated or overlooked episodes of BTAS, See No Evil would easily make the cut on that list. Why is this exactly? Mainly, this episode is genuinely really, really creepy. A man with an invisible suit could have been a lame and cliched cartoon villain, but like with many other things, Batman did it right. The episode has some stellar dialogue, action, and a surprisingly funny moment in it. Oh, and Batman has one of his coolest lines of the series near the end.

29. Never Fear

Never Fear, one of the Scarecrow’s best episodes, dares to answer the question: what would Batman be like if he killed people? Never Fear uses the opposite formula (literally in a way) than the rest of the Scarecrow episodes as his fear toxin in this episode gives the unlucky victim no fear rather than all the fear in the world. Its effect on Batman alone makes this a fantastic episode. The guy takes out alligators with his bare hands in this episode for God’s sake.

28. Harley and Ivy

A Harley Quinn/Poison Ivy team-up episode did not have to work, but fortunately for everyone, it did. This is one of the first episodes to show what Harley could do without the guidance of her “Puddin’”, and the added new element to her character improved it even more. Poison Ivy is fantastic here as well in the mentor role to criminal noob Harley. Oh, the Joker’s material here is as good always too.

27. Dreams in Darkness

The best Scarecrow episodes are the ones that ask the most questions. Here, what if Batman was insane? Dreams in Darkness is my favorite of the many great Scarecrow episodes due to the challenge of Batman facing off against his sanity, (something he also does in a certain Mad Hatter episode...) which is something we do not see that often. The narrative all the way up to the ending with giant versions of his rogues gallery makes Darkness ultimately satisfying.

26. His Silicon Soul

I love many things about His Silicon Soul. First, the animation was done by Sunrise, the animator for Cowboy Bebop, Outlaw Star, Gundam Wing, and The Big O. In fact, this episode was the single biggest influence on Sunrise on The Big O’s creation. That anime was essentially BTAS in look, characters, and tone. Good show. Another discussion for another time though. Back to the episode, this use of HARDAC was much better than the first time. Creating another Batman and sticking him in Gotham was more clever and deeper than the prior two-parter combined. The ending is also a work of art.

The Elite

During the NCAA basketball season, the polls and pundits keep a Top 25 list of the best 25 teams in the sport at the time. These teams are powerhouses, the best of the bunch, and not surpassed by any others. Same can be said here. Out of all the wonderful episodes of BTAS, these are almost the best of the best.

25. Pretty Poison

While I have made many obvious and repetitive statements while making this list, I will say again Batman did a fantastic job of establishing its villains before they became villains. Pretty Poison establishes Harvey Dent as one of Bruce’s best friends before ongoing his transformation, and it pays dividends later on. As for this episode itself, Poison Ivy is established early as one of the most dangerous re-occurring villains of the show. She is seductive, tough, and clever all at the same time. Her plot in this episode is simple yet suspenseful due to tight writing. Make this an essential viewing.

24. Terror in the Sky

On Leather Wings was an entertaining and explosive start to the series that lacked... well... something. However, Terror in the Sky added whatever Man Bat’s first escapade was missing. The action in Terror is some of the best in the entire series from the motorcycle chase to the final showdown on the plane. Also, the twist is a classic in the series. Without spoiling anything, this overlooked episode of Batman is one of the very best action focused episodes of the series.

23. Judgment Day

Without spoiling everything here, Judgment Day probably has one of the best twist endings in the entire series. I was genuinely shocked after my first viewing of this episode. I may have been six or so, but still it is really clever. Aside from the ending, Judgment Day features some nice action, a mysterious new vigilante character, and whole lot more. Just watch it.

22. The Clock King

While Mr. Freeze is the most famous example of Batman’s rogues gallery being revitalized, The Clock King is honestly a close second. Clock King really had not been utilized since the 1960′s as a Batman foe, so using a gimmicky, sort of goofy villain here in a 1990′s cartoon was a shock. Luckily for the show, they had world class writers that converted Clock King into a gimmicky, but psychotic, vengeful villain. After being late for once ruined his life, Temple Fugate devoted his life to trying to humiliate and murder Mayor Hill in, of course, a time-themed way. This episode could have been really silly, but Clock King ends up being a fantastic villain in a well-paced, action packed episode of Batman.

21. Joker’s Wild

Of all the wonderful Joker episodes, I find this one to be the most overlooked and underrated. The episode starts off with a fun interaction between Joker and Poison Ivy, kind of like the awkward best friend who hates her friend’s boyfriend type of situation. After setting his sites on destroying a new casino designed after him, the Joker is actually shown escaping Arkham, which is a rare occasion in the series. What follows is a brilliant scene where Bruce Wayne eggs on the real Joker, high octane action, and the expected brand of humor. Simple, but great.

20. Catwalk

Now we are finally talking, Selina Kyle. Catwalk is one of Catwoman’s final episodes of the series, and it ends up being her best by far. After giving up her life up as Catwoman, Selina is trying to blend in with the real world with the aid of Bruce, but it just is not working. Subsequently, Kyle is given an offer by another certain rogue that she cannot turn down. Thus, Catwoman returns. What makes this episode strong is the twist, the dynamics between Batman, the other villain, and of course Catwoman. She gets to be more of a villain this episode, or at least more gray, and that is how it should be. Good job Mr. Altieri.

19. Old Wounds

After the events of Robin’s Reckoning, one could start to tell the relationship between Bruce and Dick was starting to weaken through their differences. A major wrench was thrown into that already strained relationship when Barbara played her hand as Batgirl. Thus, we have Old Wounds, one of the best flashback episodes of the series. Without getting into spoiler territory, a traumatic event on the night of Dick’s graduation from college, when Dick was already fed up at Bruce for pulling him away from, almost completely severed the head off their relationship. While the ultimate reason is a bit of misunderstanding and involved jealousy, it is really sad to watch unwind even if we know what is coming. Nightwing’s mullet suck still though.

18. Over the Edge

Let me get this out of the way. Over the Edge could have easily been a top 5 episode if the ending was not such a cop-out. *sighs* Oh well I guess. But seriously, other than the asspull of an ending, Over the Edge is the most suspenseful episode of the entire series without a doubt. Without spoiling things again, shit hits the fan about five minutes in here and everything snowballs from there. Watching it is thrilling, unnerving, and feels nothing like most of the other episodes of the series. Seriously. When a certain other baddie comes in at the end (in a much better appearance than his first, mind you...), things get even more intense. Give this one a try even if the ending leaves something to be desired.

17. Perchance to Dream

Once again, I will start on the only tiny negative of this episode. If you know the villains’ theme music like I do, you will know who the villain is in this episode early on. Anyways, dream episodes when they really should dream episodes can be very good. HINT HINT. Perchance to Dream is definitely one of those. After waking up in a world full of his greatest desires, Bruce has to unravel what has happened to him and what actions he should take. That may sound vague, but I am trying super hard to avoid spoilers in these top few episodes. Just watch this one and wait for a wonderful ending and a great dual performance from Kevin Conroy.

16. The Laughing Fish

Who would have thought an episode having to do with copyright law and patents would be the Joker’s best episode? Not me. But, The Laughing Fish is indeed my favorite Joker episode (where the focus is on his plots). After making nets full of fish in Gotham harbor carry his signature smile, the Joker tries to patent the Joker fish. After being denied, old Jack Napier takes revenge on everyone who stopped his original plan in a demented, funny, and tightly written plot. Hell, there is a scene where the Joker dresses up like the Gorton fisherman. This episode is a blast.

15. Growing Pains

Well, I feel depressed after watching this one. Growing Pains is one of the most heart-wrenching episodes of the animated series. Not only is it painful for the viewer, but even moreso for Tim Drake’s Robin. I feel like this is the best utilization of his character. After not listening to Batman’s advice, Robin gets more wrapped into helping a young girl who is seemingly running away from her abusive father. This plot brings back Drake’s relationship with his own father and his empathy for others he sometimes lacks in other episodes. Oh, and the twist is brilliant and connects the later episodes to the original series satisfyingly.

14. Double Talk

Ah, the best redemption episode of the series. Not only is Double Talk my second favorite episode in the later seasons, but it is one of my favorite dramatic episodes of the entire series. The Ventriloquist could have easily been a joke of a villain, but he has several stellar episodes in this series. Out of all them, Double Talk is definitely the best. The audience is cheering for Wesker to get over his issues, and his battle to overcome them is suspenseful and well written. The ending is poetic as can be, and I love it. Give this overlooked episode a watch and you will not regret it.

13. Feat of Clay

The downfall of Matt Hagan is one of the most depressing storylines of the entire series. The allegory for drug addiction with Matt’s reliance on Renuyu and the awful things he would do for just a little bit of it is a true tragedy. The allegory went over my head in my younger years, but watching now after seeing several people I have known my entire life struggle with addiction, the episode has a heavier hit. The two-parter’s first half ends possibly on the most horrific scene of the series. Anyone who has seen this knows what I am talking about. While the second half is not quite as strong as the first, Feat of Clay is a top flight Batman episode.

12. Robin’s Reckoning

Speaking of depressing two-parters, Robin’s Reckoning is the closest thing to a tear-jerker in the series. The scene where Dick leaves the circus left the production staff silent for several minutes supposedly because of how emotional it was. While Robin’s Reckoning is one of the many Robin origin stories in existence, it is definitely one of the best ones. The raw emotion makes RR one of the best episodes of the series. Robin’s decision at the end of the second episode is tense. Maybe that is why it won a Daytime Emmy.

11. Harlequinade

Have I stated on this list before that I really like Harley Quinn and her episodes? I guess I have. Out of all of them, this is my... second favorite. Tough decision. It is painful making this one miss the top ten. Especially after Harley’s rendition of Say We’re Sweethearts Again. And Batman facepalming on a table. Literally. The plot revolves around the seemingly serious sounding plot of the Joker stealing an ATOMIC BOMB and threatening Gotham. Batman teams up with Harley Quinn in exchange for her immunity to bring down Mistah J. What results is one of the best and funniest episodes of the series. Just watch Harley’s karaoke moment of the episode if you do not believe me. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vp6wLXj4-5A)

The Masterpiece Tier

The title should say enough for these episodes of BTAS. While Batman of the 90′s has so many stellar episodes, these are the best of the best and incredibly difficult to rank. I tried my best though.

10. Almost Got’im

When this episode ranks as low as ten... woah. AGI is the best episode with mulitple villains collaborating in one episode. While they are not coming up with an evil plot in this episode (well, mostly...), the group discusses the closest each of them got to killing Batman. Each tale is fun and the other villains’ commentary on the other stories is even better. The interaction between Two-Face and Poison Ivy is particularly good. The final line of the episode is also wonderfully poetic. Almost got the that top spot...

9. Mad Love

Of all the top notch Harley Quinn/Joker episodes in this series, Mad Love takes the cake as the best one. Based off the graphic novel of the same name, Mad Love possesses all of the extreme emotions and dark realism as its source material... besides some of the racier stuff. Still though, Mad Love does not hold back. The relationship between our two leads is completely one-sided and abusive making this episode work as the perfect allegory for all too common abusive relationships in the real world. Just because the main focus is on the clowns this episode, does not mean Batman is not excellent this episode. Because he is. Also, the Joker says, “May the floss be with you” at one point...

8. I Am the Night

Possibly the most emotional episode in the series, I Am the Night takes the animated series to its darkest depths. While laying flowers on the site of his parents death site, Batman misses a police sting where Commissioner Gordon ends up shot and critically injured in the hospital. Batman, feeling useless and underappreciated, vows to stop being Batman because of his failure. Every supporting character is utilized perfectly in this episode to stretch Bruce’s mental health in very different directions. Bullock and Robin represent the most extreme opposites. The ending is super satisfying and can teach everyone a lesson if they are feeling underappreciated.

7. Heart of Ice

Before Joel Schumacher and the Governator took a steaming pile of crap on Mr. Freeze’s new origin, Batman the Animated Series revamped the character with this well-known masterpiece. Seriously, this one won an Emmy too. Before the 1990′s, Mr. Freeze was a lame, generic ice villain, kind of like how Firefly is a lameass fire villain in this show. Heart of Ice is shockingly dark, soaked with emotion, and cold-hearted to the core. Mr. Freeze’s voice is soooooo perfect in this series too. Not much else to say that has not been said.

6. The Man Who Killed Batman

The premise to this episode is so simple that it is unbelievable that it is so good. A small time crook nicknamed Sid the Squid, while awkwardly stumbling on a rooftop, appears to kill Batman. After this moment, Sid becomes an idol to all the criminals in the city. Unfortunately, this is not all good news for the squid. What follows is some top notch comedy when everyone in the city might want to fight him now. Even the Joker makes an appearance. That appearance I personally believe is the best for the Joker in the entire series. Don’t believe me? Watch this scene. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ld0uIhst3TA) It is possibly my favorite of the entire show. All in all, watch this episode for something great from beginning to the end.

5. Beware the Gray Ghost

Alternating from the top comedy of the prior episode, The Gray Ghost is one of the more depressing episodes of the series. Without spoiling as much as I can, it is also one of the more uplifting that gives me chills almost every time I view it. A type-cast actor who used to play a superhero on a tv show is struggling financially, with his career, and overall emotionally. His state gets involved with Batman when the episode’s villain’s plot collides with a plot from an old episode of the Gray Ghost. At first bitter and not wanting to help, Batman soons teams up with his hero to take down the villain and it is almost perfect. Who plays the Gray Ghost by the way? Adam West. Whoever came up with that idea deserves a medal. Also, Bruce Timm plays the villain in this masterpiece, which is pretty badass.

4. The Demon’s Quest

The second best two-parter of the series, The Demon’s Quest combines the best of Batman with arguably the best iteration of Ra’as Al Ghul as well. The whole episode feels like an Indiana Jones film, which is not a bad fit honestly. The first part does a nice job establishing Ra’as and Batman’s relationship, and the second half does a stellar job of completing the plot with major style. Talia and Robin also make major appearances in this episode and both really work. Once again, watch this rare world domination episode of Batman for something very different, but very good.

3. If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?

Now, here is my sleeper episode in the top five. I see this episode on people’s list every once and a while but rarely this high. Is this a Riddler (my favorite villain) bias? Maybe a little bit, but I personally think this is one of the strongest episodes due to several factors. One, this iteration of the Riddler is terrific. John Glover is perfectly cast as the genius and knocks it out of the park. His plan involving revenge, video games, supposed mental superiority, and of course riddles is well written. Robin makes one of his best appearances in this episode as a good foil to Batman’s riddle solving methods, and having superior video game skills predictably. However, the most stalwart aspect of this episode is the ending. It’s chilling and perfectly poetic at the same time. Way to go, Nygma.

2. Trial

Remember when I mentioned Almost Got’im as the best villain teamup episode? I lied. Flat out. Trial combines all of the best aspects of almost all of Batman’s reoccurring rogues gallery and all of them are at the top of their game here. Batman is captured and put on trial in Arkham, and the new DA, who hates Batman and thinks he belongs there as well, has to defend the Dark Knight. Joker plays the judge, Two-Face the prosecutor, and several other villains take the stand as witnesses. Guess what? It’s an absolute blast to watch. The episode has good comedy, top notch dialogue, and a terrific ending note. Trial is guilty of nothing but being one of the best episodes in the series.

1. Two-Face

Not the most original choice, but Two-Face was my clear cut favorite episode of Batman the Animated Series from the moment I considered composing a list. As I stated before, Two-Face is the best villain in the animated series overall. This episode really aided in making that true. So did Pretty Poison’s establishment of Harvey Dent. Seeing Harvey’s downfall from beloved District Attorney, fiance, and best friend to Bruce is painful, tragic, and as well written as humanly possibly. I feel like the first half is slightly better than the second, but both are masterpieces and work perfectly together despite a time gap which all other two part episodes lack. So, all in all, Two-Face is what I believe to be the most masterful episode in a series full of masterpieces.

Thanks for checking out my list. I had a fun, but strenuous time making it and hope you check out my future lists too!

#batman #batman the animated series #dcau

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floralmotif · 7 years

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The Audience (for Cas) 12.12 Meta

12.12 seriously made me consider making a video essay instead of a written meta because holy fish, the amount of perspective stuff in this episode is nuts. Inconsistency in subjectivity is very normal in media but this episode goes out of its way to establish it, then defies it, then establishes it again.

This episode uses a lot of subjective and objective camera tricks but it can be occasionally difficult to pinpoint the exact rules of what’s through their subjective PoV and what’s the objective camera bias needing to tell the audience things for reasons.

Give me a break here, SPN.

I’m not really gonna talk about the Reservoir Dogs references here. Other people have already done that very well. I’ll be linking to more of other people’s meta throughout, mostly hidden in words. Click on the underlined bits in the post. I’m kind of late to the party on this one. If you wrote something pertaining to what I have here and it’s not linked somewhere, I apologize. I unfortunately don’t see everything or I can’t find it. feel free to add it or message me and I’ll add it directly:

http://bluestar86.tumblr.com/post/157443210863/12x12-episode-review-still-screechingthis http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/157393322319/12x12-stuck-in-the-middle-with-you-dammit-show https://godshipsit.tumblr.com/post/157487887094/deancas-is-peach-y http://grey2510.tumblr.com/post/157340506918/reservoir-dogs-the-power-of-its-homoerotic

I hope I can explain this in text because it’s not the best medium for what I’ll be saying here. Don’t get me wrong, 12.12 is awesome but because of the nature of its storytelling, it’s weird on a structural front. It’s basically a microcosm of episodes showing the relationship between Cas and his established others.

Below is sort of a break down but I’m going to focus on certain aspects and scenes longer than others.

Establish Mary’s perspective using Ketch’s intro. Call back to Metatron telling Cas a story. What we see in the episode is technically through a character’s perspective. We don’t know which one at first. Breakfast scene unfiltered. Framed with Cas as the overall subject. This is because in a lot of ways, this ep is about Cas. But again, he’s not the one telling the story, not even here. What happens to him drives the emotional connection. So he connects with our emotions in this scene. Establishes empathy. This is the most “true to what happened” the show gives us. Dean’s goofy faces and all. ^During the scene Wally, Dean and Sam all help frame a narrative device. Dean starts his posturing when the nurse shows interest in Cas. This could be considered normal, except Wally is there. Wally idolizes Dean and partially serves to justify his actions. We don’t know what Dean would have done if Wally wasn’t there, but the cut to Dean’s reaction when Mandy calls Cas handsome could give us an idea. Simply cutting to show that Dean was upset because Mandy likes Cas instead of him is kind of a silly editing choice. It’s possible but film tends to make simple connections and Dean’s care for Mandy doesn’t matter in the episode. If Dean really didn’t want Cas to go after Mandy, he would have said so. That perspective doesn’t compromise his image. Him being interested in Cas does though.

^The last aspect of framing for this scene is Sam. Poor dude can’t get a wifi signal. This coming from the man who is often headcanoned as being a sentient wifi tower. Communications are down and it’s seriously impeding his ability to progress. Guess what’s happening at the table while he's trying to get the wifi up: communications are down on pretty much every front (him and the wifi, Dean and Cas, everyone and the waitress, Mary and everyone, Wally and dietary facts, Wally participating in Mary’s lie) it’s seriously impeding real progress. At this time, the audience doesn’t know the extent of that communication error, so the framing is built for this scene to establish relationships and that something is amiss. Now that everyone’s on the same page plan wise(as far as the audience knows), Dean ends his awkward posturing by calling Cas handsome and joking with the waitress, and the wifi is back.

^The escapade with the waitress is kind of odd in itself. She’s kind of a sucky waitress and there seems to be something off about her from what Cas shows us but it never leads to anything. Even Dean’s insistent “teachable moments” don’t go anywhere. It only ends with Cas giving him confused looks and him laughing awkwardly to himself. It almost feels like it he knew Cas wasn’t into it and it was never meant to be serious. Huh.

There is a ton of meta about this scene. Go poke it. In fact, just go poke the archives of all of the people I link. There is so much in their 12.12 tags too I’d imagine from them and others. I know @mittensmorgul has a ton http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/spn%2012.12

Moving on:

The smash cut tells us that regardless of Mary’s reassurance of communication, everything is not going to be fine. Something went wrong here and many people in the audience have probably already noticed that the wrong was hers. The rest of the scene from the cut establishes some of the things that also went wrong with the plan: Cas getting hurt, demons being involved and Wally getting killed. In my original meta for this ep’s promo, I seriously had to resist the urge to refer to Wally as “Fodder”. From what I can tell, his existence has always been to establish a justification for Dean’s behavior by specifically idolizing him and to die early to establish stakes. Poor dude.

After the medias res scene, we get our first real character card: The Wounded Angel. Cas’ block has begun and his is the most confusing subjectivity wise. His block pretty much acts to show his current place in things. He’s still got the Cosmic Consequences looming, he hasn’t found Kelly. Cas continues to be shown as an incompetent hunter. He’s still a fairly passive character during the episode which means he’s not fully healed as a person. There’s still something missing. The ending of the episode arguably gives him that thing or at least a stronger start of it. Again, this episode is in a lot of ways about Cas, but he is not the perspective. The perspectives we get are everyone else’s reaction to what happens to him, which makes his being the first block make sense. His block also establishes what happens to him and sets in motion the rest of the episode.

^An interesting aspect of Cas’ block is that it recaps the opener with all of the antics taken out. Mary’s apparent retelling doesn’t include any of the mis-communications and this time tells it as though it went smoothly. She even glosses over that there were mis-communications at all. This is actually the scene that jumbles up the PoV rules a little since it pulls the rules of “what really happened, who’s PoV we’re in, what is she telling Ketch and what is just her PoV?” into question but never really gives a defining answer. My reading is that it’s Cas segment and Cas dismisses the antics, he wants to know what the plan is and I think he can tell Dean is posturing. He keeps looking at hims like “are you serious right now?” He also dismisses the communication issues which is interesting. The episode uses some weird PoV layering. What characters are seen with in their segments is important for their characters. Again though, even as Cas’ segment, he’s not telling the story but it does tell us what the episode finds is relevant to his character. I could go on forever about the subjectivity in this episode and how much it makes my brain hurt.

^They seem to want to use the “perspectives” of everyone else to convince the audience of how each of them feels about Cas in the episode and what’s happening in general. The only PoV we don’t get directly is Sam’s because his PoV is the only one that doesn’t need distinctive convincing to the audience... and because the episode only has so much time, but if there was really a question there, he would've had a solidifying segment of some sort. I kind of consider the opener/medias res scene his segment since he sort of acts as the facilitator for the episode’s dilemma and it gets glossed over in Mary’s recap during Cas’ block so...join me if you want. It’s just my reading.

Mary’s PoV (Mother Mary) starts when Sam asks her what she’s gotten them into and the emotional connection with Yellow Eyes is called on. Cut to her and Wally establishing her lie for later and telling the audience who their after. The PoV here is also a bit weird and it makes me wonder about whether Dean actually does know about “the most sacred oath” because we are privy to a conversation here that she has with Wally about the BMoL that I doubt she would actually mention to them. I dunno, subjectivity is weird anyway and since editing and dialogue is built on emotion first, the technical aspects tend to get lost. I don’t know many movies or shows that use subjectivity and consistently keep the rules throughout. It’s frustrating to people like me, but most wouldn’t notice.

^In the car, Mary justifies working with the BMoL but never establishes if she really trusts them. More silence as an answer that SPN likes so very much. Later in the house, we get Sam and Mary talking about getting what they want ending on a depressing note for Sam. I think Sam has really been gunning for Mary to get out as proof that he can. Her saying that probably hurt him but I think he still holds out for her getting out as proof of his own ambitions. He puts her on a pedestal just like Wally did with Dean. Dean postures for Wally and Sam(for similar reasons). Mary doesn’t posture for anyone, and it’s created a dissonance for her and Dean, just like Sam’s pedestal does for he and Dean. I haven’t seen the new episode yet but I have some things to say about that.

Another recap of the opening, this time without the cute parts of Dean’s posturing.. I agree with Mittens on this one.

^Enter the colt. At the time, we don’t know it’s the colt. Well, we kind of do if you know how to read recap speak but theoretically, it’s just an artifact at the moment. Good thing they didn’t show it too, if they did this early, they’d have to fire it hehehe. It being shown at the end means it will get fired by the end of the season. I have a guess as to who gets the bullet but I’ll need 12.13 to think about it more.

-More Michael imagery!

^Mary gets Cas into the barn (ha, another one), Mary texts the BMoL and Dean and Sam come in. Now up until this point, we have gotten a lot of reassurances that Dean and Cas have... something.. just in the episode alone. Dean greets Cas during his segment before everyone else, Dean is a dork to Cas during breakfast, Sam tells Dean to get Cas, etc etc. From this point on, Mary gets to witness that condensed into an hour or so. When Dean and Sam come in, Dean pretty much immediately runs to Cas and in Mary’s block, they talk to each other while Dean tries to cope with the possible loss of Cas (again). Sam doesn’t go over until Dean calls him.

Mr. Crowley enters. Crowley’s segment establishes that he A) Cares about “feathers” B) Some important backstory about himself, the lance and the Princes of Hell and C) That he’s willing to break deals for the sake of people he cares about, just like Cas did in 12.09. He cares about the Winchesters even if he doesn’t admit it. Sadly, communications between he and the Winchesters are as bad as ever when it comes to each other but that probably sounds familiar at this point. Good character paralleling. *pats head* And again, Dean in this segment shows the most verbalized concern for Cas, not dealing with Crowley well and going for anger and disbelief.

^Poor Crowley gets thrown through the wall of the barn. Note though, that he gets thrown to the left. Bad guys are thrown to the right typically. Even allied bad guys. Left is regression in western film, right is progress. If he was thrown right, it would have been the direction progress and that doesn’t fit his arc. Welcome to the club Crowley, bout damned time. For me, this meant Crowley’s gonna save them and it’s not just because they inserted him with the archaic lance description.

Now for the fun part: “A Real Barn Burner”. This title is two fold. It’s technically Dean’s segment but it also alludes to everyone being present. A “Barn Burner” is a riveting sport event which sort of pokes fun at the fight that’s about to happen and the race to save Cas. All the previous establishments and blocks in the episode as well as what triggers the block and what happens in it tell us who this segment belongs to.. but the label is plural. It refers to a group. Just like how all the previous establishments and episodes tell us what the “you” means. These episodes don’t exist in a vacuum and this episode is a microcosm of that concept.

After Crowley disappears, we have everyone’s favorite part of the episode. Cas starts to tell them of his dying declaration but Dean is the subject here. This is his block, his segment, his episode. This is what was important for the audience to see about his character. When Cas says “I love you,” he looks at everyone, but when he says “I love all of you,” he looks at Dean and his gaze stays on him after Dean’s reaction insert. He’s telling him there’s a difference and Dean makes some note of it. It’s hard to say if he internalizes it or if he’s just scared of the situation but throughout the scene we and Mary are given a distinction. It also shows how much Cas really does care for everyone by including Mary. Throughout the episode, we have been shown that distinction. It’s subtle but it’s there and this episode wants to shyly tell us about it.

Throughout the entire episode, we didn’t know who was really telling this story, but we had hints. In all of the scenes with something pertaining to Dean and Cas’ relationship, Crowley caring about Cas or instances involving the BMoL that only Mary would have known about tells us it’s Mary. She is the one surprised by them, she is the one who changes the story, she is the one who slowly grows to understand and to fear and to question. She is the audience, the surrogate for the PoV at the beginning. Ketch asks the audience for the story and Mary gives it. She is the audience in general, she needed convincing of that distinction of Dean and everyone’s care for Cas but she never out right says it and neither does the show. She never outright says if she trusts the BMoL either. At the end, she calls Cas one of her boys... because like the audience, she’s been given a microcosm of relationship between Cas and everyone else, she’s been given that distinction, she’s seen the episodes as a whole and what each one says and we know she has, because she’s telling the story. She got it the same way we did and decided what it meant at the end. We got our answer through our PoV, our surrogate Mary, the audience who needed convincing that Cas loves and is loved.

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therothwoman · 7 years

Text

TV: The Doctor Who Chapter (To Have a Home, chapter 5)

Words: 3,387

Relationship: Stucky

Characters: Bucky, Steve, with brief cameos from Natasha and Sam.

Content warnings: Bucky gets triggered and has a panic attack, but through outside help and his own coping mechanisms he pulls through just fine.

Summary: Warm. Pictures. Company. Stray. TV. Share. Loved. Months after the events of Re-establishing Contact, a security mishap forces Steve and Bucky to be placed in different apartments at distant ends of the city. With a small but brand-new place to call his own, functional in society but still laying low and still wrestling with voices in the night, Bucky begins building a new home. This is a story about friendship, love, photography, books, movies, television, cats, prank wars, and having somewhere to go in times of need. This is a year in the life of Bucky Barnes. (New tags added with new chapters. This fic can be read as a complete story or as a series of vignettes. Each chapter’s opening notes will state chapter-specific tags.)

Chapter: Bucky decides to check out some 21st century sci-fi television and gets just a little bit more than he bargained for.

Notes: In which I take a few steps further and get Even More Self-Indulgent than the Pokemon scene from Re-establishing Contact. As a geeky BA-in-English-holder and certified Whovian, futzing around with reactions and thematic parallels between my favorite media like this was probably inevitable. Add to that the fact that Simmons referencing the TARDIS in Agents of SHIELD means that Doctor Who does exist as an actual series in the MCU. So I figured hey, why not make it a bit of a narrative? When I was first writing this chapter, it was mostly in the form of Bucky's text reactions to each season. But then I got stuck as I approached Season 6-8 because I felt like I knew them a lot less intimately (even though I watched them when they aired). Also, I didn't want to overwhelm non-Whovian Stucks with what was essentially turning into Twitter Who: Bucky Barnes Edition. To compromise, I've set those aside in a separate fic.

Chapter-specific tags: Television Watching, doctor who - Freeform, Panic Attacks

From the beginning

Previous chapter

On AO3: http://archiveofourown.org/works/8353570/chapters/21823745

Bucky: [Okay I just finished the first episode.]

Bucky: [We’ve already got alien time travelers, some sort of space war, murder mannequins, and exploding buildings.]

Bucky: [I’m not sure how much crazier this show can get.]

Sam: [oh]

Sam: [oh man you just wait]

It had started with a fairly simple question. While Banks the cat did a good job of keeping Bucky company during the day, his presence had not stopped Bucky’s nightmares. He hadn’t reasonably expected it to, though. There was a decrease, and Bucky having something warm and freely affectionate to hold in the aftermath every time was certainly a blessing, but he still kept up his repertoire of staying up and doing something to keep his mind and/or body active for a bit before attempting sleep again, if at all. During a group video call, Bucky brought up a desire for something a little more structured.

“Whenever I need a distraction by turning on the TV, I always just watch whatever’s on,” he said. “I’d like something to actually watch, something that I can keep up with and get engaged in.”

There was a smattering of affirmative murmurs before Natasha said, “Easy enough, what are you interested in watching?”

Bucky considered for a moment. “Hmm. I want…something with adventure. Something about the little guys beating the odds. Something that doesn’t take itself too seriously but respects the weight of a situation when it needs to. Something with love. Something with…” His eyebrows lowered, thoughtfully. “Something with a home base. Someplace the characters can always come back to.”

The others looked contemplative for a second before Steve snapped his fingers. “I know one I’ve been enjoying.”

Sam smirked. “Are we thinking of the same one?”

“Is it the same one I stopped watching after Season 6?” asked Natasha.

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

And then all three of them in unison: “Doctor Who.”

For the most part, it was a great time. Bucky actually found himself watching it of his own accord instead of for nightmare balm more often than not. He loved all the characters and the wild stories, identified with some, and took offense at others (he had some angry caps-lock words to say about the two-parter that took place in 1930’s New York). If there was one issue he did have, it was with any story that involved memory erasure or reality alteration. And there were a number of those. He was fine through Human Nature and The Family of Blood, because there was an established sure-fire way for the Doctor-turned-John-Smith to be returned to his old self in a moment. The ending of Journey’s End, with poor Donna and her forced mind-wipe, was a significantly tougher sequence to go through. The one episode he couldn’t bring himself to finish at all was Amy’s Choice, because it was one thing to have an entire episode about switching between two perceived realities and being forced to determine which one was real, but the event’s orchestrator looking like the spitting image of Arnim Zola was a step too far. Still, ever-eager to know what happened next, he pressed on.

Nearly two hours later, his shaking fingers were hastily tapping to Steve’s number on his phone. The dial tone rang twice before Steve picked up. It had been months since Bucky was so relieved to hear his voice.

“Steve, I just…it was the ending of Cold Blood,” Bucky stumbled, trying to keep breathing. “…Rory died…Amy had to watch him die…and then he got swallowed by the crack…Steve, the universe itself made her forget him. She…she was willing to die instead of live in a world without him…yes I know, I looked up the rest of that episode…but I just…Steve…when I fell off the train…when you fell into the river…what if we’d…Jesus, Steve, I can’t…I just can’t…” He heard Steve trying to make reassuring noises over his anxious chattering.

“Hey hey hey, listen, Buck,” Steve said, “first of all, there’s no crack in the universe that’s going to make us forget each other…”

“But the technology…!”

“…was destroyed with that arm of Hydra. Second,” Steve continued, “I’m coming over now. You haven’t sounded this bad in weeks. Third, can I tell you a spoiler if it’ll help you feel better?”

Bucky nodded, even though Steve couldn’t see him. “Yeah, that’d be great.”

“Okay,” said Steve. “Rory comes back.”

Bucky was amazed that he had the mental energy to be puzzled. “O-kay…I’ll question it later. But yeah, c’mon over, I’m so sorry that…”

“Bucky,” Steve interrupted, “whatever you’re about to apologize for, you don’t need to. Just hang tight for a bit, okay? I’ll be right there.”

“I will, thanks.”

They wrapped up, and Bucky went to turn on the lights as he brought up the next episode of a podcast he’d been enjoying to put on as background noise. He scooped up Banks from the towel-cushioned cardboard box he’d fashioned as a cat bed (cheaper and more likely to actually be used than a real cat bed, according to the Internet) and sat back down on the couch to stroke the purring fluffball while listening to the animated rambling of the two podcast hosts. It was nice to have a source of such variety of listening in one show, with topics as mixed as flags and computers and human consciousness and promoting widespread availability of those little plastic sticks you used to plug up the hole in your coffee lid. He did tend to get a bit unsettled when the Australian guy talked about plane crashes with such zeal. Bucky usually skipped those segments when they came up. Thank god the American host wasn’t going on another lecture about how free will was probably an illusion, because Bucky really didn’t think he could handle that right now. It was about one podcast episode later when the intercom finally buzzed. Banks vacated Bucky’s lap as the less-distressed man went to let Steve in.

“Hey,” said Steve as he entered.

“Hi.”

“C’mere.” Bucky welcomed Steve’s warm embrace and the soothing hand rubbing his back, feeling the solidness of touching and knowing that Steve really was there and wasn’t about to vanish into a crack in time and space and make Bucky forget about him for another seventy years, or worse. They moved to lie down on the couch and just held each other for a while, Bucky stroking Steve’s shoulder blade with his right hand while Steve breathed calmly for him and gave Bucky occasional kisses to the forehead. Bucky had half a mind to reach up and try to drape the blanket over them, to just let them sleep in the comfort of each other’s company, but the thought kept nagging at the back of his mind: seriously, how the hell did Rory come back from the dead?

“Y’know,” he said at last, “I kinda still want to watch the next episode.”

Steve had his left hand in Bucky’s hair, giving him fond scratches around his crown. He stopped and patted Bucky’s head. “Ordinarily I’d say you could stop here if you wanted,” he said, “but I actually do really think you should see Vincent and the Doctor. It’s…I dunno how else to put it…it’s a healing episode.”

“Alright,” said Bucky, turning over to set up the next episode. “Let’s do this.”

After the dire straits of the previous story, switching to the subject of a troubled artist in the French countryside occasionally tormented by an invisible space monster was a welcome change for Bucky. He found himself nodding solemnly at Vincent’s talk about how the others in the village treated him horribly because they believed him to be the cause of their problems. Bucky thought back to his days in Bucharest, how that looming sensation followed him everywhere he went: that feeling of do they know? Do they know what I am? What I was? Oh, the number of times he had expected something to be thrown at him, or for a crowd in front of him to suddenly bolt as he approached, or for a distant siren to herald a swarm of armed soldiers with their guns trained on him and ready to finish him off. The fact that the invisible space monster in the episode was, in death, revealed to be a scared, wounded, and lonely creature itself did not help much. But it was in the aftermath of that scene that Bucky began to understand what Steve meant by this being a “healing episode.” For those few days, Vincent didn’t have to face his demons alone. More importantly, he was given the incredible chance to take a trip forward in the TARDIS to see the effect his work would have on future generations; to be reminded that just because you don’t get to see the impact of your time on this earth in your lifetime, it doesn’t mean you didn’t have an impact at all. For a minute, Bucky was worried that the episode had shot itself in the foot with the reveal that the Doctor and Amy’s visit ultimately didn’t prevent Vincent’s suicide, but then the Doctor rolled out the “pile of good things” speech and Bucky started to get sniffle-y again.

“’The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but the bad things don’t always spoil the good things or make them unimportant,’” Bucky repeated once the episode was over. “That’s one hell of a line. Come to think of it, there’ve been a lot of great lines on this show. Maybe that’s my next collage project: a Doctor Who quote wall.”

“I’d love to see it when you’re done,” said Steve. “Oh hey, the sun’s coming up.”

Bucky looked away from the TV and towards the kitchen window where the first rays of dawn were shimmering outside. The start of a new day. “Huh. So it is. Only got three episodes of the season left, I think I’m gonna keep going. You staying or…? You can crash on my bed if you want.”

Steve yawned. “Why don’t I make us some coffee first?” He patted Bucky’s shoulder as he got up from the couch.

“Hope you like espresso, ‘cause that’s all I’ve got,” said Bucky.

They blazed through the rest of the season, musing on the themes of protecting those you love (and using temporary superhuman abilities to do so. “He waited two thousand years for her and you only waited about seventy for me? Jesus, step up your game, Rogers,” Bucky had quipped with a playful elbow to the ribs) and the idea of “if something can be remembered, then it can come back.”

“Wow,” said Bucky at the conclusion. “What d’you think, Steve? Remembering things just…brings them back?”

“Not that literally, that’s for sure,” said Steve. “But…what do memories do other than bring back echoes of events, people, feelings, smells, places?”

“Easy,” said Bucky, stretching his shoulders a bit as though he subconsciously felt the need to physically assert himself as a perfect example of a response to Steve’s question. “Memories inform us. They tell us where we’ve been and how we got here. They give us context for being. I spent decades knowing and remembering nothing but Hydra, and then you showed up in Washington. Things started to come back. I knew that there’d been something to me before Hydra. There were other people I knew…another man I’d been…more context to me that had been blocked out.” He paused thoughtfully, gazing at the blank wall above the TV. A thought flitted by his mind ever so briefly that this was more blank wall space where he could put something up if he wanted to. “What d’you think, Steve?” he said again. “Have I gotten enough context back that I’m who I used to be?”

Steve lowered his eyebrows and took a few moments to answer, presumably searching for the right words. “I think it’s unreasonable to expect that you’d be the exact same James Buchanan Barnes I lived with in Brooklyn and fought with in the war. Like you said, memories inform you. I had faith that enough of the old you would come back that I could look into your face and see the man I loved again, but...” he sighed, “…that doesn’t change what happened in between. But if there was a way to…”

“Steve, don’t,” Bucky interrupted. “I know what you’re going to say, I know you’ve told me about how Wanda can mess with people’s heads and how she could probably use that power to my benefit. But quite frankly, it wouldn’t…it wouldn’t feel right. What right do I have to forget everything that I did? Or…sorry, right…what I was made to do? Or even to feel better about it? What kind of disrespect is that to all the lives I was made to shatter? Besides…” he laced his fingers together and closed his eyes in a very slow blink, curling his mouth up in the faintest of smiles, “…I…think I like what I am now. I’m a man living his own life, and I think that’s all anyone can ask for. I’m someone who’s already given his service to his country, but I know there’s more I can do, and I want to stick around for that day. I’m alive and I want to keep living. I want to stay someone who can give and receive love. And if anything that’s happened to me, good or bad, has helped me become that, I want to remember it.”

Steve took a few moments to respond, eventually lifting a hand and resting it on Bucky’s shoulder. “You’re right, Buck, I’m sorry,” said Steve. “Your mind, your memories, your decision.”

Bucky nodded, turning half his attention to the rest of the room. “Y’know, it’s funny,” he said. “The details I can remember and the ones I can’t. If you gave me a sheet of paper and a pencil, I could probably trace a rough floor plan of our old place. I could tell you where the couch was, where the stove was, where the bed was, but I couldn’t tell you…” his brow furrowed, “…the colors and patterns are things I have trouble with. I want to say the old bed sheets were sky blue, but that’s just because of the ones I have now. I think we had books, too. We must’ve had books.”

“We did have books. Not a lot, but…” Steve turned to look at Bucky’s current bookcase against the wall next to him. “Maybe a shelf or two of what you’ve got there? There wasn’t a lot of time for reading, not with the hours we had to keep to afford rent sometimes.”

“I remember some of the stuff I read, but more vague plot things than actual titles, unless it was one of The Classics,” Bucky continued. “I know a read a bunch of H.G. Wells, I’m pretty sure I read Frankenstein, I must’ve read Alice in Wonderland at some point because I know there was something in there somewhere about a girl going on a goddamn trip. When I first remembered it existed, it took me a while to stop getting it mixed up with The Wizard of Oz. If we had any P.G. Wodehouse books, they were definitely yours. You liked them a lot more than me, I remember that. Or at least the Jeeves books. I never really understood what you got out of stories of bored rich guys getting almost-married every few weeks.”

“Honestly, I think it was more the writing than the stories,” said Steve with a light chuckle. “Maybe I’m just a sucker for a good well-worded sentence. Or, in this case, a lot of them in a row.”

Bucky tilted his head with a smile. “I might have to give those another shot,” he said, “because one of them has the only specific sentences I remember from back then.”

Steve’s eyes widened. “You remember actual lines from the books?”

“Just barely,” said Bucky. “I know you got me to read the Jeeves short stories, and there was one…” he closed his eyes, “…I can’t remember the name of the story or which book it was or anything else that happened in the actual plot but…Bertie Wooster and some other guy got stuck on the roof of a gazebo in the middle of a lake or something and they couldn’t get back to the boat because there was an angry swan in the way. So Jeeves has to come save them and…again, I don’t remember the meat of that one paragraph but I know it started ‘every young man starting life ought to know how to cope with an angry swan, so I will briefly relate the proper procedure’ and it ended with ‘that was Jeeves’s method, and I cannot see how it could have been improved upon’.” Bucky turned to look at Steve again, whose eyes were still wide and whose mouth was slightly open in pleasant surprise.

“Oh my god,” he said with the slightest of pauses. “I remember that. I remember you reading that. I was tidying up the kitchen and you were laughing your ass off in the next room and suddenly you rushed in with the book and yelled ‘STEVE, I’VE JUST…’”

“’…FOUND THE FUNNIEST SHIT I’VE EVER READ IN MY LIFE’,” they finished in unison.

“Yeah,” Steve continued. “You tried doing a dramatic reading of it, but you barely got to the end before you were on the floor with one hand over your stomach and the other slapping the rug.”

Bucky grinned. “Ohhh man, when the hell was the last time I found something that funny?”

“You know they made a TV show out of that?” said Steve.

“Wait, out of the Jeeves books?”

“Yeah, it’s just called Jeeves and Wooster. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’d like to.”

“Well then,” said Bucky, leaning back into the couch, “I bet I know what we’re watching after I catch up on Doctor Who.”

Bucky: [Holy shit]

Bucky: [Hoooooooooly shit]

Bucky: [Steve, I just realized something about season 9.]

Bucky: [That was us. That was basically us.]

Steve: [It…wait]

Bucky: [I mean, think about it:]

Bucky: [There’s a protagonist and his best friend who mean the universe to each other and fight evil together]

Bucky: [And one day the protagonist has to watch his best friend die, shortly before he himself gets agelessly aged by a lot]

Bucky: [And then the protagonist learns there might be a way to get his friend back, so he goes through hell and high water to make it happen, maybe crossing a few lines along the way]

Bucky: [And when the protagonist finally gets his friend back, something happens to separate them again.]

Bucky: [Plus there’s forced memory loss and a part where one of them tries to kill the other because they don’t recognize them.]

Steve: [You know, it’s freaky]

Steve: [I feel like I thought that too when I first watched it, but I hadn’t put it into words like that.]

Bucky: [I think you and I won out in the long run, didn’t we?]

Steve: [Yeah, we did. We absolutely did.]

Steve: [Wait, what’s with this me being “the protagonist”? This isn’t a movie of my life, Buck.]

Bucky: [Yeah, but it fit the metaphor.]

Steve: [Maybe you should stick that somewhere on your quote wall: “I am the protagonist of my own story.”]

Bucky: [That’s a thought. I’ve already got the rest of it laid out though.]

Bucky: [Maybe it’s just because we just watched it earlier this week and it’s still fresh in my head, but I’m giving a really good space to that one line about]

Bucky: [“Never be cruel and never be cowardly, and if you ever are, always make amends.”]

Bucky: [I only hope I can achieve that someday.]

Steve: [You do tend to apologize a lot these days.]

Bucky: [If it’s a coping mechanism, let’s just say it works for me and leave it at that.]

Steve: [Hey, what works for you that isn’t hurting yourself, works for me.]

Bucky: [Sounds fair. Thank you.]

Steve: [Speaking of “leaving it at that,” have you seen that Christmas special with River Song yet?]

Bucky: [RIGHT, THAT. NO I HAVEN’T, LET ME FIX THAT.]

#stucky #bucky barnes #steve rogers #captain america #winter soldier #bucky #doctor who #my fics #fanfikshun

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thisdaynews · 5 years

Text

How Peak TV Prepared All of Us for the Impeachment Hearings

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/how-peak-tv-prepared-all-of-us-for-the-impeachment-hearings/

How Peak TV Prepared All of Us for the Impeachment Hearings

Yes, it’s true, we’re living in a time of short attention spans and reality-show screaming matches, exploited by a president who measures success through the lens of TV ratings. But these televised hearings also come at a time when television has conditioned viewers to do much more than passively watch. The serial shows that fill the broadcast, cable and streaming channels—the phenomenon known among critics as Peak TV—have sprawling casts and rich dialogue, sympathetic antiheroes and complex storylines. They actively train viewers in feats of unprecedented engagement, driving a passionate fan ecosystem online, promising big payoffs if everyone can just sit through the slow parts.

So maybe TV hasn’t ruined us for politics, after all. Maybe, instead, it’s been preparing us for precisely this moment. That may even offer one explanation for why Trump supporters are likely to stick with him through the coming weeks: Nobody ends up winning our sympathy more than a Walter White or a Don Draper.

***

“Peak TV,” a term coined in 2015 by FX network chairman John Landgraf, referred to the dark underbelly of the Golden Age of Television: a glut of scripted programs across a growing list of networks, which Landgraf predicted would someday lead to a Darwinian winnowing-down. The challenge Landgraf named is, essentially, the same one some impeachment skeptics have raised: With so much competition for eyeballs, how can any new show gain attention, let alone traction?

One answer is to create the kind of rich, immersive series Landgraf’s network has specialized in, from “The Shield” and “Nip/Tuck” in the early aughts to challenging hits like “Sons of Anarchy,” “The Americans” and “American Horror Story.” These shows are kin to HBO’s groundbreaking dramas, from “The Wire” to “Game of Thrones” to “Watchmen;” AMC’s “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad;” ambitious network hits like “Lost.”

Nothing on that list is designed for casual viewing; watching a Golden Age show is a commitment, and following the byzantine plotlines requires both a healthy memory and a body of background knowledge. Sometimes, the media and fans create an online apparatus to help viewers keep it all straight. Often, episodes are followed by a flurry of recaps and podcasts and online conversations. And despite all the talk of Americans’ micro-attention spans and celebrity crushes, the serial drama shows no sign of fading. In 2018, there were nearly 500 scripted series across the TV landscape, and the crash Landgraf fears hasn’t yet come to pass.

It all represents a massive shift in viewing habits since the Watergate era, when there were three major networks plus PBS, and, of course, no livestreaming opportunities over a yet-to-be-invented internet. In 1974, interest in the Richard Nixon impeachment hearings was high—because of civic interest, to be sure, but it couldn’t have hurt that there wasn’t much else to watch. Some 70 to 80 percent of Americans reported that they tuned in for all or some of the hearings.

Over the years, TV audiences splintered as cable channels proliferated. There’s still no shortage of (or shame in) cheesy, easy, or mindless entertainment: “NCIS,” “America’s Got Talent,” and “The Masked Singer” earn some of the highest network ratings. But there’s also ample proof—in the recordbreaking viewership of “Game of Thrones,” in NBC’s willingness to invest in a sitcom about philosophy, in the growing audience for Hulu’s dystopian “Handmaid’s Tale”—that Americans will also flock to long, slow TV that requires their full attention.

So it shouldn’t be a big surprise that, by today’s scattered standards, the Trump impeachment hearings have done more than all right. About 13.1 million people tuned in to the midday programming across six major networks last Wednesday, when Ambassador Bill Taylor and George Kent testified; 12.73 million watched Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch on Thursday; another 13 million watched on Tuesday afternoon. (For reference: midday network soap operas draw 2 to 3 million viewers apiece, and “The Ellen Degeneres Show” draws about 4 million.) And while Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing drew an even more robust 20 million viewers across the networks, it’s worth remembering that the Kavanaugh hearing was a dramatic one-day affair, full of highly emotional testimony about allegations of sexual assault and alcohol—not the intricacies of the foreign service and national security apparatus.

“I think sometimes we don’t give the public enough credit” for paying attention to today’s impeachment process, says Arthur Sanders, a political science professor at Drake University who specializes in how media shapes public opinion. As the hearings continued, he predicted at the start, day-to-day viewership would ebb and flow, but interest would stay high.

That’s a sign, not just of civic engagement, but of stamina the public doesn’t often need to exercise, at a time when political scandals appear and disappear like fireflies on a summer night. Indeed, impeachment has been one of the first truly binge-worthy opportunities of the Trump era, and everything slow-burn TV has been preparing us for.

Peak TV has proven that viewers are perfectly capable of accepting that plot needs to be tempered with exposition, and the impeachment hearings fit this mold precisely.It’s fair, in retrospect, to think that the first day of hearings, featuring sober diplomats Taylor and Kent, laid the groundwork for more dramatic testimony to come—and it’s fair to wonder if Sondland’s testimony would have packed the same punch had it not been already established how the players fit together. The questioning from members is easier to follow when the action rises and falls, and there’s enough lawyerly case-building to counterbalance agitated rants from Reps. Devin Nunes and Jim Jordan.

The hearings have also given us a chance to latch onto quality characters, from fiery inquisitors like Jordan, Rep. Elise Stefanik and Rep. Sean Maloney to understated diplomats and civil servants like Yovanovitch and former top Russia adviser Fiona Hill. (Sondland, with his incendiary opening statement and his string of one-liners, seemed to view himself as a star player in a rollicking dramedy.) There have been a steady stream of viral moments when viewers collectively gasped, as when Yovanavitch reacted to Trump’s real-time tweet or Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman demanded that he be addressed with his military title. ( Ryan Murphy, when you create the inevitable miniseries, please cast John Hodgman as the Vindman twins.) And those characters have also been deployed in efficient, creative ways; like the president in “The West Wing,” who sometimes functioned as more of a symbol than a player, Trump has made an occasional high-impact cameo with a midday statement or a Twitter rant.

Like dialogue crafted in a writer’s room, the rhetoric sometimes manages to soar. There have been speeches about the value of America and truth that might as well have been penned by Aaron Sorkin: Vindman reassuring his Soviet-Union-born father that he won’t be punished for telling the truth in the United States, or Hill recounting the career opportunities the United States afforded a daughter of poor English coal miners. The members of the House Intelligence Committee seem to understand, implicitly, how to wring out those moments, or at least prep them for memes and sharing. On Tuesday, Maloney asked Vindman to re-read a dramatic part of his opening statement, presumably so that viewers who tuned in late could still experience the thrill.

Whether the public’s high attention will change public opinion is another question. As Sanders points out, the most engaged viewers are likely the most partisan: The most popular network for viewing the first week of hearings was Fox, followed by MSNBC, and those channels amounted to 43 percent of the TV viewership. Still, history suggests that, if people keep watching, their views could shift in one direction or another. With the Watergate hearings, public opinion changed in stages over time, as viewers followed the plotline and lost faith in Nixon. During the 1998 Bill Clinton impeachment hearings, Clinton’s public approval ratings actually rose as proceedings went on; Sanders says the public increasingly thought, “‘He had an affair, he probably lied about it, people lie about affairs all the time, so why are we going to remove him from office for that?’”

That’s clearly the outcome Trump is hoping for, and the conclusion Republicans are pushing. Their best hope is that casual viewers see Trump, if not as a lovable rogue, then at least as one of those prestige TV antiheroes. Those kinds of characters are what make serial dramas so intriguing; what draw people in; what make a series last. But from Stringer Bell to Jaime Lannister, the antiheroes tend to get their comeuppance in the end. And viewers are fine with that, too.

#Foreign #hearings #impeachment #Politics

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bizmediaweb · 6 years

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How to Create an All-Star LinkedIn Profile [INFOGRAPHIC]

Having a LinkedIn profile is no longer enough, especially if no one is seeing it. Or worse, people are seeing your profile but it does a poor job of representing you and what you do.

Your LinkedIn profile is an essential part of your personal brand and having a great one is a MUST if you plan to do any form of LinkedIn marketing or lead generation.

According to LinkedIn, your profile may already show up with All-Star status.

Sadly, that means nothing at all. It could simple mean you’ve added the various sections into your profile, perhaps with little to nothing in those sections, yet it still shows all-star status giving you a false sense of your professional presence.

To me an all-star profile means that you…

Are easily found when someone searches for what you do

Your profile intrigues people, makes them want to connect and learn more about you

In this article, I am going to show you exactly how to have true all-star status with a comprehensive step-by-step LinkedIn profile infographic so you can visually make sense of what it takes to truly have an all-star profile.

In following the steps laid out in this article and infographic, you will be able to create a professional, search-optimized LinkedIn profile, while also turning your profile into a lead generation magnet.

In fact, doing this is so vital that I recommend that you don’t start actively using LinkedIn for social selling until you have done this.

Google Search Results

What is the first thing a prospective client will do when they want to know more about you?

They will Google your name.

Did you know that your LinkedIn profile will show up very high in the search results (often in the top spot) and usually before your website?

Personal branding has become a hot topic and your personal brand is reflected in everything that shows up in Google search results and your social media profiles.

Remember, LinkedIn is not Twitter or Facebook and the impression you give must be a professional one. It must speak to what you do and your credibility.

LinkedIn Marketing: Attract Your Ideal Clients with Your LinkedIn Profile

When re-writing your LinkedIn profile, it’s essential that you know who your ideal clients are, so that you can create a client-focused profile.

A misconception you may have when writing your LinkedIn profile is that it should be all about you, like your resume or professional CV. When in fact, your profile should speak directly to your ideal clients.

People are much more interested in what you can do for them, than they are about you. Remember they are thinking: WIIFM (what’s in it for me).

Make sure that within your profile you identify exactly who your ideal clients are, as well as the specific problems/challenges they face and how you can solve them.

Choosing Keywords for Your LinkedIn Profile

If you want to get found on LinkedIn when people are searching for what you offer (rather than searching for you in particular), then you need to think about the keywords they may use in their search on LinkedIn.

On LinkedIn people tend to look for people, rather than things or information like they would on Google. For example, on Google someone may search for “How to create a great LinkedIn profile” or “LinkedIn marketing ideas” whereas on LinkedIn they may search for a “LinkedIn expert” or “LinkedIn profile writer” or “LinkedIn marketing consultant”.

So, when you are adding keywords throughout your profile, think specifically about the words and keyword phrases your ideal clients would be using on LinkedIn vs on Google.

How to Create an All-Star LinkedIn Profile [Infographic]

Feel free to share this LinkedIn profile infographic anywhere on the web as long as you reference the source and link it back to this blog post.

Below this infographic, you will find more specific details on how to write a great LinkedIn profile. Be sure to read to the end if you are committed to building a powerful personal brand and LinkedIn presence.

Now that you’ve gone through this complete LinkedIn marketing infographic, let me expand on some of the most important sections within your profile to ensure you understand exactly what is needed to have a professional presence that attracts your target audience.

1. LinkedIn Cover Photo

Have a professionally designed cover photo to take advantage of this LinkedIn profile feature, which will help you create a consistent and professional looking personal brand.

Keep in mind that your cover photo should not only reflect your personal brand, but it can also be a great place to quickly and easily let people know a little more about who you are and what you offer. It is also a good place to add an appropriate call-to-action.

2. Professional Profile Photo

The first and most important thing you need to remember is that first impressions are everything, especially online. Personal branding starts with a professional headshot, you have only seconds to make a positive impression.

You need to ensure that your profile image will convey the impression that you want to make.

Here are some pointers for a better profile image:

Look straight ahead at the camera

Smile, show some teeth

Have a clean, plain background

Dress appropriately for your profession and audience

Your picture should include only you

3. Your Name

Your name field should include nothing other than your name.

Adding something other than your name in the name field is a violation of LinkedIn’s Terms of Service and can get your account restricted. But beyond this breach of contract, using something other than your name makes you harder to find, looks unprofessional, and reduces your credibility.

LinkedIn’s Terms of Service state that it is unacceptable to add personal information such as email addresses or phone numbers, or to use symbols, numbers, or special characters.

There are exceptions. These include things such as suffixes, e.g. Ph.D., as well as former names, maiden names, and nicknames (as these can make it easier to find you by those who know you).

4. Your LinkedIn Headline

Your headline is the MOST important part of your LinkedIn profile. You have 120 characters to make your ideal prospects and clients want to learn more about you.

Using one or two keywords, create a headline that will generate interest and encourage your connections to want to click on your profile to learn more about you.

It is not enough to show up in the search results as many other profiles will be also be listed.

You must also stand out and capture the attention of your ideal clients. This would include having a compelling statement to capture your readers’ attention and intrigue them enough to want to click on your profile and learn more about you.

Your headline may include any of the following:

Highlights of your credibility

Insights into what you do and for whom

Outcomes/solutions you offer clients

Keywords you want to be found for

5. Standout Summary Section

Like your headline, you want the first couple of sentences of your Summary section to catch attention and make your ideal clients curious to learn more about you and click See more to read your entire summary section.

If you don’t grab their attention, they will click away, and the opportunity is lost.

6. Have 500+ Connections

While you only want to fill your network with high quality connections, it is important to work on building your network to over the 500+ level.

This is important both as social proof but also as it will allow you find or be found by more of your ideal clients. Remember that you can only be found by people who are your 1st, 2nd and 3rd degree connections or that you share a common LinkedIn Group with.

7. Post LinkedIn Publisher Articles

It is extremely easy for anyone viewing your profile to see just how active… or rather inactive you are on LinkedIn. A great way to stay active and visible, if you write articles, is by posting regularly to LinkedIn Publisher.

This activity will help keep you top of mind with your connections, which is crucial to relationship-building.

8. Share Regular Status Updates

Another great way to ensure that you look active on LinkedIn is to post regular Status Updates.

Not only will this help you look active and stay top of mind, but it will also generate engagement and conversation with your connections.

9. Write in First Person

No matter to whom you are selling, whether it’s a small business or a large company, the decision is made by a person. People connect with people, not brands.

For this reason, you should always write your Summary in the first person.

Even though it is business-oriented, LinkedIn is still a social network, so don’t forget to be social. One way to do this is to write in the first person, not in the third person.

10. Summary Section: Credibility Section

In the first couple paragraphs share a little bit about: who you are, your story, why you do what you do, and your background.

Mention accomplishments that will enhance your credibility such as media attention, publications, well-known clients, years of experience, or anything else that makes you stand out. This establishes your credibility in what you do.

11. Summary Section: Ideal Clients—Problem—Solution

Next, identify your ideal clients. You want to ensure that once your ideal clients land on your profile, they will self-select themselves after realizing that you are someone they need to connect with.

You do this by being specific about the types of clients you work with and then speak directly to them and their problems/challenges as well as the solutions you offer.

12. Summary Section: Call-To-Action

Finally, have a clear call-to-action—tell your viewers (leads, prospects) exactly what you want them to do next.

If you miss this part, you are leaving it to chance that they will take action. People often have the best of intentions and plan to follow up, yet usually don’t.

Do you want them to call you or perhaps email you? Tell them exactly what they should do next.

13. Summary Section: Rich Media

LinkedIn has a rich media feature that allows you to add videos, SlideShare presentations, and PDFs.

Adding multimedia to your summary section makes your profile look more visually appealing and provides viewers more information about you.

14. Contact Info: Vanity URL

By default, LinkedIn will automatically create a URL for you. The URL will include your first name, dot, last name, forward slash, a series of numbers with a dash, and another string of numbers.

A vanity URL lets you change the unique link from random, hard to remember letters and numbers to something simple and memorable, like your name.

You should change the URL you are given to a vanity URL. If at all possible, you should select your name for your vanity URL. If your name is not available, try adding a middle initial or a designation at the end.

15. Contact Info: Websites

In your contact information, you can include your website.

Customize the website label instead of it showing only as “Company Website.”

LinkedIn gives you three spots to include websites, so if you have more than one website, include up to three of them in this section. If you only have one website, you can still take advantage of all three.

For example, you may set one to go to your homepage, another to a service page, or perhaps to a landing page for a download you are offering. This will encourage people to visit the specific pages where you can provide more information about your business offerings.

16. Contact Info: Email

Adding your email(s) to your contact info can make it easy for potential prospects to contact you.

Unfortunately, it can also make it easy for spammers to spam you as well. Thankfully, LinkedIn allows you to be able to choose whether or not you wish to share your email, depending on your preference.

17. Contact Info: Twitter Profile

If you have a Twitter account and are active, it is a great idea to include your Twitter handle. This allows people to easily check you out to learn more about you and contact you on Twitter, which is a more casual setting.

18. Your Current Experience

This section describes what you’re doing right now in your business or your current position. Just like the Summary section, you have 2,000 characters to describe your current work experience, so make sure you make full use of them.

First, begin with a couple paragraphs that highlight your company and anything that positions showcases your businesses credibility in your industry.

Share the most compelling information about your company here. You can also provide information that highlights the benefits clients receive in working with you.

Next you could list the services you provide. This is another good spot for keyword optimization.

If you have well-known clients or brands you’ve worked with include a list of them, otherwise list the types of clients you work with.

19. Your Current Experience: Call-To-Action

Lastly, in your current work experience description, include a call-to-action.

You can use the same call-to-action that you created in the summary section, or a variation of it, and add it to the bottom of your current work description section.

20. Your Current Experience: Add Video

Like in your Summary section, you will want to add multimedia to your profile to make your profile look more visually appealing and provide viewers more information about you. A great way to do this is by adding videos to your profile.

Adding video to your profile is very effective in humanizing you, building trust and connecting with your viewers. You can also include a product video, a company video, or a testimonial video.

21. Your Current Experience: Add Other Rich Media

You will want to include other forms of rich media to your current experience as well as video, such as slideshows and PDFs.

PDFs can be white papers or marketing materials describing your products or services. You can also include SlideShare presentations with content you want to share.

If you do add multimedia, be sure the content is both relevant and professional in appearance.

22. Past Experience

Your LinkedIn profile should include at least a few of your past positions, to have a complete and professional presence.

Your Past Experience section does not require very detailed descriptions however to make your profile look complete and professional include at least a short paragraph describing what you did and any accomplishments during that time.

23. Volunteer Experience

If it is relevant, you should add any volunteer experience you may have. Depending on the industry or situation, this can add credibility, count as experience or just provide readers with more information about who you are and what is important to you.

24. Skills & Endorsements

While the Skills section does not have the same weight and credibility as the Recommendations section, it will increase your level of social proof and improve your search ranking.

Did you know that members that have listed their Skills on their profile receive up to 17 times more profiles views than those who don’t? In addition, it certainly enhances your social proof when you receive a high number of endorsements for your skills.

25. Recommendations

Recommendations are a vital part of establishing trust and building your authority and credibility on your profile. This is the most important form of social proof on LinkedIn.

Don’t be afraid to ask for recommendations from people you have worked with and can speak to your expertise and results. Be sure to personalize your request and provide ideas of what you would like them to write about.

Watch this video on “How to get LinkedIn Recommendations.”

26. Accomplishments

There are a number of different sections and categories located under Accomplishments. These areas can help ensure that your profile:

looks professional and complete

further establishes your credibility and authority

helps your ideal clients to know, like andtrust you

One such section is Publications, which is an excellent place to showcase your authority on your topic.

In this section, include content or resources you have created which are of value to your ideal clients. These could include books, eBooks, reports, whitepapers, or articles you have written.

27. Honor & Awards

Adding any honors and awards you and your business have received is an excellent way to establish your authority and credibility.

Start LinkedIn Marketing & Social Selling with a Great LinkedIn Profile

I hope you enjoyed this LinkedIn profile infographic and that it will be helpful to you in creating a complete and professional LinkedIn profile. Having a great profile is essential for your success with LinkedIn marketing (especially if you are using it for social selling) and it will improve your overall personal brand and make a great online impression.

Whether you are a student, job seeker, business owner, salesperson, marketer, professional or executive, LinkedIn is one of the first places people will go to learn more about you. Take control of your personal brand and enhance your credibility by using the tips shared in this LinkedIn profile infographic to create a professional presence.

If you found this LinkedIn profile infographic helpful, please share this via social media to help others with their LinkedIn marketing efforts.

Looking for a LinkedIn profile writer to make sure you have a profile that stands out and gets attention? We specialize in writing client focused, professional, rock-star LinkedIn profiles. Click here to learn more about our LinkedIn profile development services.

Want to learn more about how to build a powerful personal brand and generate more leads and clients with LinkedIn? Check out my new book “LinkedIn Unlocked” for a proven system to use LinkedIn to generate new leads, clients and sales.

The post How to Create an All-Star LinkedIn Profile [INFOGRAPHIC] appeared first on Top Dog Social Media.

How to Create an All-Star LinkedIn Profile [INFOGRAPHIC] published first on https://themarketingheaven.tumblr.com/

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sebastiano-merlino · 7 years

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I've just published a new post on https://mylittleblackbird.com/2017/10/16/trigun-my-review-of-the-anime/

Trigun - my review of the Anime

This is going to be an article full of feels… so many feels!

Trigun is one of my favorite animes. This is the result of a combination of factors that can be summarized up into:

Awesome setting

Compelling theme

Incredibly well-designed characters

Great ability to inflict emotions on the audience.

I’d like to talk about them in order and, don’t worry, as usual, I will mark the sections containing spoilers.

Before we get into the meaty part, I am going to refer to the 1998 Anime series, not the Manga (that I read way too many years ago) nor the “Trigun: Badlands Rumble”, the movie from 2010 that I’ve yet to watch.

Trigun is an adaptation by the director Satoshi Nishimura (studio Madhouse) of the homonymous manga written by Yasuhiro Nightow. It is a Space Western story and follows the adventures of Vash the Stampede for a brief amount of time while trying to show us his philosophy and how this is impacting his and other’s lives. As the story progresses, more is discovered about Vash’s mysterious past and origins.

The setting

The story takes place on Gunsmoke (No Man’s Land) a desert planet in a far away galaxy. The human race has left planet earth because of unknown reasons and now finds itself on this deserted planet. Here humanity struggles to survive to the lack of natural resources. This caused a de-evolution into a society similar to that of the first explorers of the American’s west. Gunmen battles on the streets while sheriffs struggle to avoid the violence to spread.

One of the main resources of energy (and even water and food) are Plants. These mysterious systems are heavily relied on by humanity that builds cities surrounding them.

The theme of Trigun

I guess the simplest way to explain the theme of this series is to show you a short clip that summarizes it.

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Simply put: can we save everybody? Can we subvert the idea and perhaps the natural order of “kill or be killed”?

This short video is a haunting one. I find this scene incredible from a writing standpoint – Rem (the woman) and her reaction when she sees Knives killing the spider (0:17) and the single shot of the two brothers (1:14), so similar and yet so different. So close and distant at the same time.

This theme is the main focal point of the entire series. The thing that hurts the most is that I am not even sure Vash is right here. We see him struggling for the whole duration of the story not to kill anyone. Protecting the good without harming the evil.

At first sight, this looks like the author wanted to create a perfect hero. I think there is a better read though. Vash keeps fighting without even knowing if there is a meaning in it. He doesn’t know if there will be an end. We watch him struggling to do the right thing without even believing it is actually the right thing. Is he just being a hypocrite? Will he not just make the spider die anyhow by continuously saving the butterfly?

I don’t know. The author doesn’t seem to know either and the anime doesn’t claim to give you an answer. It just leaves you with the pain of the question.

This draws quite an imperfect hero who is probably just lying to himself while trying to do what he thinks is the right thing and being punished for it.

The characters

Trigun displays an incredible cast of characters. Protagonists and antagonists are compelling and because of this, the series received overall praise during the past twenty years.

The main protagonist is Vash the Stampede. He is a mysterious man, arguably the best marksman on the planet. He has a massive bounty on his head for having destroyed an entire city on his own. Because of this hunters are always behind his back. For the same reason, Meryl Stryfe and Milly Thompson, two Bernardelli Insurance Society employees, follow him to prevent him and who want to kill him from causing excessive damage.

Vash the Stampede

Vash is a pacifist. He has the goal to protect everyone he meets without harming anyone. Not even the evilest of villains. Because of this, he suffers incredible pain and losses. Many times while watching I struggled because of the emotional pain inflicted to the character. As discussed in the previous chapter, Vash has a naive and simple view of life. He keeps himself in sync with it by thinking of his mentor Rem Saverem (the woman in the video above). She taught Vash while still young and acted as a mother to him and his brother Knives. During this period, she explains a philosophy of peace and non-violence that remains with Vash forever.

Another important character is Nicholas Wolfwood. A priest and yet another mysterious gunman. He has a bleaker and more practical view of life and how to deal with evil. It is hard to talk about Wolfwood without making any spoiler, but he is what Vash would have probably ended-up being if not for Rem. They become closer and closer during the series and it makes it for an important subplot of the series to watch the growth of both characters as they influence each other.

The big bad of the series is Millions Knives. He is Vash’s brother. Knives’ philosophy is completely opposite to Vash’s. He looks at life in a more black and white way. Evil exists and must be eradicated. We must protect innocents and destroy who harms them. Sad to say, but in his view, humanity is the evil to eliminate.

The perpetrator of most of Knives’ actions is Legato Bluesummers, an emotionless nihilist. He continuously puts Vash in “kill or be killed” situations through the use of a group of outlaws, the Gun-oh-guns.

Trigun and the ability to convey emotions (Contains Spoilers)

Despite having often a humoristic tone, Trigun seems to have made a mission of making you cry. This especially in the last few episodes.

We see an example of this ability when Wolfwood dies. This happens on two fronts: the death itself and the way the others cope with it. We are used to seeing heroic characters dying in a stoic manner. Maybe even happy to have achieved their goals. This is not the case for Wolfwood. He has just saved Vash and saved the lives of the people he loves. Despite this, he cries while dying and re-affirms he doesn’t want to die. He finds it unjust and even blames God for having created an unfair world in which he has to die immediately after having found love and friendship.

This also continues after. Milly, Wolfwood’s lover at this point in the series, has to deal with his death. It is excruciating to see the scene in which she cries and laugh at the same time while claiming she is fine. Similarly, we follow Vash, while he separates from the girls and travels to another village. He is apparently joyful while buying some donuts (his favorite food). He sits down and starts eating them just to break into tears one moment after, consumed by the guilt of having convinced Wolfwood not to kill. Because of this, the man has paid with his own life.

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A second example is when Legato forces Vash to kill him. The scene itself is powerful.

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I consider this one of the greatest defeats for a hero I have ever seen in almost any media. Vash has lost. He has killed someone and, even worse, this happens to him after his best friend has been killed for following his ideas.

The aftermath is again devastating. Vash goes through the crisis. Unable to cope with what he has done, he thinks of himself as a killer. We hear him screaming in pain behind closed doors while Meryl and Milly are unable to do anything that can help him.

Does Trigun have any defect? (Contains Spoilers)

Well… nothing is perfect, right?

I am not here to talk about the relatively poor animation and generally flat drawing, but I can see some problems in the story too.

The Anime doesn’t really help us understand some of the things that happen. One example is Legato and his strong motivation. He almost appears surreally insane. Why such a devotion to Knives’ cause? (I know, the manga explains it but, we are not talking about that here).

Similarly, the story never goes deep on what Plants really are. We understand that Vash and Knives are Plants – this is why they hold such power. We never understand where Plants come from and why only the two brothers, amongst all the Plants we see, have human form.

There is also some waste of time. Whereas the first few episodes might be useful to establish the setting and Vash’s famous “fake smile”, this section of the Anime goes on for a bit too long. I would have preferred a shorter intro to the anime and I think it represents a risk of abandonment for the story to have such a long and undertoned introduction.

This is my review of one of my favorite animes. Let me know what you think in the comments and if you like my work here feel free to subscribe to my mailing list.

#anime #review #story #trigun #vash the stampede #Reviews (Stories)

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