#Can a paragon go mad with power or are they forced to be good people?

[non-cannon]

If you think about it, technically Rufus did his job as the Osirian in the season two finale. When he took the mask from Nina he protected the Chosen One from going to the afterlife, and with Senkarah following the mask he also sent the evil being harming/threatening the Paragon to the (probably technically not hell) bad afterlife.

[samdotdocx]

A very long-winded essay about why I love Night in the Woods and The Ramayana makes me Big Mad ft. Lets Talk About Mental Illness™

So I was in this class called 'The Ecology of Language". Excellent class, 10/10 would recommend - and especially relevant in the Indian context in particular, but that's a topic for another day.

One of the things we talked about was the concept of 'relatibality' in media, which, I'm sure we can all agree is a large component of contemporary character or story-line development. Considering the context of modern readers, what that sometimes ends up looking like (in our society that is built on constantly being told we are lacking, and the subsequent need to satisfy manufactured desires), is some wonderfully nuanced characters in stories stories that are three-dimensional, well rounded, and well developed and written. It's pretty great. And sometimes, what that means is that we have excellent characters that don't conform to the standard 'protagonist' stereotype. They might not even be 'good' (this is NOT a villain-apologist post). In fact, they might be complete idiots. They might be the people in stories who make all the wrong choices.

One such relatable character is Mae, and it's because she's an unmitigated train-wreck.

Anyone who knows the game probably knows what I'm talking about when I say the illustration style and character designs are gorgeous. Anyone who's ever dissociated probably knows what I'm talking about when I say that illustration style and character design were excellently used to create the sort of subliminal, surreal state of Mae's mind. And as you play the game, you see how that state of mind plays with the other characters, and - spoiler - it isn't great.

This is the first of the relatable aspects of Mae’s character; there are people around her who love her and are worried about her, but at the same time, are angry and irritated about her behaviour. At what point does it become too much to ask of those around you to forgive all your continuous and repetitive mistakes? Even if you have a good reason for it, mental illness is not an excuse for being exploitative, even if it is unintentional. Mae is not trying to hurt the people around her, but she constantly needs emotional labour from them – it’s exhausting, and people’s patience is going to run out eventually, as is their right.

Another aspect of this behaviour is the lack of reciprocity, an example of this being when Bea’s mother died of cancer – and Mae didn’t even notice.

There are several instances of Mae’s thoughtless behaviour throughout the game; she gets completely wasted and makes a scene at the party, gets jealous of of Greg and Angus because they’re leaving the town without her, and ends up destroying the radiator Bea was supposed to fix, getting her in trouble.

The thing is though, that Mae is given the opportunity to fix her mistakes.

A large part of relatability is the want so see yourself in a character. Mae is relatable to me because there are several circumstances and events in our lives that match up, but more than that; the game is an interactive visualization of her healing process. Her nine steps, if you will. She is given a second chance – and that chance is hard won, particularly in the context of the game.

Mae talks about feeling like she’s falling behind, of knowing that she is, in a way, wasting an opportunity that was a privilege in the first place, especially considering her family’s financial situation – but at the same time, being literally unable to help herself. And the aspects of the gameplay that hint at the supernatural elements of the story possibly being a figment of Mae’s imagination – well. All us depressed losers know what it's like to not be able to trust your own judgement and point of view. She talks about why she dropped out of college, and her description of the dissociation, and the mental and emotional deadening that it causes is spot on and so well represented.

It underscores the point that the logical brain knows that mental illness is an illness like any other – but the emotional brain doesn’t care.

The game does a brilliant job of laying bare the realities of middle class life, and makes painfully clear the fact that, at that level, it doesn’t matter how difficult things are for you. The world isn’t going to wait for you to get back on your feet.

Mae’s mental state and the limitations it imposes on her cultivates a state of extreme frustration. Again, relatable. It’s an understated aspect of illness of any kind; the anger at yourself, and how that anger carries over into a lot of things in your day to day life. After a point, it becomes a habit. Mae does this too; she's belligerent, and instigative, and unrepentant of consequences, because anger blinds you.

It's not how things will always be. I have the privilege of hindsight, so I can say that with authority. But, this isn’t the kind of thing that ever fully leaves you, either. If you break a kneecap, it’s going to bother you for the rest of your life, and similarly, mental illness has a ‘no return, no refund’ policy. So you grow up, and you try to adapt those habits and impulses into a more positive context. Recycling, right? Maybe you set your sights on things that actually deserve your anger, and you go from there. You find people who, for their own reasons, perhaps or perhaps not related to your own, are angry.

And you don’t understand the people who are not.

A large part of the anger and frustration surrounding mental illness is due to the stigma surrounding it. It’s frustrating to be so powerless and dependent, but this is exacerbated by the attitude of ‘it can’t be that bad’, which makes it so difficult to reach out, to be able to say, ‘I need a break’ – and actually get one. This is an attitude that carries over to a lot of other issues as well, and the worst part is – we are surrounded by people who are okay with it, who believe in and support that mentality.

The myth of Sita, for example. She is a strong female figure in Indian mythology, who overcomes her circumstances to live a ‘good’ life, and for all intents and purposes, is a hell of a role model.

But that’s the thing; her life wasn’t good, was it? She was supposed be a goddess reincarnated, she should have been powerful, and respected, but instead she is reduced to ‘wife’ – and everyone today is fine with it.

I respect her immensely for the choices she made; marrying for love was her choice, going into exile with her husband was her choice. She was the paragon of virtue, of 'wifeliness', of kindness – she chose her husband over everyone and everything else, including herself, as was expected of her. But yet – she couldn't win his trust or respect. It should not even have needed to be won.

It’s commendable the way she takes it all in stride, but why did she? She was kidnapped and held captive for years, entirely against her will, and her husband's response to that is to force her to walk through fire to prove her ‘purity’ – and she does it. And she stays with him after, and I cannot understand the depths of her patience and forgiveness, because I would have been livid, and I want her to be so too. I’m furious for her, because Ram was not just her husband, he was also the king, and his later verdict to exile her, alone, while heavily pregnant, his readiness to condemn her based on speculation and public sentiment, was not just a verdict against her, it was against every woman in his kingdom who had ever been victimised.

Sita became a martyr to the modern feminist movement – if she could not be angry on her own behalf, we will do it for her. But at the same time, she is still relatable, because we are held to a slightly lesser degree of the same expectations. There are always going to be aspects of things that you relate to. ‘Big Mood’ culture is a strong indicator of the human ability to empathise, especially with characters that you like, or respect.

Sita’s world, I imagine, was run by the expectations her society and community had of her, and maybe she didn’t even have the liberty to be angry. Who is responsible for portraying her in passive acceptance of her fate? Is that representation reliable? Would the story have been different had it been written by a woman?

I can't remember a time when I was not angry, especially about things like this. I am always ready to fight, and I think the same goes for so many other people today, sometimes to our detriment. I cannot imagine a world where that was not at the very least an option. Not necessarily the best option, - but Sita’s world was very different to ours. Even with centuries between us, we’ve just gotten over angry and depressed women being labelled as ‘hysterical’ and subsequently being locked away. What is it like, to have to be calm and careful in response to being treated like this? This care in response may not be an overt requirement anymore – though the fact remains that society will not take you seriously if you become hysterical - but shouldn't you, at the very least, be able to rely on the support of other people in the same boat?

That is the main difference in these stories, and another main point of relatability to me; Mae, like myself, had a support system. Sita did not. Mae was selfish and demanding in so many ways, and required a lot of time and patience and healing before she was able to give back, but she got there eventually because she was able to put herself first. She fought for herself, and when she couldn’t, she had other people to fight for her. Night in the Woods represents the intersection of oppressed minorities and community with their portrayal of Mae, Greg, and Angus in particular, and the importance of community support – and, the difference between geographical community, and communities formed through camaraderie and actual unity. And so does the Ramayana - except, where was Sita’s community? Where were her sisters, or her parents, when she was abandoned in the woods, and later when she committed suicide? We are well aware, in the modern day, of the state of mind that causes people to kill themselves, and yet that is a part of the story that we never talk about. Where were her people then?

What would have happened if she had been more like Mae, and put herself first instead of bleeding herself dry for people who never respected her, and would never do the same for her?

People relate to personalities. They relate to choices, and circumstances, and habits, and it is neither a good nor a bad thing, to be relatable or not. Sita will be highly relatable to people who, like her, were governed by their circumstances, and were screwed over despite their best efforts. People who felt they couldn’t, or shouldn’t exercise their power and agency. Sita’s death was at odds with her strong personality, and so was her deference to her fate on many occasions, but there are a lot of people out there who will relate to the feeling of simply wanting things to be over. Mae on the other hand; she’s a steamroller, and she doesn’t stop. There’s a reason her character is a cat, and jokingly referred to as feral in the game. She is persistent, she is growing.

[1] In Defence of Kaikeyi and Draupadi: a Note – by Fritz Blackwellhttps://www.jstor.org/stable/23334398?read-now=1&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents [2] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/10/emergency-room-wait-times-sexism/410515/

[stillness-in-green]

Thoughts on Chapter 314 (and surrounding events)

Being a loose summary of several things I thought about in relation to the leaks, what they say about the series as a whole, a bit of new operating headcanon on the Peerless Thief, and a dash of how fandom is responding to the revelations. Spoilers, obviously.

This chapter makes it quite clear that the HPSC absolutely would have gone in and eliminated the PLF quietly, lethally, and wholly unlawfully if Hawks hadn't reported back the numbers that he did. The only reason the raid involved non-Commission-affiliated heroes at all is because the PLF's manpower was simply too much for the Commission to deal with via their usual methods. I'm both appalled that the disregard for human rights in HeroAca Land is somehow even worse than I thought it was and smug that that tiny little piece I recently posted criticizing the PLF's treatment has turned out to be totally justified and supported by the canon.[1] (Note that this does not absolve Horikoshi of the responsibility to, himself, treat the PLF better than paper dolls tossed into the incinerator of Plot Irrelevance when they cease being convenient to his story.) The fact that the Commission was forced to involve heroes might mean Re-Destro, Mr. Compress and the others are somewhat safer than might otherwise be the case. Because of the involvement of the unsuspecting stooges law-abiding heroes, and because the botched raid became such a huge disaster, there’s far more public scrutiny on this than would otherwise be the case. Of course, "accidents" can still happen,[2] especially in a chaotic environment, but the factors above (combined with Clone!RD murdering the bejeezus out of the Lady Prez) do, I think, suggest that there probably isn't an organized push for quick solutions going on behind closed doors.

I don't think Nagant has been around for a terribly long time or that there was an uptick in vigilantism in recent years—I think the scene where she mentions vigilantes becoming accepted as heroes is just in reference to the early history of heroism. It's in keeping with what Tsukauchi Makoto described in Vigilantes, and forms the basis of the current system—the current system that Nagant was a single cog in a big machine grinding away to preserve.

Speaking of Nagant and the system, it's interesting to me that one of the groups Nagant apparently targeted at the HPSC's behest was corrupt heroes—those who colluded with villains or specifically goaded/incited civilians into using their quirks illegally, thus turning civilians into capital-V Villains in the eyes of the law. One might easily say that targeting corrupt heroes (albeit using a much broader definition of "corrupt") was Stain's whole shtick, but it actually puts me more in mind of the Peerless Thief, Harima Oji. Harima punished greedy or corrupt heroes with theft, and presumably with a measure of declaration and exposure,[3] then distributed their money back to the streets. Someone who ridicules those who abuse their power, and gets away with it for long enough to build a reputation: that right there is a recipe for a folk hero. The HPSC, in whatever form they existed at the time, obviously couldn't let that go on—such repeated humiliations would weaken peoples’ faith in (and obedience to) the system the HPSC was trying to build. At the same time, though, it would also weaken faith in the system to openly acknowledge that system's flaws, to acknowledge that some pretty awful people had found their way into the heroics business specifically for the power and ability to abuse it that the title of Hero afforded them. Public trials would make it a matter of record that some heroes—and, accordingly, heroes at large—did not deserve the public's unquestioning faith. Obviously in a system that was built from the ground up on faith, that was unacceptable. And so Harima was branded a supervillain for exposing the system's flaws, while the corrupt heroes who embodied those flaws to begin with were—and continue to be—quietly disposed of at the HPSC’s discretion.

There's a lot of talk around about how Lady Nagant is stupid, or hypocritical, or delusional, or whatever other dismissive adjective people want to use, because she expresses a preference for AFO's rule over the HPSC's. Firstly, I think it's dubious Lit Crit to fault a character for not being a Paragon of Rationality, especially when they're under the cascading stressors Nagant has been under since she was, what, 13? 14? Forced to live this dichotomy of smiling gallant hero and ruthless covert assassin, had her life threatened by the man who'd taken her in,[4] probably dumped in Tartarus until such time as her trial could be held,[5] and kept in those ghastly, dehumanizing conditions for who knows how long? How shocking, that her objectivity might be somewhat compromised! Secondly, it's not like she's saying that AFO's rule would be a sunny walk in the park. The kanji she uses doesn't even mean "better"; while it can mean serene or tranquil, her more likely meaning is clear/transparent. Her phrasing indicates that she's aware it would be pretty bad; she's simply of the opinion that at least his rule wouldn't be a sham, a pretty lie. It would be bad, but everyone would know it. No one would have these comforting illusions they could lose at any time; if you stepped out of line and got shot in the head by an assassin, well, at least you would probably know you that being defiant was running that risk, rather than never seeing it coming because you'd been told all your life that Heroes Didn't Do That To People. Again, this is a woman whose life was shattered no less than three times by the duplicity of the highest acting authority in this comic.[6] She doesn't have to be Objectively Correct By The Standards Of Ethical Utilitarianism—nor do you have to agree with her choice that because she doesn’t want to live in the Matrix, no one else should get to either—for her opinion to make sense from her own perspective! Thirdly, while I think it's fair to say that the HPSC and AFO actually use fairly similar methods to recruit followers and punish dissenters, we have no idea how much Nagant herself knows about AFO's recruitment tactics other than her own brief experience of it. And while AFO is a controlling and manipulative bastard, at least in his case it's coming from a man who openly styles himself as a Demon King, not an organization positioning itself as lawful regulators of the protectors of society at large while secretly training child soldiers to flagrantly violate every law protecting the human rights and due process of that society's people.

Overhaul's presence is delightful, and yes, he is a victim of Hero Society, if only because Hero Society could have put him in some kind of prison-based rehab facility after Shigaraki was through with him, but chose to dispose of him in Tartarus instead, for absolutely no justifiable cause. I suspect it's only due to Horikoshi not being very interested in the harsh realities of the trauma caused by enforced isolation[7] that Overhaul is the only Tartarus escapee that talks to himself and has dissociated from reality almost completely. Overhaul's maiming was not the fault of Hero Society, nor did Hero Society force him to torture Eri and repeatedly commit cold-blooded murder. But his madness? Yeah, I'm pretty comfortable laying that one at Hero Society's feet, actually. I can’t wait for Deku to have to face the victim that Chisaki Kai has become due to levels of systemic cruelty and negligence that really ought to be criminal—and which, if this were real life, would be.

--------Lately, footnotes are really popular with us!--------

[1] Lady Nagant: *talks about how the Hero Society everyone believes in is illusory, a thin fake over a brutal reality, and that returning to the false simplicity of that status quo will only cause history to repeat itself* Me, two weeks ago: Hero Society will never stop creating its own villains so long as, every time it fails people, it does nothing but shrug and write off the victims as unavoidable, inevitable sacrifices for the greater good.

[2] Yes, I'm still highly suspicious of the "Destro committed suicide in prison" claim.

[3] Compress tells us Harima “preached reformation,” but regardless, you don’t dress up in a modified kabuki costume and waltz midair through nighttime cityscapes raining cash out of the sky if you’re trying to keep your activities a secret.

[4] And her family situation couldn't have been much better than Hawks', if she was targeted by the HPSC to begin with. I would guess she was an orphan in the childcare system, easy to move from whatever alternative care arrangement she was in, be it an orphanage, a group home, or simply mature enough despite her relative youth that she lived alone on government support payments—that kind of thing isn't as unbelievable in Japan as it is in the U.S.—to the HPSC's care.

[5] And given what we learned between this chapter and 297, I doubt she was even allowed to be present for it. Japanese law states that everyone by default is supposed to be present for their own trial, but as in the U.S, that right can be waived if the defendant proves themselves to be a threat to the safety of the judge, court staff and other attendees. And of course, what a threat the HPSC could have painted her as being!

[6] At least until Hori deigns to show us a damn Diet session.

[7] To say nothing of the physical consequences of spending six months stuck in a tiny room with no natural light while frequently being strapped into a straitjacket, of which there should also be several.

[1296-very-good-year]

Sylvanas and the Jailer

I feel like it’s a fair complaint that there is just.. a lot we haven’t seen about the relationship between our two Big Bads that explains all the relevant character and story beats happening with Sylvanas right now. HOWEVER, I’d like to lay out what we do know, and I think its enough to intuit what exactly the context of their relationship was/is. 

Side note: Yes, Zovaal is still horribly underdeveloped and hopefully that changes soon. We still don’t know how he managed to convince the literal Paragon of Loyalty (Devos) to betray her covenant and there better be a damn good reason.

So at the very base of it, Sylvanas and Zovaal decided to work together to tear down the system they both hate and build a fairer one in its place. When they were about to reach that goal, Zovaal reveals he never intended to honor the “fairer system” part of the deal so Sylvanas turns on him. I find it fascinating that although Zovaal clearly betrayed her, a lot of people frame this moment as Sylvanas betraying him. He just declared he wanted everyone and everything forced to serve him, and somehow it’s Sylvanas doing the betraying. Interesting...

Anyway, the biggest complaint from the raid finale people seem to have is: 

How could she be so stupid to believe the JAILER wanted to give everyone free will? (Actually what a lot of people were thinking was “Goddamnit! I wanted to kill that bitch!” but they weren’t all just going to say that outright so they latched on to something more reasonable to explain why they’re mad)

So let’s think about that complaint for a second!

First of all, we don’t know if she fully believed him. They had a deal and he broke it. We don’t know yet if she had a plan in case that happened. We have to wait to find out. 

My speculation is Anduin managed to convince her to come up with contingencies - if she didn’t have any already - considering Zovaal literally gets into his head to possess him. Anduin could have learned his true intentions in time to warn her.

But why would she make a deal with this clearly evil guy in the first place?

Think about what we’ve been told already:

The Eternal Ones locked Zovaal away with domination magic, but was eventually able to free himself enough to turn that magic into a weapon against his jailers and had no concern for who got hurt along the way.

Sound familiar?

Arthas turned Sylvanas into an undead slave with domination magic, she was eventually freed and used her new banshee magic against the one who enslaved her and had no concern for who got hurt along the way.

I don’t see anyone talking about this very obvious parallel! Why wouldn’t Sylvanas see the Jailer as a mirror of herself to relate to? Someone she can project her own ambitions and hurt and anger onto? We don’t have the details about how they met yet, but I guarantee Zovaal used their similarity to convince her to help him. And based on her knowledge and fear that she was damned to the Maw when she died, it would be completely out of character if she didn’t side with the guy trying to bust it open. 

And remember, Zovaal is only using domination magic because his siblings bound him with it first! That horrible power that Arthas used to enslave Sylvanas? That was first used against Zovaal. This is why I don’t get the complaint that Zovaal is the reason for every bad thing that’s happened to her so she should hate him.

Yes he made Frostmourne and the Helm that gave Arthas the ability to do what he did to her, but 1) the lich kings were Zovaal’s only means of getting his influence out of the Maw to crack it open and 2) the game dialogue has made it clear that Zovaal did not control the lich kings like he wanted to and they all had free will. They were corrupted, not controlled. Arthas himself decided to raise Sylvanas and torture and enslave her, no one told him to do that. If you want to get technical it was Ner’zhul telling Arthas to attack the Sunwell which led him to Sylvanas, but Zovaal didn’t control Ner’zhul either.

With that said though, I can definitely see her redirecting her hatred for Arthas on to Zovaal now that she’s learned what his real intentions for getting free were. And he looks a lot like Lich King Arthas with his fancy new armor so that will be pretty easy to do. 

[sebastianshaw]

RP meme from "Chapter Four: Aspects and Renown" in The World of Darkness Ratkin Breedbook

"What you can actually do is far more important."

"The experience is little more than a challenging contract to prove one’s mettle."

"Not everyone can stand so much isolation and seclusion."

"Along the way, they work whatever scams and schemes they can to survive."

"After all, mavericks are known just as much for their quick wits as their stealth and subterfuge."

"Some do this to escape lives they cannot stand; others quest for ideals they may never achieve."

"If there’s a great place nearby to find food, adventure, or perils that threaten the young, a wise scout or spy will find them quickly."

"Relationships on the road are temporary and superficial."

" A scout or wanderer who hasn’t seen an old friend or lover in years immediately picks up the relationship exactly where it left off."

"Each year, they move from city to city, use and discard temp jobs like old clothes, and evolve a series of personas for different situations."

"Not all of them are impoverished and homeless; as long as you know where to find crash space, you’re never really helpless."

"They are fascinated by places inhabited by other creatures, especially humans."

"Some are smart enough to emulate the people they live near; others come up with bizarre explanations to explain human activity."

"Instead of a straightforward military report on the strength of predators in the area, the data must be condensed into a format even a small child could understand."

"When problems with the physical world grow too great, it’s tempting to just vanish into the ephemeral realms for a while."

"These alternate identities aren’t very flashy, just the sort of quiet identity that no one questions."

"It can also draw attention from police officers, irate merchants, and hostile humans."

"This isn’t my world. I just hide in it. If you’re looking for a place to run, talk to me."

"This isn’t my world. I just hide in it."

"If you’re looking for a place to run, talk to me."

"Seers are the keepers of ancient secrets."

"A human is still a human, and can never be trusted."

"Just because they’re victims doesn’t mean they’re virtuous; they’ll still rip you off when you least expect it."

"They seek wisdom the human race has discarded or left behind."

"They make their lairs in areas where the police fear to go, where the only law in both physical and spirit worlds is survival."

"Her body remains in the physical world; her spirit watches what transpires around it in the spirit world."

"You worry about fighting what you can see. I’ll worry about fighting what you can’t see."

"If they feel strongly enough, they will enforce their beliefs as they best see fit."

"Unfortunately, when passing judgment on their own kind, they have restraints placed on their activities."

"These harsh practices have millennia of precedent."

"They reason that it’s better to have a few small, secure ratholes to hide your equipment and yourself than to go to the trouble of defending a larger turf."

"Many secretly enjoy “pronouncing sentence” on anyone who offends them thoroughly enough."

" Justice is far more important. . . and unfortunately, far more subjective."

"Most know they can’t change the world by openly practicing violence; if anything, they’ve got to be really secretive about their revenge."

"Epic carnage is best left to less sophisticated creatures."

"The threat of one of the local politicians getting killed is usually enough to dissuade them from disagreeing any further."

"They do not disguise themselves when pursuing an assassination, as they will not apologize for what they do best."

"We had a contract. You broke it. Now I’m going to make your life a living hell."

"When rage flows freely, violence reigns."

"Some have the wisdom to choose their battles carefully; others don’t care who dies when battle lust seizes them."

"Peace is nothing more than a temporary cessation of the ways of war."

"Developing martial skill involves far more than just killing things — sometimes it involves crippling them, weakening them, or demoralizing them.

"These soldiers don’t just slay; they also use their knowledge of chaos to confuse their enemies, striking in the night when madness reigns."

"All of them pride themselves on discipline and composure. . . until rage overwhelms reason."

"Warriors of both sexes are mildly insecure, and feel the need to show off their martial prowess."

"What? Just because you’ve got an army surplus jacket and a pipe bomb, that makes you a man?"

"Any fool can pull a trigger."

"Saving the world requires true warriors."

"Technology isn’t evil, after all. It’s just in the wrong paws."

"Many are convinced that if they don’t watch their actions carefully, someone from a local laboratory will capture them and experiment on them to find out why they’re so smart."

"Wherever technology thrives, these rats will move in to scavenge it."

"Humans have a fetish about continually acquiring more stuff, newer stuff and cutting-edge state-of-the-art tech."

"The struggle begins with fierce discussions about technological innovations, and rapidly breaks down into name calling and slander."

"Two machines enter; one machine leaves."

"Whether they tinker with ancient computers or rusting cars, they have an insatiable need to fix anything that’s considered unsalvageable."

"Sometimes, she’ll spend the whole day collecting knickknacks just to see what she can build out of them that evening."

"Genius has its price."

"Each one has a physiological trait that identifies him as the gene freak he is."

"Dark powers tutor them in forgotten arts of destruction."

"He’ll be deposed by forces he’s summoned up, but can’t put down."

"Turn your head and cough. Oooh! I’ve never seen it that color before."

"Not all of them are swashbuckling heroes, but all of them are delusional about their origins and their heroic prowess."

"The conflict of egos can become so intense that bystanders get hurt from the fallout."

"Dueling etiquette demands satisfaction."

"Anyone who hears this tale will swear that it is true."

"My good sir, adventure is my middle name!"

"What? You don't believe me?"

"Keep her pointed in the right direction, and she’ll masterfully eliminate your enemies."

"If you’re not careful, she’ll blow up right in your face."

"Any place populated by the desperate, frustrated or down-and-out is another good choice — not only does it make for a good place to hide, but it has its share of potential allies seeking vengeance. . . or potential victims at which to vent your anger."

"They’ll need a really powerful common enemy to unite them; otherwise, each will suspect the other of conspiracy."

"Many come from criminal backgrounds, broken homes, abject poverty or the sort of banal borderline existence that breeds cynicism and contempt for just about everyone."

"Each one has a surprising degree of truth to it."

"It controls all forces of order."

"The balance of the world will not be restored until we destroy everything that smells of stasis, stability or the status quo."

"Hey, nobody saw me do anything. Besides, he had it coming. . . he pissed me off. What? You talking to me? You talking to me?"

"Hey, nobody saw me do anything. Besides, he had it coming. . . he pissed me off."

"Hey, nobody saw me do anything."

"Besides, he had it coming. . . he pissed me off."

"What? You talking to me? You talking to me?"

"You want a piece of me?"

"Chant the creed, kid, and learn. . ."

"I shall seek revenge against those who prey upon my kind."

"I will survive so that I may breed."

"I must respect strength and exploit weakness."

"I shall grow stronger through conflict."

"I will learn from the mysteries of the spirit world."

"I will revel in the visions the spirits grant me."

"I shall nurture, instruct and aid the young."

"I will trust my own kind before I trust outsiders."

"When someone is responsible for injustice, I will make sure someone pays."

"Legality is a subjective concept at best."

"Fighting to survive is difficult enough."

"What else could heal the world?"

"They’re doomed to self-destruct."

"The day that the buildings come crashing down, I’ll dance in the streets."

"Survival comes first."

"Mankind’s days are numbered."

"The strong breed. The weak die. Does that sound harsh? That’s evolution."

"Instinct will tell you when to kill, so follow it."

"We need an army to overwhelm our enemies."

"I still do not know if this is wise."

"If only the strong breed, then you must prove your strength before you can reproduce."

"Don’t be some addle-witted wharf rat who breeds with any half-dead body in the sewers. You, soldier, are the paragon of your race."

"Such egotism!"

"That is nature's way."

"That is nature’s way. If the population of creatures in any one area is too high, a few can be killed or a great number will starve."

“Property is relative. If I can take it, it’s mine. If you can’t defend it, you don’t deserve to have it."

"They buy far more than they need, go to great lengths to defend what they have, and insist that they have the right to determine who owns what."

"If you own more than you can carry, you’re wasting what others can use."

"Betray others before you betray your own kind."

"We’re running into the world together, kid, so we’ve got

to stick together. You ready to go? Um. . . you first. . .”

"You ready to go? Um. . . you first. . .”

"We’re running into the world together, kid, so we’ve got

to stick together."

"I just feel this rage in my blood that’s been there since the dawn of time. And I just feel like acting on it."

"Show me your true face, and it’s my call whether I want to slash it off."

[thessalian]

Thess vs Thin Coats of ‘Fun’

Picked up my Inquisition replay. I’m trying a couple of things I hadn’t done before, and it’s leading to some interesting thoughts, some of them connecting back to this post I reblogged awhile back about how Inquisition, beyond a moment or two, is missing some of the sheer frisson-garnering horror that Origins and even DA2 gave ... actually, I think I’m going to start with that, because Inquisition was supposed to be focusing on ‘the fun’ and I take issue with that statement because of one simple inalienable fact:

Everyone has different ideas of what ‘fun’ means.

Sure, yes, for some it’s pretty graphics and sleek streamlined gameplay and wandering the wilderness on fetch quests. I can have fun with that too sometimes. But that isn’t my only fun. That isn’t even my primary fun. And the issue Inquisition seems to have is that it puts the graphics-and-gameplay-and exploration fun miles ahead of emotional engagement fun. Unlike a lot of people, I loved the Deep Roads. Yeah, it was a grind, sure. Thing is, there was narrative reasoning behind the grind. Our Warden was wandering around a place so old and crumbling that the maps were only a basic guideline, descending deep into even older places that even the dwarves with their Shaperate had forgotten, now largely the home of the darkspawn horde. Yes, we were going to be hacking through all the horrible things that lived there, the ancient traps nothing managed to trip yet, and the Paragon driven mad with power and isolation and gods know what else. It was going to be a bloody and brutal slog. It fit the mood of the area perfectly, to have to cut your way through horror after horror after horror ... and then have your first moment to breathe come with the quiet, Taint-riddled chant of Hespith, and all that came after.

THAT IS A FUCKING MOOD AND I LOVE IT.

Everything’s so spread thin in Inquisition. There are moments ... but even those, some of them are only gut-punches if you happen to catch them and have played the previous two games. I ended up with a playthrough of DA2 that involved poor Molly!Hawke in the “kill or be killed” situation with Merrill’s Clan. While wandering around for unrelated but thematically appropriate reasons (more on that later), I happened to catch some snippets of conversation between an elf and a human on the floor of the tavern that houses Sera’s room and that Sutherland kid. The elf had, the last time I passed by, been freaking out about The Champion of Kirkwall being sighted. Her human conversational companion was asking why she’d been in Kirkwall. The elf said she’d been visiting the Sabrae clan - they’d lost their halla and there was talk of a trade. “I didn’t think there were Dalish elves around Kirkwall”, said the human. “Not after she was through, there weren’t”, replied the elf.

OUCH. But only ‘ouch’ if you played DA2 and were also the guiding force behind the Champion doing that in the first place, and if you happened to have wandered past that spot often enough to hear that exchange.

Incidentally, the reason I was up there was because I’d cut through the kitchens - I seldom cut through the kitchens but I’d jumped off Leliana’s level of the library / rookery tower-thing and landed near the outer door that leads directly to the kitchen and thought, “Eh, why not?” Now, I knew that we could trace Cole’s thing about the stolen cheese and mint to make the cats ‘dance and play’. But when I cut through the kitchens, the two scullery maids who were usually getting verbally lambasted by the head cook were talking about how good a mood she was in. And I remembered that she’d been the one laughing about the cats’ mint-inspired antics. So I went to Cole (which is why I passed those two in the tavern), and lo and behold, there was another whole part of that that I hadn’t tripped over in so many playthroughs. I don’t know how I feel about that because on one level it feels like a hidden treasure and on the other hand ... it’s been years. I’ve missed that for years.

So, yeah, currently I’m about to start the Fade section and my party is Blackwall, Dorian, and Cole. I’m glad I took Dorian. I did like having finished clearing the ramparts and getting the comment, “We should move. People fight, get tired; demons, not so much”. But I took Cole for the first time because I wondered how that would go.

...Wish I hadn’t. WISH I HADN’T. POOR BABY.

I guess on one level it’s all about replayability. And it’s nice to have new stuff - or at least new-to-me stuff - after all this time. Just ... having to go through all however many hours of thin-stretched nothing to get the good stuff is galling on a number of levels. And I really don’t like EA Bioware deciding what ‘fun’ means for me. I want my claustrophobic horror, thanks. That’s why I like the Fade section of Inquisition. It’s about the only spot that still does have that. It’s funny how Redcliffe Castle under the control of possessed!Connor, despite not looking crumbling or visually any different than it did the rest of the game, could give me more of the heebie-jeebies than Future!Redcliffe A La Corypheus ever did. (Apart from the personal stuff, obviously. What happens to your companions breaks me every single fucking time. And honestly, it was a smart move narratively speaking, the entire time magic thing with Dorian. Maybe you have a hard time trusting him because Tevinter, but that kind of shit is going to be a next level fast-track bonding experience.)

Basically, I want depth to my fun. I want it slathered on like peanut butter and jam in a sandwich, not spread thinly and mostly evenly like a coat of paint on untreated wall. I’m not saying I don’t like Inquisition - I am playing it, after all. However, I am saying that I dislike being told that depth and heebie-jeebie horror isn’t ‘fun’. BITCH, THAT IS MY FUN.

[themonolithicmystique]

Cruel Macro Mantis Empathy Manipulation!

With TheMegaMaryam!

GargusToday at 1:58 PM Any Mantis thoughts maybe? MegamaryamToday at 1:58 PM hmmst mantis trying to calm down drunk rockette and getting violently sloshed via empathy GargusToday at 2:00 PM Gets the GREAT idea to reverse her intentions and make Rockette go even more out of control MegamaryamToday at 2:00 PM "She will get it out of her system if I turn off all of her inhibitions!" -Mantis, having the worst (best) idea ever GargusToday at 2:03 PM Good thing they live in a universe where complete galaxies spring into existence all the time MegamaryamToday at 2:03 PM or Groot's just snatching them from other universes to make up the difference GargusToday at 2:04 PM Mantis big enough to hold them like toys Easily amused by the terror her looming face inspires MegamaryamToday at 2:06 PM more drunk on that power and fear than alcohol at that point doing everything she can to make them feel helpless and doomed because it feels so fun~! GargusToday at 2:07 PM Mantis acting like this while retaining her sweet and innocent persona is my favorite thing actually MegamaryamToday at 2:08 PM same she's secretly the scariest and cruellest giantess in the entire group, but never drops her adoring eager and innocent peronsliaty actively evil in some ways and not just hedonistic GargusToday at 2:10 PM She just lives for the despair, because she can latch onto it and intensify it a thousandfold And STILL promise them that she hasn't even gotten started MegamaryamToday at 2:12 PM Mystique dominates and tortures billions because she likes that it makes her feel good Unhinged mantis dominates and tortures billions because it makes them feel bad. Those promises are truthful as can be of course, and everyone who hears her innocent voice knows that it's absolutely sincere. And she's so, so eager to show that. GargusToday at 2:12 PM And of course Rockette does it because they're in her way Mantis getting big is probably the worse thing that could happen to the universe, because when her powers could only influence one person at a time and required direct physical contact, inducing fear and agony reflected directly back onto her and was too much to do except as a very last resort Whereas the larger she grows, the less the individual experience matters over the sheer power rush of feeling all those hearts and minds feeling what SHE wants them to feel And on such a tiny impulse too! If she actually focused hard enough to replicate what she had to do to achieve the same effects when she was smaller, she'd easily drive an entire galaxy to madness MegamaryamToday at 2:17 PM very, very very good. A single person's emotions can provide her with untold exctasy. The more that's magnified it becomes impossible to describe. And she'd drive that whole galaxy to madness when still probably only barely planetary in size. If she gets galactic scaled, the radius only gets exponentially larger and able to drink in every single iota of fear and pain and horror GargusToday at 2:17 PM I mean, pretty much any emotion she tries to make people feel is overwhelming to the point of feeling like it's physically crushing Even if she tries to make people feel positive and uplifted, the command from her power is like if an entire planet's worth of happiness were forced into your head all at once In which case she's giggling with glee over the storm of internal darkness she's holding back just because she can Likely in anticipation of how good it'll feel when she lets them go and it all comes flooding in Mantis' favorite game: Are You Afraid of Me Enough? MegamaryamToday at 2:20 PM Just a microfraction of what she's capable of inflicting would make AM from I have no mouth and I must scream look like a literal saint in comparison. And she'll inflict that on every living thing in her grasp with the most absolute ease. The answer to that game is always very much "No." and each level of fear makes the previous look laughable. GargusToday at 2:20 PM This raises the question, does she ever turn it on Mystique (And of course all this done with the biggest of smiles and the sunniest of demeanors!) MegamaryamToday at 2:24 PM QUite possibly. Making her feel more powerless than before she ever even grew in the first place. Times about a trillion. (Naturally. She is the epitome of joy and angelic kindness concievable while inflicting these unfathomable horrors on quadrillions) GargusToday at 2:25 PM Oh that would be a great use of her powers Bringing alllllll your insecurities to the surface MegamaryamToday at 2:27 PM and of course her powers cause considerable time dilation. So Mystique could experience the absolute pinnacle of pathetic painful and terrifying existence for years in the span of seconds GargusToday at 2:27 PM Mystique's lucky it's ONLY years since she's somewhat close to Mantis' size Ordinary people... MegamaryamToday at 2:30 PM plus it gets exponentially more dilated the longer it goes on. mystique only got a relative blink at her size. For regular mortal lifeforms, they wish they could escape into insanity. but she ensures they fully conciously experience every microinstant GargusToday at 2:32 PM To do otherwise would be TREMENDOUSLY unkind And what is she if not a paragon of virtue and kindness? MegamaryamToday at 2:33 PM Exactly! If she could fit a hundred googolplex eons of torment into a single picosecond, but chooses not to, that'd be such an incredible waste for their sake! GargusToday at 2:34 PM and of course it means any time she chooses to mush them into galactic dust between her tits, the experience lasts all the longer! MegamaryamToday at 2:35 PM Exactly~! She couldn't deprive them of that incredible joy, could she? That would be so...cruel! GargusToday at 2:36 PM It's part of the reason she rides with Rockette so much So she's a chance of catching as many galaxies and giving them a PROPER treatment rather than the sad, short fate of being entangled in her fur and obliterated that way You ask her, this is far, FAR more important work than anything she did while a conventional superhero! What good is your pitiful suffering if it doesn't last as long as she can make it last? (She's VERY condescending too) (Even towards Rockette) MegamaryamToday at 2:39 PM The concept of mortality is so unfair to her, so she'll fit in as much time and dpeth into their short sad lives as possible. Even if she stretches an instant of suffering into trillions of googolplexes. She's the greatest hero to ever live in her own mind with what she's doing! The apex flea bringing the gifts of torment and pain. And absolutely the case. It's just the reality of the situation she's mentioning! No fliter as ever GargusToday at 2:40 PM "Congratulations! You are being rescued!" "Now suffer" MegamaryamToday at 2:41 PM Of course, she is the source of all this suffering in the many many many functional eternities she stuffs into each picosecond And is equally smug in each torturous iteration GargusToday at 2:42 PM oooh, how so? MegamaryamToday at 2:42 PM kind of like a magnetism where their thoughts springing from these hellish emotions come back to her. THey never, ever forget who's causing all this naturally she's absolutely high off this sensation she's getting GargusToday at 2:43 PM Her judgement impaired evermore with each passing instant Takes GREAT offense if anyone dares call her evil or even think about her as such She hasn't changed a tiny whit! MegamaryamToday at 2:46 PM exactly! She is the epitome of all that is good, and to think otherwise is the epitome of evil! these poor little fools will eventually realize, she's sure GargusToday at 2:47 PM Her only regret is that sometimes she misses a galactic collision and can't help the poor defenseless specks within it MegamaryamToday at 2:51 PM She'll see if one day she can train her powers to work on those who have already died. Her dream would be for her powers to affect all creatures living and dead across all time and space. Oh how wonderful that would be~! GargusToday at 2:52 PM An undying hell of Mantis dictating how everyone feels at all times Mostly geared towards making them cower before her MegamaryamToday at 2:54 PM Time would become a flat circle of endless unfathomable suffering and horror under her kind and loving influence she gets giddly just imagining it~ GargusToday at 2:54 PM Even Rockette caught in her maelstrom~! MegamaryamToday at 2:59 PM though rockette most likely would be given nothing but joy and eternal drunkeness beyond what's physically possible Groot of course completely above this but casually enjoying it GargusToday at 3:00 PM Mantis is nothing if not a loyal little flea~ MegamaryamToday at 3:03 PM her view on this for certain. No hypocrisy at all just love for all living things expressed differently~ GargusToday at 3:03 PM This is a great cruel gts scenario we've cooked up MegamaryamToday at 3:04 PM it really is and that's saying something considering some of the cruel but lovely stuff we've come up with

[blue-mint-winter]

BSG 4x09 The Hub rewatch

In which there’s a lot of Roslin analysis because she’s so complicated and I love her :)

Continuing from 4x07, we get the other side of the story - what happened on the baseship while everyone in the Fleet was panicking and looking for them.

Just like previous episode was Adama-focused, this one is fittingly about Roslin. In their unexpected separation they were both forced to finally recognize their feelings for each other. For Adama it was more straight forward, because his main struggle was duty vs love. For Roslin it’s a lot more subtle journey of self-reflection that’s not solely focused on one person. For her, love is a subject deeply tangled with all her other issues - her leadership, her cancer, her trauma, the fate of humanity itself, even her grudge against Baltar.

It’s interesting how Roslin has visions of Elosha whenever the baseship jumps. It might suggest that in that time of transit, disappearing from one point in space and appearing in another, the ship is nowhere - outside of the material universe. Which allows Elosha’s spirit to guide Roslin on her journey of self-reflection.

Picking Elosha for this role is brilliant. Not only she was a priest, she was also Roslin’s friend and confidante. She never betrayed that trust and Roslin never betrayed her too. Elosha knew her in those better times, before Pegasus, before New Caprica. Before Roslin started making those horrible decisions like kidnapping Hera or ordering to use bioweapon to commit Cylon genocide. Elosha herself reminds us how Roslin was back then, more open to people, more hopeful, compared to how she became now - hard, distrustful, angry and vengeful. Her words help Roslin realize those things about herself - that she doesn’t allow herself to love people anymore. Her issues, her trauma and her power made her so lonely, pushing others away, unwilling to trust anyone. It’s no accident that in those visions of Roslin on her deathbed, she sees Adama, Lee and Kara (!) at her side - they’re her family. Those are the people who love her, who care about her, and she’s keeping them away, not trusting them. She’s so afraid of these emotions, this vulnerability.

She sees Adama reading to her, saying goodbye when she dies, crying... putting his wedding ring on her hand. Beautiful scene, but also means that Roslin has to be smacked in the face with this to allow herself to realize the depth of love between them.

What I really like is that this episode gives Roslin a reality check that she needed. Somewhere along the way, she stopped loving people, trusting them, giving them second chances. And not only those closest to her, as this applies to her new Cylon allies. She decided to go behind their backs and get D’Anna all to herself. I love how it really doesn’t work out because D’Anna’s just not cooperating. Roslin’s duplicity and her lack of trust was completely unnecessary and will only serve to make the Cylons less willing to trust her. I just love how her scheming (against allies!) didn’t pay off. There’s a lesson in that.

Another part of Roslin’s self-reflection is Gaius Baltar. He’s injured by shrapnel during the battle, so Roslin has to tend to him. She has his life in her hands and, doped on painkiller, Baltar finally gives her what she always wanted from him - the admission of guilt. She was right, he gave the access codes to Cylons. But his confession isn’t how she would have liked it because Gaius now is a changed man, a man of faith and he let go of that guilt. He sees himself as a flood that wiped out most of humanity so they can be reborn. His actions were part of God’s plan, God made him that way. Roslin is mad because this is not what she wants to hear from him. To her these are just religious excuses. She’s mad he doesn’t feel guilty anymore for his crime so she decides to let him bleed to death.

Ok, so this is a first time Roslin’s killing someone by herself but even now she’s shying away from doing the deed properly. I’d say watching the man you hate bleed to death and doing nothing is quite cowardly.

I like that Roslin changing her mind and saving Baltar’s life isn’t really about her feelings for him. Letting him die was motivated purely by her emotions and judging his worthiness for life. Saving him is a selfless act, because just as he let go of his guilt, she needs to let go of her grudge. She saves him despite what he’s done or who he is - she saves him because of the simple fact that he’s a human being. It’s not her place to judge if he deserves life because she’s just another human, just as fallible. And that’s beautiful. Elosha’s spirit indicated Roslin as the leader is responsible for morality of her people and I think to a degree it’s the truth. She’s at the forefront, the decisionmaker, the example.

Roslin saving Baltar to prove humanity’s worthiness to survive and find Earth to some higher entity (very irrational of her :) is reminiscent of Natalie backing out of her plans to double-cross humans because she thinks the Final Five would judge if the Cylons deserve their help.

Now, of the other people in this episode worth speaking of:

Gaius - well, he’s mostly there for Roslin’s character development. His own characterization is still brilliant, from him trying to be some kind of Hybrid authority, but everyone ignoring him, to his admission of guilt and his faith in God’s plan. His talk with the Centurion about God was funny, but I think he was not really trying to start some Centurion revolution, rather Centurion was the only one on this ship who would actually listen to him. Gaius just really needs an audience, lol.

Helo, as always the moral paragon, but a good soldier that follows orders, even if he doesn’t agree with them.

So, Eight accessed Athena’s memories and she now knows how to give backrubs to Helo. I think she got those memories only after meeting Athena and getting that angry lecture from her. Eight must have wanted to understand Athena better... still the memories aren’t really her own.

D’Anna’s return was pretty good. Cavil wanted to use her to stop the Cylon rebellion, but she smashed his head in. Revenge! XD I like how she’s back to her cool, calculated self. She has the top info everyone wants, she won’t lose that advantage until she’s really safe.

[thecorteztwins]

Fanfic suggestion: Inhumans let not-so-evil-now Uncle Max babysit Luna, and he ended up to fight against Fabian who tried to kidnap her again

(OOC: Great idea, anon! I hope I did Max’s dialogue here well. I’m tagging @docgold13, @esteicy-blogand @sammysdewysensitiveeyes for Maximus content, hope they enjoy too if they choose to read it!)

The Royal Familywould probably never truly trust Maximus again…but they did, atleast, understand he was loyal to his family. Well, sort of.Basically, no one was allowed to harm them but him. He’d evensacrificed himself for them and their kind before, most recently atthe hands of Vox. He got better, of course. But still, thegesture did not go unrecognized.Thus, in this time ofemergency, during which he could not accompany his fellow Inhumansinto battle because of some complicated reasons, he was entrustedwith watching Luna. Entrusted, of course, with the caveat of apower-inhibiting ankle bracelet. Which was absurd, both because hispowers could not effect Luna in the first place, and because thething would be child’s play to reverse-engineer. But, he decided notto; it would probably behoove him in the future if they went onthinking that THIS was all it took to keep his psychic prowess underliteral lock and key.Luna herself was no trouble. She seemedmildly worried about him, but not to the degree that most childrenwould be of an obviously unstable and proven dangerous man who hadkidnapped her before and tried to kill members of her family. Indeed,she seemed no more upset about it than, oh, say, someone might beabout having to grow up in a soundproof prison or being experimentedon in-utero; sure it sucked sometimes, but in a normal way. Nothingout of the ordinary to object to.Besides, he’d worry abouther intelligence if she WASN’T a wee bit concerned and on thoselittle tippy toes of hers. Of course no one was as smart as he was,but he couldn’t picture anyone related to him being that dumbeither.Well, ok, maybe Gorgon.

Since he was currentlyin a state of grace with his oft-so-suspcious family members, hedecided that he would, for the moment, not disappoint them, andsettled in beside his niece to observe some rather fascinating Earth“cartoons”.At least, he thought it was going to be“cartoons”. That was what she had liked the last time he hadspent any significant time with her. But now she claimed that was“for little kids” and changed the channel to something sheexplained to him as being a “reality show”. It was, in aword, fascinating. The Inhumans had long called him mad, yet he was aparagon of sanity and temperance compared to the wild ilk that rantedand raved upon this program! He did not know what manner of maniacal“reality” that these strange and deranged humans were meant torepresent, but he was HOOKED! And learning so many new words! Like“dtf” and “thot” and “it’s a Jersey thing”!He wasso entranced that he didn’t even notice that Luna actually seemedmuch less interested in this than she had in her cartoon. Indeed, sheactually downright disliked it. But some of the older kids atBraddock Academy had said her favorite shows were for babies, andthis show had been rated “for mature audiences only” in the TVguide…Oh well. Uncle Maximus seemed to like it, and sheconsidered that a good thing. It meant he was kept distracted. Shecould keep an eye on his hands, and on his emotions. Herfamily may have left her with him. But she considered it to be atleast a little the other way around. She was watching him. She wasold enough. She was mature enough. They must think so, right?Shewouldn’t let them down.But she also couldn’t take anotherminute of this show. Luna was not a fan of people shouting and beingangry with each other over stupid misunderstandings. If she wantedthat, she could just look to her own family. Maybe that was why itwas called a “reality” show. “I’m going to make somepopcorn,” she told Uncle Maximus, and got up. He did not respond,nor did his eyes break from the screen as an over-muscled orange manheld back a screeching, half-dressed woman from attacking another.Nor did he at first notice when a screech from the kitchen joinedin.“Luna?” he said, when it cut to commercial at last.“Luna, if you are going to prepare the popped corn, I’d like thekind with the caramel candy coating, sucrose is an essential fuel forthe brain—”And then finally, the screams registered. Ohdear. If the microwave had exploded, primitive beastly human-madething that it was, then surely he, Maximus, master of the machines,genius of all things mechanical, would be blamed! This wasdisastrous! He must swoop to the rescue and prove his worth as thebest of those who sit upon babies!He rushed into the kitchen,skidding comically on the linoleum as he halted before theunexpected—and unwelcome—view of an equally unexpected andunwelcome guest. Fabian Cortez, secondary bane to theAmaquelin-Maximoff union (the primary being Maximus himself, ofcourse, the only one who mattered!) was standing over poor littleLuna, menacing her like the big dunderheaded ginger brute hewas!“Uncle Maximus!” said Luna, “He’s fighting mypower! I don’t know how, but he—”The distraction was allthat Fabian needed to throw off Luna’s abilities entirely; forcinghis way through her control, he clasped a pair of bracers around hertiny wrists. Maximus didn’t need to be a genius, let alone thegreatest mind in all the multiverse like he was, to guess that therewere power-inhibitors, just like his own ankle bracelet.“Ithought you might have developed powers since the last time we met,”said Fabian, “What luck for me—it’s a set that I have muchexperience with. My own sister was a psychic, you see, an empath justlike you. It gave me much practice in resisting such abilities.Maximus can attest, I am not an easy man to manipulatetelepathically; in order to do it himself, he first needed to trickme into boosting his powers. They were not enough on their own.Remember that, Maximus? Not that it would matter now even if you werethe most potent mind on the planet; I cased this situation thoroughlybefore arriving, I know about your little fashion bracelet.”“AndI’m sure it was you who arranged for the rest of the Inhumans to bepreoccupied at the moment,” said Maximus. It was not a question.But Fabian answered it with his smug smile,“Indeed. Youfancy yourself the most clever one around, Maximus; time to show mehow clever you really are,” he drew the struggling Luna to his sidewith one hand, and aimed a very large, very unpleasant-looking gun atMaximus with the other,“…by not getting in my way.Believe me, that would be the smart thing to do.”“Believeyou?” Maximus arched an eyebrow even as he put both his hands up,“Fabian, really now, we both know that’s about the most fatallystupid thing that anyone can do.”“You know what I meant,”Fabian snapped irritably. He wanted to be out of here as fast aspossible. The gun made a very unpleasant sound. Like it might begetting ready to do something even more unpleasant yet.Maximussmiled, “Well, I can tell you’re going to shoot me now. That’sfine. I’ve died before; we both know it doesn’t last. And I can goout delighted knowing all the alarms you’re going to trip. What nastysurprises are in store for you, Lord Cortez! Unfortunately, littleLuna will probably share your fate, given how you’re hauling her withyou like a piece of designer luggage, but personally it’s worth it tome to let you go anyway. No offense, Luna dear, but Ahura was alwaysmy favorite.”“Alarms? Ha!” Fabian scoffed proudly, “Itook them all out on my way in! How else do you think I got herewithout you noticing?”“Oh my, you silly man,” Maximussmirked, “What a fool you are! You are dumb. You are really reallydumb, for real. There aren’t just alarms here to keep you out—thereare alarms to keep ME in. And can you just IMAGINE what they entail?I can. Now, I’m picturing one PARTICULIARLY scrumdiddlyumptiousscenario in my mind that Karnak would have cooked up to stifle mywould-be escape, and how absolutely HILARIOUS it would be happeningto someone lacking Inhuman physiology—like, say, you—so if youplease, shoot me now while this is still my last thought.”Heclosed his eyes, still smiling. And was not surprised at all when,rather than blowing him to bits, he instead felt Fabian’s hand grabaround his wrist.“Nice try, Maximus—but if you want me toshoot you, that tells me that you have something up your sleeve tobackfire on me for exactly that! Maybe you installed some kind offorce shield into your inhibitor? Whatever—you’re my guide now! Youhelp me past these alarms, and in return, you get to live. Thistime.”“Never!” Maximus faked protest, “My loyalty maybe to myself first, Fabian Cortez, but it is still to my familysecond!”“This is loyalty to yourself!” Fabiancountered, “And how loyal have THEY been to you, locking you uponce more?!”“Don’t do it, Uncle Maximus!” sobbed Luna,and then began begging Fabian not to shoot him either. Clever girl,she must have picked up what her wiley old fox of an uncle had inmind and was going along with it. What a splendid little actress!Maximus was proud, she clearly got that from him. “Fine—butsweeten the deal,” he said, “Give me my life AND my freedom. Idon’t want to be here when they get back and find Lunagone.”“Fine,” snorted Fabian, and Maximus didn’t needto be a mind-reader to know full-well that the ginger Judas was justgoing to kill him when he was finished. Or at least, that waswhat he thought.Maximus, of course, had other plans.—“Last one,” said Maximus, cranking the dialthat had been carefully hidden behind the portrait of Agon and Rhyndain the entry hallway. “There. Now, about my reward.”“Indeed,”Fabian cackled, and aimed the gun at Maximus’s face, as expected.Asalso expected, the front door opened at that moment to reveal thefull Inhuman Royal Family and several attendents…all of themlooking very pissed off. Fabian’s jaw dropped, and the gunwas pulled from his hands in an instant by one long lock of Medusa’sendless scarlet hair, while another lock whisked Luna away from hisside and into his mother’s arms. A targeted seismic stomp from Gorgonknocked him off his feet, and a single karate chop from Karnakfinished the job…though sadly not Fabian’s life.Oh well,Maximus reflected, can’t have everything.“Maximus, what’sgoing on?” Crystal asked, stepping forward as Karnak next disabledLuna’s manacles,“We thought YOU had escaped.”“Oh,I know,” Maximus grinned, “See, I knew that you’d doubtlesslyinstalled a bunch of alarms to alert you if I tried to escape…and,more importantly a SECONDARY set of alarms to alert you if I disabledthe first set!”“So you tricked Cortez into making youdisable the first set…thus setting off the second set, ensuring wewould come to the rescue,” Karnak said, putting it together. Lunaconfirmed this, relaying all that she had seen. Oddly, she lookedconfused when Maximus thanked her for her participation in theruse!“So….can I have this off now?” he stuck out hisfoot and pointed to the ankle bracelet. Again, he could disable ithimself…but he wanted to see what they said.

Alas, Black Bolt’sface said it all.Maximus crossed her arms, pouted, and usedhis newfound human lingo,“Thot.”

[rcsiistance]

hey ! i’m blossom, i’m sixteen, i go by any pronouns, and i present to you the youngest charracter in rp. i’m on discord @ human espresso#2857 & here on any of my tumblr accounts. this is my introduction to my ninth character, ellie ! read under the cut for about her and some wcs. FIND HER PINTEREST HERE.

( ROWAN BLANCHARD, TRANS FEMALE, SHE/HER ) — ✧ that looks like ELEANOR “ELLIE” MAYA ROGERS-BARNES! they’re the SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER of STEVE ROGERS & BUCKY BARNES ( BIOLOGICALLY EDDIE BROCKS ). [ they are also a HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT at paragon. ] i hear they’re ALTRUISTIC & AVID, but tend to be DOGMATIC & JUDGEMENTAL. her file says that her power is KLYNTAR SYMBIOTE. { admin b LOVES u }

tw : foster system, adoption, drug, alc, ment, homelessness, transphobia

i / v.  ｢    background  !  ｣

ellie has always thought that being born in the dead of winter says something about her. it makes her a strong woman, or it’s what put that cold spot in her heart, or it’s the reason she can’t stay happy for long.

zara fares is a reporter in san francisco. she’s a second generation immigrant who doesn’t sit still for long. her and eddie brock meet at a party thrown by one of her coworkers, and she immediately detests him.

she finds him uncouth. too openly ambitious in a way that she has never been able to be. on principle, she goes out of her way to correct and bicker with him. he finds it amusing when he is not getting angry in a way that leaves them apart days for zara’s fear of the monster that must lurk beneath the man.

they maintain themselves frenemies for months, until one night over drinks they fall into bed with each other.

zara is angry, really. not at him, but at herself. he’s not what she has ever looked for in a man. he’s a scary, morally reprehensible man, and she has high standards. she doesn’t speak to him for days, and when he comes to her apartment, she doesn’t let him in.

it’s the day she’s breaking her silence when she realizes she’s pregnant, and that’s that. she cuts off eddie brock forever.

eleanor maya fares is born on january second after a 26-hour labor. she’s given up for adoption right after, though she wouldn’t find out why for many years. 

there’s not much that can be said for her formative years, though if so desired she would be able to go back and read her file, including who she was handed between during that time.

when she’s two, she’s dubbed “ ellie “ by her foster mother, and she’s been called that ever since.

when she’s three, though she does not know this, venom has another child, which they dub wrath. they send her after a girl eddie is unaware of that’s living near the outskirts of san francisco with seven foster siblings.

wrath chooses ellie as her host, per venom’s instructions, able to find her simply because she has eddie’s blood ruining through her veins. ellie doesn’t remember a time before wrath, and since they’re fully bonded, she never will.

she grows up in the homes of people she never knows. most of the time, ellie is a well-behaved child, but she’s easily frustrated and easily aggravated. her foster parents sometimes find her toys destroyed in ways that should be incapable of her. when lectured, ellie refuses to admit.

she’s an aware child. too smart for her own good, but not school smart. she has trouble like the rest of the kids when it comes to times tables, but she knows when her foster dad comes home mad from his posture alone.

she grows up beside her best friend. they were in the same foster home when they were four, and ellie remembers hearing about them being twins, offhanded once. she takes it as law.

the first time she runs away from a foster home, she’s eight years old. tiny and contentious. they try to get her to apply herself. they put her in sports. they don’t realize that when she learns to run, she will never stop.

ellie doesn’t like her newest foster parents. they’re strict about school and about home. they won’t call her by her name and when her foster mother tries to cut her hair, she sneaks out the bathroom window and runs, and runs, and runs.

she knocks on the foster home her twin is staying at with loose knuckles, and they climb down the fire escape together.

she spends four months with them and she loves it. ellie learns about everything. she goes to the library often. wrath helps her more than anything. she tells the pair when to hide, and where to go, and who to avoid.

they work out fine until she gets caught shoplifting a chocolate bar. when the shop owner drags both of them to the back of the store by their ears and asks her parents number, she crosses her arms and stays silent. when the police come, they play nicer.

she tells that they don’t have any, and the looks on their face teach her something about the world that day. they look sad but resigned. like they expected this of them. she doesn’t get it, but one day she does.

another foster home. this one is more strict, and it’s in colorado, two states over from where her last one was. they hadn’t stopped running.

they’re nicer, but she’s predisposed. she knows she would be better off with her twin and wrath. her and her twin and wrath and her dirty converse that they make her replace. they’re stricter, too, with locked windows and all.

it doesn’t stop her. she disappears one-day after school, and by the time they realize it she’s already in denver with her twin by her side. they continue their trek east. ellie spends most of her time talking with wrath and her twin.

it takes time to realize that it’s not normal. normal people’s skin doesn’t sometimes not become they’re own. they don’t have a voice inside their head. it’s another one of those things, she thinks. if she told that cop from that one day, he’d have the same damn look in his eyes.

she wants to tell her twin, but she can’t bring herself to face the rejection.

by the time she’s ten, they’re living from place to place in new york. she makes friends easily and her twin keeps her happy and wrath gets her out of trouble when it comes her way. she doesn’t tell anyone about her symbiote, and she makes no plans to.

she reads more than anything. from jane eyre to the great gatsby, she likes classics. she makes a friend who looks at ellie with kind eyes, who sees past the dirty hands and dirty converse.

they invite ellie to join them at a rally they’re going to with kids from the local college. and she finds her footing on top of a shoe-box stage. she feels better with a megaphone in hand.

she’s eleven, squatting with a group of other rugrats, and she’s reading harry potter when molly weasley gets her thinking. who were her parents ? why did they give her up ? where are they now ?

she asks her twin about it, and they’re reproachful. what would they want to do with the people that abandoned them ? they clearly don’t care, eleanor. you’re just lining up to disappoint yourself.

nevertheless, ellie went out of her way. she scorned them all. in the end, with wrath’s help, finding the information was dumb easy in the age of technological innovation.

the adoption wasn’t closed. zara fares lives in upper manhattan. there’s no father listed.

ellie spends weeks staring at the address. she doesn’t know if she can bring herself to go. she googles her. the likeness is uncanny. she’s a reporter, a popular one.

on the day of her birthday, she takes the subway and makes her way to her mother’s expensive apartment. she knocks, and when she’s answered, states with a clear voice who she is. ellie doesn’t stutter.

she’s shocked. but when ellie asks the question, she doesn’t hesitate. she tells her the truth.

she’s never been made to be a mother. she’s a crime reporter, and her work can get dangerous. and she’s certainly never had the want for children. she tells ellie she’s sorry, but she had believed she was giving her a better opportunity at life than a mother who would never love her right.

ellie’s not mad, though, really, not at all. she looks at zara and she can see herself reflected in the same hard, brown eyes. they understand each other. they’re not the sentimental types. she’s still a kid, but she’s never felt older in her life.

when she asks about her father, zara looks in her eyes as she lies. she tells ellie that she doesn’t know. it was a confusing period in her life, she explains. she doesn’t ellie to be disappointed by the man eddie brock is.

zara, despite herself, offers everything she has. she tells ellie that she can have the room at the end of the hall if she wants. she’ll adopt her, legally. they’ll make it work.

but that’s not ellie. she isn’t going to force zara’s hand. she leaves with a debit card in her pocket, but takes nothing else from zara besides a phone number. she goes back to her twin and she doesn’t tell them and she doesn’t cry.

that’s the year her and her twin go in separate directions. they fight more often than they speak, and things are arising for them that aren’t open to ellie. she’s not upset about it, and she doesn’t want to admit that.

she reads in her free time. goes to any protests she finds out about. her signs are infamously funny. people around the city know her name, can recognize the glint in her eyes a mile off, can tell it’s her backpack by the sheer number of pins.

a good kid, they say, but too passionate for her own good.

she’s at a mutant rights rally in the spring after she’s turned twelve. she always feels odd, out of place, because she can’t answer the question of whether or not she belongs. wrath can explain it all she wants, but the question remains.

the edges of her ‘ magneto was right ‘ sign are getting frayed and it rains on and off, but there’s no place she’d rather be. people keep stepping on the toes of her doc martens as she makes her way towards the front, and she walks face first into steve rogers chest.

she doesn’t recognize him until he introduces himself. books don’t have pictures, really. he’s earnest in a way that none of the adults she has met are. when she speaks, he listens to her, and it’s refreshing. she’s been another voice in a chant for years.

he asks where her parents are, and she just laughs. steve offers to walk her home out of no other reason than kindness, and while she doesn’t understand it, she lets him. talking to him is easy, and she tells him all about her. ( except for wrath. )

she likes him a lot more than she’d care to admit. the fine details are fuzzy. but before she’s thirteen, she’s officially eleanor maya rogers-barnes. she’s never had a family before, but now she has more of a family than most can ever hope for.

ellie’s platform is larger now, and she uses it all the same. there was barely a time where she was just “ that new rogers-barnes kid, “ NOT “ that activist rogers-barnes kid. “ 

ii / v.  ｢    wrath  ! ｣

wrath is ellie’s symbiote. a reflection of herself without ellie’s own dishonesty with her feelings. wrath is kind to ellie, though her suggestions can be severe, they reflect ellie’s own beliefs.

wrath takes ellie’s bad side, the parts she hides, her stubbornness, and bitterness about circumstance, and her anger, and runs with it.

they’re close as could be, fully bonded, and ellie doesn’t remember a time before her symbiote.

venom sent wrath to ellie to watch over her, as eddie’s spawn, but ellie is still unaware of her own heritage. wrath has explained her role in ellie’s life, but as someone who spends most of her waking time dealing with prejudice, she can’t bring herself to tell people.

she doesn’t want to deal with the rejection she is sure to come. she’s kept her power to herself and plans to keep it that way, though there have been slips in the past, no one cared about some random mutant kid. now, as eleanor rogers-barnes, a ton of people care.

she just doesn’t want to risk it.

iii / v.  ｢    work !  ｣

her schooling before running away from her foster home had been mediocre at best, but after it, if it wasn’t something she could learn from the young adult section of the library, she hasn’t heard of it.

she’s a sophomore in high school ( about to be a junior ), but catching up is taking up half her time. countless tutors to teach her everything she missed while she was hiding from police. kids these days.

she’s not unintelligent, but school isn’t something that comes naturally to her. applying herself takes effort she doesn’t want to make but forces herself to.

iv / v.  ｢    personality ! ｣

ellie’s a strong personality. she’s wise beyond her years and stubborn to a fault. she grew up way too quickly. 

she’s sweet. the worst curse that passes her lip is damn, and she doesn’t drink or do drugs. 

ellie’s a good kid, but her bad side can get the best of her. she can’t keep quiet when she hears offense, and won’t stop until she’s heard.

she cares about people and she really wants to change the world. passionate, almost too much so, she could probably be compared to a zealot.

but her patience is thin, and when worn short, you don’t want to be on the other side of her wrath. it’s a as scary place to be.

she’s also incredibly judgemental. a single offense can keep you on her hate list until your days are up. 

v / v.  ｢    wanted connections !    ｣

best friend ! her closest confidante, her best advisor, her pal at all rallies, parades, and protests.

“twin” ! her childhood best friend she treked across the country with. soon w / wc.

enemy ! it’s not hard to find your way onto her bad side. her nor wrath are fun to deal with when provoked.

other ! i’m always up for new ideas. if this sparked an interest in you, feel free to message me here or on discord.

[bonecleaver]

great short story™ (A humans are weird story)

This is a story about a man whose wealth was so great those who had less looked to him as the true paragon of wealth. But instead of letting his avarice cloud his mind, he instead replaces it with munificent actions in poorer communities. He was also a real debonair individual who always tried to do the right thing. He was so larger than life that all descriptions of him sound like caricatures, but that does not mean that he is a megalomaniac. Now prepare for the amazing story of Steve the Great. Steve started out like most revolutionary inventors with the only thing separating him from them is that he was trained by epitome of researchers and inventors. He was a quick study surpassing even the most grandiose expectations anyone could have had. Eventually he built himself a lab and sealed it off, except to get resources and food. When he finally came out of his hiatus, he looked very disheveled like he had been on three hours of sleep, but when he revealed what his years of self isolation yielded, nobody cared how bad he smelled or how unkempt he was, they would rush to him for interviews he really didn’t want. If one wonders what he built, they could just look at the pictures he snapped from Jupiter. Even though his tech was vastly superior, companies still tried to elicit it from him using force or saying they need it to buttress the human race’s defenses. Over many years he made covert constructions of a space battle fleet to go and live his herculean dream of ruling the galaxy. His ships after completion made themselves known to the world then shortly to all the galaxy. With one simple motion he transcended the abilities of any civilization in the stars in recent millennia. “Engage the FTL drive Sir Memeston.” commanded Steve. “Right away Steve,” responded Sir Memeston. “I thought I told you to refer to me as Supreme Emperor,” berated Steve. “Sorry my Supreme Emperor.” whimpered Sir Memeston. Then the FTL engaged launching Steve’s capital ship the Destiny Manifester and its support fleet into the Alpha Centauri system; spotting a small ship under fire Steve thought, I should help them or at least scare off their attackers. “All hands prepare for combat! We are helping that ship!” “Yes sir!” the crew responded with a mighty clangor. As the command was given shields were thrown up, weapons powered up,  all systems nominal, and targets locked. Then as they were rushing the ships, about to cause mass carnage, the  attackers left, because an entire battle fleet was bearing down on them. The ship they just saved hailed them “I thought I had just meet the most squeamish pirates but apparently I meet the only battle fleet in this quadrant. So which empire are you from?” blurted out the thankful alien. “From what ever I decide to name my empire,” declared Steve realizing he never thought of a name for his space empire. “But only the three empires have a battle fleet that size.” “You could call us the novice fourth empire,” retorted Steve almost sanctimoniously. “Well how many systems do you have in your domain?”asked the alien. “For now just our home world, but soon I will accrue the entire universe!” announced Steve. “A pretty bold aspersion to make towards the great empires.” said the alien with just a little sass in its voice. “You have been talking about these empires like we know about them.” “You really don’t know about the great empires?” “Yup.” “Well each empire controls about one quadrant, except this quadrant which is just referred to as the Expanse of Madness.” “Why is it called that?” “Because there is an aura of madness that keeps the bigger empires out and civilizations from developing past the stone age.” Steve let that ferment before he tried to wheedle more out of the alien. “Then my species must be very bizarre, because we evolved not very far from here.” “That is most anomalous, but there was always a chance that a space faring civilization would develop in the untouched depths of the Expanse,” finished the alien. “Thanks for the short history lesson. If you don’t mind my asking, why were you out here?” “Well rumor has it that there is a natural metal that is stronger than the iron carbon alloy that makes up the armor of every ship in the galaxy.” “I think my ships are made from the metal you are looking for.” “Well then your dream of galactic domination may not be the petulant dreams of a young and anxious empire.” said the alien. Then Steve said goodbye and left to make plans to invade one of the three empires, but he still didn’t think of a name for his empire 5 months later “If our probes are correct, the capital of the Th’rul Empire is the most powerful and technologically advanced empire out of the three.” said Steve’s tactical officer and son Gabe. “Then we will strike at their bulwark and show the might of humanity!” A few weeks later at the main Th’rulian defense station. “Sir I have detected a foreign battle fleet infringing on royal Th’rulian space!” “Nonsense no species would be mad enough to attack our capital. Well all technology is susceptible to malfunctions so we can surmise that is the most logical answer.” “Nonetheless, I will still send the message that interlopers will not be tolerated,” replied the small crab like alien. “Fine.” Back to Steve. “Sir we have just received a transmission saying that we are not welcomed,” said the comms officer. “Reply with ‘we will not stop due to some bovine drivel.’ Then increase speed and go into attack mode.” “Roger that my lord.” We got this, thought Steve, I concocted this perfect strategy that we have been practicing for weeks and their weapons will barely damage us, let alone destroy us. Back on the station “Sir, they replied.” Cue the station master letting loose a string of invectives. “Do we at least know who they are,” sighed the station master. “No, their shields and armor cannot be identified.” “How can their armor not be identified?!?!?” yelled the station master loud enough for it to reverberate. “It may be the metal that some of our scouts went looking for in the Expanse.” “Can we at least determine what kind of ships we are going to fight.” “There seems to be one super dreadnought, several battle ships, and a plethora of much smaller ships.” described the station’s tactical officer. “Anything on the dreadnought?” “Only that it has more weapons than our entire fleet.” “Well then we should take their transgression more seriously, for now we are vulnerable,” the station master with stalwart courage declared to the defenses to ready for the attack. Back to Steve “It seems our reply has expedited their response,” chuckled Steve. “We will dissipate any hope they had and force them to surrender their capital or we will bomb it from orbit!” The two forces were two amorphous blobs, with one bracing for impact while the other charges recklessly into the other, but bracing did not help the blob of stations from being all but obliterated from a distance. “We have just dealt a scathing blow to their entire defense matrix.” Now having orbital supremacy, Steve sent his demands and any caveats they might have. On the planet Th’rul prime. “My liege,” a messenger whimpered to the heavily armored Crab like King. “What is it?” replied the king. “We have been invaded.” “Surely you jest, for I am not that daft,” said the king pretentiously. “I am afraid not, my liege.” “Well, what are their demands.” “All they want is loyalty, resources, and information.” “That’s it? Why no territory?” “The want to have us as a vassal, which is where we would have a lot of autonomy, but still be under their rule. Also they said if we do not comply, they will start bombing the planet.” “We shall agree due to the fact the loss of the capital would put to many of our citizens at risk.” Back to Steve. “They have responded very nicely to our demands.” “Good, Good.” “Invite their king up so we can meet face to face, also make sure to scan for contraband. And make any of the sleazy looking personnel are out of sight.” In a very nice conference room on Steve’s flagship. “Thank you for coming up here so we can discuss your new provincial status in my empire.” “Yes, I hope this enjoining of our empires will go smoothly.” “Do not worry, we will not flout your empire like a corpulent deer killed on a hunt.”  said Steve very calmly. “ We will make sure the transition is very transient.” “You seem like a very astute strategist to be able to defeat us.” “I thank you for you adulation, but I had a full team of strategists to help me.” Said Steve with no hint of betrayal in his voice. “ We want to make sure to enhance our relationship from the very start.” “Thank you for inviting me,” vocalized the ex-emperor impassively. “Now let's eat. I hope none of the food here is heresy for you to eat.” “I don’t even know what that word means.” “Good to know so let’s dig in” After a few hours eating and drinking the two rulers got into a carousel and almost fought each other that no one but the two drunks knew why, but it was blatant the the two were going to kill each other. Even though the alien emperor had size on Steve, Th’rul prime’s gravity is much lower than Earth’s, giving Steve the upper hand. The next morning. “What happened,” groaned Steve. Gabe was there helping his father up with his big strong muscles. “Dad you nearly killed the emperor, but some perceptive guards stopped it from happening.” “Make sure that it does not disseminate throughout the empire.” “Yes, Father.” “I liked his demeanor, for he seemed like a man who really cared for his people, and if they were in another empire he would still protect them. I was going to suggest foisting the work of inculcating the population, but he may just do it willingly.” “As you wish my father,” Gabe left in a hurry to please his father. Hours later on the bridge. “You have permission to deplete some of our missiles for fireworks to signify our victory to all below.” “Sir you should also give a speech to mollify them further.” “I guess I have to do it impromptu.” Steve gives a moving speech on how he is going to treat the citizens. To the relief of many he won’t be a sadistic ruler. After curtailing the speech with a fly over of his elite pilots it was easy to see he has the support of the people. When news on his takeover got to the most extraneous parts of his new empire and beyond. The Garuck Empire and Shr’Tis ascendancy (the other two great empires) all they heard was; there was a shining, invincible, and irresistible fleet out there with plans of galactic domination. So to preserve their cultures and peoples they entered a coalition. After gathering the Th’rulian Navy, Steve sent most back to where they were, but he took some and put them in a fleet under Grand admiral Zak. So he can help lead them to conquering the remaining empires. At the coalition fleet. “We should attack first.” said a Garuckian admiral. “What if the rumors are true?” retorted a Shr’Tis admiral. “If we wait too long we may be attacked first.” “Fine we will do it your way Garuckian.” conceded the Shr’Tis admiral. Back to the Destiny Manifester. As the two fleets are working on moving and fighting as one entity. “The fleets seem to working well together,” said Gabe with some seriousness. Just then the entire coalition fleet jumped in, looking for a fight. “It seems we can get every bird with one stone here,” smugly declared Steve. Now the two composite fleets raced toward each other with no regard for safety. In the middle was a bloodbath so intense the narrator does not have the correct words to describe how brutal it is. In the end Steve’s Ships remained mostly untouched, but the ships under Zak’s control were not as lucky with fifty percent of the original fleet left. Now with both enemy fleets destroyed all that needed to be done was to go to the enemy home worlds and demand their empires, which is exactly what Steve did.

[christysports]

Games Like World of WarCraft

Sports may be getting back to TV, yet it doesn't create the impression that life in the U.S. will be completely back to typical any time soon. With less choices springing up for socialization in everyday life, huge multiplayer online pretending games (MMORPG) are turning into a go-to strategy for investing some protected energy interfacing with individuals. In case you're worn out on having no place to go with your homies, simply boot up World of Warcraft, call a few companions, and begin attacking Azeroth.

With regards to MMORPGs, no title can rival World of Warcraft. Initially delivered in 2004, Blizzard has delivered various extension packs and even delivered an exemplary worker that permitted long haul fans to re-visitation of a form of Azeroth unimpacted by years worth of resulting stories. In the event that picking between the Alliance or the Horde doesn't sound excessively engaging, consider investing some energy with one of these 25 games like World of Warcraft.

1. 'DC Universe Online'

Probably the most ideal approaches to easily fall into a huge pretending game is to discover one set in a universe you are now alright with. Fanatics of orcs and dream can go to World of Warcraft, however enthusiasts of caped crusaders and superheroes have DC Universe Online. Regardless of whether you make a personality that is firmly connected with characters like the Joker or Wonder Woman is up to you and players get the opportunity to spread cheer or tumult close by a portion of DC's best characters. The game's extension is really monstrous, taking gamers over the universe with the Green Lanterns to the lower part of the sea with Aquaman.

2. 'Time of Conan'

No, Age of Conan won't let you control a virtual Arnold Schwarzenegger, yet it permits players to contend and attempt to positively influence Hyboria. With various classes, races, and models to look over, players have a ton of control with regards to fashioning a definitive fighter fit for helping Conan shield his recently held onto seat from antiquated abhorrent powers. The game has a charming hack/slice battle framework that permits players to act continuously more than numerous customary pretending games.

Purchase

3. 'Crossout'

In case you're an aficionado of Mad Max however think the genuine individuals are incidental to what in particular makes it so engaging, Crossout is the computer game for you. The allowed to-play game changes out people and beast characters for adaptable beast trucks prepared for outrageous battle in unforgiving conditions. Set in a dystopian world, players join various groups and attempt to discover special things that will assist them with adjusting their vehicles and dominate in the unforgiving climate.

4. 'Fracture'

Like World of Warcraft, Rift sorts players into two groups the Guardians and the Defiant-as they battle for strength and endurance in the voracious universe of Telara. Instead of simply fight one another, players additionally need to stress over the destructive animals that rise up out of the basically voracious cracks across Telara. Follow your class calling to turn into a definitive hero or mage, among different groupings, and collaborate in gatherings to take on strikes in the hazardous prisons to open probably the best things accessible in the huge world.

5. 'Tera'

Delivered in 2012, The Exiled Realm of Arborea (TERA) set the activity battle's part in MMORPGs. Without precedent for a MMO, player aptitudes were friendly and dodgeable, giving gamer's more power over their fantastical ongoing interaction than any time in recent memory. Like World of Warcraft, players make exceptional characters and run off into the world to create things, complete journeys, and takedown online adversaries. With a special karma style that boosts honorable ongoing interaction, the game will really confine certain gamers for a while on the off chance that they knock off an excessive number of players essentially more vulnerable than them.

6. 'Senior Scrolls Online'

In the event that games like Morrowind and Skyrim just started to expose your enthusiasm for the undertakings of Tamriel, Bethesda's Elder Scrolls Online is the game for you. Rather than making your own character, step up, and fashioning things in a single world, players get the chance to encounter Tamriel as an online climate unexpectedly. A fantastical setting loaded up with heroes and mages continuing on ahead, players join different organizations and set out on missions as they battle to recoup their spirit from the Daedric Prince Molag Bal.

Note:Also read here more about World of warcraft.

7. 'Ruler of the Rings Online'

On the off chance that everything about Elder Scrolls Online sounds fun yet you wish it was set inside creator J.R.R. Tolkien's fantastical arrangement, Lord of the Rings Online is the ideal game for you. Investigate Middle-earth as either a diminutive person, mythical being, hobbit, or human, players are allowed to make their own cooperations of up to six characters to finish bunch journeys with. Exemplary characters like Aragorn and Gandalf seem to help acquaint characters with the bigger undertakings of the unmistakable settings, however players rapidly assume responsibility for the activity and pick their own way as they set out to finish different missions to help keep the domain protected and stable.

Also read here universe of warcraft cinematic quest guide

8. 'Ocean of Thieves'

A Microsoft select, Sea of Thieves is an undertaking game that permits players to extend their ocean legs and hone their bold aptitudes. With a deck underneath your legs and wind at your sails, players investigate an open-world by means of their privateer transport in Sea of Thieves and complete different missions en route to turning into an unbelievable privateer. The huge world is additionally shared, which means there are incalculable privateers and groups dashing over the open seas hustling to locate the greatest and best goods.

9. 'Last Fantasy XIV'

Last Fantasy XIV might be the fourteenth title in the apparently endless establishment, yet it's really the main MMORPG of the pack. Delivered in 2013, gamers make their own character and become either an understudy of war or enchantment in the realm of Hydaelyn. Notwithstanding which street you pick, gamers eventually become a globe-trotter, join a Free Company organization and begin constructing a notoriety for themselves. With a thick story that addresses the establishment's long history, this game is unquestionably simpler to prescribe to long haul fanatics of Final Fantasy than individuals who are totally new to it, yet any devotees of World of Warcraft searching for a likewise fun encounter ought to consider looking at it.

10. 'Skyforge'

Skyforge is an engaging blend of folklore, sci-fi, and dream all folded into one. Players control a godlike being who, through your activities all through the game, is continually working to turn into a divine being. As opposed to being secured in your group for the entirety of forever, players can pick between any of the 17 alternatives anytime, permitting them to pick up renown in different various habits to at last assist them with opening more rigging and devotees along their long excursion. Collaborate with companions to take on missions or remain as a monotheistic being as you take on the world without anyone else.

11. 'City of Heroes'

Rather than occurring in a pre-set up superhuman universe like DC Universe Online, engineer Cryptic Studios' City of Heroes we should players partake in a spic and span caped universe. Make a superhuman or supervillain as you would prefer, with the ideal forces and extreme codename, and begin performing missions as you either spare or threaten arbitrary residents across Paragon City. Actually, the game is not, at this point accessible from distributer NCSOFT, however in 2019, a publicly released worker of the game sprung up online that has been drawing in players is as yet online today.

12. 'Predetermination 2'

Bungie changed the gaming scene when they delivered the first Halo and they keep on kicking off something new with the uber-effective Destiny 2. Make your own Guardian and specialty his shield and weapons as you would prefer as you set-out to protect Earth's Last City from an assortment of dangerous outsiders. Set in an immense world brimming with different players running-and-gunning their way through missions, Destiny 2 is a profoundly intuitive title with a ton of ability movement and thing customization to keep major parts in charge of their own insight.

13. 'Planetside 2'

In the event that facing a daily reality such that two groups are battling it out for control sounds excessively recognizable and depleting, possibly Planetside 2, a game where there are three groups duking it out for control of the planet Auraxis sounds additionally engaging. The genuine attract to this game is the monstrous size of the player matches. While World of Warcraft may pack endless players onto a solitary worker, Planetside 2's open-world framework, joined with its ability to deal with fights with in excess of 1,000 players, makes it one of the biggest and most riotous multiplayer encounters available.

14. "Star Wars: The Old Republic'

A considerably longer time back, in a system far away, the Jedi and Sith struggled it out in Star Wars: The Old Republic. As great and malicious fight over the universe, players browse eight classes and begin having their effect on the world. It's dependent upon players to pick whether they need to align themselves with Sith or Jedi and screen their activities to ensure they aren't tricked to the contrary side of the power. With many players hurdling around and doing their part to help either the radicals or the domain, The Old Republic is a definitive.

[rocket-sith]

The "BPD Anakin" Theory is Overlooking Some Crucial Shit - a long rambly meta objection

Suiting up in my flame proof armor for this one, but submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society jury…

The BPD Anakin theory is gundark bollocks. 

I’ve seen this theory getting bandied about a lot, and it’s never sat quite right with me. It finally clicked that the reason why it doesn’t sit right is because the entire argument is hinged upon ignoring nearly all the situational and cultural factors in Anakin’s world, and “diagnosing” him in a vacuum. This is tantamount to arresting someone for yelling FIRE! in a crowded theater when there actually is a fire. 

Simply put, a lot of the defenses I’ve seen of the theory fail to take into account that in order for a disorder to be present, the person’s thoughts and behaviors have to actually be disordered, and they also have to be pervasive. Patterns of thought and behavior that are reasonable within context are not disordered. (If someone’s yelling “fire!” in a crowded theater, it’s not unreasonable if there actually is a fire.) Thoughts and behaviors that we don’t see until the tail end of RotS where Sidious has manipulated Anakin into what can only be described as a psychological break are not pervasive. (I’d also argue that some of them aren’t even really Anakin’s - he’s a victim of gaslighting, both by Palpatine AND the Jedi Order. Not that it excuses what he did, but abuse victims who’ve been mentally and emotionally manipulated can display behaviors that deceptively mimic various mental illnesses. And TBH the Jedi Order was really just a fancy religious cult that responded to Anakin’s very normal, very human need for love and acceptance with pretty much the Jedi equivalent of “stop having impure thoughts or you’re gonna go to hell” - which really didn’t help matters.)

And for the sake of clarity here, let me go ahead and establish a couple of things. 1) I’m talking about Anakin while he was still Anakin. Vader is a different entity in a lot of ways, and that’s an entirely different discussion. Most of the BPD stuff I’ve seen has been focused on PT and TCW Anakin, so that’s what I’m working with here. 2) I’m absolutely not arguing that Anakin is some shining paragon of perfect mental health, or that he’s necessarily neurotypical in the first place, because yeah NO. He absolutely has some issues he needs to deal with, and as far as neurotypical-ness goes, I’ve seen some pretty convincing cases for ADHD, PTSD, generalized anxiety, and even high functioning autism. I’m only arguing that BPD doesn’t fit. So let’s go through the diagnostic criteria for BPD, keeping the above in mind.

(If you're on mobile, the rest of the post is here. Hellsite app hides the Read More. https://rocket-sith.tumblr.com/post/158218862776/the-bpd-anakin-theory-is-overlooking-some ) 

*frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment*

Okay, so picture this. You’re in the middle of an ongoing war, and you’re fighting on the front lines. All your friends are in the war too, and many of them are right there on the front lines with you. Your spouse is a high-profile politician with powerful enemies, and he/she has faced assassination attempts before. Your mother is living in a hostile land as a slave, where it’s commonplace to be killed or abused.

Tell me your fear of losing the people you love is irrational. Go ahead, tell me that’s not a 100% justified fear. I’ll wait.

We see in Crystal Crisis that Anakin feels abandoned by Ahsoka when she left, but she actually did leave. That wasn’t an irrational fear. She left. Anakin stood by her, not thinking she’d leave, and she left anyway, which clearly shocked him. It’s totally fair to say he’s being short-sighted in his reaction, in that the council was the ones he should be mad at, not her, but if irrational fear of abandonment is what we’re looking for here, there simply wasn’t any in this case. The possibility of her leaving never even occurred to him before the council scene in the Wrong Jedi arc, and when she did leave, he was upset, but he was upset at something that actually happened, not irrationally fearing something that might.

Anakin gets mad at Obi-Wan for leaving him out of the loop in the TCW Deception arc, but getting mad at your supposed best friend for faking his own death in order to emotionally manipulate a reaction out of you…I mean, damn, who *wouldn’t* feel pissed off and betrayed by that? And even THEN, he never thought Obi-Wan was the one behind it until Obi-Wan told him point blank that it was his idea to leave Anakin out of the loop. Anakin’s immediate reaction to finding out Obi-Wan was alive wasn’t “Obi-Wan abandoned me and was conspiring against me” it was “the council doesn’t trust me.” The thought that Obi-Wan was in on it doesn’t even cross his mind as a possibility. 

Then we have the incident with Padme and Clovis where Anakin walks in and starts to whup Clovis’s ass. A lot of people like to point to this as irrational possessiveness taken to the point of violence, but again, we’re overlooking a few things here. Padme has had attempts made on her life before. The person she’s trying to lure is a known slimeball. And when Anakin busts into the room, he doesn’t see Padme making googly eyes at Clovis. He sees Clovis trying to physically force himself on Padme while she says no. This is not Anakin walking in on his wife flirting with someone, this is Anakin walking in on a known scuzzbucket doing something to Padme that looks an awful lot like sexual assault. No shit, he lost his cool! 

The “everyone’s abandoned me and turned against me” mindset isn’t something we see until the tail end of RotS on Mustafar. Not pervasive. And given Obi-Wan actually was there to kill him, it’s not particularly disordered either. He did incorrectly assume Padme had brought Obi-Wan there, but considering 1) Palpatine had planted the idea in Anakin’s head that there was something under-the-table going on between Padme and Obi-Wan, and 2) Obi-Wan really had just shown up on Padme’s ship looking to throw down and start shit, it’s not like Padme bringing Obi-Wan there to whup Anakin’s ass was some random, wild idea that just popped into Anakin’s head of its own accord, manifested purely by his own insecurities. It was a conclusion reached by combining something that was actually true (Obi-Wan had arrived on Mustafar via Padme’s ship with the intention of fighting or killing Anakin) with something that had been deliberately planted in his head by a malevolent, manipulative third party (Obi-Wan and Padme were in cahoots about something sketchy). I am not in any way, shape, or form defending the way Anakin handled it, but I am saying the suspicion itself isn’t mere left-field paranoia born of nothing but a fear of abandonment. *a pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation*

Anakin is emotionally intense, sure, and he comes off the rails when one of his loved ones is in danger, but I do not see instability in his relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation of the people he loves. Anakin is a steadfastly loyal person, and he doesn’t do the push-pull thing. Let’s look at the people he’s closest to - his mother, Padme, Obi-Wan, Ahsoka, Rex, and Palpatine. 

- Mom and Rex - there’s never anything even remotely turbulent with either of these two regarding how Anakin views and feels about them. He’s unwaveringly loyal to both, never once devalues either, and there’s no push/pull here at all.

- Ahsoka - he’s overprotective of her sometimes, but she’s a young teenager in a war zone entrusted to his care. The only time we ever see him slagging her off is when he’s ranting to Obi-Wan in the Crystal Crisis arc, mad at her for leaving. That’s it. One instance hardly constitutes “pervasive” or “alternating” and we can’t forget, this wasn’t a fear about things that might happen, or Anakin saying she was Jerky McJerkface because she disagreed with his opinion of loth-cats or something. This was a reaction to her actually leaving, which was a huge, life-altering thing for Anakin that hurt him very deeply - especially since he did stay unwaveringly loyal to her even when no one else was. He’s definitely guilty of not grasping the big picture here, but again - not pervasive, not alternating, no history of devaluing Ahsoka or thinking she was going to abandon him for no good reason.

- Obi-Wan - Okay, the Anakin/Obi-Wan dynamic is complex. These two clowns are both masters at miscommunication and not understanding each other for shit despite the fact that they clearly adore each other, but again. A teenager bickering with his guardian and ranting to his friends about how much he dislikes being nitpicked and dislikes rules (AotC) is typical of every teenager everywhere, and it’s not at all contradictory for a teenager to do this even though they love their guardian. It’s 100% normal. A person being angry when a friend lies to them and manipulates them is a rational reaction (TCW Deception), and if ANYONE is guilty of disordered behavior here, it’s Obi-Wan with his shocking lack of empathy. Anakin didn’t come off the rails with the whole “Obi-Wan isn’t really my friend, he’s out to get me” deal until the tail end of RotS, when Obi-Wan really was out to get Anakin. We don’t see anything remotely like that before then. We see a teenager frustrated with rules, we see an adult upset at being lied to and manipulated, and we see some mutual communication SNAFUs, but we don’t see turbulent, foundationless devaluing. 

- Padme - Both Anakin and Padme are very young considering their roles in life, and their relationship can be rocky and immature sometimes. (And not just on Anakin’s part - there was a TCW ep where Anakin had to cut an evening with Padme short to go do Jedi Business and when he showed up the Senate building later to talk to her, she greeted him with an icy “Oh, so now you have time for me?”) Anakin has some jealousy issues, and I’m not going to insult anyone’s intelligence by pretending he doesn’t, but he does not devalue Padme or think she’s against him until the end of RotS - and we’ve already covered that incident.  There are absolutely some unhealthy things about the relationship (even before Mustafar), but it doesn’t fit with the BPD criteria here or indicate he’s in the habit of devaluing Padme as a person. 

- Palpatine - Well hell, Anakin’s main problem here was that he was blindly loyal! If Anakin had mistrusted Palpatine at all or pushed him away, a lot of really bad shit wouldn’t have happened. 

*identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self image or sense of self*

Anakin is absolutely struggling to find his place in the galaxy, but again - self discovery and finding out who you are is a normal part of being teenager and young adult. Not disordered. The Jedi are a batshit cult who try to convince Anakin that his normal, healthy, human emotions are dangerous, and he understandably gets frustrated by it. This isn’t a dysfunction on Anakin’s part, and labeling it as such is fairly abusive in its own right. One of the key elements of gaslighting is when you abuse a person and then blame them for their negative reaction to it. Jedi dogma tries to convince Anakin he’s defective and untrustworthy for having totally normal emotions, and now we’re going to say he’s disordered for reacting to it with anger and confusion? I think we’re fighting in the wrong corner, y'all. And anyways, Anakin doesn’t completely come off the rails with his “the Jedi are evil” deal until the tail end of RotS - not pervasive. 

*impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating).*

Anakin gets dinged for this one a lot in the BPD Anakin theories, and this is one of those areas where we need to take into account that Anakin does not live in our world.  Yes, Anakin is a daredevil. However, acting like you have superpowers isn’t disordered if you actually have superpowers. You wouldn’t call Clark Kent self-destructive for thinking he could jump in front of a bullet. You wouldn’t call Wolverine irrational for thinking he could heal from a wound that would be fatal to anyone else. So it makes no sense to call Anakin self-damaging for acting like he’s some sort of badass super pilot who can deflect blaster fire with a lightsaber.  *recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behavior*  - None of this applies at all, unless we’re talking about general daredevil stuff, and then - see above. 

*affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days)*

This one’s iffy, especially when you’re dealing with someone who’s constantly in the front lines of a war zone, as it calls into question whether anxiety and irritability are disordered in this context. Anakin definitely seems to be anxious and irritable, but he and the people he loves are constantly in harm’s way. You could definitely make a case for PTSD here, but BPD doesn’t fit considering there are very real, very legitimate causes for anxiety and irritability. 

*chronic feelings of emptiness* I haven’t seen any direct canonical evidence to support this. 

*inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger*

LMAO okay, y'all can have this one. Homeboy’s got some anger management issues. (I still say a lot of the time when he’s pissed off, he’s got a good reason to be, but DAMN he does a shitty job of handling it in a remotely constructive way.)

*transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms*

Nope. It’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you, ya know? He thinks the council doesn’t trust him. They *don’t* and they’ve never been shy about showing it. He thinks his mother is being tortured to death. She *is*, and prophetic dreams are a real thing in Anakin’s universe, and a power that Anakin has been canonically confirmed to possess. He has premonitions of Padme dying in childbirth. Again, he is canonically confirmed to have the power of prophecy, and the *last* time he ignored a prophetic dream, it cost his mother her life. Taking his dreams seriously is not paranoia, and it’s not him having a dissociative episode. (Yeah, there’s a fan theory that Palpatine planted the Padme dream in Anakin’s head, but even so, that’s not evidence of a disorder with Anakin. It’s more like the equivalent of a forensics expert planting extremely convincing fake evidence at a crime scene, then blaming the cops when they think it’s real.)

So there are the 9 symptoms. You need five or more for a BPD diagnosis. Anakin has ONE. *Maybe* two if you squint really hard and tilt your head. If Anakin were a regular adult human on regular earth who wasn’t in a war zone, wasn’t caught up in a crazy religious order that was shaming him for being human, and wasn’t being manipulated by a goddamn Sith Lord, it would be another matter. But he is, and it’s not accurate to diagnose mental disorders while completely ignoring cultural factors and extenuating circumstances like being a General on the front lines of a war or being preyed upon by a master manipulator. 

tl;dr - The “BPD Anakin” theory might seem reasonable at first glance, but it holds significantly less water when we stop pulling Anakin out of his own environment and either analyzing him in a vacuum, or analyzing him against the backdrop of our own world rather than in the context of *his* world, his environment, and his reality in a galaxy far, far away.

[adambstingus]

5 Hollywood Stories You See Everywhere (That Are Always BS)

Entertainment sites are facing a serious problem: There’s a limited number of things that happen every day, but their readers will click on an infinite amount of articles, as long as someone or something vaguely famous is involved. The solution? Follow the grand Internet tradition of making shit up. Print a headline saying “Bill Murray killed and ate Miley Cyrus!” and watch as it gets 100,000 shares before either of their publicists can deny it.

Now, all of us have fallen for stories like these in the past, but there are some particularly egregious types of bullshit articles that should really be setting off our hogwash alarms by now. Starting with …

#5. Stop Saying The Simpsons Predicted Stuff

The Internet is 80 percent porn, 70 percent fanfic on Tumblr, and 90 percent inaccurate statistics. Whatever’s left is made out of bullshit listicles about how some old Simpsons episode predicted today’s events. Apparently, they foresaw Donald Trump: Angry Half-Chewed Orange Starburst For President 15 years before it happened:

They also predicted that Lisa would be an adult by 2010, so …

But before you go proclaiming Matt Groening “King of the Psychics,” consider this: That episode aired in 2000. Guess what lying, hypocritical moron announced he’d be running for President in 2000? No no, the other one. Yes, Trump said he’d run for President under the Reform Party in 2000 (and had been talking about it since 1987), meaning The Simpsons predicted precisely squat. And as far as them “predicting” that President Trump would destroy the country … duhhhh. That’s like predicting grass will be green, or that a diaper will be loaded with shit.

Can anthropomorphic loaded diapers even legally run for president?

And we do this all. The. Fucking. Time. Unless some fat yellow dude destroys an entire city by pressing the wrong button at the power plant, it’s no big deal if real life imitates The Simpsons. It’s a topical show with damn near 600 episodes under its quarter-century-old belt. Of course there’s going to be overlap with reality — which hasn’t stopped sites like BuzzFeed from marveling over the matter. Let’s review their mind-blowing discoveries:

So the Simpsons made an irradiated food joke, and now Japan’s got irradiated fruit? That’s not a new idea. If anything, the vegetation around Chernobyl predicted The Simpsons. Oh, and the deformed Japanese veggies were bullshit anyway. Off to a good start, BuzzFeed!

OK. So. In 2004, a bunch of Ohio voting machines glitched and accidentally gave George W. Bush 4,000 extra votes. In 2008, the Simpsons satirized that incident. In 2012, it happened again for real. And that’s supposed to be a score for Homer and friends how? Just because your memory was crippled by all those ’90s nostalgia GIF parades doesn’t mean that the past suddenly didn’t happen, BuzzFeed.

This is probably the closest one: They successfully predicted that somebody who works with wild animals would eventually get attacked by one. Impressive. What’s next, claiming that The Simpsons predicted baseball players playing softball?

DICK TRACY, YOU ASSHOLES! THE JETSONS! EVEN THE FUCKING FLINTSTONES! Somebody got paid for this list! You know what, we’re moving on before this gives us an aneurysm.

Arrrrghhh! Too late!

#4. People Need To Chill About Idris Elba Playing James Bond

Eventually, Daniel Craig will stop being James Bond. And despite the fact that he’s a totally outdated character, tradition dictates that we’ll need a new one. One of the top names being bandied about is Idris Elba, who deviates from the Bond norm in one glaringly obvious way …

“The world isn’t ready for a Bond with facial hair. Sorry.”

OK, there’s also the race thing, an issue which Bond novelist Anthony Horowitz dealt with in the worst possible way. In an interview with The Daily Mail, he claimed that Elba would suck as Bond because he’s “too street.” The Internet responded by figuratively painting Horowitz’s naked body gold and leaving him to asphyxiate.

Most were only scandalized to find out there are still Bond books, though (or books in general).

First off, this quote came from The Daily Mail, so rage-sharing it is like raging over something the bad guy said at WrestleMania. Even worse, all these headlines conveniently ignore where he named other black actors he’d prefer play Bond. Everybody’s focused on “too rough” and “too street,” while see-no-eviling the part where he recommended Hustle‘s Adrian Lester instead.

There’s still a race issue at play here, of course — but not in the overt, simplistic way that everybody seeing red took it as. It’s deciding that black actors, who have proven their ability to play both suave and rough with equal tenacity, should only be one thing. Horowitz is typecasting Elba as a rough, street black man, and Lester as a suave, classy black man, and won’t let them sit at each other’s table. And nobody’s talking about this except … The Huffington Post? Really? Dear Internet: When BuzzFeed-Minus-Cat-GIFs is the voice of reason, it might be time to pay attention and rethink things.

Both because they’re right on the money, and because it’ll probably never happen again.

Ex-Bond Roger Moore got in similar hot water recently, accused of opposing Elba Bond over blackness. Moore himself had to clarify that he only said Bond should be 100 percent “English-English” — his interviewer later edited it so it seemed like he was talking about Elba. But you know what? When Elba finally becomes Bond and blows everyone out of their seats, all this ridiculous talk of race, class, and who’s street and who’s not will disappear. Because it’s the performance that matters, not the-

Wait … it was all a rumor? He’s NOT going to be Bond? There were never even talks of him being Bond, nothing but Daniel Craig dream-casting off the top of his head? We got all worked up over that? FUCK.

#3. Every Celebrity Death Hoax Comes From The Same Source: Your Idiot Friends

The world lost the best/worst father in movie history last August when James Earl Jones sadly passed away, according to the Internet. The only person who didn’t hear the news was James Earl Jones, who is still tweeting like normal. Yeah, it was another celebrity death hoax. So what happened? What crapbag news site yellow-journalism’d a beloved celebrity to an early grave this time?

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooot dead yet, guys.”

None, as it turns out. The source is us. We fake-killed James Earl Jones, the same way we’ve fake-killed every other celebrity since the days of Netscape. We’re not merely part of the problem; we’re all of it.

The only source for Darth Vader’s voice reuniting with the Force was the Woodward-and-Bernstein-approved paragon of journalism called FeedNewz. But FeedNewz isn’t a fucking news site — its real name is prank.link, a content creator where any random asshole can plug anybody’s name into the generator and create a fake news story about them. When people clicked on the “James Earl Jones dies” link to learn how an 84-year-old man could possibly pass so suddenly, they got this instead:

“Also, his most famous line was ‘I quit on you when you cleared out of Detroit with Willie the Pimp‘ … from The Lion King.”

GET IT? You thought a thing happened, but it didn’t! Doesn’t that tickle-torture your ribs? Here’s another knee-slapper: Justin Bieber was raped and killed in Las Vegas … except he wasn’t! How gullible you must be, to think people die.

Don’t worry, David Caruso is on the case.

But if FakeNewz sounds too shady for your phony death needs, perhaps you’d prefer a website that sounds an awful lot like a legitimate one? FakeAWish.com will kill any celebrity you like and report it under the name “Global Associated News,” which is the biggest waste of an official-sounding name since Dr. Phil first called himself “Dr.” Then there’s MSMBC.co, where you create a fake death story (like this one for Arnold Schwarzenegger) complete with a link that looks exactly like MSNBC.com if you’re both blindly clicking on everything and actually blind. And when somebody clicks on it, they’re greeted not by a HAHA PWNED page, but a real-ish-looking news story that you can’t read until you share it with your distant uncle and that guy you haven’t talked to since college:

Or with no one, if you go with the Google+ option.

Alternatively, if using those sites is too much work, you can go with the absolute laziest option and create a “RIP [celebrity name]” Facebook page for someone who isn’t in fact RIPing … and then watch it grow inexplicably popular. Rowan “Johnny English” Atkinson, for example, has no fewer than two pre-posthumous Facebook pages, each with over 3,000 fans. For the sake of our species, we hope it’s simply the same 3,000 who fell for the same thing twice.

#2. Stop Pretending Everyone’s Offended By Movies

Hey, remember when those Native American actors walked off the set of Adam Sandler’s new movie? It seems they were outraged over all the gross inaccuracies, blatant stereotyping, lazy jokes, and other things that have never, ever been in an Adam Sandler movie.

“We thought we were signing up for something more sophisticated, like a male deodorant ad.”

Notice how none of those headlines mention how many actors walked off the set, implying through omission that the number was “all of them”? Well, they did that for a reason: The real situation was way less volatile (and thus, more boring) than the hate-click media reported. According to one of the actors, only four out of 154 actors walked out, plus one consultant, leaving the rest to feel “betrayed” that they were being painted as “sell-outs” to the White Man. Oh, and another actor says they all saw the script beforehand, so those who quit probably should have seen the terribleness coming, even if they haven’t been to a cinema since Big Daddy came out.

Precedent shows “pee-pee on your teepee” wasn’t going to be a metaphor.

Then there’s Mad Max: Fury Road and the supposed shitstorm it caused among Men’s Rights Activists for daring to include women kicking ass:

“Feminists started all the wars,” one anonymous member said.

Makes sense, right? Babies throw tantrums. MRAs are babies, so they’re throwing tantrums. Except they weren’t. This entire story came from one blog post on We Hunted The Mammoth, which centered around the anti-Furiosa furor on Return Of Kings, a site so viciously anti-woman even Al Bundy would yell at them to grow the fuck up. But RoK isn’t a MRA site — just some random cootiephobes — and nowhere on Mammoth does it confuse the two. Every other site, desperate for traffic, did that.

Misogynists want her to grow hair and make babies and sandwiches, while MRAs want her to stop destroying masculinity. And to grow hair and make babies and sandwiches.

Did legitimate Men’s Rights Assbags hate Fury Road? Sure, because vagina. But they’re not nearly smart enough to organize some massive boycott of a film $375 million worth of people saw anyway. Also, despite what leading MRA loudmouths fantasize about while jerking off with mini-tweezers, nobody was “paid to put [an MRA boycott story] in the press.” It was lazy and biased, adjectives with which MRAs should be plenty familiar. And finally, we have the time the Noah movie threw every Christian into a hateful tizzy:

That’s a lot of cheek not-turning.

A survey of over 5,000 people found a whopping 98 percent were tut-tutting the movie for bastardizing the Bible. One problem: That survey focused on “faith-driven consumers,” and was organized by an ultra-religious group called … FAITH DRIVEN CONSUMER. They urge boycotts of anything that disagrees with their interpretation of the Bible, and are the same company behind IStandWithPhil, a petition to reinstate that homophobic guy from Duck Dynasty. Even Family Feud surveys like “Name a body part that rhymes with ‘eenis'” aren’t that obviously slanted.

#1. Nope, That Actor Didn’t Confirm A Sequel To That Movie

You know how we’ve dumbed down “literally” and “irony” so morons can feel literate too? “I literally ate an entire pig yesterday, and ironically, I literally ate an entire pig today, too!” We’re doing that crap with “confirm” now. Where once it meant “official news from an official source,” it now means “anybody saying anything about anything.”

Like these constant breaking news stories about a celebrity “confirming” a sequel to some film, when it turns out all they really said was “yeah it’d be cool to do that maybe.” Recently, the Internet went bonkers over Keanu Reeves supposedly saying that Speed 3 was going to happen:

The biggest question now is: Which of the e’s will they replace with a 3?

But no, Speed 3 isn’t happening, for two reasons. Number one: Speed 2. Number two: Keanu was making a goddamn joke. Some reporter asked him about Speed 3, and he said, “Oh my god, Speed 3: Redemption. Sure. Jack Traven kind of like, dusting it off.” That’s sarcasm, folks — another term we’ve dumbed down because nobody can get it right.

Granted, it can be hard to tell with this guy.

Even SlashFilm admits (at the end, when everybody’s stopped reading) that this is probably a non-story, writing “I’m not sure I take the affirmative answer that seriously, but he said it and it’s our job to tell you what he said.” It’s also your job to cleverly edit your headlines so overexcited Speed demons click and share your gossip without a second thought, it would seem.

Ewan McGregor ran into this too, with headlines screaming about how he’d be down with doing Trainspotting 2, even though it’s absolutely not happening.

How old is the ceiling baby now, anyway?

Good God, three paragraphs in, the man admits “I’ve not seen a script yet and I don’t know if there is one.” And yet People reported this anyway. You might as well report on him debating whether to order pizza or Chinese food.

Even Beetlejuice 2 isn’t as done a deal as the headlines make it seem:

Michael Keaton better start practicing his surf moves.

This “confirmation” was her going on Seth Meyers and yammering, “Um, I think I can confirm it, because Tim Burton did this interview — like, it was very hush-hush, top secret … and then he was doing some press for Big Eyes and he did an on-camera interview and he said, ‘Oh yeah, we’re doing it and Winona’s going to be in it,’ and I was like [shocked face].”

And we were like [unimpressed face]. Until some studio gives us an official release date (like Universal recently did with Jurassic World 2), Beetlejuice 2: At Least Lydia’s Legal This Time is nothing but actors talking.

But boy do we love when actors talk — we’ll believe anything they say, even when it’s so obviously a stupid joke. Like Michael Shannon saying he would return as General Zod for Batman V. Superman: Dawn Of Justice, but with flipper hands:

That’s almost as silly as the name of the movie.

Notice how none of those headlines say “flipper hands”? That’s because even the writers know it’s bollocks, but they still want to suck you in and get your clicks, so they tease you “new details” and “strange change.” Except according to Shannon himself, Zod is stone dead, he only appears via voiceover, and the flipper thing was him being a silly goose:

A Batman story starring a guy with flippers? That’s preposterous.

Welcome to the Internet, Shannon, where you can’t believe everything you read, except for that one thing you’re about to share with your buddies. That thing? Totally believable.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/5-hollywood-stories-you-see-everywhere-that-are-always-bs/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/182767620712

[allofbeercom]

5 Hollywood Stories You See Everywhere (That Are Always BS)

Entertainment sites are facing a serious problem: There’s a limited number of things that happen every day, but their readers will click on an infinite amount of articles, as long as someone or something vaguely famous is involved. The solution? Follow the grand Internet tradition of making shit up. Print a headline saying “Bill Murray killed and ate Miley Cyrus!” and watch as it gets 100,000 shares before either of their publicists can deny it.

Now, all of us have fallen for stories like these in the past, but there are some particularly egregious types of bullshit articles that should really be setting off our hogwash alarms by now. Starting with …

#5. Stop Saying The Simpsons Predicted Stuff

The Internet is 80 percent porn, 70 percent fanfic on Tumblr, and 90 percent inaccurate statistics. Whatever’s left is made out of bullshit listicles about how some old Simpsons episode predicted today’s events. Apparently, they foresaw Donald Trump: Angry Half-Chewed Orange Starburst For President 15 years before it happened:

They also predicted that Lisa would be an adult by 2010, so …

But before you go proclaiming Matt Groening “King of the Psychics,” consider this: That episode aired in 2000. Guess what lying, hypocritical moron announced he’d be running for President in 2000? No no, the other one. Yes, Trump said he’d run for President under the Reform Party in 2000 (and had been talking about it since 1987), meaning The Simpsons predicted precisely squat. And as far as them “predicting” that President Trump would destroy the country … duhhhh. That’s like predicting grass will be green, or that a diaper will be loaded with shit.

Can anthropomorphic loaded diapers even legally run for president?

And we do this all. The. Fucking. Time. Unless some fat yellow dude destroys an entire city by pressing the wrong button at the power plant, it’s no big deal if real life imitates The Simpsons. It’s a topical show with damn near 600 episodes under its quarter-century-old belt. Of course there’s going to be overlap with reality — which hasn’t stopped sites like BuzzFeed from marveling over the matter. Let’s review their mind-blowing discoveries:

So the Simpsons made an irradiated food joke, and now Japan’s got irradiated fruit? That’s not a new idea. If anything, the vegetation around Chernobyl predicted The Simpsons. Oh, and the deformed Japanese veggies were bullshit anyway. Off to a good start, BuzzFeed!

OK. So. In 2004, a bunch of Ohio voting machines glitched and accidentally gave George W. Bush 4,000 extra votes. In 2008, the Simpsons satirized that incident. In 2012, it happened again for real. And that’s supposed to be a score for Homer and friends how? Just because your memory was crippled by all those ’90s nostalgia GIF parades doesn’t mean that the past suddenly didn’t happen, BuzzFeed.

This is probably the closest one: They successfully predicted that somebody who works with wild animals would eventually get attacked by one. Impressive. What’s next, claiming that The Simpsons predicted baseball players playing softball?

DICK TRACY, YOU ASSHOLES! THE JETSONS! EVEN THE FUCKING FLINTSTONES! Somebody got paid for this list! You know what, we’re moving on before this gives us an aneurysm.

Arrrrghhh! Too late!

#4. People Need To Chill About Idris Elba Playing James Bond

Eventually, Daniel Craig will stop being James Bond. And despite the fact that he’s a totally outdated character, tradition dictates that we’ll need a new one. One of the top names being bandied about is Idris Elba, who deviates from the Bond norm in one glaringly obvious way …

“The world isn’t ready for a Bond with facial hair. Sorry.”

OK, there’s also the race thing, an issue which Bond novelist Anthony Horowitz dealt with in the worst possible way. In an interview with The Daily Mail, he claimed that Elba would suck as Bond because he’s “too street.” The Internet responded by figuratively painting Horowitz’s naked body gold and leaving him to asphyxiate.

Most were only scandalized to find out there are still Bond books, though (or books in general).

First off, this quote came from The Daily Mail, so rage-sharing it is like raging over something the bad guy said at WrestleMania. Even worse, all these headlines conveniently ignore where he named other black actors he’d prefer play Bond. Everybody’s focused on “too rough” and “too street,” while see-no-eviling the part where he recommended Hustle‘s Adrian Lester instead.

There’s still a race issue at play here, of course — but not in the overt, simplistic way that everybody seeing red took it as. It’s deciding that black actors, who have proven their ability to play both suave and rough with equal tenacity, should only be one thing. Horowitz is typecasting Elba as a rough, street black man, and Lester as a suave, classy black man, and won’t let them sit at each other’s table. And nobody’s talking about this except … The Huffington Post? Really? Dear Internet: When BuzzFeed-Minus-Cat-GIFs is the voice of reason, it might be time to pay attention and rethink things.

Both because they’re right on the money, and because it’ll probably never happen again.

Ex-Bond Roger Moore got in similar hot water recently, accused of opposing Elba Bond over blackness. Moore himself had to clarify that he only said Bond should be 100 percent “English-English” — his interviewer later edited it so it seemed like he was talking about Elba. But you know what? When Elba finally becomes Bond and blows everyone out of their seats, all this ridiculous talk of race, class, and who’s street and who’s not will disappear. Because it’s the performance that matters, not the-

Wait … it was all a rumor? He’s NOT going to be Bond? There were never even talks of him being Bond, nothing but Daniel Craig dream-casting off the top of his head? We got all worked up over that? FUCK.

#3. Every Celebrity Death Hoax Comes From The Same Source: Your Idiot Friends

The world lost the best/worst father in movie history last August when James Earl Jones sadly passed away, according to the Internet. The only person who didn’t hear the news was James Earl Jones, who is still tweeting like normal. Yeah, it was another celebrity death hoax. So what happened? What crapbag news site yellow-journalism’d a beloved celebrity to an early grave this time?

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooot dead yet, guys.”

None, as it turns out. The source is us. We fake-killed James Earl Jones, the same way we’ve fake-killed every other celebrity since the days of Netscape. We’re not merely part of the problem; we’re all of it.

The only source for Darth Vader’s voice reuniting with the Force was the Woodward-and-Bernstein-approved paragon of journalism called FeedNewz. But FeedNewz isn’t a fucking news site — its real name is prank.link, a content creator where any random asshole can plug anybody’s name into the generator and create a fake news story about them. When people clicked on the “James Earl Jones dies” link to learn how an 84-year-old man could possibly pass so suddenly, they got this instead:

“Also, his most famous line was ‘I quit on you when you cleared out of Detroit with Willie the Pimp‘ … from The Lion King.”

GET IT? You thought a thing happened, but it didn’t! Doesn’t that tickle-torture your ribs? Here’s another knee-slapper: Justin Bieber was raped and killed in Las Vegas … except he wasn’t! How gullible you must be, to think people die.

Don’t worry, David Caruso is on the case.

But if FakeNewz sounds too shady for your phony death needs, perhaps you’d prefer a website that sounds an awful lot like a legitimate one? FakeAWish.com will kill any celebrity you like and report it under the name “Global Associated News,” which is the biggest waste of an official-sounding name since Dr. Phil first called himself “Dr.” Then there’s MSMBC.co, where you create a fake death story (like this one for Arnold Schwarzenegger) complete with a link that looks exactly like MSNBC.com if you’re both blindly clicking on everything and actually blind. And when somebody clicks on it, they’re greeted not by a HAHA PWNED page, but a real-ish-looking news story that you can’t read until you share it with your distant uncle and that guy you haven’t talked to since college:

Or with no one, if you go with the Google+ option.

Alternatively, if using those sites is too much work, you can go with the absolute laziest option and create a “RIP [celebrity name]” Facebook page for someone who isn’t in fact RIPing … and then watch it grow inexplicably popular. Rowan “Johnny English” Atkinson, for example, has no fewer than two pre-posthumous Facebook pages, each with over 3,000 fans. For the sake of our species, we hope it’s simply the same 3,000 who fell for the same thing twice.

#2. Stop Pretending Everyone’s Offended By Movies

Hey, remember when those Native American actors walked off the set of Adam Sandler’s new movie? It seems they were outraged over all the gross inaccuracies, blatant stereotyping, lazy jokes, and other things that have never, ever been in an Adam Sandler movie.

“We thought we were signing up for something more sophisticated, like a male deodorant ad.”

Notice how none of those headlines mention how many actors walked off the set, implying through omission that the number was “all of them”? Well, they did that for a reason: The real situation was way less volatile (and thus, more boring) than the hate-click media reported. According to one of the actors, only four out of 154 actors walked out, plus one consultant, leaving the rest to feel “betrayed” that they were being painted as “sell-outs” to the White Man. Oh, and another actor says they all saw the script beforehand, so those who quit probably should have seen the terribleness coming, even if they haven’t been to a cinema since Big Daddy came out.

Precedent shows “pee-pee on your teepee” wasn’t going to be a metaphor.

Then there’s Mad Max: Fury Road and the supposed shitstorm it caused among Men’s Rights Activists for daring to include women kicking ass:

“Feminists started all the wars,” one anonymous member said.

Makes sense, right? Babies throw tantrums. MRAs are babies, so they’re throwing tantrums. Except they weren’t. This entire story came from one blog post on We Hunted The Mammoth, which centered around the anti-Furiosa furor on Return Of Kings, a site so viciously anti-woman even Al Bundy would yell at them to grow the fuck up. But RoK isn’t a MRA site — just some random cootiephobes — and nowhere on Mammoth does it confuse the two. Every other site, desperate for traffic, did that.

Misogynists want her to grow hair and make babies and sandwiches, while MRAs want her to stop destroying masculinity. And to grow hair and make babies and sandwiches.

Did legitimate Men’s Rights Assbags hate Fury Road? Sure, because vagina. But they’re not nearly smart enough to organize some massive boycott of a film $375 million worth of people saw anyway. Also, despite what leading MRA loudmouths fantasize about while jerking off with mini-tweezers, nobody was “paid to put [an MRA boycott story] in the press.” It was lazy and biased, adjectives with which MRAs should be plenty familiar. And finally, we have the time the Noah movie threw every Christian into a hateful tizzy:

That’s a lot of cheek not-turning.

A survey of over 5,000 people found a whopping 98 percent were tut-tutting the movie for bastardizing the Bible. One problem: That survey focused on “faith-driven consumers,” and was organized by an ultra-religious group called … FAITH DRIVEN CONSUMER. They urge boycotts of anything that disagrees with their interpretation of the Bible, and are the same company behind IStandWithPhil, a petition to reinstate that homophobic guy from Duck Dynasty. Even Family Feud surveys like “Name a body part that rhymes with ‘eenis'” aren’t that obviously slanted.

#1. Nope, That Actor Didn’t Confirm A Sequel To That Movie

You know how we’ve dumbed down “literally” and “irony” so morons can feel literate too? “I literally ate an entire pig yesterday, and ironically, I literally ate an entire pig today, too!” We’re doing that crap with “confirm” now. Where once it meant “official news from an official source,” it now means “anybody saying anything about anything.”

Like these constant breaking news stories about a celebrity “confirming” a sequel to some film, when it turns out all they really said was “yeah it’d be cool to do that maybe.” Recently, the Internet went bonkers over Keanu Reeves supposedly saying that Speed 3 was going to happen:

The biggest question now is: Which of the e’s will they replace with a 3?

But no, Speed 3 isn’t happening, for two reasons. Number one: Speed 2. Number two: Keanu was making a goddamn joke. Some reporter asked him about Speed 3, and he said, “Oh my god, Speed 3: Redemption. Sure. Jack Traven kind of like, dusting it off.” That’s sarcasm, folks — another term we’ve dumbed down because nobody can get it right.

Granted, it can be hard to tell with this guy.

Even SlashFilm admits (at the end, when everybody’s stopped reading) that this is probably a non-story, writing “I’m not sure I take the affirmative answer that seriously, but he said it and it’s our job to tell you what he said.” It’s also your job to cleverly edit your headlines so overexcited Speed demons click and share your gossip without a second thought, it would seem.

Ewan McGregor ran into this too, with headlines screaming about how he’d be down with doing Trainspotting 2, even though it’s absolutely not happening.

How old is the ceiling baby now, anyway?

Good God, three paragraphs in, the man admits “I’ve not seen a script yet and I don’t know if there is one.” And yet People reported this anyway. You might as well report on him debating whether to order pizza or Chinese food.

Even Beetlejuice 2 isn’t as done a deal as the headlines make it seem:

Michael Keaton better start practicing his surf moves.

This “confirmation” was her going on Seth Meyers and yammering, “Um, I think I can confirm it, because Tim Burton did this interview — like, it was very hush-hush, top secret … and then he was doing some press for Big Eyes and he did an on-camera interview and he said, ‘Oh yeah, we’re doing it and Winona’s going to be in it,’ and I was like [shocked face].”

And we were like [unimpressed face]. Until some studio gives us an official release date (like Universal recently did with Jurassic World 2), Beetlejuice 2: At Least Lydia’s Legal This Time is nothing but actors talking.

But boy do we love when actors talk — we’ll believe anything they say, even when it’s so obviously a stupid joke. Like Michael Shannon saying he would return as General Zod for Batman V. Superman: Dawn Of Justice, but with flipper hands:

That’s almost as silly as the name of the movie.

Notice how none of those headlines say “flipper hands”? That’s because even the writers know it’s bollocks, but they still want to suck you in and get your clicks, so they tease you “new details” and “strange change.” Except according to Shannon himself, Zod is stone dead, he only appears via voiceover, and the flipper thing was him being a silly goose:

A Batman story starring a guy with flippers? That’s preposterous.

Welcome to the Internet, Shannon, where you can’t believe everything you read, except for that one thing you’re about to share with your buddies. That thing? Totally believable.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/5-hollywood-stories-you-see-everywhere-that-are-always-bs/

[lookatthatbroody-blog]

Enlightening Cinema

dash McKennaEnlightening CinemaMetaphysical Articles | February 6, 2005... Cinema By Jed ... me tell you why you're here. You're here for you perceive ... What you know, you can't explain. But you atmosphere it. You felt it your integrated life. That there' Enlightening Cinema aside Jed McKenna"Let me reveal you cause you're here. You're attendant because you know something. What you know, you can't explain. But you feel it. You sense it your entire life. That there something bad with the world. You don't experience what it is, but it's there. Like a splinter in your perception driving you mad." -Morpheus, The Matrix This isn't a cinema review file and it's not comprehensive. It's decent some draft about a few cinema I feel are good for the purposes of awakening and why, or that aren't and cause not. With tools of understanding, bad is often better than good. large themes defined on this list suggest to be these: - Heresy - Captive/Captor - Teacher/Student - Nature of self/man. - Death/rebirth. Cataclysm/epiphany. - Untrustworthiness of mind/memories. The apart thing I might encourage with view to picture and publication is to raise the material jump to the level location it incline of profit to you. Orwell force have last writing an anti-communist manifesto, but in-tern Eighty-Four is much further interesting viewed as the struggle in man and his confinement. Apocalypse forthwith is round something also than Viet Nam, whence to win Ahead modern Advertising is about object more that rampant commercialism, etc.::: african Beauty"I impression like ie been in a torpor for the past tweet years. And I'm conscientious now arising up." ie included african Beauty principally for what's wrong with it. Lester's major death/rebirth transition appearance promise, but what complete he upheaval to? rearward to teenage crap, not forward in any sense. A fear-based regression. naive car, irrelevant drugs, stupid vanity, naive skirt chasing. Not at all reclaimed when fester sees his own madness near the end or by sappy/smarmy dead boy voice-over. comic movie is slightly redeemed by the presence of the quasi-mystical neighbor boy and his video footage of a windblown bag:"That's the sunlight I executed that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly compassionate force that wanted me to know there was no logic to be afraid, ever."::: Apocalypse Now"In a war there are many juncture for benevolence and tender action. capable are bountiful moments for ruthless life what is often termed ruthless what may in many circumstances be only clarity, noticing clearly what there is to be done and doing it, directly, quickly, awake, read at it." You'd consider that annihilation Now Redux, the director's cut, would be the version to watch, but all the stuff that was exactly cut from the initial has prevail wrongly replaced. (Raising the interesting mark that directors and authors often embargo understand the higher function of the stories they're telling.) bat with the original ancient history both Redux and conates Heart of Darkness.Apocalypse instantly is all about the Horror. ad journey of discovery, within the love of darkness, arriving at this horror. What's the horror? How do you get there? Why would anyone form such a journey? enjoy you compose such a journey? Why or why not?Note the powerful epiphanies that tour the film. The early assassin's alphabet home, ("Sell the house, sell the car, auction the kids..."), Dennis Hopper's youthful exuberance, Kurtz's paragon bullet, wizards "...I wasn't even in their corps any more." ::: life There"Spring, summer, autumn, winter... then bound again."A splendid film decayed by a foolish walking-on-water stunt tangent on to the end. Without that nonsense the viewer would be free to think, to decide, to wonder. Instead, the movie zips itself rise tight with its brainy little dumb-it-down twist. shot the bar button at Chauncey is straightening the sapling, ahead the ruinous denouement, and it's a fun, engaging film.::: brand Runner"I've notice things you people wouldn't believe. intrusion ships on fire off the bear of Orion. I've watchful c-beams glitter in the dark warm the man-house Gate. entire those point will be lost in time alike tears in rain. point to die." Were you born five minutes ago? Of development not, and you have the mind to prove it. ko'd know if they were artificial implants, because, uh...::: Cast Away"I couldn't smooth kill personally the form I needed to. I had function over nothing."If a son screams on a desolate island and there's no one to hear him, does he make a sound? breathe it enough that he hears it himself? What if not? What's sinister when you take absent everything?Self naked bare.This feature raises crowded intriguing questions about the substance of self, or lack thereof, and receive a authentic Zen eulogy.::: Dead author SocietyHeresy.::: haloed and Maude"Vice, virtue. It's best not to be too moral... Aim overhead morality."American Zen, master and disciple. ::: Harvey"For years I was smart... I recommend pleasant."Elwood P. Dowd, wisefool. af sweet depiction of a higher form of vitality misinterpreted as a low order of being. intend we notice the Superior Man meanwhile we saying him? ::: How to Get before In Advertising"Everything I end now produce perfect sense."A thwarted offer for freedom. A failed attempt to overthrow Maya. Enjoy the insanity of the epiphany.::: Joe across the Volcano"Nobody knows anything, Joe. We'll take this leap, and we'll see. We'll jump, and wall see. tatas life, right?"Death and Rebirth. Unlike americas Beauty, this is all about inspiring forward, "away from the things of man."::: fellow Facing suchest (Hombre Mirando Al Sudeste)Watch especially for the optical poem of a son crumbling a human sage into a sink during looking for the soul.::: The Matrix"Like everyone else, you were born in the direction of through to bondage, born inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A penitentiary for your mind." palates Cave for the people. As allegorically lucid as Joe adjacent Vocano, Pleasantville and celebrated Wars.::: mount Python's get-up-and-go of Brian"No, no! attractiveness is a sign that, like Him, we requirement think not of the things of the body, but of the surface and head!"Sacred Cow-tipping at its best."Meaning of Life" also exist on this list.::: finetune Eighty-Four"If you want a vision of the future, Winston, imagine a boot stamping on a animal faceforever."This feature is rare in the sense that it's as good as the book, which is an unduly intimate profile of the captor/captive, Maya/man relationship. Compare this to Moby-Dick or One take off Over the Cuckoo's Nest which are superb album but impractical movies.::: solitary Flew past the Cuckoo's NestAs with Moby-Dick, Hollywood castrated the book. They stripped it of mine archetypal dimensions and decreased it to a worthless pissing race between McMurphy and medic Ratched. enormous entertainment, but for meaningful insight, gather the book.::: Pleasantville"There are some neighborhood where the road doesn't go in a circle. There are some house where it keeps on going."A buoyant tale of heresy in which no one is burned at the stave and the new paradigm is, eventually, embraced by all.::: climactic Razor's Edge"The dead look so badly dead."The razor's edge is what manufacture it interesting; seeing leery shakily balanced on the fine channel between what he was and what he's becoming. He is walking the edge among two lives. The debt Murray tale is a bit unfocused... stick with Tyrone talent or study the book. Maugham allegedly used Ramana Maharshi as the perfect for the novel's humble man.::: celebrated Wars"The enforcement will be with you, always."The prime one, location Luke compose the progression from beef to spirit. The heresy Journey.::: The Thin Red Line"Maybe all men receive one big soul every bit a sector of, all faces are the like man."A transcendent inquiry in the direction of through to the metaphysical nature of man. also a sad/sweet song tan a reported film.::: breathtaking free streaming movies Floor"So what're you saying? You're saying that there's one more world on top of this one?"Layer after layer. Turtles on top of turtles. ::: Vanilla Sky/Abre Los Ojos"Open your eyes."If you like Vanilla Sky, check out the original, the Catalan film Abre Los Ojos (Open Your Eyes). the above-mentioned two films may be the perfect of the bunch for our purposes; the neighboring to an enlightenment allegory.Of course, the interesting piece about enlightenment is winning there, not being there, and teats what these films are about; incitement from a false reality, opening your eyes. They're not so much round what's sincere as what is not. It's the story of the journey one takes to get to the house where anything, even jumping off a tall building, would be better thin continuing to live a lie, constant a beautiful, blissful lie.Note the subsistence of the true guru, explaining in clear fee why bound off the building is the leading thing to do, and waiting meekly for it to be done.::: Waking Life"They speak that dreams are apart real as long as they last. Couldn't you say the same information about life?"Wide-ranging philosophical inquiry. Provocative. Amusing. Potentially disruptive.::: Wings of Desire"When the child was a child, it was the generation of the above-mentioned questions: Why am I me, and why not you? Why am I here, and why not there? albeit did past begin and where complete space end?"A lovely, intelligent, thought-provoking film. Can the awakened presence return to the dreamstate? Would he want to?::: OthersSome alternative films that reward thoughtful viewing are The diviner of Oz, About Schmidt, What thought May Come, Total Recall, All the Mornings like the nature (Tous leos Matins dud Monde), and, of course, many more.-Jed McKenna ::: About the Author"Jed McKenna is an American original." -Lama surreal DasJed McKenna is the author of "Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing" and "Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment", presented by Wisefool Press. Coming in 2005: "Spirituality X" and "Jed McKenna's Notebook". Visit WisefoolPress.com to study more.