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lets-ignore-that · 4 months

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MY FNAF VERSION/AU MASTERPOST!

Little disclaimer my version of FNAF is VERY VERY CLOSE TO CANON.

Everything from lifespans of the businesses to characters to the main plot is under the cut.

Fredbear's Family Diner 1964-1983

Sister Location (Circus Baby’s Funland) 1984

Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza 1984-1993

Fazbear’s Frights 2023-2023

Faux Fazbears 2024

Pizzaplex 2030

The order of the games is such: 5 - 4 - 2 -1 - 3 - 6 - UCN - SB

Characters

William Afton (October 14 1938 - ???)

Henry Emily (June 10th 1939 - September 15 2024)

Michael Afton (February 13 1969 - April 16 2031)

Elizabeth Afton (May 4 1976 - May 6 1984)

Evan Afton (July 6 1977 - July 8 1983)

Charlie Emily ( December 6 1971 - 1983)

Elanor Afton-Schmidt (February 15 1943 - March 6 1978)

Ruth Emily-Davis (November 26 1941- October 1 2026)

Jenny Smith (March 25 1970 - )

Evan Jr. Smith ( October 13 1987 - April 5 2030 )

Vanessa Williams ( September 29 1999 - )

William was born to James and Helen Afton in Essex, England. James died in WW2 in 1944 when William was 6. Helen remarried in 1946 to a man by the name of George. George resented and was highly abusive to William, their relationship was strained at best. Once William turned 18 he moved to America to pursue a college education. He never regained contact with his mother and step-father. William went to college for a degree in engineering in 1956. There he met Henry and they quickly became friends. One year later he met Elanor and they married in 1959. They had three children together.

Henry was born to Edward and Dorothy Emily in Hurricane Utah. He had a normal childhood growing up and went to college in 1957 where he met William. He ended up marrying his highschool sweetheart Ruth in 1961. They had their only child Charlie in 1971. They then divorced in 1981.

Michael is the oldest son of William and Elanor, he was born and raised in Hurricane, Utah. After his mother dying when he was 9 his father started to abuse him, it subsequently got worse as his brother and sister passed. He met his girlfriend Jenny when he was 18 and they quickly had a child, Evan Jr. He worked as a security guard for multiple Fazbear Ent. Inc. locations.

Elizabeth and Evan are the two younger children of William and Elanor. They were born only a year apart and were favorited by William, their mother died when they were too young to remember her and became highly attached to William. Both died very young. Elizabeth possessed Circus baby and Evan possessed Golden Freddy.

Charlie Emily was the only child of Henry and Ruth. She grew up very close to her “cousins” Michael, Elizabeth, and Evan. She had a good relationship with her “uncle” William. She was murdered by William at 12 years old and possessed the puppet.

Elanor Schmidt was the wife of William and mother of Michael Elizabeth and Evan. She was a proficient ballet dancer and ended up being a stay at home mother to her three children, she had a loving relationship with her husband but it ended up tense at the end of it, she was murdered by her husband in 1978.

Ruth Davis was the wife of Henry and mother of Charlie. She met Henry in highschool and they had a decent relationship until they drifted apart and ended up divorcing. She gave up parental rights to Henry.

Jenny Smith is the girlfriend of Michael Afton and the mother of Evan Jr. She met Michael when she was a teenager and supported him through his teenage years, which lead them to fall in love with each other. She got back together with Michael after his accident and they raised Evan together.

Evan Jr. Smith is the son of Michael and Jenny. He had a normal childhood and early adulthood. He ended up being possessed by his grandfather William and lost his sense of self in 2030 and essentially died.

Vannessa Williams is a security guard at the Pizzaplex. She resurrected William and helped him possess his grandson. They are in a strenuous relationship.

Main timeline of events

Henry and William start Fredbear’s Family Diner in 1964

William suffers a springlock accident, permanently scarring him.

Michael Afton is born in 1969

Charlie Emily is born in 1971

Fredbear’s Family Diner opens more locations.

Elizabeth Afton is born in 1976

Evan Afton is born in 1977

In 1978, Elanor Afton is killed by her husband William with a sledgehammer. He takes her body and disposes of it in the Utah desert. Due to marital conflicts being known, he is interrogated but the case is quickly dropped.

Evan Afton’s 6th birthday takes place in Fredbear’s in 1983. His older brother and his friends put his head into the Fredbear animatronic and Evan’s head is quickly crushed. He is rushed to the hospital and put into a medically induced coma. The events of FNAF 4 take place in his head over a week when he is pronounced brain dead and dies. He possesses the Fredbear animatronic.

Over the next year, William’s mental health rapidly deteriorates and he becomes obsessed with the idea of possession. He theorizes that his son is in the fredbear animatronic and starts to design animatronics to test his theory by giving them the capability to capture and kill children inconspicuously.

A sister location known as Circus Baby’s Funland is opened with William’s new animatronics. Elizabeth becomes infatuated with one of the robots, Baby, based off of her. William commands her to stay away but she defies his orders and is killed by Baby.

William’s sanity decreases once again.

Henry, noticing the problems in his business partner's life and mental state, and proximity to horrific accidents, forces him to leave the company for his own good. He also secretly fears for his own daughter's safety. Henry designs an animatronic puppet to act as a watchguard for her.

One night Charlie is locked outside of Fredbear’s Family Diner and William murders her in the alley next to the building. The puppet follows Charlie outside and she possesses her. William is dropped as a potential assailant due to lack of evidence.

After this death, the restaurant chain is renamed to Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza in 1984

New animatronics are designed (toys) and new locations are opened up subsequently.

Michael and Jenny have Evan Jr.

William disguises himself as a security guard, uses his springbonnie suit, and murders five children in 1987.

Due to the murders, the restaurant is about to be shut down, but one more party takes place, during this time, a security guard by the name of Jeremy Fitzgerald gets bitten in the head by Mangle, this is the bite of ‘87

The location is shut down and William is apprehended due to previous speculation, he is let go due to the police being unable to find the bodies.

In 1993 a new location is opened up with refurbished animatronics, Michael is hired as a nightguard but ends up being fired.

One night, William enters the building in an attempt to dismantle the animatronics. He is confronted by the ghosts of the murder victims. In an attempt to scare them off, William dons the springbonnie suit, but the suit malfunctions.

William dies in 1993 in the backroom of a Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. He possesses springbonnie.

Learning of William’s disappearance, Henry closes off every backroom in every location under the guise of “budget cuts’

In 1995, Michael travels to the underground bunker holding Baby and the other Circus Baby’s Funland animatronics to rectify his mistakes and find out more about his father. Baby and the rest manipulate Michael into helping them escape, and they end up leading him into the scooping room, scooping out his organs and killing him. Baby and the others congeal into one animatronic and enter Michael’s body. They use his body as an attempt to conform to civilian life but it starts to rot and it expels them.. Michael’s soul possesses his own body, essentially becoming undead.

After being expelled, infighting causes Baby to be removed from Ennard due to her being Afton's daughter and refusing to kill Michael. She rebuilds herself and Ennard becomes Molten Freddy.

Michael, being undead, finds Jenny, who accepts him, and they begin to raise Evan together.

30 years pass.

The children’s murders essentially become urban legend at this point.

In another attempt to dispel the urban legend, Fazbear Ent. Inc. opens a horror attraction known as Fazbear Frights in California. Michael starts to work there to continue his hunt for his father.

Springtrap is transported to the location as a prop, as workers found his body.

Michael and Springtrap fight and Michael sets the building on fire. Springtrap survives as well as Michael, and Michael captures him and drives him to Utah so Henry can deal with him.

Springtrap escapes Michael’s capture.

In a desperate attempt to end everything once and for all, Henry opens up a fake pizzeria in 2024 to lure all the still roaming souls.

In a miracle, it works, and Springtrap, Baby, Molten Freddy, Golden Freddy, and the Puppet (in Lefty) all arrive.

Michael works at the building to help Henry during this.

Henry locks down the building and sets it ablaze, killing everyone and himself in the building. Michael survives.

William is sent to Hell, to be tormented by Cassidy for eternity, she traps all of the other souls alongside her to torment William as well. Henry eventually convinces her to release the souls and pass on herself to leave William to burn in hell.

Six years pass.

Fazbear Ent. Inc. opens up the Pizzaplex, with all new animatronics and redesigns.

Vanessa works at the Pizzaplex as a security guard.

Evan Jr. Works at the Pizzaplex as an animatronic engineer.

Due to her obsession with the murders and William, she attempts to bring him back to life, and it works.

He ends up possessing her, and appears in her head as Glitchtrap.

Vanessa finds Williams old body (springtrap) under the pizzaplex and slowly starts to rebuild it so william can possess it.

William possesses his body again.

After the battle with Gregory and Glamrock Freddy, his body gets destroyed and he possesses his grandson, Evan Jr. Him and Vanessa escape.

William and Vanessa work together over a year to start murdering children again, as William wants remnant due to it extending life and he does not want to return to Hell.

Michael goes to the pizzaplex and attempts to stop Vanessa and William.

He ends up getting murdered by William.

Michael possesses Glamrock Freddy.

The future of this is up to debate :)

#fnaf #five nights at freddy's #masterpost #fnaf au #lets ignore rambles

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olympic-paris · 3 days

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THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more …

September 17

1730 – Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben (d.1794), also referred to as the Baron von Steuben, was a Prussian-born military officer who served as inspector general and Major General of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. He is credited with being one of the fathers of the Continental Army in teaching them the essentials of military drills, tactics, and disciplines. He wrote the Revolutionary War Drill Manual, the book that served as the standard United States drill manual until the War of 1812.

In Germay, in 1776, he was alleged to be homosexual and was accused of improper sexual behavior with young boys. Whether or not Steuben was actually intimate with other men is not entirely known, but the rumors compelled him to seek employment elsewhere.

On September 26, 1777, the Baron, his Italian greyhound, Azor (which he took with him everywhere), his young aide de camp Louis de Pontière, his military secretary Pierre Etienne Duponceau, and two other companions, reached Portsmouth, New Hampshire and by December 1, was extravagantly entertained in Boston. Congress was in York, Pennsylvania, after being ousted from Philadelphia by the British advance. By February 5, 1778, Steuben had offered to volunteer without pay (for the time), and by the 23rd, Steuben reported for duty to General George Washington at Valley Forge. He served as George Washington's chief of staff in the final years of the war.

Two of the General's soldiers, William North and Ben Walker, were to von Steuben's liking. He legally adopted both men, and they lived together until the Baron's death, at which time they shared in his estate.

The Lafayette Park Memorial

Many places are named in his honor, including Steubenville, Ohio. His monument by Albert Jaegers in Washington, DC, across the street from the White House in Lafayette Park, is perhaps one of the most homoerotic sculptures in America. Make sure and pay a visit the next time you're in town. You will not regret it.

1904 – Sir Frederick Ashton (d.1988) began his career as a dancer but is largely remembered as a choreographer.

Ashton was born at Guayaquil in Ecuador, in the artistic neighbourhood called Las Peñas, the original founding site of the city. When he was 13 he witnessed a life-changing event when he attended a performance by the legendary Anna Pavlova in the Municipal Theatre in Lima, Peru. He was so impressed that from that day on he knew he would become a dancer.

In 1919 he went to England to attend Dover College and then to study under the famous Leonide Massine and established a working relationship with the ballet troupe belonging to Marie Rambert and Ninette de Valois. Rambert discovered Frederick's aptitude for choreography and allowed him to choreograph his first ballet, The Tragedy of Fashion in 1926, starting a tremendously successful career as a choreographer.

He began his career with the Ballet Rambert which was originally called The Ballet Club, but he rose to fame with The Royal Ballet, becoming its resident choreographer in the 1930s. His version of La Fille mal gardée was particularly successful. He worked with Margot Fonteyn among others. His broad travesti performances as one of the comic Ugly Stepsisters in Sergei Prokofiev's Cinderella were annual events for many years.

The choreographer's emotional life focused on the unattainable and the unsuitable, and it often wreaked havoc in his ballet company, as when, in the case of the heterosexual Michael Somes (Fonteyn's principal partner), the beloved enjoyed and exploited favoritism to the point that other dancers signed a petition of protest.

Ashton, like so many other famous gay men of his epoch, including Cecil Beaton and Noël Coward, was necessarily discreet, but he was not closeted. The British high society in which he moved enjoyed the scintillating company.

Ashton was a member of the circle of gay men who surrounded Queen Elizabeth, the late Queen Mother, whom he taught to tango. When she heard that Ashton, a formidable mimic, did imitations of her, she allegedly retaliated by imitating his own queenly manners.

In 1962, he was knighted for his services to ballet. He died in 1988 at his home, Chandos Lodge, in Eye, Suffolk, England.

1926 – Curtis Harrington (d.2007) was an American film and television director whose work included experimental films, horror films, and episodic television. He is considered one of the forerunners of New Queer Cinema.

His memoir, Nice Guys Don’t Work in Hollywood, was recently published by Drag City. The original manuscript was disinterred from a special collection in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and carefully edited by Lisa Janssen, a Chicago-based poet, archivist, and film buff.

For Harrington, the romance with movies began early. He was stirred as a child by the sight of Mr. Death wilting a bouquet of flowers with his breath in Death Takes a Holiday (1934).

Growing up in Beaumont, California, with parents who gave him leeway to pursue his creative interests, Harrington discovered a soul mate in Edgar Allan Poe, and began his film career at 14 with an abbreviated version of “The Fall of the House of Usher.” The director plays both the death-haunted Roderick and his twin sister, Madeline.

Greatly influenced by Maya Deren, co-creator (with Alexander Hammid) of the trance classic Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), he completed a cycle of 16 mm shorts, several of which – Fragment of Seeking (1946), Picnic (1948), On the Edge (1949) – are now regarded as prime examples of West Coast experimental filmmaking. His friendship with Kenneth Anger, director of Scorpio Rising (1963) and author of the notorious bestseller Hollywood Babylon, fueled an appreciation for the mystical and provided occasion to participate, if only peripherally, in the Southern California occult explosion.

Although he enjoyed unfettered creative license during this period, the pressure to conform weighed heavily on the young filmmaker. The conservative postwar climate was an unlikely breeding ground for the deeply personal, highly stylized "film poems" created by Harrington and his contemporaries. His status as an outsider was no doubt intensified by his orientation as a gay man – a subject on which Harrington remains subdued throughout the memoir. "This seemed perfectly natural to me," Harrington writes of his teenage attractions. "It did not occur to me to attach any sense of guilt or shame to my activities." A screening of Fragment of Seeking and Anger’s Fireworks (1947) stunned an audience of Los Angeles intellectuals with its potently surreal evocations of homoerotic desire. "Everyone in the room was too shocked to say a word," Harrington recalls.

The true turning point in his career was the extraordinary Night Tide (1961), a gently haunting fable about a sailor (an uncharacteristically shy Dennis Hopper) who falls in love with a mermaid impersonator (Linda Lawson). Night Tide was distributed by Roger Corman, who in due course offered Harrington two directing assignments: Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (1965) and Queen of Blood (1966). Harrington was given the task of repurposing a couple of Russian science fiction films to which Corman had acquired the rights.

In the following years he went on to direct a series of B-movies in the horror genre TV series and Made-for-TV movies including The Killer Bees (1974).

At 75, he managed to summon the remainder of his creative vigor to make Usher (2002), a self-financed short film that brought his career full circle. "I went all the way back to the story that had haunted me so early in my life,"

1928 – Roddy McDowall (d.1998) was born in London on to a Scottish father and an Irish mother. His mother, who had herself aspired to be an actress, enrolled him in elocution lessons at the age of five; and at the age of ten he had his first major film role as the youngest son in Murder in the Family (1938). Over the next two years he appeared in a dozen British films, in parts large and small. McDowall's movie career was interrupted, however, by the German bombardment of London in World War II. Accompanied by his sister and his mother, he was one of many London children evacuated to places abroad.

As a result, he arrived in Hollywood in 1940, and the charming young English lad soon landed a major role as the youngest son in How Green Was My Valley (1941). The film made him a star at thirteen, and he appeared as an endearing boy in numerous Hollywood movies throughout the war years, most notably Lassie, Come Home (1943), with fellow English child star and lifelong friend Elizabeth Taylor, and My Friend Flicka (1943).

By his late teens, McDowall had outgrown the parts in which he had been most successful. Accordingly, he went to New York to study acting and to hone his skills in a wide variety of roles on the Broadway stage.

McDowall was praised for his performance as a gay character in Meyer Levin's Compulsion (1957), a fictionalised account of the Leopold-Loeb murder case; and he won a Tony award for best supporting actor as Tarquin in Jean Anouilh's The Fighting Cock (1960).

After a decade's absence, McDowall returned to Hollywood, and over the last four decades of his life he appeared in more than one hundred films, encompassing a wide range of genres from sophisticated adult comedy to children's fare, from horror to science fiction, usually as a character actor. He also made regular character appearances on TV in such series as the original Twilight Zone, The Carol Burnett Show, Fantasy Island and Quantum Leap.

His best known appearances include those in The Subterraneans (1960), Midnight Lace (1960), Cleopatra (1963), The Loved One (1965), Inside Daisy Clover (1965), Planet of the Apes (1968) and its various sequels, Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), The Poseidon Adventure (1973), Funny Lady (1975), and Only the Lonely (1991). His last film role was the voice of Mr Soil, an ant, in A Bug's Life (1997).

Although McDowall never officially came out, the fact that he was gay was one of Hollywood's best known secrets. It is a tribute to his characteristic discretion and the respect with which "Hollywood's Best Friend" was regarded by his peers that his homosexuality was never really an issue or used against him in his six decades in the entertainment business.

Roddy is offered a hot sausage by Tab Hunter

McDowall died of cancer at his home in Studio City, California, on October 3, 1998. At the time of his death, he held several elected posts in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and was a generous benefactor of many film-related charities.

1965 – Bryan Singer is an American film director. Singer won critical acclaim for his work on The Usual Suspects, and is especially popular among fans of the sci-fi and comic book genres, for his work on the first two X-Men films and Superman Returns.

Singer was born in New York City. He was adopted by Norbert and Grace Singer and grew up in a Jewish household in New Jersey. He attended West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South, then studied film making at New York's School of Visual Arts and later the USC School of Cinematic Arts in Los Angeles. Actors Lori and Marc Singer are his cousins.

Singer is openly bisexual, and has said that his life experiences of growing up as a minority influenced his movies. In October 2014, it was confirmed he was expecting a child with actress Michelle Clunie. The couple's first son was born on January 5, 2015.

Singer is also executive producer and directed the pilot and first episode of highly regarded TV medical drama House.

Singer is said (or rumoured) to be involved in a number of possible or 'in development' projects at present including: a Superman Returns sequel; a remake of Logan's Run; a Warner Bros. film called U Want Me 2 Kill Him? about a 14-year old British boy who was charged with inciting his own murder, a reimagining of Battlestar Galactica, and a film of Augusten Burroughs' Sellevsion.

In April 2014, Singer was accused in a civil lawsuit of sexual assault of a minor. According to the suit filed by attorney Jeff Herman, Singer is alleged to have drugged and raped actor and model Michael Egan in Hawaii and Los Angeles in the late 1990s. On May 22, 2014, Singer's attorney presented evidence to Federal District Judge Susan Oki Mollway stating that neither Singer nor Egan were in Hawaii at the time. In early August 2014, Egan sought to withdraw his lawsuit.

In May 2014, another lawsuit was filed by attorney Jeff Herman on behalf of an anonymous British man. Both Singer and producer Gary Goddard were accused of sexually assaulting "John Doe No. 117." According to the lawsuit, Goddard and Singer met the man for sex when he was a minor and engaged in acts of "gender violence" against him while in London for the premiere of Superman Returns. The charge against Singer in this case was dismissed, at the accuser's request, in July 2014.

1975 – Jade Esteban Estrada, born at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, is a successful Latin pop singer, comedian, choreographer, actor, political commentator, and human rights activist. Out Magazine called him "the first gay Latin star."

As a young boy, he participated in extracurricular school activities and sang in the school choir, where he first noticed that his talent captivated audiences. Through the encouragement of his choir instructor he began to take voice lessons and eventually moved to New York where he worked as an assistant to Tony award-winning actress Zoe Caldwell.

Estrada appeared in the German production of Starlight Express and also worked as a dancer for Seventeen Magazine. After two popular appearances as a transgender singer/dancer on NBC's The Jerry Springer Show, he won the attention of Latin TV personality Charo and worked as her choreographer and lead dancer. He gained international recognition in 1998 when he released his first Latin pop single, "Reggae Twist" on the Brooklyn-based Total Envision Records label. He later turned his attention to solo theater and stand-up comedy.

His recordings include Fabulous Gay Tunes Vol.2, and Being Out Rocks.

1991 – Scott Hoying is an American singer, musician and songwriter who came to international attention as the baritone of the a cappella group Pentatonix and one-half of the music duo Superfruit. As of June 2021, Pentatonix has released eleven albums (two of which have been number ones) and two EPs, have had four songs in the Billboard Hot 100, and won three Grammy Awards as "the first a cappella group to achieve mainstream success in the modern market". As of November 2021, Superfruit's YouTube channel has over 2.4 million subscribers, and over 444 million views.

Hoying is openly gay and resides in Hollywood. He began dating model Mark Manio in 2017. They got engaged in the Bahamas on April 13, 2022, and were married in Santa Barbara, California on July 7, 2023. Their wedding was officiated by singer-songwriter Christina Perri.

2001 – Paul Holm, the partner of Flight 93 hero Mark Bingham is presented with the folded American flag.

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monsterfactoryfanfic · 17 days

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The Communer

The Communer is the thesis of what I wanted out of Detente for the Ravenous, it's a crystallization of the base themes that got me writing the book in the first place. The novel started from the idea that "western" religion, specifically Catholicism, is every bit as scary and grotesque as religions considered foreign by European colonizers when they first encountered them in the 15th-19th centuries. Catholicism is a religion in which you literally eat God and drink His blood, and I wanted to over-exaggerate that with DFTR's Commune.

So the Communer is basically just a fantasy Catholic, ideally a priest or nun. Someone who genuinely believes in a fucked up religion. To emphasize this, I gave them the "Suffer" skill, which is still the funniest mechanic in the game.

The Core Abilities are also pretty much exactly what I want from a self-sacrificing priest. The main character of the novel is a priest, and she constantly puts herself and her faith before her own needs. It turns out that 20 years of that makes you a bit of a freak. I tried to showcase this by giving players abilities like "protect your allies by suffering in their stead" and "Confession." The Communer is a "support class" in the traditional sense, but they are also having a terrible time while they carry your team.

I also tried to do a lot of worldbuilding in the Communer's abilities. I give them the option to spec into various Saints, and I like how the bonuses they get give you an idea of what each Saint is like in the setting. For instance:

Like, these are two VERY different devotional paths to take! Obviously, St Augur is some sort of military hero (thinking of St George or St Michael here), but then St Echnatz is closer to a St Valentine. I also love the ability to simply romance an enemy into being on your side.

But my favorite ability of the Communer was actually suggested by @thumblrdotcom, and that is, of course, the ability to create a Schism in the church.

Because you are part of the evil Catholic Church analog, your character can move up the ranks of the Church to the point where you become what is essentially a cardinal. And in addition to having a pretty substantial Stipend to spend on equipment, you can also declare yourself Antipope, which is such a funny thing to do, an action that would have catastrophic implications for the setting, that I couldn't not have it in the game. I love the Resistance System's big swing abilities, and I think this is the best showcase of how big a swing you can take.

#detente for the ravenous #long post

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barely-medi0cre · 8 months

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George Michael Bluth

A Quick Look at one of my favorite characters

Arrested development is basically like a series of unfortunate events if it were made into an adult comedy.

So the sadder parts are all left as jokes or punchlines.

When really, if it were a drama, the characters would appear completely different.

George Michael is a key example of this, he’s held to almost perfection standards by his dad, who he also would spend all his time with until he gets a girlfriend. Like his dad makes him go on atkins for literally no reason and he clearly hates it but is too scared to say anything.

Or when he gets an A- on a test (still an A though) and when he comes home and shows his dad and says “I got an A!” And his dad keeps cutting him off and saying “minus” before telling him to get back to his room and study. Later his dad walks in on him studying and literally beating himself up over not getting a problem, calling himself stupid over and over again.

Of course, this is the episode where Michael (his dad) and Lindsey (Michael’s twin) are arguing over parenting. She says he’s too strict and is going to give George Michael a nervous breakdown. Naturally, after walking in on George Michael beating himself up, he tells him to stop and go do something fun. George Michael is very reluctant because he never really does that. He ends up going right to work, because he doesn’t have anything else to do.

Naturally, during this short period of parental freedom, George Michaels uncle Buster (the one who still lives with his mother and is basically a toddler) comes to see him at work to ask him for drugs. Michael has always taught George Michael that “family first” is the most important rule, so of course he keeps it a secret at busters request and tries to get drugs for him. This leads to him going to his uncle Gob, leaving a note asking for drugs, leading to a whole mix up where Michael thinks that he gave George Michael too much freedom and has now caused his son to develop a drug habit.

Rising action, rising action, climax where everything comes to a head with fake cops and real cops and fake drugs and real drugs and weird misunderstandings until everything is laid out, all is forgiven, and things go back to normal

However, since this show is a comedy show, we don’t focus on the fact that George Michael never actually was able to utilize the freedom his dad had given him, instead opting to use his newly free time to take on a really big favor from his family member instead of doing something for himself

His gimmick is that he’s awkward, and comparatively uptight to Maeby’s street smarts and irresponsibility. It creates a fun dynamic for comedy stories, but when you watch it as many times as I have you start to see some of the more serious character traits that are glossed over

This back and forth can only continue if there is no real character development in each of the ensemble members, hence the end of an episode essentially hitting reset on shenanigans for everyone. George Michael is a great character for that because even during the one chance he had to be free or do something for himself, he yet again took on a task that someone in his family asked him to do and assumed he could do it. So when those opportunities of development present themselves, realistically he wouldn’t take them. And if he did, his character development would have to be so minute that it’s barely noticeable.

If this show were a drama, I think there would be considerable emphasis placed on the parallels of George Sr’s relationship with Michael and Michael’s relationship with George Michael. Animosity about the relationship between Michael and George Michael is only brought to Michael’s attention in season four when he is told that is the father-son relationship Ron Howard wanted to make a movie about.

#arrested development #george michael #george michael bluth #michael bluth #tv #rambles #character analysis

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narcissistcookbook · 11 months

Note

Do you have any thoughts about the boundary between inspiration and plagiarism? I'm working on my own poem heavily inspired by "I HAVEN'T WRITTEN THIS ONE YET BUT I'M SURE I'LL THINK OF SOMETHING" about my own relationship with work and motivation. making a plea to several different gods and exploring how their domains match up with my executive dysfunction issues.

IHWTOYBISITOS has been my absolute favorite song for the past several months since I discovered it. and I wanted to try my own hand at imitating the righteous prose you use to explore a less than healthy relationship with the god(s) the prose is directed towards. But I also want to be very careful to not completely copy your work. I know there's the argument that all work is derivative etc but I'm curious to hear any insight you might have on the matter.

i nicked the original idea from Alan Moore, who was talking about researching esoteric gods until you find one that resonates with you, and try praying to it - either as a religious act, or a magical act, or just a personal game to see how it feels

honestly i wouldn't be too afraid of stealing ideas unless you're actively trying to pass off someone else's idea as your own (when i was a kid i tried to convince my friends i'd written The Party Song by Blink 182, and there's an argument to be made that everything i've done since is to prove that i *could* have written that song so it wasn't that cringe actually). especially in the early years of learning How To Art, stealing and riffing on other people's ideas is an essential part of learning how art works and what you love about the things that move you.

examples!

the bo-diddly beat is so firmly associated with its creator that it's named after him, but you probably know it as the beat that George Michael's Faith is built around, or Black Horse And The Cherry Tree by KT Tunstall. oh, and Bo Diddly said he just nicked it from gospel music he heard growing up

the dolly zoom was explicitly invented (as far as i know) by alfred hitchcock for Vertigo (26s in), it's even known as the Vertigo Effect, but it's since become a core part of the language of cinema to show a character going "fuckin wat". that's not even how hitchcock pioneered it! here it is being used in Jaws famously, in Guardians Of The Galaxy 2, and in Squid Game.

aaand HP Lovecraft of course, whose story style inspired so many incredible writers so directly that some of their work is explicitly set within his world and using his characters (Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Alan Moore, China Miéville)

So!

be mindful of what you're stealing from and how you're stealing it, but absolutely steal

#the narcissist cookbook #lovecraft #inspiration #plagiarism

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fatehbaz · 1 year

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The New York State Urban Development Corporation saw in the piers a sacrificial milieu of impurity and devaluation. Rivera described the event as follows: “It’s called a sweep. Not even a fucking eviction. A sweep, like we’re trash.” [...]

The clearance operation of the piers took place under the New York Slum Clearance Commission and Law and its frothy utopian verbiage of “sanitizing” an environment [...] unsuitable for human life. [...] The demolition of the piers showed the violent clash of two confronting forms of urbanism. [...] [Manhattan’s] working class industrial base was transformed into a corporate and service-based economy and New York State Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, together with city planners, implemented policies to frame Manhattan as a place for work, but not living. [...] The rhetoric used by public and private officials to get rid of the piers was embedded in medical metaphors, [...] "blight" [...]. At the same time, these discussions were imbricated with racial depictions and xenophobic targets: most of the constructions beleaguered in this operation were inhabited or used by black people, Latin Americans, migrants, and displaced communities. [...]

---

The piers thrived with life. [...]

The notion of the piers as insalubrious areas that needed to be wiped out gained traction in the 1980s - during the peak of the HIV/AIDS crisis [...]. This narrative concerning the piers was active in New York City until the early 2000s, until Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Governor George Pataki opened the Greenwich Village segment of Hudson River Park on May 30, 2003. The highway was finally demolished [...] and a series of gates were erected to keep Pier 45 closed after 1am [...]. The previous residents of these spaces were just routine casualties. The new proposal opted for a unitary, straightforward, apparently open but constantly surveilled set of facilities, where constant circulation (by car, skate, bike, foot) was central, and framed the conception of the piers as a passing point. This contrasted the labyrinthic and fragmented former setting, with multitudes of hidden spaces that provided a sense of privacy and safety [...].

---

The history of the piers runs parallel to the history of the LGBTQIA+ movement in New York. This is where Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson decided to locate the first installment of [...] (STAR) in 1970 [...], a year after the Stonewall riots. [...] [D]uring the 1973 Gay Pride Rally [...], [Rivera] asked the movement to support [racialized, trans, gender non-conforming, homeless, and incarcerated people] [...] instead of just focusing on cis "men and women that belong to a white middle class club" [...] [which entailed] the negation of alternative forms of living [...].

Members of these groups were ostracized and deprived of typical considerations during the outbreak of an epidemic: protocols of announcement, transparency in information, research, and measure-taking. Meanwhile, the communities that congregated around the piers, and the piers themselves, helped spread information about AIDS, made transparent the available data, and offered care among affected communities. Groups and associations like STAR, Gay Men's Health Crisis, and Gran Fury were essential in this effort. [...] This environmental activism, where kin was formed [...], happened in places like the piers. [...] They were an escape from the constant scrutiny of authorities and from homophobic attacks [...].

---

AIDS' first name, GRID (Gay Related Immune Deficiency), as well as the common “gay plague” and “gay cancer” epithets, strengthened the idea of a specifically gay disease related to a certain environment-specific villain. Journalists, following the views of public health authorities, blamed the epidemic on [...] the places gay people frequented. [...] Physicians thus described a spatial configuration located in downtown Manhattan [...] which [...] posed a threat [...]. This claim had terrible consequences for the activist spaces and urban fabrics that confronted the epidemic [...]. The remnants of Pier 45 were demolished. The activist history of these places was “cleared.” [...]

---

When Sylvia Rivera shouted to the authorities “stay away from my house!” while being evicted, “house” not only referred to the physical construction of her home. She was confronting teleological progress with the project of a[n] [...] assemblage based on [...] mutual caring [...] and defying colonial narratives of race, sex, gender, and nature. The territorialization of epidemics, identities, and citizenship not only shape the built environment, but the built environment shapes them in return. Architecture thereby assumed the form of an expanded spatial practice [...].

When Rivera was trying to save her home from demolition, she said, “there’s so many fucking buildings in this fucking Manhattan.” What New York City was losing with the demolition of Pier 45 was not just a series of dwellings. It was losing a complex ecosystem of coexistence.

---

All text above by: Iván López Munuera. “Lands of Contagion”. e-flux Architecture (Sick Architecture series). November 2020. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

#abolition #colonial #imperial #ecology #landscape #pathologization #carceral geography #tidalectics #health and sickness

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russalki · 2 months

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The problem for surrealism is that there is no possibility of imbuing any such ritual with meaning. No ritual could go beyond the immediate context of its performance. The absence of myth has itself been ritualized, and has in this way become absolute. Of course, this is a contradiction in terms, but capitalist society bases itself on such a contradiction, so neutralizing the contagious quality of ritual. Deprived of this contagion, which was its essential quality, any possible surrealist ritual could only be impotent, since no one outside the surrealist circle could believe in it. It was, as Jules Monnerot stated in La poésie moderne et le sacré, only ‘prayer in a void’.

— Michael Richardson in the introduction to Georges Bataille's The Absence of Myth: Writings on Surrealism

#q #excerpts #georges bataille #the absence of myth: writings on surrealism #words #quotes #book quotes #literature #lit #surrealism

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noxexistant · 1 year

Text

a compilation of my uksies notes thus far

(mostly organised and cleaned up, including notable covers)

16 april (ajh oscar)

oscar and morris are INCREDIBLY physical and practically always touching each other. lots of (pretty gentle) pushing and grabbing at each others hats and teasing each other, but they also rest with their arms around each other and sit very close together. they sort of cling to each others backs on a few occasions. clingy and comfortable with each other.

morris glances back guiltily after beating crutchie and leaving with the others while crutchie is taken to the refuge. he’s the only one who looks back.

oscar and morris essentially chainsmoke, and blow smoke in the newsies’ faces frequently to antagonise them. they throw their cigarettes on the ground when they’re done with them.

constantly fawning with wiesel - particularly oscar. they smile at him and oscar laughs when wiesel tells a joke. they back him up when he’s having conflict with the newsies, ready to follow orders. but oscar is tense around him and tries to keep morris away, usually puts himself closer to wiesel.

they’re truly not much bigger than the newsies, morris especially. he’s considerably shorter than davey, smaller than a lot of them. the fights seem much more evenly matched, and much more brutal, because of it. oscar and morris have baseball bats in the second fight, and swing them brutally.

one of them absolutely does not hesitate to throw les out of the way to get to jack to fight him.

physically affectionate with the scabs!!! they hug them. they jostle them to reassure them, almost like jack does with crutchie. they pull them close by an arm around the shoulder and kind of squeeze them before pushing them back out into the square. particularly tommy boy.

morris fidgets!!! a lot. taps his feet, bounces, pulls himself up by the slats above on the scaffolding/fire escape set to casually sit over the edge of the railing, with his legs dangling, and pulls himself up again to get back down. his hands are usually linked, he fidgets with his fingers by holding them and squeezing them.

oscar glances at morris when pulitzer threatens crutchie to jack, specifically when he refers to him as “the little crippled boy”.

when they’ve got jack against the wall before they drag him down to the basement, oscar hits him hard a few times, but then hands it over to morris who gives it to him. just absolutely beats on him, almost desperate, while oscar just kind of stands by watching.

they hugged so tight and george cried for most of the duration of bows.

25 may (george jack, jack bromage morris, rory oscar)

jack “honks” crutchie’s nose when he’s trying to cheer him up in santa fe prologue

when davey is wandering around the audience trying and failing to sell papes, an audience member offered to take one, so he snatched his pile back and choked out, “no, actually! not you.” like he got too anxious and panicked.

katherine sincerely finds jack’s flirting funny and has to try and suppress her laughter as she’s asking him to go away in the theatre

jack and race are BROTHERS. they’re rough with each other, jack shoves race off a lot when race is trying to convince him of something or bargain, but they hug tight in once and for all.

george’s jack feels young and full of life. he’s bright and mischievous and playful, definitely the newsies’ leader which is a role he fills very intentionally. he’s funny on purpose, rarely takes anything seriously, but he’s not particularly immature - he doesn’t whine like jeremy and michael do. he seems deeply, deeply sad - more sad than angry most of the time.

he’s a good fighter and unafraid of fighting - when he says the “newsies, get ‘em!” line before the big fight, it’s a pretty grim order, said rather than shouted, not big and loud and dramatic. he and davey immediately make eye contact and davey tries to bargain him out of the fight, reaching out to put a hand on his chest, visibly anxious. jack brushes him off and brushes past him easily and immediately, like the fight is an inevitability and he just wants to get into it. he does not care about himself.

everyone is violently protective of splasher. he’s the one who gets hit by the cop, and it’s after that that all hell truly breaks loose in the fight. also, splasher is wailing in pain after the hit and has to be all but carried away.

george sings santa fe like he’s actively having a panic attack.

jack is amazing with les. he picks him up a lot - more than is scripted - and is very physical with him, very affectionate.

jack is utterly heartbroken as he betrays everyone at the rally. he speaks like he can’t even stomach the words, and takes spot’s hit like he knows he deserves it. he doesn’t try to fight back or defend himself to anyone, he’s just crushed and hopeless.

spot and race chest bump.

matthew and george both play trauma fantastically. george’s jack goes directly into flight response when he sees snyder - he just runs. crutchie goes into freeze response when he sees snyder and seemingly dissociates.

25 june (morgan oscar)

oscar tossed a wet rag from the blackboard at morris, who flipped him off in response.

oscar stole morris’ hat and morris left the stage holding it rather than putting it back on.

morris climbs over one of the fire escape barriers like a ballerina - graceful, leg extended - and sits dangling on it. he clearly is not afraid of heights or at least doesn’t have much sense of danger. oscar stands close by, right behind him.

when everyone is scattering after the world will know, crutchie calls out “c’mon, les!” and waits for him, and les rushes to him beaming before davey calls out for les from the other side of the stage and they have to go the other way to all the other newsies. crutchie is very confused by this before he suddenly remembers, and leaves the stage scoffing, “folks.”

jojo and romeo bicker over who gets the water in jacobi’s. romeo grabs it and drinks most of it while jojo is complaining, and then finally gives it over for jojo to drink the rest.

mike knocked over someone’s water cup off the table and was giggling. and also did not pick it up, instead making the owner of the water - tommy or race, i think - dive under the table to do so.

as morris and oscar were leaving after soaking jack in the basement, oscar reached out for morris - who shoved him away harshly in the chest and kept walking.

9 july (jack bromage oscar)

finch openly laughs meanly with the others at davey after he apologises for being late. he turns around and jerks a thumb at davey and asks the others, “why’s he talkin’ to me?”

morris is Fast. considerably faster than oscar while they’re chasing jack. boy just Goes, with single-minded focus, leaving oscar several paces behind.

when medda shouts at jack and katherine in the theatre, it doesn’t occur to katherine until she notices jack apologising that it might be her that’s in trouble. she then scrambles to apologise too, like she’s never really been in trouble before.

morris is absolutely manic during the fight. he fights with no self-preservation or technique, just pure violence directed at anyone who gets close to him. he’s in a lot of pain, holding his ribs and panting and clenching his teeth, but doesn’t stop.

oscar and jack hate each other. the tension between them is incredibly deep-rooted and vicious, jack cajoles and mocks him and grins at him but there’s a tension beneath the casual facade. oscar is practically shaking with anger when he’s looking at jack.

when the delanceys are leaving the basement after soaking jack, oscar wrapped an arm around morris’ waist and pulled him close, and morris wrapped an arm around oscar’s shoulders in turn.

19 july

one of the nuns pulls the cigar out of race’s mouth, so he blows his mouthful of smoke in her face and laughs as he takes his cigar back.

jack tries to physically stop race from going and starting on oscar by putting himself between them, but race shoves past him, clearly with a bone to pick.

morris consistently punches harder than he can actually take. he’s always in visible pain after hitting anyone, shaking his knuckles out and wincing/grimacing.

morris and oscar briefly join hands and squeeze when wiesel separates them, but don’t hesitate or argue following the order.

jack holds tommy’s cross necklace and holds it up for him to see when he’s trying to convince him to join the strike. tommy is crying.

jojo openly and boldly argues with both delanceys during sales, and continues to shout after them even when they’re walking away.

at the rally, after jack shoves les to the ground, davey puts a hand on jack’s chest and helplessly begs him “stop” like he can’t believe that jack just did that. jack looks like he can’t believe it either.

during the finale, morris sat himself on the edge of the paper cart and lay back against the piles of papers. he pretty much went to sleep.

22 july (jack bromage morris)

crutchie prays in the morning while the other boys are getting ready - it seems like he’s doing the rosary, sat on one of the boxes.

one of the nuns tries to hold jack’s face and comfort him, but jack is the only one of the newsies to draw away. he is visibly incredibly uncomfortable, laughing awkwardly as she promises he’ll be saved and jesus loves him.

jojo throws himself forwards and says “me! i’ll take ‘em!” after davey rejects the papes jack bought for him. mike wrenches him back, rolling his eyes, and jojo looks confused.

crutchie proudly and slightly disbelievingly says “yes, davey!” as he starts finding his confidence during seize the day.

oscar sat himself on the edge of the paper cart, reclined back and spread out, smoking. morris sat down beside him, also smoking, but was drawn tight and fidgeting, swinging his legs. he did not even nearly touch the floor. oscar is so much bigger than him.

race is smoking as katherine enters jacobi’s and she grimaces as she has to walk through the smoke, trying to quickly fan it away from herself.

elmer looks through the drinks as they’re leaving jacobi’s and is disappointed to find them empty.

crutchie is lay in one of the overlooking boxes, watching as jack gets chased by snyder. he pulls out his rosary and prays, visibly panicking, looking utterly petrified for jack.

oscar just curls up on his side after being beaten by jack in their blackboard fight. it takes him A While to finally drag himself up and all but crawl offstage.

jojo got into a full-on fistfight with oscar during sales, though oscar was mostly just shoving jojo away, clearly unbothered by jojo’s attempts to hurt him.

david and katherine are stood together watching during king of new york, and both call out to les as he runs off to join the chaos. katherine calls “les! please stop—“ as he tries to vault the tables, but then bursts into laughter as she’s trying to be stern. davey looks like he’s ready to keel over.

morris couldn’t settle on how to stand in pulitzer’s office, fidgeting, until he finally glanced back and settled on an imitation of how oscar stands.

#there are a fair few shows i apparently did not save my notes for :’)#i’ll add em if i find em #uksies #uksies notes

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sea-owl · 1 year

Note

So, I know we bully the Bridgertons in the isekai au because the Spouses want nothing to do with them and reject all their attempts (which I find hilarious because I enjoy making them suffer)

But how do you think the Spouses would start falling in love with them? What are the things that make them "click" and see their respective Bridgerton in different lids?

So a big part of the change of perspective for the spouses is gonna back to two things. The first is the root between this divide between the two families, and that is Portia's fear for her family and the relationship she shares with Violet. Until that has some change in it, the spouses are almost guaranteed to be at arm's length from the Bridgertons. The champions for helping to solve that mess will be Lady Danbury and Mary. Though to be honest that's probably just a fun game for them or at least for Lady Danbury who lives for the drama and is the whole reason this started when she isekaied Portia.

The second thing is that the spouses have to learn to grow beyond the family and beyond the mothers. Now that is to say they don't love them and will always be there for the family. But part of growing up and moving forward is learning to move beyond your parents, which a part of that is starting a family of your own.

There are little things that help with that second part. Things that helped the spouses see beyond the Bridgertons public personas.

For Kathony it's when Kate sees Anthony not as the viscount but as the man who got thrown into a seat of power and essentially fatherhood before he was ready. She saw it when the siblings were playing pall mall, and she saw it again when she stumbled upon Anthony during a stormy night in the library. She was trying to find a distraction while he was letting himself have a vulnerable moment with some of his father's old things.

For Benophie, I want to say it's when Sophie discovers Benedict's sketches. You can see a lot of what the artist does in their work. There was such beauty in them it left Sophie stunned. Especially when she got to the sketches of herself. She never knew she could be so beautiful to someone.

Weirdly for Polin, I can see the change happening when Colin blows up on Penelope. Penelope recognizes Colin as a snake charmer. He uses pretty words, and while she loves pretty words, she thought there was nothing else. Then, one day, Colin caught her by surprise when he followed her doing some of her more illegal activities, and he blew up on her. It's not the fact that he was angry at her but the fact that he was angry because of his fear of her safety. The multi-level emotions she had never seen from him before were now there.

Saphne's change came when Daphne punched Simon and gave him a black eye. (He deserved it. Also, Simon has a strength kink, and no one is changing my mind on that) All the time Simon has known Daphne, she has been the model debutant. (We all know she has a body count in a literal sense, but he doesnt) This is the first time Simon gets to see more of the real Daphne.

Philoise happens right around the twins' birth. George died in war, leaving behind a pregnant and unwed Marina. Marina sadly passed in childbirth. Phillip adopts the twins, and Eloise, in a roundabout way, comes to his aid with parenting books or the closest thing to it in that time. The twins also take a liking to Eloise. We'll Phillip have to listen then, babies do generally have a good judge of character on who is safe.

Franchael happens around the time of John's death. Francesca, in this timeline, fell in love with Michael first but was still good friends with John. Michael, whose loyalties lied with his found family, still loved his cousin, and their relationship actually improved when Michael started living semipermantly with the Featheringtons. Mourning together over a loved one can bring people closer.

The babies really didn't have a big defining moment. They followed the older ones' leads when the two sides started getting friendlier, so did they. Being younger, they had more time to let things take a more or less natural course.

#bridgerton #villainess isekai au #isekai and yanderes au #what if everybody but violet remembered isekai au #what if spouses remembered isekai au #kathony #benophie #polin #saphne #philoise #franchael #violet x portia #portia x violet

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glass-needles-and-futurisms · 10 months

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I keep thinking back to Muse playing Survival at the closing ceremonies of the 2012 London Olympics, and I keep saying that one of these days I'm just gonna spew all my feelings about how it's not just one of my all-time favorite Muse moments, but also a hilarious, if perhaps unintentional, moment of social commentary.

I still remember our postgrad professor showing those same closing ceremonies in class, explaining the not-so-subtle propagandistic purpose the entire spectacle served on the global stage. (For those who don't know, the 2012 Olympics closing ceremonies were essentially a three-hour star-studded tribute to UK music and pop culture.)

Picture this: you just sat through about two hours of the UK's various national exports - One Direction, the Spice Girls, the Pet Shop Boys, George Michael, Ed Sheeran, Annie Lennox, erm, Russell Brand. You've just seen live performances of Bohemian Rhapsody, Imagine, Wonderwall, and Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, alongside tributes to David Bowie and Freddie Mercury. And you still have Queen, Take That and The Who to go after this.

youtube

Interestingly, that class glossed over what an afterthought the Muse performance felt like by comparison. You could argue a lot of extenuating circumstances: the controversial reception of Survival as the official London Olympics theme song, the infamous NBC debacle where it inadvertently got cut from the US broadcast of the ceremonies, or the simple fact that this far into the festivities, a fairly straightforward stage performance* by a band with slightly less name recognition than Coldplay was pretty underwhelming.

* Not sure if this is common knowledge, but apparently this performance was mostly playback with the exception of Matt's vocals. Which also makes this an underappreciated entry in the annals of Muse miming shenanigans.

youtube

But something becomes very apparent once you actually reach this part of the show: Survival is fucking bananas. I'll never forget that one internet commenter calling it the world's most epic villain song that doesn't know it's a villain song. I mean, just look at the lyrics:

Life's a race / and I am gonna win

And I'll light the fuse / and I'll never lose

And I choose to survive / whatever it takes

You won't pull ahead / I'll keep up the pace

And I'll reveal my strength / to the whole human race

This is how the song starts! You can sort of see the logic behind making it the Olympics theme song. And then it gets weirder from there:

Yes, I am prepared / to stay alive

I won't forgive / the vengeance is mine

And I won't give in / because I choose to thrive

Yeah, I'm gonna wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin

Good grief. No wonder it's called "Survival". The song makes slightly more sense in the thematic context of The 2nd Law, the album it was released on. But on its own it's just.... yeah.

And this performance ramps up the insanity even more by just taking the piss. Between Matt Bellamy peacocking in a sparkly suit and Union Jack t-shirt, the batshit guitar solo, the pyro, the backing choir, and the fact that everything onstage (including the grand piano) is pretty much just for show (and wobbling like mad), Survival feels cheesy and irreverent in a way that makes you suddenly hyper-conscious of how tightly orchestrated everything else you just saw (including the Monty Python and Mr. Bean stuff) was. Remember that this was all broadcast to an international audience of millions.

Pairing the sheer pageantry of the ceremonies thus far with the actual lyrics of Survival kinda puts everything in an uncomfortable new light. Then it dawns on you that you pretty much just watched an accidental three-hour love letter to British imperialism. (Okay maybe that's overselling it a bit but it's still pretty funny.)

#muse #muse band #survival #the 2nd law #matt bellamy #olympics #P.S. I can't help but wonder how Dom and Chris feel being accomplices to all this

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rickybaby · 2 years

Text

Daniel Joseph Ricciardo, you are the World Champion!

In which Daniel wins the Championship.

Warning: Pure, utterly complete delusion.

------------------------------------------------------------

February 2026, Bahrain

“Well, hello everyone. Cars, on track, for the first time this year! How good is that?!”

“So much to cover this afternoon” Ted Kravitz led his cameraman down the paddock as he fished his notes out of his pocket. “Right then, let’s start off with the talk of the paddock - the new Audi-Sauber team and their surprising new driver line-up!”

“It’s a bit of an interesting one, isn’t it? Daniel Ricciardo and Theo Pourchaire! Yep, the Honey Badger is back in F1 after three years out. Are we surprised that Audi went for Danny Ric? I mean it’s an easy choice if you’re looking for experience. Yes, his last season with McLaren had not been great, but I think he’s more than proved himself in the years away since then, hasn’t he?”

“He’s won Le Mans in 2023 and then went on to win the Indy500 just last year. And you know what that makes him? The only second driver to have ever won the triple crown of motorsport!” Ted stopped just outside the new Audi motor home. “Also he didn’t do too badly today as well.”

“He finished P6 on the timesheets, with his former teammate Max Verstappen in P1, followed by the merc boys - George and Lewis, Yuki Tsunoda in that second Red Bull and Charles Leclerc in his Ferrari. It’s not looking too bad for the Australian, is it? He may just be the one to look out for this season!”

“Now Pete, the Ferraris!” He gestured for his cameraman to follow him as he continued to move down the paddock “those were some interesting side pods we saw on the car …”

-l l-

Up in his driver’s room, Daniel Ricciardo felt as if his neck was about to snap into two. It was always painful to get back into the car after the winter break and even more so now, when he’d been out of the car for three years, but damn if he could stop himself from smiling.

“How was it out there today?” Michael asked as he applied the kinesio tape on Dan’s neck. “Good” he said, and just like in his interviews from earlier, he had to stop himself from gushing, had to be conservatively optimistic for fear of jinxing himself. Truth be told, he felt almost jubilant. Because this morning, when he’d sat in the car and drifted out of the garage, he’d felt that click with the car. The click he hadn’t felt since he’d left Red Bull. He might get criticised for this, but Daniel had never been the type of driver who’d get too technical. His driving style had always been more instinctive. He had to have that particular feeling in the car, that certainty that the car would do exactly what he expected it to do when he was throwing it around a corner at 300 kilometres per hour. He wasn’t naïve, he knew there were still kinks to work out, but he knew the pace was there because they’d been massively sandbagging this morning. He almost had to stop himself from declaring he was here to win the championship because he knew they might laugh him out of the paddock. But these people didn’t know the new Daniel, most still remembered the broken man that McLaren had left for dead.

For his sanity’s sake, Daniel rarely thought back to the season he lost his seat. It had happened to his teammates before but he’d never thought it would ever happen to him. Even after McLaren had essentially fired him, he’d still had hope he could turn his career around. He’d only lost hope when he had found out that Pierre got the Alpine seat while he was still in Australia before the Singaporean Grand Prix. From that moment on, he’d known his prospects for 2023 were pretty much non-existent, but still he’d flown to Singapore, did his media duties, played his usual happy-go-lucky guy role to perfection and all the while, he had been dying inside. And then he got P5 in that race, his best finish that season. He had people congratulating him and through it all, all he could think about was how far he had fallen. He used to be on the top step and now people were patting him on the shoulder for fucking P5.

That night, he’d gone back to his hotel room and looked at himself in the mirror, really looked at himself and he hadn’t recognised the man who’d looked back at him. He still loved the sport but he couldn’t see the Daniel who was passionate about racing, whether he came in first or last. He could only see a man who had been so concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other everyday for so long that he hadn’t realised he had reached the end of the road. He’d picked up the phone and dialled his mom even though he knew it was an ungodly hour in Australia. His mom had picked up on the first ring and she’d softly said his name. That string that had been holding him back finally snapped, and he’d cried, big gulping sobs, snot mixing with his hot tears. When he’d finally calmed down, his mom had quietly told him you know what you have to do. The next morning, he’d told Blake and Michael about his decision.

For the rest of the season, everyone and their mother had gone on and on about what a terrible decision he was making, that they couldn’t understand why he would take a step back. He hadn’t needed people to tell him the risk he was taking, he’d been well-aware of the odds of him ever making his way back on the grid. But he’d reached a point where he couldn’t go on, it had been more important for him to salvage whatever dignity he had left and leave before he started hating the sport. Sometimes, it took a lot more of bravery to accept defeat. So he’d left. He’d taken the time to find his smile again and then block by block, he’d slowly started to rebuild himself into a better, improved Daniel. And this Daniel was here to win.

-l l-

May 2026, Monaco

“Hello and welcome to the qualifying round of the 2026 Monaco Grand Prix. Join us as we watch the 20 drivers fight it out for pole position here. Martin, we all know how important qualifying is here. Who is your favourite for pole position here today?”

“Yes, Crofty. Qualifying in Monaco is always a special one. It really tests all the skills you need as an F1 driver. It should be an interesting fight for pole today. We can expect Max, Lewis and Charles to be bringing a good fight, but I believe we may be in for a surprising result in Daniel Ricciardo. He’s been on pole twice here before and with the season he’s been having since his comeback, I don’t think we can discount him from the fight.”

“Ah yes, Daniel Ricciardo. What a mega comeback it has been. He was in the top 5 in Bahrain and Saudi, and then he went on to win his home race! What an incredible weekend that was! I don’t think I’ve ever heard a crowd cheer so loud as he was making his way round that last corner at Albert Park before he took the chequered flag.”

“Definitely, his performances have been incredible. He did well in China and Baku as well, placing second in both of these races”

“If he continues with performances like that, I think he’ll have to lay off the shoey a bit. Surely, it wouldn’t be too good for his health if he does back-to-backs!”

Daniel knew these streets like the back of his hand. He could drive this track with his eyes closed. So far, he’d been P3 in both Q1 and Q2. There was 3 minutes left on the clock and he had to make this lap count. As he reached the end of his outlap, he briefly closed his eye, took a deep breath and relaxed his shoulders. He let his instincts take over. He almost felt like he was having an out-of-body experience, hovering over the car, watching as he hit the apex, anticipating where the racing line was even before he was taking that exit. He didn’t even need confirmation from his engineer to know pole was his. And the next day, as he took the chequered flag, he couldn’t help thinking that winning Monaco was even sweeter the second time around.

-l l-

September 2026, Monza

“Mate, zucchini on pizza sounds awful”

“Don’t diss it until you’ve tried it, Russell George” Daniel laughed, as they made their way to the truck for the driver’s parade. Daniel couldn’t really tell how his friendship with George had come about. They were vastly different people, but they’d always shared a mutual respect and then George had been one of the few people who had not hesitated to outwardly support him during that last year. And for that, Daniel would always be grateful. He got on the truck, fist-bumping all of the drivers. The Italian sun was shining and just like in 2021, he was starting in P2 just behind Max. Daniel was desperate to pull off the same start as he had the last time around. He badly wanted to win here again. His last Monza win would always be associated with McLaren and he wanted a Monza win that he could call just his.

Later on, as he stood on the highest step of the podium, head tipped back as Max poured the bottle of champagne over him, Daniel felt vindicated. Last time around, he’d cried on the podium, out of relief, out of happiness that he could give that win to his team. This time around, he felt like roaring, felt like banging on his chest. This more than anything felt like a big fuck you to McLaren. In the five years since that last victory, since McLaren had kicked him out, he’d won two of the most prestigious motor races in the world, had clawed his way back to F1, had won another six Grand Prix, had been on 10 podiums so far, while McLaren was still chasing that illusive next victory. He was still McLaren’s last winner. He sat down and unlaced his boots. He’d had his redemption, now it was time for his vindication.

-l l-

November 2026, Abu Dhabi

“Radio check, Daniel”

“Loud and clear”

“30s to the formation lap”

“25s…”

“10s …”

The tire blankets were removed, the car was lowered on its jack. His head mechanic gave him a slight nod. Good to go.

Daniel lowered the lid on his helmet, flexed his hand on the steering wheel. This was it. All or nothing. Last night, he’d been beating himself up for missing out on pole and for qualifying P3. Then this afternoon, as he walked into the paddock, Martin fucking Brundle had pushed his microphone into his face and had the gall to go on about how surprising it was that Daniel was even a name in the championship fight, how no one had expected that he would only be four points behind Max in the lead going into the final race. Daniel had wanted to snap that he had, that he’d come into this season with the full belief that he could win, but he’d put on his usual smile and gave his usual asinine answer.

That more than anything had fired him up. All throughout his career, people had always underestimated him, thinking he was no more than the joker he liked to play. He let that need to prove people wrong fuel him. He thought back to his win over Valterri in Silverstone during their junior years. He wasn’t meant to win that race, but then he had. It had been the same in China in 2018. Most of his wins had been outside of pole. The championship was still his to lose before it was even Max’s to win. He was Daniel Ricciardo, he could make the unexpected happen.

5 … 4 … 3 … 2 … breathe … 1 … lights out. It was time to go hunting.

“Good job, mate. You got Leclerc on the start. Up to P2. 54 laps to go. All to play for.”

Max wasn’t the kind of driver who would easily give in to mind games on track , but Daniel knew the only way he could win this was to force Max into making a mistake. For him, that was the fun in hunting - lulling your prey into complacency, slowly drawing blood before pouncing for the kill.

So, he waited. Lap after lap, he held on to Max, staying in his slipstream. They both built a gap to the rest of the grid, had their pitstops and yet Daniel did not make a move. His engineer kept feeding him information about tyre temperature, Max’s lap times and through all of it, he kept his eyes fixed to the back of Max’s car. Five laps to go. It was time to add a bit of pressure. He closed the gap to the car in front, his front tyres nearly kissing the rear of Max’s car. He stayed glued to Max’s gearbox as they went into the next turn. From then on, it was a game of cat and mouse. Daniel dove down the inside of Max, but Max firmly closed the door. Daniel weaved back and forth, never letting max forget of the danger he posed. He dove and recoiled. Daniel once again dove down the inside going into the next chicane, coming out of the exit side by side with Max. He knew that he wouldn’t have been able to make the move stick because Max had the racing line on that one, but he could feel Max’s nervousness. He had started driving more defensively, going over a couple meters of track he didn’t need to to fend Daniel off. Daniel could smell the blood in the water. Two laps to go. It was time to make his move. He did the classic switcheroo, diving down the inside before switching back, making the move stick by outbraking Max at the last second. They exited the corner with Max trying to come back at him, but Daniel kept a steady grip on the racing line, gradually pulling away.

Daniel knew the battle wasn’t over. Anything could happen in the last few corners. He tried to keep his heart rate down, kept his focus on the last lap ahead. Keep it together, don’t get cocky, he repeated to himself.

“Okay, Daniel. Last corner, last corner. Verstappen is 0.4s behind you. You’re going to make it, Daniel. We just need to keep it together. This is it, Daniel. This is it.”

“What a brilliant battle we’ve seen these last two laps. Max Verstappen has defended his first position valiantly, but there was no stopping this man, Daniel Ricciardo. And just like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the honey badger has come back to win his first world championship as he takes the checkered flag under the lights here in Abu Dhabi! He becomes the second driver only in history to have won the triple crown of motorsport and a Formula One championship! What an incredible achievement!”

Daniel could hear his team go wild over the radio as he crossed the finish line. His heart felt like it could burst from his chest at any moment, it was beating so furiously. The fireworks overhead blurred and sparkled through his tears and sweat running down his face. He’d spent so long chasing this dream, sacrificed so much to get to this moment that now that it was within his grasp, he couldn’t quite believe it. For the first time in his life, Daniel Ricciardo was speechless.

“Thanks boys. Thank you” Daniel’s voice cracked with emotion. He wasn’t even embarrassed that he was openly crying. He had fought too long for this, he deserved it. “Thanks for believing in me. I knew we could do it. We deserve it!”

He parked his car in parc fermé. Knees weak, he clambered up onto the halo and as a million flashbulbs went off, he beat on his chest. The honey badger was finally victorious.

Then, it was a blur of celebratory hugs and pats from his team, from the other drivers. Through it all, he remembered seeing his mom’s tear-stained face, his dad’s proud smile. On the podium, the Australian flag draped over his shoulders, head thrown back as he tried to stop himself from crying once again. Fucking hell, he’d done it. Then he was handed his trophy. He placed a soft kiss at her base, then he was lifting her up as the lights bounced off the silver.

Much later, Daniel walked into his driver’s room, still in a daze, shoeless, race suit drenched in sweat, tears and champagne. He looked at himself in the tiny mirror on his wall. The urge to both laugh and cry bubbled up inside of him. It was going to take sometime for it to really sink in for him. He dragged his hands over his face and up into his curls. Guess he could really say he never left this time around.

#daniel ricciardo #daniel ricciardo fanfic #f1 #f1 fanfic #f1 imagine

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darkmaga-retard · 17 days

Text

Trilateral Commission members have dominated the Department of State since its founding by Rockefeller and Brzezinski in 1973. No less than 11 out of 16 Secretaries of State, or almost seventy percent, hailed from its membership. Anthony Blinken is a member. They have all been traitors to America. Oh, let me count the ways (now in my 48th year!).

Henry A. Kissinger (1973-1977)

Cyrus Roberts Vance (1977-1980)

Edmund Sixtus Muskie (1980-1981)

Alexander Meigs Haig (1981-1982)

George Pratt Shultz (1982-1989)

James Addison Baker (1989-1992)

Lawrence Sidney Eagleburger (1992-1993)

Warren Minor Christopher (1993-1997)

Madeleine Korbel Albright (1997-2001)

Colin Luther Powell (2001-2005) (Closely associated with Rockefeller interests)

Condoleezza Rice (2005-2009)

Hillary Rodham Clinton (2009-2013) (Husband Bill Clinton was a member)

John Kerry (2013-2017) (Closely associated with Rockefeller interests)

Rex Wayne Tillerson (2017-2018) (Closely associated with Rockefeller interests)

Michael R. Pompeo (2018-2021)

Anthony Blinken (2021-present)

By posting this complete page straight off the STATE.GOV website (lest anybody tries to accuse me of skewing the issue) PLUS the recent video of Mike Benz, a former employee of the State Department, on the Tucker Carlson Show, you should be prepared to connect all the dots in the global war on free speech. Yes, globally.

The Department of State, working with Intel agencies like the CIA, FBI, DHS, and NSA, employs “tradecraft” to achieve its policies. Because the Trilateral Commission has global ambitions, it has to spread the war on free speech to every nation.

The rhetoric about maintaining democracies and democratic institutions is total gaslighting. They are destroying democracies, period. It’s time to throw these carpetbaggers out before they destroy the world! ⁃ Patrick Wood, TN Editor.

youtube

⁃ Patrick Wood, TN Editor. [/su_note]

FROM WWW.STATE.GOV

Democratic Roadmap: Building Civic Resilience to the Global Digital Information Manipulation Challenge

“For all of the challenges that these disruptive technologies present, no system of government is better equipped to drive the forces that they represent in improving our people’s lives than democracy. We excel at innovation. We’re nimble. We encourage a multiplicity of voices and perspectives to find solutions. We let the best ideas rise to the top, rather than assuming that the best ideas come from the top. We believe our people have a vital role to play in the ongoing process of making our system better, of fixing its flaws. We embrace vigorous and open debate within and across our democracies.” – Secretary Antony Blinken, The Second Summit for Democracy

Purpose

The United States is advancing a global response to tackle the information integrity challenge in ways that are consistent with democratic values, freedom of expression, and international human rights law. As part of that effort, the Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy (CDP) at the U.S. Department of State has developed a democratic roadmap for global policymakers, civil society, and the private sector to:

Step 1: Highlight the importance of the digital information manipulation challenge as a threat to the functionality and vitality of society.

Step 2: Recognize that building information integrity can be consistent with freedom of opinion and expression.

Step 3: Reinforce private sector digital platforms’ ability to strengthen civic resilience to promote information integrity.

Step 4: Prioritize efforts to address generative AI (GAI), particularly in the context of global 2024 elections.

Preamble

Democracy depends on open, free, public debate and consistent access to diverse sources of fact-based information. These features are essential for citizens to inform their opinions and exercise their human rights, including freedom of expression and freedom of peaceful assembly and association, and the right to vote. Citizens’ access to and trust in accurate information is necessary to effectively participate in open, democratic societies. The functionality and vitality of democratic societies, as well as the ability to address transnational challenges such as climate change and pandemics, depend on the integrity of the information realm.

An evolving lexicon has been developed to describe different dimensions of the information manipulation challenge – foreign information manipulation, including disinformation and propaganda, misinformation, and “fake news.” The essential problem all of these terms point to, but don’t fully capture, is that the erosion of trust and integrity in the digital information realm has become a threat to the future of democracy. While the term “disinformation” frequently is defined as false and intentionally misleading content, but is often used as shorthand for the entire spectrum of information challenges, we are using in this Roadmap the term “digital information manipulation” to capture the range of challenges related to the erosion of integrity in the digital information realm. In a rapidly evolving information ecosystem, the global response to digital information manipulation has not matched the gravity of the threat, and the consequences are playing out, very visibly, as a dimension of the democratic recession around the world.

Challenges to information integrity are not new, but digitization of the information realm has exponentially increased the speed, scale, and reach of all forms of misleading and manipulated content. Digital platforms have had a dramatic globalizing effect on the information realm and provided new modes of amplification. State and non-state actors alike now have the means and mechanisms to instantaneously manipulate civic discourse within communities and across borders, eroding the quality of the information citizens depend on to form opinions and voters use to make decisions in democratic societies around the world.

Many democracies are struggling to address the digital information manipulation challenge without falling into the trap of unintentionally undermining freedom of expression. Some nations have opted for content-based regulations that criminalize disinformation or manipulated content in ways that are not consistent with their international human rights law obligations regarding restrictions on freedom of expression.

Meanwhile authoritarian regimes leverage concerns about “disinformation” and “fake news” online as a guise when passing regulations intended to stifle political dissent and censor individuals, including human rights defenders. Some authoritarian states have embarked on a strategy to advance their global “discourse power,” including by exploiting global digital platforms.

New capacities to manipulate civic discourse across borders via global information platforms have exposed asymmetries between open societies and closed ones, where the digital information realm is closely controlled by the state. Democratic, rights-respecting governments will need a more sophisticated understanding of how to protect individuals’ freedom of expression online to showcase democratic resilience.

#Youtube

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