#If it were objectively real there would be zero question that something was badly wrong

[nobodysystem]

(guy extremely posting this shit at 2:15 pm voice) among the many many problems with our childhood we are somewhat upset by the framing that abuse is something that is premeditated and calculated and Abusers know what they’re doing always mostly, as always, because if this framework is real there is no word for what happened to us

[hey-hamlet]

BNHA AU Ideas: Genetics Prodigy

Also on AO3!

TL;DR:  

Quirks might be the coolest thing ever, but they aren't magic, they're genetic. So what's to stop one very stubborn quirkless prodigy from working out how to give himself some?

Ok so! Tech Genius!Izuku AUs are a thing, right? I love them to bits but my problem is I know nothing about tech so I can't write them, but what I do know is biology!

Biology/Genetics prodigy Izuku giving himself quirks!

Stays friends with Katsuki (They have a rough patch but they work through it), not sure if I want Izuku to fiddle with Katsuki's quirk or not - not sure if I'll make the quirk limit 1 or 2, but I've always headcanoned you can give more quirks to someone born quirkless, so Izuku will end up with a few

So, after the dawn of quirks, a lot of, if not all, genetic research stopped. Sure, tech marched onwards, but genetics became an even bigger taboo than it was before. Izuku is a little genius, and this his massive interest in quirks when he's told he’s quirkless? It's more of a “how do I change this” than a “can I change this”

Izuku has always been the smartest person Katsuki knows. They have a rough patch at the beginning where Katsuki is trying to claw this one thing he's better at Izuku than over his head, to make himself ‘better’ than izuku

People have always called the quirkless worthless. If he’s less than a quirkless kid, what does that make him? Izuku eventually manages to drag it out of him and tells him about all the things people did before the dawn of quirks. Katsuki changes his mind to instead believing that everyone else is stupid for thinking quirks are everything and is now very vocal about that. (He still loves his quirk though, as does Izuku.)

His first real trial is a bit of a silly one: he cures Katsuki’s lactose intolerance. They were both salty they couldn’t share their icecream.

Collection of quirks:

Bakugo:

Explosion

Fire Manipulation

Midoriya:

Telekinesis

Heal

Forcefield

Jump

I want Izuku to give himself a quirk aged like, 8, with bakugo there for the ride as a lab hand, and I want them to realise with mounting horror what they've managed to do

bakugo turning to izuku and whispering "how many quirks would it take to beat - be as strong as - all might?" and izuku just shrugs because he hadn't thought about that but what he's done could start a new breed of bioweapons

he knows enough about the brain to see that more than 2 quirks in a quirked persons body, or more than 4 in someone born quirkless would be seriously damaging, but he's really scared about what could happen if he did go over that limit.

he won't, but he's curious, and he feels a little sick because of it

Nezu catches wind of this baby bio genius, one of the red flags is the only recent research done into quirks was actually from the lab nezu was kept in, so when he sees someone digging into that research he's ready to rain hell down upon them

then he sees an 8-year old that gave himself a quirk and he's like "oh. son."

oh he also totally has a little collection of lab rats that he spoils to bits - he's careful not to give them any quirks that would hurt them / cause an ethical issue. mostly they just have colour changing and glowing quirks, one of them can photosynthesize

he's a very good boy and his little rat children love him

So, when one is as hopelessly heroic as Izuku, it tends to be hard to avoid ‘accidentally’ using your quirk in public. When you have a heal quirk? It’s basically impossible.

Healing quirks actually have a special provision under the vigilantism act, along with exemptions due to age, but when Izuku gets caught, the police don’t tell him that. They honestly just want to try and scare the kid straight because it was a ‘miracle’ (forcefield) that he didn’t get hit by the falling rubble.

So Naomasa is brought in, as usual for the Mustutafu area, and asks the basic questions: name, age, quirk. Izuku, being a genius but still like 8 and scared he's going to jail lies for the first two questions, and he doesn’t lie very well because the poor kid is chronically honest.

‘Um, my name is – Tsubasa! Yeah!.” “I’m 10!”

But the last question throws Naomasa for a loop. “What’s your quirk?” “I was born quirkless, I’ve got the x-ray to prove it.”

That wasn’t a lie. But he visibly used a quirk, they saw it happen. And Naomasa suddenly gets a terrible feeling, because there is only one person he knows that can take someone from quirkless to quirked.

“So you don’t have any quirk?” “No sir.” A lie. Fuck. He lets Izuku go because, despite the horror of a child caught in AFO’s clutches, he might be the most valuable lead they’ve ever had. So they keep an eye on him.

It doesn’t take long to see him using more than one quirk. The kid is creative and isn’t bad at disguising them as the same quirk, but using a forcefield to shield you and your friend from rain is visibly different from telekinetically doing the same, if you know what you’re looking for. And boy do Naomasa and All Might know what they’re looking for.

Their second heart attack comes from an absent “So have you been practising with flame manipulation?” “Of course, dipshit, I’m not lazy. We’ve gotta practise to become heroes, don’t we?” “I know, Kacchan! I’m just excited!”

They keep freaking out about it until they bring in Nezu. It takes him a week or so, but he quickly finds out whats going on. “So, I’m not sure if this is what you wanted to hear but: It’s not All for One,” general sighs of relief “But the child has worked out how to synthesize quirks.” PANICKED NOISES

I feel like izuku is def. the first to make a quirk suppressant chemical, which really interests overhaul. Unfortunately, so i assume he can counter than with something that could just speed up the metabolism to flush another chemical out and because aizawa's quirk binds to the quirk factor, he could just give himself a quirk that has a different biological mechanism - confusing the fuck out of everyone involved

Timeline of Izuku’s shenanigans

Katsuki: lactose intolerance cured, proof of concept – age 6

A very nice rat: Attraction of small objects, yes the rat used it and yes it was amazing because other rats counted as small objects – age 7

Izuku: Attraction of small objects – age 8 (Inko’s quirk)

Katsuki: Flame control, a portion of Hisashi’s quirk from Izuku’s genes – age 8

Izuku: Jump, from a detailed study about a quirked rabbit – age 8 (late)

Another very nice rat: given the ability to live to 10 years old. His name is Hermes – age 9

Izuku: Starts a medical degree – age 10

Izuku: Forcefield, partly from a study of a weak forcefield quirk from the beginning of quirks when genetic studies were less taboo, combined with some promoter sequences from Katsuki’s quirk – age 10

Izuku: Heal, something he’d been working on since the beginning, created without reference for a similar quirk, his masterpiece – age 13 (This quirk is not tied to the quirk factor and therefore can not be stopped by erasure or the quirk erasing bullets.)

Izuku: Finishes the medical degree – age 14

Katsuki tries to get him to write Dr. Midoriya on his application to UA but he refuses, sadly. Not that it matters, Nezu recognises the last name from some of the only quirk research since the lab he was kept in was shut down. He’s very interested about one of the boy’s earliest papers; a case study about a quirkless boy born to 2 4th generation quirked parents, and the conclusion he drew: it wasn’t possible. It doesn’t take a genius to work out the quirkless kid was Izuku himself.

Izuku and Katsuki walk to UA together, Uraraka still saves him from tripping, Katsuki was just laughing at his suffering. Izuku’s a little less awkward in this AU and actually manages to thank her. They all enter the hall together.

Izuku never exactly kicked him mumbling habit, Iida still tells him off. Katsuki is trying to fight the urge to fly down there and kick his ass. Not that they can see, but Uraraka is also glaring at Iida for being rude to the nice boy.

Iida tries to stop Izuku from saying hi to Uraraka but she blows straight past him, loudly thanking Izuku for stopping to say hi. She’s glaring at Iida, Izuku is blissfully ignorant of that. Iida feels like he's offended the wrong person.

The exam starts, Izuku jumps straight into the middle of the exam. His legs hurt but he's totally clear of the other test takers. He starts kicking butt. He yanks wires from ports, tears screws from joints, punches robots with forcefield protected fists, etc. He gets maybe 30 points like this.

All around him he can see people in danger, he throws up countless forcefields to protect his fellow test takers. The judges are impressed with the versatility of the quirk, All Might, even though he knows Izuku isn’t connected to AFO, is having a slight breakdown. Nezu is incredibly impressed. Izuku is flagging though, his forcefield quirk takes some serious energy when he doesn’t have much to spare.

The zero pointer is released. Uraraka is pinned, and, unlike canon, she isn’t unscathed. Her ankle is snapped under the rubble, her ribs are badly bruised. Izuku sees this happen and he just moves. He doesn’t trust his forcefield to hold enough weight, so he goes the other direction: brute force. Using his jump quirk, he rockets into the air, landing a solid, quirk enhanced kick to the face of the robot. As it teeters, he uses attraction of small objects on as many individual points as he can, flying over the back of the robots head. He lands with an impact that jars his teeth, just as the robot starts to tip backwards. He makes it to safety with seconds to spare.

He’s exhausted, so far into quirk exhaustion it isn’t funny, but he’s not done yet. He stumbles to Uraraka helps her lift the bolder off her broken ankle, and heals it. He collapses just as the test finishes, Uraraka catching him and keeping him safe from the last few bits of falling rubble. She’s so thrown by her healed ankle.

Recovery girl comes over, checking on Uraraka. She saw the injury on the cameras and felt bad for the poor girl, but when she gets over there’s nothing. Sure, there’s some blood, but under it all there isn’t even a single cut. Uraraka begs her to help the boy in her arms and she thinks she might know why. The boy looks half dead, likely quirk exhaustion. Still, she didn’t know anyone with a healing quirk was applying, normally Nezu would have told her.

[eb-byestelle]

A word about Kaname

From the first moment when I set up an account here, I was thinking about writing a text dedicated to Kaname. Initially, I expressed my opinion through debates, editions and analysis of small details. However, it's time to fulfill my original desire and write my own Kaname Kuran's analysis.

There are already interesting, insightful analyzes of Kaname. However, none of these texts is based mainly on the screen adaptation of manga. My journey with Vampire Knight began with the anime. That's where I saw Kaname for the first time and he immediately caught my attention. So I decided that it would be an interesting difference, especially because that's where he made such a big impression on me that remained inside of me forever. Therefore, I want to not only present my analysis, but also to prove how much the screen adaptation reveals. In the second part, I will complement the analysis with manga information and juxtapose with knowledge from anime.

I have to admit that at the beginning of watching the series I fell into the trap called "poor Zero". His endless, tangible despair was emphasized in each episode. However, at the same time I started to like Kaname. In a completely different way. I was charmed and fascinated by his person. I wondered how many intriguing elements are hidden inside of him. It was visible from the very beginning. Tenderness, intelligence, strength, but also weaknesses, loneliness and this kind of darkness, which gave rise to numerous questions about how it actually came into being in him.

Soon after, when the "fumes of suffering" spread around Zero subsided, I realized that I wasn't a fan of his character, but I only felt sorry for him. With time, compassion also disappeared when I saw how many opportunities for a better life Zero lost through his doubts and the lack of a distinct personality. Pity turned into indifference. From then on, Kaname mattered.

One of the things that intrigued me in him, were various kinds of contradictions. On the one hand, he teased a vampire on level D (Zero), on the other hand he cooperated with a human, what's more, a former hunter (Cross Kaien), while hunters are his natural enemies. He also seemed to be respectful of the hunters. In other words, he respected and helped someone who in theory was his enemy. What’s more, he trusted him completely in the matter of protecting the most precious person for him.

What's more, he treated badly only one vampire of level D. - As if he had a goal in this... - I thought. Then it turned out that he wanted to instil in Zero hatred of pure-blood vampires to he would kill Rido (based on knowledge from the second season. We know from the manga that it was not just about Rido.) This was confirmed by the Kaname's satisfaction of the Zero's big hatred for him. Who wants to someone else hate him? O.O Someone who has in this some purpose. What is the purpose of a person who treats humans with respect and can love as much as he loves Yuuki? The goal is obvious - the help the weakers and the protection of the loved one.

He felt a rage that Zero was hurting Yuuki and jealousy, seeing him with her, which made that the conflict with Zero in contrary to some opinions, for me looked quite funny. I felt like I would see two boys from elementary school, where one, seeing how the other is hitting on to his girlfriend, glues the rubber to his hair, and this other one for each time thoughtlessly lets himself be provokedand and in anger he throws the books in this first one ^^"

I began to wonder that if wouldn't be his plan and his feelings for Yuuki, Zero would be probably completely indifferent for him...

What's more, besides of Seiren, I didn't see him making for himself any other servants, while as a pureblood, he could easily create a whole army of faithful subjects. Based on the Seiren's submissive behavior, more humble than the others in relation to Kaname, I concluded that she must have been a vampire of lower rank, probably created by Kaname, and basing on his tenderness towards people, it probably happened due to some sudden circumstances. (VKM explained this situation in an interesting way, combining the facts from volume 10 - Hino, thank you that among so many hopeless chapters of VKM you gave us inter alia the chap. 4 xD)

On the one hand, he told others what to do. On the other hand, when Ichijou objected to him to protect Shiki, Kaname didn't use his vampire power of pure blood to control the will of Ichijou. He didn't do anything to him. He just respected his decision. Then, when Ichijou, (already as a theoretical traitor), offered to kill Asato Ichiou by himself, Kaname only patted his shoulder and went. And he never punished him. He always liked and respected him. 

The only person of the lower level from which he sometimes joked, was Aidou. Personally I have a feeling that apart from the Aidou's unruly character, who sometimes had to be "tame" (expecially that we talk about the vampire's world, where everything is even more dangerous and "unruly" behaviours are rather inadvisable) Kaname didn't respect in him that excessive, blind obedience. This is especially evident when they were a children and Kaname simply accepted the bitter words of Aidou, who initially didn't want to be friends with him. This, by the way, gave me reason to think about Kaname's self-esteem, because as we know, he didn't to Aidou anything wrong. They both just then met each other. I began to wonder if under the facade of self-confidence and always raised head there was a person who just despised herself. And if so, why?

What's more, none of the students of the night classes were intimidated by Kaname, nor were they offered any payment (I mean the two most popular ways to get someone's favors). It made that I saw it's not Kaname who is the real ruthless tyrant (although he knew for sure how to use a situation!) but they are these one who are blind to the principles instilled in them, which govern the world of the aristocracy.

I knew that his haughtiness was caused by inter alia from his social position. The high-ranking people or public figures in our world behave in a similar way. It's known that they are like this "on public", and different "in private", that's why his alleged "conceit" on public was nothing new to me. Especially when we see how humble and warm he can be in private, with Yuuki or in the past towards Juuri and Haruka. Because of the enormous power and high social position (basically the highest) he felt the burden of responsibility on himself, passing only the most important details to the others. This is visible when Aidou says that he wants to know more, on which Kaname says to Aidou not waste his life on this.

Another thing which impressed me exceptionally and which as a first draw my attention, was openness in terms of feelings. Quite often in anime/manga I see an annoying "smokescreens", games like from kindergarten, the escapes while most of series, excuses. Sometimes these "plays" are very cute, but how long? And why to behave like an idiot, don't respect a girl, or try to hide the own weakness... Meanwhile, in Kaname's case, we can see clearly what he feels for Yuuki. That he loves her, that he wants to be with her. In his feelings he is steady and determined. He's toward her nice, gallant, romantic, openly expresses feelings with words and gestures. Even when he hides something in front of her, he does it to protect her and move her away from worries. I admit that when I saw this, I felt a breeze of freshness, that after seeing so many infantile stories in other serieses I see a man who in an open and mature way offers the beloved girl his love.

Later I saw who he was before the tragedy with Rido. He loved Juuri and Haruka as if they were his real parents. Besides of this he didn't agree to Yuuki would be kept locked up. I also saw that he tried to destroy Rido by himself. When it turned out that it was impossible, he created a plan which not only gave him the highest probability of fulfilling his goal and saving his loved ones, what he couldn't do by himself. This plan also limited the number of victims to a minimum, focusing on one warrior with enormous power, which had the task of destroying the source of evil. The others were only supposed to "cover the rear".

I saw his weakness, deep sorrow and fear of losing Yuuki. It also moved me and gave me a food for thought...

I emphasize that all the time I am based only on anime.

Already there I've seen many elements of Kaname's personality worth attention. I was then so charmed by what I saw in the screen adaptation, that tbh, I felt that it's enough for me. Already then, I saw that he was a good friend, lover, brother, son, vampire. He had besides the most beautiful voice I’ve ever heard among seiyuus, but ok, it’s just btw ^^

Later, out of curiosity, I looked into the manga.

For a few obvious reasons, I'm happy that I did it. I obtained further valuable information about Kaname, including I discovered one of his greatest secrets - his age. This is very important information which changes many things. It must be included in the analysis, because in combination with his experiences it explains a lot of his behavior. Already in the anime series I knew that Kaname is the ancestor of vampires, i.e. he's not 18, as it seemed earlier. However, the information that he's 10,000 years old, makes us realize how deeply emotionally burned must be this old, tired vampire. It shows how much he had to survive, see, experience. It's unbelievable quantity of time... For some time he was so lonely that he even didn’t remember what’s his name. It's also a problematic element, because it makes it difficult to analyze the character of Kaname, i.e. someone older than any creatures known to us, even those from manga. What's more, he was born by the human while he was an immortal vampire. For these two reasons, it is different than all the vampires known in the VK universe (the another ancestors also had this second feature but none of them was so old). Fortunately, with a little deeper thought it's possible. Although still difficult ;3

What's more, it turned out that he already had once lost a close person, very suddenly and tragically, which explains his tendency to obsessions and anxiety and his fear that a loved one may be harmed or killed during his absence or temporary loss of control. Hence his possessiveness while some time.

I also got to know how much good things he did for others. Medicines for people from his own blood, help them in the collect crops, drinking blood only in a gentle way, without having to change people into his servants, help the hunters and others during the war, being one of those who initiated pacifism and living in peace. He was the first who tried to create a medicine which might to change a vampires into the humans, what is one of the evidences. He was also in a distant past the king of vampires, just and legendary to the level that Juuri and Haruka decided to named their first child by his name. (I attach a link to the post, where did the inspiration come from to mention this interesting detail, which is the giving a names in royal families >>Click<<) 

These events also prompted me to ask a question: Does Kaname in the depth of his heart dream about being a human? Not being condemned to endless life, painful vampire's  desires, lack of sun, a huge power that carries so much? I wrote about it during the post "Humanity”. >>Click<< Here I will only mention about it.

Next we see his boundless sacrifice because of his love to Yuuki, the sacrifice his own happiness, his own physical state (I mean discomfort because of the thirst for her blood), and his own morals. Seeing his personality, attitude and the fact that for the first 9995 years he was the definition of the word "kindness", it's ridiculous for me to say that giving Zero pain was for him completely indifferent all the time. I think that at the very beginning, while creating his plan, he felt bad and simply rejected his conscience for love and higher purposes, creating a paradox of "light and darkness" in which he started to be. If it were otherwise, the plan would bring to him a joy and satisfaction, while for real he felt doubt and self-loathing.

I was also moved by the fact that Kaname continued to help people, despite the fact that despite his previous help and goodness, they banished him because of who he was, calling him embodied blasphemy. I felt that I saw something similar before. Already in the arch 1, when Aidou rejected Kaname's friendship, and Kaname's reaction was not astonishment but the acceptance of this information, as if it was something even more correct, than if Aidou would accepted him. It's sad that someone so valuable had such a low self-esteem. What's more, his paradox of "light and shadow" deepened this state even more.

I began to ask myself why he had chosen such a way to achieve the goal instead of the previously chosen path or some other way. We already know what his purpose was. But why did he choose just this way of its realization?

Summing up his enslavement by Rido, the inability to total kill his enemy, an unique, bordering on absurdity the creature who are the hunters' twins, where one of them, thanks to the devouring of a part of the brother already in the womb, he made more powerful than other hunters, which is the most effective material on the killer, combined with the extreme long age of Kaname, and therefore also a big life experience, disappointments and internal burnout, I can confidently say that the way of achieving the goal was in his case created by one simple factor:

Lack of faith. And more specifically, the loss of faith over the years and the many experiences which led to this. Faith has been replaced by fear, despair and determination.

Everything he did in the past, before the situation with Rido, and what many of the characters of the series did, who, as we know, are young and hopeful, it was driven by faith, as evidenced by the fact that these are the actions more moral than effective. I.e. those one which don't give the same effectiveness as actions devoid of something what increases the possibility of defeat and is called "morality". The medicine is a good idea. But can it be done? How long will it take? How much damage will happen in the meantime? This is one of those plans that are not an ax that cuts through, but a subtle step forward, not knowing whether the goal will be achieved, and even if yes, it's not known when and what will happen during this time. While the plan to annihilate Rido and other pureblood vampires with someone's hands, though not very ethical, was the most effective.

It's the style of action of a person who has lost faith and puts forward the most radical steps, at which the margin of error is as small as possible.

As we know, pureblood vampires have for thousands of years preyed on the weaker, giving in to the instincts. After years, not much changed. Ex-humans continue to walk on the Earth, and purebloods after the overthrow of the corrupt council and hence, after losing the „brakes”, became even more dangerous. It comes to some kind of generalization that these creatures are a source of danger, because if in case of vampires' lower-level the people are able to simply win with them by anti-vampire weapons, in case of the pureblood vampires, they are on powerful enough that the weapon itself turns out to be not enough.

There are more an examples like this. Let Yuuki, who is still inexperienced, go outside, where there are swarms of enemies, which raises the level of danger that she will be killed or wounded, expecially in that "dangerous" year? Or to bet on effectiveness and not let her go out? After killing the council and taking control by a Kaname, other pureblood vampires started to plotting something secretly. Kaito one time mentioned about that. The evidence was visible at the vampire banquet, and the worry about Yuuki's life was justified already on the same day when Yuuki went outside. Kaname told her directly that he would do everything to Yuuki could go outside again. He knew, however, that he could allow it only when the danger would be as small as possible. Otherwise, he could rely almost exclusively on the aforementioned faith. Especially, that in the main series Yuuki was the opposite of the word "cautious" (fortunately in VKM it has changed).

I emphasized the killing of Rido, because it's possible you could have noticed that Kaname fueled the most in Zero the hatred to vampires during the plan associated with Rido in arc 1. After his death, Kaname, even though he still wanted Zero to kill all pureblood vampires, no longer he was so involved in manipulation and after some time he took matters into his own hands. This is imo an interesting detail that shows Kaname's independence, which he has previously shown through thousands years of struggle for survival in the world just after climate changes. This is also another proof that this loss of faith was what caused such a radical system of action, which I personally called the " extreme/last resort", chosen at the end of the journey, when the previous methods didn't work.

Even in case of fact he and Yuuki love each other, Kaname has lost faith that he is able to make her happy although, as we know, Yuuki was happy thanks to him a lot of times, she was ready for a relationship and she wanted to start everything once again. Besides it was also the effect of the previously mentioned low self-esteem. Seeing him as an old, tired vampire and her as an inexperienced teenager, I see some sense in this, nonetheless still seeing how great love connects them, I believe that it could have been avoided. But... after all, this is story from the type of the goddamn romantic tragedy xp However, I think that if Kaname was with Yuuki now, when they both tasted a long vampire life and a full of sun human life, I see even more potential than in the main series! But I have already talked about this on the occasion of another post ;)

Better define the matter of his, as we say, "gray" morality, it would be an absolute mistake to regard him as a villain or antagonist, i.e. a person "black" morally. For the informations for these „less informed” - He's not! Mentioned in the first part the higher goals, protection of the weaker, of the beloved girl, everything this is beautiful, noble, magnanimous. Nobody should forget about all of this, trying to understand this character. Only he also wasn't a "white" moraly person. Because who is? This is one of the many aspects that makes us see how complex the charakter of Kaname is.

Regarding his relationship with Yuuki and some single elements which have aroused controversy, I have already explained many of these behaviors. These so-called "abuse" are really the kind of overprotection which is the result of the factors discussed and has nothing to do with the cruelty. Hovewer I decided, that it's worth mentioning the famous sentence in which Kaname says that if he and Yuuki are separated, or he will kill her (which we know, that would never happen, so I don't know how idiotic someone has to be to believe it) or let her kill him. I case of these ones who say that these words are something bad - How many romances these people have seen in their life? Especially those where love is such a huge and twisted that almost crazy? Please... Such a sad texts in the style of :"If you leave me, I will die.", are in so many romances that it's just surprises me that someones are still surprised by this. This is in movies etc. one of the most popular expressions of love so deep and crazy that a person just cannot imagine life without a beloved and prefers to die than to be far away from a loved one.

Generally, in term of the knowledge from manga about Kaname, I have undoubtedly seen there its cumulating, widening wounds, suffering, weakness and burnout, through which his mental condition deteriorated significantly, resulting a wobbly attitudes and behaviors. I especially see this in comparison with the behavior of the "present" human Kaname without those traumatic memories. 

I also saw, how much Yuuki and Kaname love and desire each other. Almost to the madness. The romantic scenes of these two have undoubtedly aroused my fascination. Among the various romances in the world of manga and anime, which I have seen so far, this couple is for me an intriguing difference.

At the end of the series Kaname changed the method of operation to the method of cooperation and sacrificed himself for the others, which once again proved his inner chivalry and devotion. Where did this sudden change of decision come from? I think, besides the absurd, which will be for me ridiculous probably forever, ie. that the furnance started to cool down just then, and Kaname as the most powerful vampire and protoplast, was the perfect material for a new weapon, came to the fore his gentle heart, which despite the "ash" that settled on it, still beat in his chest and could love more than ever. Kaname, regardless of the form of realisation the goal, wanted to die and he wanted to do it for the sake of Yuuki and the weaker. Appeared the opportunity, to instead of still getting own hands dirty, fulfil the goal in a more subtle way and renew the belief that even not fully effective actions are able to produce results. As we see in VKM, the lower effectiveness makes the enemies are still lurking, the danger is still big. But Kaname's wish to end the endless journey in the name of who and what he loved and wanted to protect, was fulfilled. What is beautiful - his hidden wish of being human too.

However, there are reasons why, despite so much valuable information, I'm partially discomforted because of the fact that I looked into the manga. I saw that the continuation is heading for something that, although it's still deep and moving, becomes more and more forced and overly dramatic. So dramatic that almost preposterous...

After volume 10, the plot became much more complicated, and at the same time, paradoxically devoid of the important details which we got in less complex arc 1 (regarding arc 1 ofc), which is imo a lack of respect for each character and the overall potential of the series.

Manga also turned out to be much more bothering. There appeared some single moments which became a "stodge" for the Kaname's anti-fans, whose immediately caught it, removed from the context and deprive a sense. While a story is not just single moments. They are part of a larger whole, which is accompanied by numerous elements and sources of their creation. While with the aforementioned more quanity of informations and explanations, more explicit statements, this could have been avoided, or at least reduced. Now VKM tries to fix these "shortcomings" and slowly closes the mouth of these the more embittered, showing Kaname in a very good light, highlighting the elements of his personality, which should have been even more highlighted already in the main series. This is a big plus for this addition, but it's hard not to notice that the first seed was sown.

It's interesting that the season 3 has never created. The plot of the first two seasons, ie. the first 9 volumes, I liked it the most (volume 10 was published after the anime, and was a bit filler, but for the chap 48 it's worth reading ;3). Some minor modifications in the anime, like changing the ending, subtracting certain scenes, adding others. It all showed me how good this series is able to look like, when someone new will come and manage to fix this and that. (Maybe besides of cutting the fight with Rido, which was however much better in the manga). I think it was one of the reasons why the season 3 was never created. The quanity of mistakes which Hino did after the volume 10 is really difficult to fix.

As we see, the anime shows many Kaname's features. Manga is also an important supplement, especially if someone besides of the general outline wants to really explore this special character. In anime we can also see how he moves, what voice's intonation he has. This is also very important to judge someone properly. In terms of perceiving anime, the opinions are divided, some people are delighted, others not. For me, generally the anime was a a little bit reworked copy of the manga, so I don't see much difference in the reception of this character. Music also did a lot, beautifully fitting into and emphasize the pop-gothic, melancholy climate of the series. However, I don't hide that I have always lamented that in terms of graphics (and a bit in term of animaction), the anime is limping against the absolutely resplendent drawing we see in the manga. 

There is a theory that a popular series known elsewhere, gained popularity not only because of the excellent, immersive story, but also thanks to the so-called. "Shinkai's clouds", in other words, thanks to unbelievable care for graphics and animation. In case of VK, this aspect has been seriously neglected. Believe or not, but these small details really important and give a lot! I think that if the anime were drawn as fabulously as a manga, with a fluent, refined animation, in combination with the other elements that we already know, it would be something really spectacular, and the reception of the characters and the whole screen adaptation of VK would be even better.

I suppose that person who would make the best analysis of Kaname, would be his “creator”, ie. Matsuri Hino. From my side I tried to do my best to make this analysis as insightful as possible, on the occasion also evaluating the elements of the manga and its adaptation. I hope you enjoyed!

[hope-isgood]

Hey guys. I’m having a pretty rough time... Can you help me take my mind off of things and send me some ask or questions? Hers’s a list of what you might ask if you don’t have any ideas. I’ll appreciate any kind of ask 📨❤

1. What weird food combinations do you really enjoy?

2. What social stigma does society need to get over?

3. What food have you never eaten but would really like to try?

4. What’s something you really resent paying for?

5. What would a world populated by clones of you be like?

6. Do you think that aliens exist?

7. What are you currently worried about?

8. Where are some unusual places you’ve been?

9. Where do you get your news?

10. What are some red flags to watch out for in daily life?

11. What movie can you watch over and over without ever getting tired of?

12. When you are old, what do you think children will ask you to tell stories about?

13. If you could switch two movie characters, what switch would lead to the most inappropriate movies?

14. What inanimate object would be the most annoying if it played loud upbeat music while being used?

15. When did something start out badly for you but in the end, it was great?

16. How would your country change if everyone, regardless of age, could vote?

17. What animal would be cutest if scaled down to the size of a cat?

18. If your job gave you a surprise three day paid break to rest and recuperate, what would you do with those three days?

19. What’s wrong but sounds right?

20. What’s the most epic way you’ve seen someone quit or be fired?

21. If you couldn’t be convicted of any one type of crime, what criminal charge would you like to be immune to?

22. What’s something that will always be in fashion, no matter how much time passes?

23. What actors or actresses play the same character in almost every movie or show they do?

24. In the past people were buried with the items they would need in the afterlife, what would you want buried with you so you could use it in the afterlife?

25. What’s the best / worst practical joke that you’ve played on someone or that was played on you?

26. Who do you go out of your way to be nice to?

27. Where do you get most of the decorations for your home?

28. What food is delicious but a pain to eat?

29. Who was your craziest / most interesting teacher

30. What “old person” things do you do?

31. What was the last photo you took?

32. What is the most amazing slow motion video you’ve seen?

33. Which celebrity do you think is the most down to earth?

34. What would be the worst thing to hear as you are going under anesthesia before heart surgery?

35. What’s the spiciest thing you’ve ever eaten?

36. What’s the most expensive thing you’ve broken?

37. What obstacles would be included in the World’s most amazing obstacle course?

38. What makes you roll your eyes every time you hear it?

39. What do you think you are much better at than you actually are?

40. Should kidneys be able to be bought and sold?

41. What’s the most creative use of emojis you’ve ever seen?

42. When was the last time you got to tell someone “I told you so.”?

43. What riddles do you know?

44. What’s your cure for hiccups?

45. What invention doesn’t get a lot of love, but has greatly improved the world?

46. What’s the most interesting building you’ve ever seen or been in?

47. What mythical creature do you wish actually existed?

48. What are your most important rules when going on a date?

49. How do you judge a person?

50. If someone narrated your life, who would you want to be the narrator?

51. What was the most unsettling film you’ve seen?

52. What unethical experiment would have the biggest positive impact on society as a whole?

53. When was the last time you were snooping, and found something you wish you hadn’t?

54. Which celebrity or band has the worst fan base?

55. What are you interested in that most people aren’t?

56. If you were given a PhD degree, but had no more knowledge of the subject of the degree besides what you have now, what degree would you want to be given to you?

57. What smartphone feature would you actually be excited for a company to implement?

58. What’s something people don’t worry about but really should?

59. What movie quotes do you use on a regular basis?

60. Do you think that children born today will have better or worse lives than their parents?

61. What’s the funniest joke you know by heart?

62. When was the last time you felt you had a new lease on life?

63. What’s the funniest actual name you’ve heard of someone having?

64. Which charity or charitable cause is most deserving of money?

65. What TV show character would it be the most fun to change places with for a week?

66. What was cool when you were young but isn’t cool now?

67. If you were moving to another country, but could only pack one carry-on sized bag, what would you pack?

68. What’s the most ironic thing you’ve seen happen?

69. If magic was real, what spell would you try to learn first?

70. If you were a ghost and could possess people, what would you make them do?

71. What goal do you think humanity is not focused enough on achieving?

72. What problem are you currently grappling with?

73. What character in a movie could have been great, but the actor they cast didn’t fit the role?

74. What game have you spent the most hours playing?

75. What’s the most comfortable bed or chair you’ve ever been in?

76. What’s the craziest conversation you’ve overheard?

77. What’s the hardest you’ve ever worked?

78. What movie, picture, or video always makes you laugh no matter how often you watch it?

79. What artist or band do you always recommend when someone asks for a music recommendation?

80. If you could have an all-expenses paid trip to see any famous world monument, which monument would you choose?

81. If animals could talk, which animal would be the most annoying?

82. What’s the most addicted to a game you’ve ever been?

83. What’s the coldest you’ve ever been?

84. Which protagonist from a book or movie would make the worst roommate?

85. Do you eat food that’s past its expiration date if it still smells and looks fine?

86. What’s the most ridiculous thing you have bought?

87. What’s the funniest comedy skit you’ve seen?

88. What’s the most depressing meal you’ve eaten?

89. What tips or tricks have you picked up from your job / jobs?

90. What outdoor activity haven’t you tried, but would like to?

91. What songs hit you with a wave of nostalgia every time you hear them?

92. What’s the worst backhanded compliment you could give someone?

93. What’s the most interesting documentary you’ve ever watched?

94. What was the last song you sung along to?

95. What’s the funniest thing you’ve done or had happen while your mind was wandering?

96. What app can you not believe someone hasn’t made yet?

97. When was the last time you face palmed?

98. If you were given five million dollars to open a small museum, what kind of museum would you create?

99. Which of your vices or bad habits would be the hardest to give up?

100. What really needs to be modernized?

101. When was the last time you slept more than nine hours?

102. How comfortable are you speaking in front of large groups of people?

103. What’s your worst example of procrastination?

104. Who has zero filter between their brain and mouth?

105. What was your most recent lie?

106. When was the last time you immediately regretted something you said?

107. What would be the best thing you could reasonably expect to find in a cave?

108. What did you think was going to be amazing but turned out to be horrible?

109. What bit of trivia do you know that is very interesting but also very useless?

110. What’s the silliest thing you’ve seen someone get upset about?

111. What animal or plant do you think should be renamed?

112. What was the best thing that happened to you today?

113. As a child, what did you think would be awesome about being an adult, but isn’t as awesome as you thought it would be?

114. When’s censorship warranted?

115. What’s the most boring super hero you can come up with?

116. What would be some of the downsides of certain superpowers?

117. What word is a lot of fun to say?

118. What current trend do you hope will go on for a long time?

119. What actors or actresses can’t play a different character because they played their most famous character too well?

120. Where’s your go to restaurant for amazing food?

121. What’s something that all your friends agree on?

122. What’s your best story from a wedding?

123. What languages do you wish you could speak?

124. What’s the most pleasant sounding accent?

125. What’s something that everyone, absolutely everyone, in the entire world can agree on?

126. What country is the strangest?

127. What’s the funniest word in the English language?

128. What’s some insider knowledge that only people in your line of work have?

129. Who do you wish you could get back into contact with?

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130. How do you make yourself sleep when you can’t seem to get to sleep?

131. If people receive a purple heart for bravery, what would other color hearts represent?

132. What are some of the best vacations you’ve had?

133. If there was a book of commandments for the modern world, what would some of the rules be?

134. What’s the craziest video you’ve ever seen?

135. What’s your “Back in my day, we…”?

136. If you could know the truth behind every conspiracy, but you would instantly die if you hinted that you knew the truth, would you want to know?

137. What animal would be the most terrifying if it could speak?

138. What’s the worst hairstyle you’ve ever had?

139. What habit do you have now that you wish you started much earlier?

140. If you were given one thousand acres of land that you didn’t need to pay taxes on but couldn’t sell, what would you do with it?

141. What about the opposite sex confuses you the most?

142. When was the last time you yelled at someone?

143. What’s the opposite of a koala?

144. What kinds of things do you like to cook or are good at cooking?

145. What life skills are rarely taught but extremely useful?

146. What movie universe would be the worst to live out your life in?

147. If you could hack into any one computer, which computer would you choose?

148. Who do you feel like you know even though you’ve never met them?

149. What’s the most ridiculous animal on the planet?

150. What’s the worst thing you’ve eaten out of politeness?

[orbemnews]

Analysis: Nikki Haley just *totally* flip-flopped on Donald Trump's 2024 candidacy “I would not run if President Trump ran, and I would talk to him about it,” Haley said in response to a question from The Associated Press during a news conference at South Carolina State University when asked if she would support another White House bid from Trump. “That’s something that we will have a conversation about, at some point.” Asked whether she would support Trump if he ran again, Haley responded simply “yes.” That represents a MASSIVE shift from what Haley was saying about Trump — and his future in politics — just a few months ago. “We need to acknowledge he let us down. He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again.” Haley told Politico’s Tim Alberta in February. She added of Trump: “He’s not going to run for federal office again. … I don’t think he’s going to be in the picture. I don’t think he can. He’s fallen so far.” Which is different than what she said on Monday! Like, a lot different! So, what changed? Let me walk you through my theory. Haley talked to Alberta — blasting Trump and predicting that he would never run again for office — in January, with the images of the January 6 US Capitol riot very much top-of-mind. (Alberta’s piece was based on a series of interviews with Haley over several months and didn’t come out until early February.) Haley was, I believe, genuinely outraged over Trump’s behavior on January 6. The day after the riot, Haley said this in a keynote address to the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting in Florida: “President Trump has not always chosen the right words. He was wrong with his words in Charlottesville, and I told him so at the time. He was badly wrong with his words yesterday. And it wasn’t just his words. His actions since Election Day will be judged harshly by history.” There was also political calculation on Haley’s part. Trump was being blasted in almost every corner of the country for inciting the crowd on January 6 and then waiting to call them off. There were real questions as to whether this — finally — would be the breaking point for Republicans with Trump. So Haley made a bit of a gamble. She went on record distancing herself with Trump, so that if the January 6 riot did destroy any future for him in politics, she would not be dragged down with him. Of course, with three months of hindsight, we know that isn’t the way things played out. Almost 150 Republicans — 139 House members and eight senators — voted to object to the Electoral College results in Pennsylvania or Arizona. (Those votes happened the same day of the riot.) Politicians — like Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks and Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley — became heroes among Trump conservatives for their ongoing (and fact-free) opposition to the 2020 election. Trump doubled down on his ridiculous rhetoric — and saw his base follow right along with him. (In a Quinnipiac University national poll in February, 76% of Republicans said that there was “widespread fraud in the 2020 election” despite zero evidence for that claim.) Taken as a whole, what the last few months have proven is that Trump (and Trumpism) isn’t going anywhere — January 6 or not. In fact, there’s already been considerable re-writing of history of that day by Trump allies to somehow suggest the rioters were peaceful (they were not) or that the violence was stoked by Antifa activists (it was not). Which brings us to Monday and Haley. Given that January 6 didn’t ruin Trump, Haley needed to recalibrate her relationship to the former President. She couldn’t have the last thing she said about him be that he has “fallen so far” and that he couldn’t possibly run for president again. That would put her far out of step with the GOP base. And that is no place to be for a candidate who wants to run for president. Here’s Haley’s calculation: If Trump does run again in 2024, he will be nearly impossible to beat because of his immense popularity within the GOP. If he doesn’t run again, then she will need to have Trump (or at least the Trump base) on her side. And in order for that to happen, she had to make nice with Trump. And that’s what she tried to do on Monday. Source link Orbem News #Analysis #candidacy #Donald #flipflopped #Haley #Nikki #NikkiHaleyjust*totally*flip-floppedonDonaldTrump's2024candidacy-CNNPolitics #Politics #totally #Trumps

[dipulb3]

Analysis: Nikki Haley just *totally* flip-flopped on Donald Trump's 2024 candidacy

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/analysis-nikki-haley-just-totally-flip-flopped-on-donald-trumps-2024-candidacy/

Analysis: Nikki Haley just *totally* flip-flopped on Donald Trump's 2024 candidacy

“I would not run if President Trump ran, and I would talk to him about it,” Haley said in response to a question from The Associated Press during a news conference at South Carolina State University when asked if she would support another White House bid from Trump. “That’s something that we will have a conversation about, at some point.”

Asked whether she would support Trump if he ran again, Haley responded simply “yes.”

That represents a MASSIVE shift from what Haley was saying about Trump — and his future in politics — just a few months ago.

“We need to acknowledge he let us down. He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again.” Haley told Politico’s Tim Alberta in February. She added of Trump: “He’s not going to run for federal office again. … I don’t think he’s going to be in the picture. I don’t think he can. He’s fallen so far.”

Which is different than what she said on Monday! Like, a lot different!

So, what changed? Let me walk you through my theory.

Haley talked to Alberta — blasting Trump and predicting that he would never run again for office — in January, with the images of the January 6 US Capitol riot very much top-of-mind. (Alberta’s piece was based on a series of interviews with Haley over several months and didn’t come out until early February.)

Haley was, I believe, genuinely outraged over Trump’s behavior on January 6. The day after the riot, Haley said this in a keynote address to the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting in Florida:

“President Trump has not always chosen the right words. He was wrong with his words in Charlottesville, and I told him so at the time. He was badly wrong with his words yesterday. And it wasn’t just his words. His actions since Election Day will be judged harshly by history.”

There was also political calculation on Haley’s part. Trump was being blasted in almost every corner of the country for inciting the crowd on January 6 and then waiting to call them off. There were real questions as to whether this — finally — would be the breaking point for Republicans with Trump.

So Haley made a bit of a gamble. She went on record distancing herself with Trump, so that if the January 6 riot did destroy any future for him in politics, she would not be dragged down with him.

Of course, with three months of hindsight, we know that isn’t the way things played out. Almost 150 Republicans — 139 House members and eight senators — voted to object to the Electoral College results in Pennsylvania or Arizona. (Those votes happened the same day of the riot.) Politicians — like Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks and Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley — became heroes among Trump conservatives for their ongoing (and fact-free) opposition to the 2020 election. Trump doubled down on his ridiculous rhetoric — and saw his base follow right along with him. (In a Quinnipiac University national poll in February, 76% of Republicans said that there was “widespread fraud in the 2020 election” despite zero evidence for that claim.)

Taken as a whole, what the last few months have proven is that Trump (and Trumpism) isn’t going anywhere — January 6 or not. In fact, there’s already been considerable re-writing of history of that day by Trump allies to somehow suggest the rioters were peaceful (they were not) or that the violence was stoked by Antifa activists (it was not).

Which brings us to Monday and Haley. Given that January 6 didn’t ruin Trump, Haley needed to recalibrate her relationship to the former President. She couldn’t have the last thing she said about him be that he has “fallen so far” and that he couldn’t possibly run for president again. That would put her far out of step with the GOP base. And that is no place to be for a candidate who wants to run for president.

Here’s Haley’s calculation: If Trump does run again in 2024, he will be nearly impossible to beat because of his immense popularity within the GOP. If he doesn’t run again, then she will need to have Trump (or at least the Trump base) on her side. And in order for that to happen, she had to make nice with Trump. And that’s what she tried to do on Monday.

[brucefree-blog]

In response to a video on the newearth channel concerning flat earth the psy-op debate.

The original video is here: https://youtu.be/5cZH4LUHRec

All children naturally develop a flat earth conception. And with flat earth I mean, a flat realm. That is nature. Nature is always right. Natural understanding is different from scientific mechanical knowledge. Do you know how to digest food? Do you need the right certain thoughts to make it happen? Science may think it understands digestion, but your body actually does it. Nature is not a machine. It requires a different understanding to connect with it. We do not need a model of digestion to digest or to digest better. That is not how nature works. In the past, people could see which plants were poisonous and which not. They did not have to perform a test for each plant, have many casulties etc, and compile a corpus of knowledge to pass on. That is an absurd form of life that only came about when people lost their natural knowledge. Now we are blind and deaf, and our only way to understand is to measure with machines and reason mechanically. But let me tell you, this is absolutely not the way to understand Earth. The true nature of our life, earth, the heavenly bodies, is behond the grasp of mechanical thinking and Measuring. The problem starts already with light. What is it? Nobody knows. The whole physical sciences have zero understanding about anything. Our technological progress is not built on the understanding of nature, just the oppsite, on understanding robots and mechanics. Technology is developed through trial and error. It is the progress of how to manipulate substances, not how to understand them. We can understand something wrong, yet achieve success in an experiment. You think there is only a problem with the historical sciences? The whole basis of science is a problem. It is easier to focus on one thing, like history, but that is a reductionistic approach of science which leads away from natural understanding where everything is a whole. There will not come experiments to show us the true shape of the earth. It does not exist on that level. I understand it to be a flower, floating on the cosmic sea. But this cannot be measured. Can you measure your love for someone? The essence of life lies outside mechanical thinking. Since mechanical thinking is a fairly recent developmznt, look around you how it is destroying life quickly, we can be sure that the mechanical spherical model of earth and heavenly bodies is recent as well. The vedas talk about planes of existence, which you can deduce yourself that they exist. It was common knowledge not so long ago that there were multiple realms in which you existed as well. In your dreams, real dreams are rare these days of course, you can sometimes visit these other levels. They contain parts of you that know more and have memories that go far back. It is through such dreams that I learnd without any youtube flat earth knowledge or involvement, that the whole spherical model is a lie. This whole video is a big disappointment and on a very low spiritual level. It is even badly researched in that respect. If we could see the curve from a plane, there would exist no debate concerning the curve. I and countless others have never seen a curve from a plane. According to calculations, you should not even be able to see it from a commercial plane. To focus on the physical level of the debate is already a mistake, but then to take this worst of examples, just shows you cannot deal with this topic in a proper manner. Hours are spent to dwell on rocks and stones on this channel, but to the nature of the earth itself, 10 minutes should be enough? Is that an honest contribution? And then, you burden the so-called flat earthers, a creation by the evil ones, that they have to come up with new experiments to form a scientific sound new model of the earth. Aha, so it is up to others to figure it out? Is that it? You have nothing to do with this? So much for the newEarth Channel. There are no flat earthers. These are artificial groups created by the system, and you play the chess game along with it. By your logic, you should provide us with a complete alternative history with all the necessary proof. This is corrupt thinking. We can question a model without having an alternative. Too much knowledge has been lost on all levels. We start by questioning the status quo the system gives us. It is not because we know something is a lie, that we know what is true. The whole flat earth debate is meaningless as it is guided by the rules of the system. It is poison that feeds the evil forces. It is not a matter of intellect, the nature of earth. It is a matter of the heart in the first place. Gravity, ball earth, empty black space, etc. are all intellectual inventions. They remove you from your own inner knowledge, it ridiculises your own intuition which you started developing as a child. Earth is not an object, that is an intellectual invention. Earth has been made into an object, it has been dethroned. Earth is the condition where objects can manifest. Past people never objectified earth, she was always a goddess, a mystery, a living realm. To not understand that a spherical earth that floats in empty space amidst countless other spheres is a vision that destroys a spiritual meaningful life, that this is the central vision of the whole quacedemia, that this “fact” is a very recent fabrication, this shows the gap there must exist between heart and intellect, this is the total lack of spirituality. It is the product of a mechanical mind, not your own. The flat earth topic has been steered into a corrupt intellectual direction that will lead nowhere. And you are joining it as they want it. Because the movement is corrupt, a psy-op, you think it suffices to deal with in such a superficial manner. Let me tell you, the whole alternative history-science-religion, the whole new age movement, all of it is a psy-op. All of it. It does not mean that the ideas discussed in them are all lies, it means that they are explained in such a way that they will cause no harm to the system the parasites have created. Thery are just there to create the illusion of freedom. But you can think whatever you want, it will not harm the system in any way. It will gladly accept another zillions hours of newearth videos showing alternate views of the past. As long as the true heart is not involved, your thinking remains restricted and bound by the rules they have set in all of us. Flat earth is yet another movement they initiated that seemingly breaks the rules of the system, but that actually makes them stronger. We do not arrive at the truth of things through discussions, experiments, watching videos and talking. Truth comes from within. Nothing is needed from the external world, no therapist, no drugs, no music. Contact with the soul can only happen if time is given, great care and patience. Any other way will lead to misleading experiences. The truthmovement is just entertainment, a drug against boredom, a mass movement. An abstract intellectual enterprise that has no connection with reality. Truth is not information, it is insight through personal effort. It cannot be spread, handed over to others. We can be informed that our history has been rewritten, but that gives us no insight to what that means. But I can tell you that nothing is changing, that the system is not in danger, because it is itself handing you out all this fascinating information. As long as the gate of wisdom remains closed, you have no power to change anything. Tolkien has perhaps written the most powerful tale of where truth is to be found: in the heart of darkness. We are the small hobbits, no magical powers, all odss against us. The ring is the system. It can never be used to do good. All our technology is destructive. All thinking derrived from this technology is equally destructive. To destroy this ring, this system, we must penetrate into the heart of the place where it was forged. We must confront our biggest fears. We must go where we least want to go of all. We must destroy the system within us. But we do not seem to have the time to do all this. We are running around but achieving little. Each day we seem to have less time. The system grows bigger as it swallows more and more of our time. That is how it controls our world. It is a time thief. History was changed to steal time from us and to add it to the system. Only if we are able to take back our time, will we in fact have the time to free ourselves from the slavery of the system. But to understand this, we must forget what we have been taught about time. Time is the essence of life. Michael Ende has written a beautiful story about this in Momo. It is a book with vital insights about the system, well hidden in a so called childrens story. Good stories are like dreams, they can help you to achieve insights because they are more than information, they are also full of symbols and archetypes. Like a plant cannot grow without sufficient water, we cannot live and develop without sufficient time. We grow old quickly and die before we can even understand why we were born at all. And then we are born again, and each time we possess less of our soul because the system eats it and uses this soul time to generate a false world with principles opposite to those of life. If you want to change anything, start by concentrating on retreiving your time. There is a good reason why swastikas have been demonised. The left turning swastika is the symbol of how to reverse the flow of time. It contains the dynamics to do this, to make time flow away from the system back to you. That is a direct threat to the system, so it had to be associated with evil. Think of the most horrible situations you suffer or suffered and reverse them clockwise. Drain them of their time essence, and you will notice that they will lose their power over you. They will eventually become unreal, like a film. That is how the past can be undone. You cannot rewind anything, that is mechanical thinking btw, but you can retreive the time essence through your memories which keeps these events alive. The other archetype you must focus on to achieve time reversal is the dragon, which symbolises all real original animals. The dragon is the magic body you need to help you activate the reversal dynamics. Btw, the ancient dragon culture also had to be destroyed, and the dragon turned into some evil reptile to be slain, and later even became associated with dinosaurs (which only exist in the astral planes). The dragon spirits are the arch enemy of the systems agents, which could be called dragon snakes. They can manifest in many forms in nightmares, or in astral visions. Appear as angels, aliens, etc. They are what the orc is to the elf. Dragon spirits are repelled from our world. It will take effort to connect with, I should say, your dragon. A name is important. Create a power place, like a small altar, make a drawing from the unconscious. Draw a left turning swastika. Draw a black ring to represent the system. Know that the soul is twofold, with the lower manifested as a snake and the higher with the bird. These need to be merged together. That is the winged snake. Redeem the snake, the fallen part of the soul. That is how this system will be destroyed.

[talesofzero]

La Douleur Exquise - Ch. 4

AU; Chapter 4 - The Case of Violet

Shep’s chapter!!! This one tackles some weird ideas, so I hope the execution works. Let me know what you think!

~3k words

Everyone in the brothel said my skin was an odd color, but I didn’t see it that way. However it looked to them must have been similar to Desslar’s skin, but to me, Desslar was the same gray as everything else. He only gained color when he spoke - splashes of red, purple, and white. I’d never seen someone with such coloring.

Clients tended to have the same colors in their voices - greens usually meshed with the shades of red. When anyone spoke, the colors flooded their form and seeped into the air around them. 

Most of the other brothel workers had unique patterns, though. Susumu was beige and brown, Mamoru orange and yellow, Dick green and blue. Daiba was all reds, though some pink had mixed in lately. The new Tadashi was yellow and red and white and blue, and watching his voice was like a symphony. The old Tadashi, now dubbed Monono, tended toward a baby blue. Manabu had an odd mottling of blue and black that always made me anxious.

Zero had the same coloring after things went wrong.

So had Harlock. They’d both stayed that way for weeks before any trace of their old colors returned, but even now the old colors were faint. Harlock’s voice almost never exuded the loud yellows it did when I first met him.

He was the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes. The first thing I could remember. His attempt to speak with me was gibberish to my ears. The words were foreign, but the colors that came along with them were familiar. I felt like I knew those swirls, somewhere once far away.

Harlock, though I knew nothing about him at the time, helped me sit up, and I found myself lying on a bed in an extravagant room. There was another man nearby fiddling with something. The two spoke a brief conversation before Harlock took hold of my hand and tried to talk to me once more. I found myself more interested in his hand grasping mine. Though my hand was bandaged, something about the sensation made my head roar with familiarity.

It was then I noted my other hand bandaged as well, restrictive cloth winding up my arm and across my bare chest. Reaching up, I found it on my face and forehead as well. I must have been a mess.

The other man walked over and fit an object, the one he’d been fiddling with, into my ear. When he spoke, the words formed meaning.

“Let’s try that. Can you understand me?” His voice was mostly brown broken by pools of dark blue, different from the reds that appeared when he spoke to Harlock.

For some reason, I knew I was unable to respond aloud, so rather than open my mouth, I nodded. It felt like the appropriate response, a form of confirmation.

“Can you speak?” he asked.

This time I shook my head.

“This is going to be a little difficult then,” Harlock said, a curious mix of orange, yellow, and purple. “My name is Harlock. This is Zero.” He gestured to the other man, who nodded. “Your ship transported here, so damaged it was basically scrap. We weren’t able to salvage much from it, and you were pretty badly injured.”

“I don’t know anything about a race with gold blood,” Zero said, “but with how much you lost, I’m amazed you’re still alive.”

My head listed to the side. It seemed we were of different races, not just different languages. 

“We’re humans, if you didn’t know,” Harlock offered. “Our blood is red, so we were pretty startled when we saw you like that and didn’t have a transfusion available. Luckily we have a sexaroid who was able to make enough sense of your anatomy to hold you together. Your wounds were largely superficial, likely caused by shrapnel. Whatever you had a fight with, you probably lost.”

“He did come out alive, so that’s something,” Zero said.

Another human knocked and entered the room with more bandages in hand. I later learned that humans could identify themselves in varying ways, and this one expressed “woman” rather than “man.” The variation in the translator took me by surprise at first, but I grew to a base understanding over time. Humans had a variety of identities. All the same but all different.

“Oh, he’s awake,” she said in flashes of yellow and orange as she pushed the tray into Zero’s hands. “How are you feeling?” she asked me.

I offered a smile in answer. Nothing hurt, so I felt content. Confused and lost but content.

“He can’t talk,” Harlock said.

“Have you tried giving him something to write on?” she asked. The two men looked at each other, and she rolled her eyes. “His race may not have a written language system, but it’s worth a shot.”

Perhaps women were the smarter variety of human. I was unsure, as I only met a few in my time at the brothel. She introduced herself as Kei and wrote it in some strange, flowing symbols on a square of what I later learned was paper. Harlock wrote his name as well, though the symbols were entirely different, several simple ones in a row. Zero wrote his name the same way, but his writing curved and flowed where Harlock’s drew to points.

When they handed the paper to me, I realized I didn’t know my name, but writing I could grasp. They peered at the paper with eager eyes as I sketched out a message. “I do not remember my name. I do not remember anything. Thank you for helping me.”

When I handed the paper back to them, they all frowned at it. Zero used some small device to scan it. His brows pinched as he looked at the device. “Whatever the language is, it’s not showing up in records. Decoding it may take some time.”

“It looks kind of like sheet music,” Kei said, tilting the paper and her head.

What followed was several hours of gesturing and doodling and yes or no questions, until I was finally able to convey my lack of memories to them. Zero suggested they turn me over to some sort of authority figure, but Harlock’s voice swirled with colors at the idea. “We don’t know who attacked him,” he said. “It’s not safe to turn him over to anyone right now.”

Zero’s voice dipped in hue. “Harlock, we know nothing about him. It’s possible…”

“You’re honestly going to look me in the eye and tell me you think he’s dangerous?”

I hoped they didn’t think that. I would never wish any harm to them or anyone else. Zero must have sensed that, as he sighed and shook his head. “Regardless, we can’t keep him at a brothel.”

“Sure we can,” Harlock said. “He can work here once he’s better.”

Zero’s eyes went wide. His whole body tensed.

Harlock threw his hands up. “Not as a whore! Just as a helper or something! Just so he can make some money!”

Despite Zero’s reservations and my own confusion of human customs, I became the new helper. They called me “Guitar Ship” for a while. Apparently my now-ruined craft looked like something called a guitar, but that was shortened to “Ship” almost instantly, and that was steadily slurred to “Shep,” which stuck.

But once I realized what the brothel business entailed, it became clear to me that I was better suited to being one of the whores than attempting to help cook or fix anything. More often than not, that resulted in a bigger mess.

Harlock did not approve of the idea one bit once I finally managed to explain my goal. “Shep, I appreciate your enthusiasm,” he said, though his voice became distressingly pink. “But it’s just… the anatomy… you don’t... it’s not…”

Before he could become more anxious, I offered my hand. “Hm, what is it?” he asked. Part of him seemed to understand, though, because he placed his hand in mine. I’d figured it out once the bandages came off, why a physical connection gave me such a rush. I knew what I could do.

I knew what Harlock wanted.

In a blink, the office around us became a bedroom I’d never seen, though it was all an illusion, like a dream - Harlock’s dream. Because I made the dream in the image of his views and desires, I saw color as he did. But I wasn’t part of what he wanted.

Harlock’s eye was wide with confusion and surprise as he spun to look around the room. His clothes had changed as well into some sort of odd pirate getup. 

“What is this?” he asked. “What’s going on? Shep?” But when he turned back, I was not myself. I was the person he desired. “Zero?” he choked.

“Relax, Harlock,” the Zero of his dreams said, placing his hand to Harlock’s cheek and leaning in close. “Isn’t this what you want?”

“No.” Harlock placed his hand to Zero’s chest. “This isn’t real. Enough, Shep.”

The dream shattered as Harlock came back to himself and tore his hand from mine.

Of all the times I wished I could speak, that was the greatest. I’d wanted to make Harlock happy, to give him what he wanted, but his shoulders were taut, his hand slapped over his mouth. Despite my intentions, I’d hurt him.

Harlock jolted as I fell to my knees in front of him. I had to apologize somehow. All I had were my actions, so I bowed my head. If he wished to hit me, I would take it.

Instead of a blow, Harlock breathed a laugh. I peered up to find him kneeling in front of me. His smile seemed forced, his eye worn, but his words weren’t far from their usual shades. “Sorry, you just startled me. Remember, our rule is absolute consent. I know it’s hard for you but you need some sort of affirmation before making a move on anyone. I don’t want...” He shook his head. “So you can manipulate people’s minds?”

I nodded. That description sounded crueler than I liked, but it wasn’t incorrect.

“I can understand how that would make you a good worker, but if you’re able to access clients’ ideals like that…” His gaze drifted toward the wall. “You might see some disturbing things. I wouldn’t want you to be under that kind of stress.”

I couldn’t understand why he was concerned for me. He should have been upset. He shouldn’t have been the one to apologize to me.

But that was just like him, always more worried about us than himself. Even after I was able to show him that I wouldn’t allow clients any dreams that broke the brothel’s rules, he checked up on me after every new client.

And after what happened to Zero, he sat by the locked door of Zero’s room for endless hours, murmuring apologies in that black and blue voice. Apologizing for something he couldn’t have predicted or controlled, just like with me.

But things got better. Colors returned. Daiba appeared with all his fires of red and Mamoru with his blinding oranges and yellows. Mamoru in-particular I could always see coming. He was always talking, so vibrant his color bled all over. It was infectious in a way.

“Shep,” he whined as he dropped into my lap where his brother had been not long before. “I lost most of my clients. Give me some of yours.”

I patted his cheek, uncertain what he was talking about. He didn’t seem too upset, so it must not have been a big deal.  

“What did you do?” Zero asked. “And who said you could come out of timeout?”

“I didn’t do anything. Some guy bought my brother exclusive, and he’s paying for all those clients I would have had, but now I’m going to have all this free time. I’m gonna be so bored!”

Manabu appeared as well, having tiptoed down the stairs when Zero wasn’t looking. He clambered over the back of the armchair Zero sat in, forcing Zero to scooch over and make enough room for Manabu to squeeze in next to him. “What?” Manabu cawed. “Susumu got a client to himself? Aw, I could have taken the client.”

With a worn smile, Zero ruffled Manabu’s hair. “Maybe next time. How about we have Monono make us some tea right now and just relax instead?”

Zero, Dick, and I had clients scheduled for Monday night, so this was our last chance to relax until then, but the reality was that Manabu could be soothed by horrible, bitter tea no matter how upset he got. Zero was just playing that to his advantage. He sent Tadashi to let Monono know of our request.

“So is Harlock going to be the one to let most of my clients know they can’t have their incest kink fulfilled anymore?” Mamoru asked. “Because I’m not dealing with that.”

A new voice with the same colors flashed from the entryway. “Can’t I have two seconds of being here without you saying something gross?” Kei called as she strode in. Her travel bag slid from her shoulder and hit the ground with a thunk. Whatever was in there sounded heavy.

“Kei, is that the equipment we sent you to get?” Zero asked, frowning at the bag. “Please be careful with it.”

“Don’t worry. I have it padded,” she said. “Anything interesting happen while I was gone?”

“Daiba got a brother,” Mamoru said.

“More brothers? Jeez, don’t we have enough?”

Tadashi popped back out of the kitchen with a bag of chips he was eating by the handful. “He’s makin’ the tea,” he said through his munching. “Who’s that?”

Kei stared at him for a stretch, a deep frown forming along her features. “Did Harlock pick out that maid outfit?” she asked at length. “It’s pretty cheap looking. We have to get him a different one.”

“I picked it out!” Tadashi squeaked. “It wasn’t cheap!”

Kei put her hands on her hips. “Well, it looks like a costume. Don’t worry. I’ll get you a better one.”

“Anyway,” Zero called over them. “Kei, this is our new maid Tadashi Daiba. Tadashi this is our other bodyguard, Kei Yuki.”

“Daiba and his brother have the same name?” Kei muttered. “Well, anyway, nice to meet you, Tadashi. I’m going to go put my stuff down and wash up. Don’t be gross while I’m gone, guys.”

She scooped up the bag and headed upstairs. She must have spotted Daiba on the way because the red of him barking spilled out from the upstairs hall.

Our tea arrived shortly, while Mamoru continued to whine, and Manabu lounged against Zero. Zero was the only one Harlock would allow Manabu to get close to to ensure no one got too handsy.

“My client should be here soon,” Zero said after he finished his tea. “I’m going to go ahead and get ready. You should too, Shep.”

I nodded as Mamoru and Manabu began pouting. I would have given them some of my clients if I could. I had no use for the money Harlock gave me. He said if I ever remembered where I came from I could use the funds to buy a new ship and return, but I was content with my home.

After stretching out my legs, half-asleep from Mamoru lying over them, I headed for the stairs. As I reached the base of them, Desslar turned the corner at the top. His expression was plain, his eyes straight ahead. We walked on opposite sides going opposite ways, but when he reached the same step as me, he paused.

“You’re not Gamilan, are you?” He sounded as though he already knew the answer, and his words were now far more red and purple tinged with black.

I shook my head. I wasn’t certain what I was, but I felt we weren’t the same.

“Strange,” he said. “I feel like we’ve met.” He continued down without another glance, so I ripped my eyes from him and hurried upstairs. Passing my room, I knocked at Susumu’s. 

“Coming,” came the muffled response through the door. We didn’t lock our doors unless we had clients, yet I heard the bolt snap out of place. I tried to keep myself from looking too anxious as he opened the door. “Oh, Shep.” He smiled, but his words were all wrong, all black and mottled with blue. I couldn’t help but let my expression twist with concern. Something was wrong.

“Did you come to check on me?” he asked. “Everything went fine, so don’t look all worried. He was pretty easy to take care of, honestly.”

But the colors were wrong. It was like an infection had spread to him, the same one that claimed Zero, Harlock, and Manabu, the one that made them stare off at nothing with heavy, worn eyes. I took Susumu’s face in my hands, trying to speak with my eyes, begging him to tell me what was wrong.

He simply looked confused. “Shep, it’s alright. Everything went fine. Don’t you have a client soon? You should get ready for them.”

I so desperately wished for a voice, but all I could do was press my forehead to his. “Shep,” he sighed, drowning in that horrible blackened blue. “I’m exclusive now. You’re not allowed to touch me.”

I had no proof, no voice, no understanding, so I let him go to take care of my client instead. No one else seemed to notice anything amiss. The next morning Susumu smiled and laughed along with the rest of us. But that hue remained in his voice, and when he thought no one was looking, I saw his gaze grow distant, glazed with pain as he lost himself in that horrible color.

I would not allow it to infect anyone else in my home, in my family. I would free them from it.

[anghraine]

I will never get over the "i don't believe in love at first sight / but godamn" gifset for jyn/cassian, it's perfect. also, your tags on the partisan jyn rec have me imagining a persuasion au, this time with cassian as anne and jyn as wentworth (draven as lady russell, I guess??) I love Persuasion AUs and that fic is so good :)

Heeeh, I love it!

I hadn’t really thought of the details of an alternate AU, beyond thinking that captaincy and gender aside, Wentworth (careless, impulsive, generous, spirited) is the most like Jyn, and Anne (obedient, withdrawn, intense, faithful) the most like Cassian. But I think it could work. 

(Completely scattered thoughts on the ‘how,’ but I definitely think it would be fun and interesting!)

Draven is definitely the obvious Lady Russell candidate (he could even be ambiguously positive in the way Ly R is, which would be an interesting take on him). Mon Mothma would be very interesting, too—I think she’s more of a Lady Russell-type personality (which would leave Draven as Sir Walter, omfg). And I think it would allow for some exploration of what’s the most interesting part of Persuasion for me.

The thing is, Persuasion never really answers the question of whether Anne was morally wrong or right to break off her relationship with Wentworth under Lady Russell’s influence. It feels wrong. It turned out badly. But morality is not determined by consequences alone, and here, there’s a complex system of obligations and risks at play. Anne felt an obligation to listen to Lady Russell’s advice—not to obey unthinkingly, but to strongly factor it into her decision-making process, given her own youth, Lady Russell’s role as her surrogate mother, and her deep respect for her. 

And Lady Russell was right in believing there were real risks to Anne marrying Wentworth so young, risks to any children they might have, etc. His ‘I don’t need to save anything, I’ve always been lucky, I’ll always be lucky’ shtick did him zero favours—Mr Price probably thought so, too, and the fact that Wentworth’s luck did hold is … well, lucky. “I’m going to go fight Napoleon and make a bunch of money, everything’s going to be fine” is not a compelling argument! 

On top of that, the winning point in Lady Russell’s argument—the thing that finally swayed Anne—was that the marriage would be bad for Wentworth. A young, delicate wife with no dowry and a collection of snobbish, expensive, totally douchey relatives would be a genuine disadvantage to a young sailor with no connections and no money. And that is also, in fact, perfectly reasonable.

So it’s not simply a snobbish woman dissuading a weak-willed girl who then develops a stronger sense of self through suffering and maturity. Snobbery absolutely played a part in Lady Russell’s motives—all of this would have been much less pressing if Wentworth were someone more like Colonel Fitzwilliam, who would double as a Worthy Alliance and bring powerful, wealthy relations into the picture. Anne may very well have been less swayed by Lady Russell’s arguments if she hadn’t faced uniform opposition from her family, hadn’t been so young and uncertain. But nevertheless, those arguments were largely reasonable, and in the end, Anne’s view is that she wishes she hadn’t taken Lady Russell’s advice, that she would never give the same advice, but that morally she was right to take it. 

I mean, there’s a lot going on there, ethically, and the book doesn’t offer clear conclusions. (UNCLEAR ETHICAL DILEMMAS

ANYWAY, MULTIPLE PARAGRAPHS LATER, that’s not something I often see confronted, even in full-on adaptations. (Particularly, one might say. >_>) And I think it would be interesting to play with it—something where Draven/Mothma/whomever have entirely valid reasons (but also dodgy ones) for their interference, and where Cassian has a real obligation to consider their opinions, and where the killing blow (as it were) would be that he is bad for Jyn (only too easy to believe he’d find convincing!). 

It’s even … like. I can definitely see Draven being profoundly unenthusiastic about his 23-y-o prodigy spy suddenly getting entangled with a 19-y-o Partisan who is also the daughter of an Imperial collaborator. But I think it’s very possible that the likes of Mothma and Draven would probably not care that much about the flings of teens and 20-somethings. The kind of concerted, intense effort leveled against Anne in Persuasion might need something more.

But Cassian, despite his sidelines in assassination and field command, is primarily a recruiter. So. Suppose that his ostensible mission is rebuilding ties with the Partisans and working out some mutual support arrangement. But in reality, the judgment of Intelligence is that the Partisans are doomed by their extreme insularity, drastic collateral damage, unclear objectives, and attraction of Imperial attention. Coordination with the Partisans is an acceptable start, but the actual goal is to draw as many of Saw’s highly-skilled fighters into the Alliance as possible before the whole organization self-destructs or gets obliterated, but without turning Saw actively against them. 

Of course, it’s not a secret that the Alliance is generally out to peel off as many recruits as they can get, and ofc the Rebel agent is going to be trying to draw people into the Rebellion. But what they don’t know is that this is why Cassian is there. 

Okay, anyway, this is what 23-y-o Cassian is up to. It’s a task of extraordinary trust, and he’s on guard against almost everything. But falling madly in love with Saw’s foster daughter was not one of those things. And it’d be one thing if he was just pining (it would be awful, but—), but no, this ferocious, shining supersoldier is (for some reason) also in love with him. 

On top of that, they’re both very much older than their ages, but in some ways younger—they were never able to be kids, to have silly crushes, anything like that. So they’re dorky and overwhelmed and unrealistic, just swept off their feet. They hold hands and talk about … running off together? But they can’t stop fighting the Empire. Cassian would never make a Partisan, but Jyn could join the Rebellion. And then they could be together!!!

(I suspect that at heart, Jyn wants out; large-scale collateral damage is not her gig.)

Anyway, Cassian would get a very sharp reality check, because the point was to draw away as many useful soldiers as he could without completely antagonizing Saw, and wow is “seducing away his best soldier and, oh yeah, DAUGHTER” not included in that description. Of course, he’s horrified because It’s Not Like That, but also … well. Yeah. 

And while Jyn is brashly sure that of course she’ll succeed at whatever she does, she always has, he’s increasingly doubtful that she’d be at all happy in the Rebellion. The Partisans are her family, the only life she knows; she doesn’t know anyone else in the Rebellion at all, she’d chafe under the command structure, she’d lose everything, and have nothing to counterbalance it all but one tormented spy. 

They’re not going to demand that a talented soldier not join the Rebellion, of course, or involve themselves in the obvious affair. But they don’t have to; once persuaded, Cassian does the dirty work himself. He persuades Jyn to stay with the Partisans after all, breaks things off, and leaves, having carefully arranged for a good number of Partisans to defect to the Rebellion over the next several months. Jyn, naturally, feels furious and betrayed (all the more after some of her friends leave). 

And that’s where it starts, lol. Now I’m thinking—like, taking ‘little sister’ and running with it, Sophy would be Baze and Admiral Croft would be Chirrut (AMAZE). While I don’t see Cassian getting winded by a long walk à la Anne, he could be hiding an injury or something that Jyn notices (and hates that she notices, and hates more that nobody else does). 

I don’t know at all who would play the Louisa Musgrove role (it’s not my favourite element of the plot tbh, but kind of necessary). And I don’t know how the scene with Wentworth helping Anne with her nephews would play out but it needs to happen, it’s my favourite. And of course the gender politics wouldn’t really work. (Though Wentworth/Jyn coming to their senses via competence kink would, lol.) And we’d need some terribad teammates or something to serve the role of the Elliots.

(Draven would really be the best bet, if not already taken as the Lady Russell. That really works best as someone that Cassian is actually close to, though, which is… like, nobody. And honestly, Lady Russell is the only person Anne is close to, but—OMG, KAY. IF KAY IS LADY RUSSELL … JESUS. HAHAHA WOW. That’d even work with Kay and Jyn being super chilly at each other, and Cassian could overhear Jyn talking ~idly~ with some of the rest of the team about a mission that went hilariously-in-retrospect wrong thanks to Rebel!Mary Musgrove this shitty commander. They’d have much rather had Andor, since SpecOps do serve under Intelligence now and then, but couldn’t get him. The rumour was that [x] talked him out of it. And Jyn’s like, huh, he’s very easily persuaded, isn’t he? And they’re … not really? That damn droid and direct commands are pretty much the only thing that stops him.)

((For bonus awful: during their brief honeymoon phase, the idea had been that Jyn would join up with SpecOps and once he made captain, they could build a joint Intel/SpecOps team.))

Oh, and Benwick is a former Partisan who was in love with a civilian in Jedha who died before they could settle down. I think the Harvilles joined the Rebellion (probably Cassian’s not!recruits, in fact). Also, there definitely needs to be a way of working in the ‘even when hope is gone’ speech (though as above, the gender politics don’t work at all). 

Ha, even the ‘I should not have known her’ slam could work? I mean, it’s absurd to talk about Cassian as ~faded~, but he is definitely prematurely aged, and Jyn could easily make a snide remark about hardly recognizing him. 

I can’t see Jyn writing anything so melodramatic as Wentworth’s letter, but it’d be sort of hilarious if she types up her vision into a datapad and then is trying to figure out a way to casually leave it lying around, but not so casually that Cassian doesn’t notice. (As if, but Emotions.)

[janiedean]

I'm the anon who said you don't glorify obesity. Look I don't know anything about that ship y'all keep referring to and I don't know who "Hunk" is or whatever, I'm talking in general terms. I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT SHIPPING OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT just to clarify. I think it's wrong that people glorify being skinny but I don't think glorifying obesity is any better (I'm talking about more than overweight - ACTUALLY OBESE)

I’m probably not explaining myself properly but I think people should be able to ship whatever they want, the shipping was never my point. I just think the way people on the internet have been going on like “Fat women are goddesses!!! Real women have curves!!! If you don’t agree you’re fatphobic!!!” is wrong. I have been hospitalized twice for anorexia, I know how being skinny is glorified but I don’t think switching it around so it becomes “being obese is totally awesome and if you say otherwise you’re a horrible fatphobe” is any better. I’m sorry for sending you so many messages, I’ll stop now.

okay so GIVEN THAT WE ALREADY CLARIFIED OURSELVES ON THE MISUNDERSTANDING: the problem is that we were actually talking about shipping XD and the other anon decided it had to be about health but like the problem in general is that as usual (on tumblr and I guess in the US because it’s mostly US beauty standards I’m seeing thrown around) is that there’s no middle way in anything. I mean, like:

body shaming is a thing. in general. the problem is that fatshaming is, like, a thing that is more culturally spread than the contrary even if in some countries (ie italy) there’s this concept that if you’re skinnier than a size 42 (I guess it’s like an S or small M) you’re omg so unhealthy please EAT SOME PUT MEAT ON YOUR BONES WHY DO U HATE GOOD FOOD, but it’s more of an older generation thing. like, I’ve had problems with weight bc when I was in freaking elementary school people would go like ‘omg you’re so fat’ at me and I thought I was and then I looked at some pictures years later and I was like ‘… wtf I was perfectly fine what the hell’ and there’s a general implication that fat/overweight = unhealthy when it’s not necessarily the case.

the problem is that when it comes to body positivity there is like literally zero distinction between curvy, overweight, fat and obese which are not the same thing, and there is zero distinction between body positivity and promote a healthy lifestyle. I mean, according to US standards someone who’s fat would be… like… normal here? a size M is seen as perfectly regular stuff but from what I see of US sizes, M is like OMG I’M FAT already, which… like. here it’s maybe curvy. also being some 3/4kgs overweight never killed anyone. but since I see ZERO DISTINCTION here, it’s all thrown in the same bag and it’s the exact same for people who have 3 kgs more than average, 10, 25, 50 or freaking 200. which is obviously not the same.

also, there is the complete lack of realizing what it means to be healthy and to not be thin. like, as has been said already it’s absolutely not a guarantee that being thin or skinny means that you’re healthy (I had a friend who used to be chubby, then got sick with a freaking chronic disease and came out of it with a body that ended up finding her a job as a fashion model but SHE STILL WAS HEALTHIER BEFORE THE FREAKING CHRONIC DISEASE), I’ve struggled with my extra kgs all my damned life and whenever I go on vacation with friends that are thinner than me but move around less or don’t go to the gym and the likes I am the one who can walk for longer or gets tired less and I have better blood tests than my father who’s at his ideal weight and takes five pills for a bunch of different stuff. some people are just heavier as a body type but if it’s their body and it’s not due to shitty eating or lack of exercise or whatever then they’re not unhealthy. obviously severely obese people who can’t walk for more than twenty minutes without feeling like fainting aren’t in that category but like never mind that for a moment, the problem is that your size doesn’t automatically mean unhealthy and having 20 extra kgs on you makes you fat maybe but not freaking obese.

THEN, on body positivity: there is a healthy difference between NOT BEING A JERK and spreading awareness re healthy habits. like, society/media and the likes shouldn’t promote being thin, they should promote being healthy ie eating well and exercising, not THIN = HEALTHY. as stated you can be healthy without being thin. (or, as the character we were talking about that you weren’t referencing, you can be mostly muscle and have some chub over it and THAT’S NOT BEING OBESE XD at the same time, if someone is overweight or obese or whatever for any reason whatsoever you can’t go at them and tell them omg go lose some weight you loser THAT’S HORRIBLE. I mean, there’s a difference between saying that one should try to be as healthy as possible and go like OMG YOU’RE FAT YOU’RE HORRIBLE. if body positivity means not shaming someone else for their body then go the fuck for it. the problem is that then according to people saying ‘okay but if you can’t walk to the supermarket and back without feeling short of breath and you might get heart diseases maybe you should consider dropping some extra weight for your own benefit’ is fatphobic which… lolno. not everyone is fat because of bad habits and they shouldn’t have people making them feel bad even if they are but assuming that the above sentence (especially when doctors recommend you to do more exercise) is inherently fatphobic imo is ridiculous. if my doctor tells me I should lose some weight then I’m gonna consider it and I’m not gonna feel like he’s *phobic*, if someone goes like ‘omg you’re so fat you’ll never find a guy who wants you’, that is fatphobic. like, THERE’S A DIFFERENCE. (at the same time people who are skinny/thinner than average shouldn’t get told all the time OMG PUT SOME MEAT ON THAT SKELETON REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES like fuck’s sake respect all body types. being a real woman has zero to do with how much meat you have on you.) what should be glorified is be healthy and be happy with whatever body type you have as long as it doesn’t cause you problems and at that point nicely try to make those problems right while you’re encouraged without shaming anyone in the process. (which also means: gdi don’t put other people down if they’re trying to gain weight or lose it, ffs.)

now, the problem with shipping: the thing is - and I swear to god I don’t wanna sound like a sjw now but I hope the previous essay has made clear how I feel in general on this issue - that, in my experience, fat/overweight characters especially if they’re male are seen as… either the laughing stock of the group or the harmless nerd or anyway never as sexual objects. every damned time I ship something where a guy is overweight/fat (notable exceptions jacob and queenie from fantastic beasts which tbh really was a nice surprise for the part where the fat guy who’s also a sweetheart hooks up with the bombshell and it’s THE BEST ROMANCE OF ALL good go you man) right as rain there’s rarely fic for it least of all porn, and even if there is someone will go around saying the fat character isn’t attractive or deserving of getting some. when I say ‘sam tarly syndrome’ I mean ‘fat/overweight guy is a sweetheart who has a lot of nice ships they could be in but they get thoroughly ignored or if it happens in canon fandom lols at it’. I mean, I basically had to start the jon/sam tag on my own (if you see the fics at the beginning it’s honestly sad to see TEN of mine all after the other), once on a kinkmeme I was like ‘okay doing it’ at a pwp prompt and I got as an answer OMG I WAS HOPING YOU’D SEE THIS NO ONE ELSE IN THIS FANDOM WRITES PORN FOR THESE TWO and whenever people discuss canon sex scenes…. the only one in the book that always gets lol-ed at is sam and gilly’s in spite of the fact that okay, it’s badly written, but ALL of the sex scenes in asoiaf except one are badly written. it’s not worse than the average. but sam getting some because a relatively hot girl wants him and the sex - omg! - actually being somewhat not vanilla is seen as… like… OMG HAHAHAHAHA I CAN’T BELIEVE HE’S GETTING SOME OMG HOW EMBARRASSING as if this guy being overweight means he can’t be seen as a palatable partner when it comes to having a sex life. same as the other anon being like ‘omg hunk (the person we were referring) is fat and unhealthy so he’s not good enough for the other person’ is… exactly the same. I mean, this hunk character is admittedly the one person in that bunch I’d actually date irl same as sam is the one character from asoiaf I’d date irl the others are completely out of the question, but since they’re *fat* naaaaah? and guess what sam/WHOEVER is a lot less popular than ships which make a lot less sense but are two hot characters stashed together bc they’re hot. (jaime/sansa has like 300+ fics and jon/sam is still under 100 but okay sure tell me it’s because it makes no sense. lol no. and being that the only porn around for those two was written by me and maybe two/three other people says all.)

at that point then people go like ‘well but it’s because they’re unhealthy’ and that is when it becomes ridiculous. because going with the above problem re fatshaming being a thing that happens on a societal level, it becomes IF YOU’RE FAT YOU’RE NOT SEXUALLY DESIRABLE AND NO ONE SHOULD WANT YOU BECAUSE OF YOUR UNHEALTHY WEIGHT, which mixes stuff that doesn’t even go together with being sexually desirable which is something inherently personal. as in: if someone who’s unhealthily fat for whichever reason has a significant other who loves them and their body guess what THEY HAVE A RIGHT TO HAVE A SEXUAL LIFE AND TO BANG PEOPLE/GET BANGED TO THEIR PLEASURE. because when it comes to preferences in the bedroom or loving a person, size can be a thing - some people have certain body shapes preferences and so on - or it cannot be a thing at all and anyway it doesn’t matter when it comes to your right to be seen as desirable/being desirable. people of all sizes can be desirable or sexy or definitely sexually available regardless of the size - like everyone is freaking allowed to be sexually desirable even if they don’t conform to whichever is the beauty canon around.

and given that I personally got told more than once also by admittedly well-meaning people that they wouldn’t ever consider seeing me as desirable because I was overweight or not as thin as other hot person around our class or even better, the aforementioned friend who turned out to be a fashion model using that as some coping mechanism (as in, she didn’t like being sick obv. but since she had come out of it with a scorching hot physique while I had then undiagnosed pcos so I was struggling with weight all the damned time and I was healthy otherwise... er let’s say that she used to tell me stuff like ‘ah well look at you and look at me instead how much better looking I am’ which obviously was in order to make herself feel better about her illness but sure as hell didn’t help me feeling good about myself), I’m honestly fucking tired of this whole trend in shipping where overweight/fat people don’t get any from their hot best friends with whom they’re absolutely shippable but the hot friends get shipped instead with the most improbable hot people that happens in 90% of fandoms I run into. because it’s just a reflection of how irl if you’re overweight a lot of the time people will say that your weight puts you out of the goddamned dating field and everyone deserves to be in there, damn it, regardless of their size. it has nothing to do with being healthy or unhealthy. and saying shit like ‘omg X is fat they’re not good enough for Y’ is really fucking old already. 

 tldr: I hope I made clear why I got pissed at the other anon and what I think of the whole matter. obviously no one has to glorify being *unhealthy* (extreme obesity and anorexia are both unhealthy) and no one needs to put other groups down while doing it (looking at you n*icki m*inaj - like sorry but according to my standards she’s thin, having a nice ass doesn’t make you *fat* or curvy, and going like FUCK ALL THOSE SKINNY BITCHES is the exact contrary of body positivity tbh). but at the same time everyone deserves to be seen as sexually desirable and it’s bullshit that the current narrative depicts being overweight as something undesirable. both in society and in fandom.

/peace

[clubofinfo]

Expert: Sometimes it is useful to take a break from news bulletins and newspapers, and even from ‘friendly’ Internet publications. Occasionally it is good to realize that there are actually two parallel realities that are constantly competing for the ‘hearts and minds’ of people living all over the world. There is real life and ‘fake life’. There is reality and elaborately manufactured pseudo-reality, which is designed to appear more real than the reality itself. It is like that chemically produced green apple shampoo that smells more authentic than the fruit itself. Periodically I disappear into some jungle or a war zone, in Afghanistan, Southern Philippines or in the middle of plundered Borneo Island. When I return to what some people would readily describe as the ‘normal world’, and a news bulletin unexpectedly confronts me at some airport lounge, everything suddenly appears to be bizarre, grotesque, totally surreal, at least for the few initial but excruciating moments. It is because most of the mainstream news communiqués and analyses are produced in the plush comfort of an armchair, or at a mahogany writing table, thousands of miles from shrapnel, sweat, torn flesh, blood, burning forests, polluted waterways, and the other horrors which are, in fact, nothing other than the true reality for billions of human beings inhabiting our planet. Remembering how things really feel, taste and smell I get desperate. I don’t recognize places described by the mass media. We are talking about two different universes; yes, about two absolutely opposite realities. ***** If mainstream reporters go to the field, they are well equipped with bulletproof vests, helmets, with 4×4 vehicles (some of them also bulletproof), with excellent life and health insurances that include airlifts and other evacuation clauses, as well as with hefty salaries and other compensation schemes. On their chests and their backs, it says loudly and explicitly “PRESS”. So what am I bitching about? Is it wrong to compensate people who are risking their lives, or to try to protect them? No, it is not; of course, it is not wrong. Author at Goma War Zone, DRC (2009) Except, there is that one tiny ‘but’… You can never, ever get ‘too close’ to anything real, this way. You cannot turn yourself into a buffoon or a walking media Rambo, and expect to uncover something hidden, something important, and something thoroughly groundbreaking. If you over-protect your life, over-insure your each and every step, you’d build a thick wall between yourself and the real life. If you go into the field looking like this, you will be spotted and questioned, and you will need all sorts of permits and stamps. It is almost like declaring: “I’ll play by your rules, I’ll not rock the boat, and I’ll let you monitor each step that I take”. Imagine arriving while being decked out like that and attempting to cover genocide in Papua! Good luck, really. About official permits, if you are from a ‘friendly’ mainstream agency, you can get them almost immediately. Yes, of course, organizations such as the BBC or CNN could easily supply you with all the necessary credentials. You could even count on an official government armed ‘escort’, or you could count on an escort supplied by friendly (to the West) ‘rebel groups’. Not to speak of all those ‘all you can eat’ press briefings. However, the chances that real people would talk to you would be slim. But would you care about hearing from real people if you work for an official mainstream newspaper or a television channel? I doubt it. Real people could, God forbid, say real things, instead of what you are ordered to ‘discover’ in such places as Bosnia, Rwanda, Syria or Afghanistan. In the end, you’ll hear what you came to hear and report, and your writing and clips would be mainly in accordance with the established stereotypes. Then what, how? Who could do it; who could describe reality, and actually stay alive? In a brilliant film directed by Oliver Stone, Salvador (1986), one of the main characters declared: You got to get close to the truth. You get too close, you die.’ He died, but what he said – that is precisely it! There is this invisible, imaginary line, in the air or on the ground, somewhere. You never see it, but if you have worked in many war zones before, you sense it, and it is what actually saves your life. It saves it often, most of the times, but, of course, not always. Those who usually die are men and women who make crucial mistakes during their first attempts, before developing their instincts. What I’m talking about cannot be taught; it is not logical – it’s just ‘there’. To get as close to the truth as possible, one has to work fast, decisively and with certain precision, avoiding obvious blunders. People around you have to trust you, and you yourself have to know whom to trust and from whom to hide. You are on your own, or at least most of the time you are. All this guarantees nothing, but these are some of the basic preconditions, if you want to understand a conflict, a war. Working in devastated places is very emotional, very deep, and sometimes you get overwhelmed, and sometimes your glasses get blurry. You make mistakes; hopefully not too many. Occasionally you go after a particular story, or you know generally what you want to find and a story bumps into you, or you stumble over it, or it just hits you frontally, brutally and at full strength. If it is good, it is never just ‘reporting’. It is much more than journalism, or it is simply shit. There must be some poetry in what you are doing, there has to be also philosophy and humanism, as well as plenty of context and ideology and passion. There can be no ‘objectivity’ in this work: objectivity is just an illusion, a fairytale dispersed by mainstream media. But you should never lie: you witness and say what you have to say, the way you believe it should be said, and while you do it, it is your obligation to inform your readers and viewers where precisely you stand. As a human being, as an artist and thinker, you should always take sides. But your position – on which side of the ‘barricade’ you stand – has to be clear and honest. Otherwise you are a liar. ***** The bitter but essential truth is: Even if you put your life on the line, even if you get badly injured or psychologically exhausted, do not expect much gratitude or support. After US bombing near Mosul, Iraq Many local victims – people whom you came to defend – will suppose and even tell you straight to your face that ‘you came to get rich using their suffering and misery’. Your readers in wealthy countries will imagine that you are being generously funded. They were conditioned to believe that there are no altruistic individuals, governments and countries left on this earth. The reality is quite different: if you work independently, if you refuse to repeat lies and take orders, to merge with the mainstream, if you go against the interest of the West and its allies and ‘clients’, the chances are that you will get zero financial support, no protection whatsoever and absolutely no perks. You may get millions of readers, of course. And you can recycle your reports in your books and films, as I did in my more than 800-page long “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”. If your writing is good, your books will sell, somehow, even if they attack the establishment frontally. But don’t count on any support from ‘friendly governments’ or wealthy but ‘left leaning individuals’. There is no Engels around, these days. You are really on your own. Trust me, you are. You and your determined work may save several villages, or if you are very good, you could make a difference on a global scale. Your writing or your films may help to stop a war. But never expect any official recognition, any practical backing or even mercy from your readers. In 2015, after making several films and writing books about several particularly horrid war zones, mostly in Africa, I totally collapsed. For several weeks, I was not able to move. I thought it was the end. There was no help at all coming from those millions of my readers living in all parts of the world. At that time I made my condition public. Still nothing. Few letters of ‘moral support’ arrived. Few: “Be strong, the world needs you!” In the end, it was my close family circle that literally pampered and rescued me and put me back to my feet and into fighting order. This is not a reproach, just a warning to those who are getting ready to fight for the survival of humanity: “You will be totally on your own. You will most definitely collapse on several occasions.” At a war zone Still, I know no other way how to live meaningfully. I would never trade my life with the life of anyone else. ***** There is another very important and revealing piece of information, which I’d like to share with you, my readers. In 2017 I worked in several extremely dangerous parts of the world, including Afghanistan, the Pakistani-Afghan border during the exchange of fire between the two countries, on the Turkish-Syrian border in Euphrates area during the Turkish invasion, in the war-torn southern Philippines, in Lebanon and in the fully devastated (by logging and mining) Indonesian part of the Island of Borneo. I drove all around Afghanistan, with no protection, no security and no one covering my back. My friend who doubled as my driver and interpreter was the only man I could count on. Sometimes I held the wheel myself. We even made it into the Taliban controlled territories and drug-infested slums of Kabul. All in a 20 year old, beat up Toyota Corona. Afghanistan Soviet Tanks Cemetery In all these places, I did not see one single Western mainstream reporter. Not one! Where were they, all those media superstars?  I don’t know, but most likely they were holed up somewhere at the NATO headquarters, or at least in the only remaining plush hotel in Afghanistan – Serena. The same can be said about the southern Philippines, although there, to be ‘objective’, one Aussie colleague actually got hit by a sniper’s bullet, just a couple of days before I arrived. Do never trust those who write about the suffering of others exclusively from the safety of their living room couches. It is fine to write from there, of course, but only after you have actually seen the people you are talking about; after you have seen them at least once, for a substantial amount of time, after you have listened to their stories, to their desperate cries, and after you have got very dirty and very scared yourself, and truly desperate.  In short: after you have got right there, near that invisible line which separates life from death, and after you have tasted the water of the proverbial river Lethe. ***** But back to where I began. Imagine: I leave the places where people are fighting for survival, or where they are fighting for true freedom, or against imperialism. I hardly have time to take a deep breath, to recover from food and air poisoning, to change into some presentable clothes, and it all hits me directly in my face: I see some news bulletin, I read articles published by mainstream media, and while doing it, I absolutely don’t recognize the world, which I have witnessed in all its rainbow of colors, with all its glory and its misery. I feel ‘out of place’. I know, some call it ‘Vietnam Syndrome’. There are many other definitions for these feelings, or for this outrage, or desperation, or whatever you want to call it. You suddenly feel it, you know it: somewhere far away where you had been living and working just several hours ago, there is still what could be defined as the ‘real world’, inhabited by real people. And then, right now, there is this other world, which over imposes, almost fully covers (and even dwarfs) that real one, by using its mainstream clichés and false mass-produced certainties. ***** This year – this ‘departing year’ 2017 – has definitely not been a good year for our planet. A group of nations, which has been controlling the world for already several centuries brutally and shamelessly, is pushing us, our entire human race, closer and closer towards complete disaster, towards a showdown, towards a confrontation that may abruptly terminate millions of innocent human lives. I’m concerned. I’m very concerned. I have already witnessed indescribable calamities in so many places. I know, I can perfectly well imagine, where all this could lead. Colonialism is always wrong. Imperialism is always wrong. Cultural, religious or economic supremacy theories are wrong, with absolutely no exceptions. If a group of nations from one relatively small continent has been continuously usurping the entire world, shaping it to its advantage and enslaving people of other colors, beliefs and values, it is all unmistakably wrong. But the world is like that – brutal, unjust, and controlled by one aggressive, greedy, sly and arrogant minority. The world is still like that. Once again, it is increasingly like that. And I cannot stand such an ‘arrangement’. I don’t want it to be like that. I’m tired of covering grief, pain, horror and violence. I’m exhausted of filming or photographing perpetual destruction and downfalls. That’s why I’m writing this, at the very end of the year 2017. Perhaps it is just one more futile attempt to stop something inhuman and unnecessary from happening. Perhaps it is almost impossible to cut through the pseudo-reality manufactured by the mainstream media, academia and ‘culture’. Or maybe it’s not impossible. I actually believe that ‘it is never too late’, as I believe that nothing in life is truly ‘impossible’. HAPPY NEW YEAR 2018! Let me inform you that the world is totally different, actually much more beautiful and diverse than you have been told. Even most of those places that are now in flames are beautiful. And if left in peace, they’d thrive. The world is worth fighting for. It is worth defending. Gaza Intifada 3 Don’t ever trust the “news” and “information” which is being disseminated by those who are continuously trying to loot and enslave the world. Trust only what you see and hear, and what you feel. Trust people who are in love with this world, if you manage to identify them. Trust your own senses, your inner logic, and your emotions. Do not vote for bombing or putting sanctions on any foreign country, anywhere on Earth, before you see it with your own eyes, before you are really convinced, before you talk to its people, and before you truly understand what they are saying. Do not make decisions or conclusions after staring at the television set only. Remember: pseudo-reality kills! And it wants you to participate in this murder. Go! Discover! See for yourself. I hope to encounter you, at least some of you, in Syria, in North Korea, in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Russia, China, South Africa, Cuba, and Eritrea – also in hundreds of other great places, which have been brutalized and smeared by those who are dreaming about making this entire world thoroughly banal, consisting only of a few super-wealthy nations served and fed by all those “others” that have been reduced to slavery. After seeing the world with your own eyes, after understanding it, I’m almost certain that you will agree with me: right now there are two parallel realities on this planet. One consists of true human lives and human stories, the other one only of trivial but manipulative interpretations of the world. One (true) reality is longing for progress, kindness, optimism and harmony; the other (fake one) is constantly spreading uncertainty, nihilism, destruction and hopelessness. It is not only what they call “fake news”, it is an entire ‘fake reality’ that has been manufactured by the establishment and upheld by men and women with helmets, bulletproof vests, 4WD’s and prominent PRESS insignia. Once again, HAPPY NEW YEAR 2018! Happy Discovery Of The World! Happy Struggle For Survival Of Our Precious Planet!” Year 2018 will be crucial. Let us all join forces in order for Humanism and that beautiful lady called ‘The True Reality’ survive, to prevail, and to triumph. • Photos by Andre Vltchek http://clubof.info/

[viralhottopics]

iPhone at 10: The gadget that changed everything

The original Apple iPhone

Image: Associated Press

When something is as ubiquitous as the iPhone, it can be hard to remember what life was like without it.

Apples iPhone, which was introduced 10 years ago today at MacWorld by Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs, is more than a device or expert integration of components, software and design. Its a cultural object with influence thats still being felt far and wide.

I wasnt present at the unveiling. At the time, I worked for PCMag.com and, though we covered Apple and its products, we didnt always attend MacWorld (back then, Macs held just a fraction of the then critical desktop market). We were aware that Apple had smartphone ambitions, but they were entering a market dominated by BlackBerry, Palm, Microsoft and Nokia (for less-smart feature phones).

Even so, by 2007, Steve Jobs had already proven he could disrupt and transform a market. Apples iPod hijacked the music player industry (and maybe the music industry, too) and laid the groundwork for every pocket-sized device to come, including, of course, the iPhone.

Before the iPhone, there were touchscreen communication devices, but virtually all of them had physical keyboards. Screens were fine for the occasional taps and menu selections, but the real work got done on tiny, plastic keys. Even gaming needed physical controls. To play Breakout on my old Blackberry Bold, I used the tiny trackball. If I wanted to draw on a touchscreen, as I sometimes did on my old Palm Trio 700p, I used a stylus.

The first iPhone wasnt an assured homerun:

It was expensive: $499 to $599.

It was available on just one carrier: AT&T.

It had no keyboard.

Apple had no phone experience at all.

Apple didnt own the “iPhone” name. It was a pithy product name coined by Infogear in 1998. By 2007 Cisco owned the brand name. First Cisco sued, but settled before the iPhone shipped.

The great unknown

What the iPhone had going for it in those early days was a mystique. Steve Jobs unveiled the device, demonstrating it on stage in January of 2007, but it would be months before the iPhone went on sale. By June of that year, the unseen, untested, illusive iPhone was the most talked about gadget in the world. (Few will remember that AppleTV made its debut at that same January 2007 event, and it took years for it to have even a margin of the iPhones impact.)

SEE ALSO: iPhone 8, AI and Trump: Welcome to Apple in 2017

Just prior to shipping the first iPhones in July, Jobs handed them to a handful of lucky journalists (not this one). The mania surrounding these men and the gadgets they had sworn to keep hidden from view was such that when I did spot one reporter whom I knew had one, I all but tackled him and wrestled it out of his hands (in reality, USA Todays Ed Baig handed it to me with zero fuss or fanfare).

I wrote an entire hands-on story based on my 10 minutes with the first iPhone. It was such an important story that we squeezed it into an issue of PC Magazine that was just days from hitting the newsstands.

What I remember about that day is that when I finally touched the iPhone, the earth seemed to move. This was the rare consumer electronics devices that lived up to my expectations (and the promises of its maker). It was beautiful, responsive, intuitive, and smarter than any smartphone I had ever touched. Yes, I stumbled badly with the virtual keyboard, but even then, I knew that was my problem and not the iPhones.

I also knew that nothing in the smartphone universe would ever be the same.

The iPhone was a shot through the heart of BlackBerry, Nokia and Microsoft. None of their smartphone fortunes would ever truly recover. They had their chances, but BlackBerry misunderstood the difference between a button and a touch screen and delivered the abysmal Storm, a touchscreen that worked like a giant button. Microsoft sat on its hands for years and then delivered bad ideas like the dead-on-arrival Kin. Nokia, a company that prided itself on unusual and innovative designs, essentially threw up its hands.

Steam roller

The iPhone also turned into a category killer.

The first iPhone had just one 3.2-megapixel camera, but by 2010, it had two, including a 5-megapixel camera capable of 720p video recording. Almost from the start, consumers used the iPhone camera, especially since the rise of the iPhone coincided with that of mobile social media. Eventually people started to leave their point-and-shoot cameras at home and share far more images than they ever did with those digital, but largely disconnected, devices.

The first iPhone had an iPod inside it, essentially torpedoing the iPod momentum (Apple had already sold millions of them). Even an all-screen iPod could not stop what became a steady decline. Apple doesnt even hold iPod launch events anymore.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs plays a Beatles Song on iTunes as he introduces the new iPhone at the MacWorld in San Francisco, Jan. 9, 2007.

Image: ASSOCIATED PRESS

Two years before the launch of the iPhone, I gave a talk about mobile phone gaming and showed the audience a motorcycle racing game running on an old Samsung feature phone. It was one of the first phones to feature haptic technology, so the phone vibrated with the game. The screen was tiny and the sound tinny, but it was a big hit. People clearly wanted to play games on their mobile phones. With its large screen, myriad sensors and, for the time, larger speaker, few smartphones at the time were more perfectly built for mobile gaming than the iPhone.

Yes, I know, the iPhone did not arrive with its own app store. That happened in March of the following year, but can anyone really remember a time when we werent downloading apps and playing games on our iPhones?

Handheld gaming devices have seen a vinyl-record-like revival in recent years, but theres no question that the growth of the iPhone coincided with the fall of handheld-gaming leader Nintendo, which tried to lure gamers back with gimmicks like the 3DS.

Ups and downs

It hasnt all been smooth sailing for the iPhone.

It took almost four years for Apple to expand beyond a single carrier, leaving the door open for Google and Android. To this day, there are more Android devices than iPhones in use around the world.

Apples first major iPhone redesign, which switched out most of the curves for edges and exposed antennas, led to one of the iPhones biggest controversies: Antenna Gate, a classic line from Steve Jobs (Youre holding it wrong) and Apple’s rare and begrudging apology.

Steve Jobs died on Oct. 5, 2011, just days after Apple unveiled the iPhone 4S. Rarely has the leader of a company and our perception of him been so intertwined with a product. It was, at the time, hard to imagine how Apple would innovate on its core product without him (that remains a fair question to this day).

iPhone Part II

There is no way to compress a decades worth of innovation, impressive sales (1 billion iPhone sold) and cultural change into one story. The iPhone changed our perception of mobile gadgets and, through innovation and countless apps, our lives.

Apples iPhone did not have to be the product to do this. Someone else could have made a game-changing smartphone, but they didnt. Maybe its because they didnt have Steve Jobs or perhaps they didnt have the vision to see how all these disparate parts would make a beautiful whole.

Today, virtually every new smartphone on the market is either a pale imitation of the iPhone or owes its success to the iPhones influence on smartphone design.

Apple iPhones next 10 years will almost certainly not be like its first 10. The company is now more apt to follow (and improve upon) than lead and its attention is increasingly turning to lucrative services built on the back of the still popular mobile handset.

The iPhones best days may be behind it. Or maybe not.

Tim Cook could pull on some faded jeans, lace up a pair of white New Balance sneakers, slip into a black mock turtle neck, walk out on stage this September and reinvent the smartphone category all over again. It could happen.

BONUS: Everything we think we know about the new iPhone

Read more: http://on.mash.to/2iw6IMm

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