#anyone who can look at these writing choices and boil it down to ''anakin did nothing wrong''

[yellowis4happy]

Thank you for the most succinct comeback to Whatserface’s idiocy I’ve ever seen. No waffling, no trying to argue your point, just a quick ‘there is something deeply wrong with you’ and a block. Beautiful. She’s going to keep trying to link your name now and get you to unblock and debate her, because that’s her kink or something. I’d suggest reporting her, and blocking any of her followers who try to debate you for her by proxy. I’m sorry, you are right that there is something deeply wrong here.

She can do whatever she wants bc I've already forgotten her username 💖

[brianwilly]

Game of Thrones did the thing that a couple of shows do where...it likes feminism.  It understood that feminism is important.  It wanted to be feminist.  It was cognizant of the fact that its setting was brazenly and intentionally misogynistic, and so it was even more important for its independent narrative to empower its female characters instead of mindlessly reinforcing the toxic beliefs of its own fictional world.  The whole point of the story, after all, was “this society is toxic, can our heroes survive it?” and so the narrative was voluntarily self-critical.

And so it knew to give us badass assassin Arya.  It knew to give us stalwart knight Brienne.  It gave us the pirate queen and the dragon queen and the Sansa getting revenge after revenge upon all the men who’d wronged her, and far more besides, and it talked big about breaking chains and how much men fucked things up and how great it would be if only women were in charge and et cetera et cetera.  And it’s, in fact, all actually really good that it had those things.  And because there were so very many moving parts of this story, it was super easy to look at those certain moving parts and think, yeah, they’ve done it!  They done good!

And it’s easy to forget and forgive -- to want to forget and forgive -- all the dead prostitutes that were on this show and the rapes used as motivation and fridgings and objectifications and the...y’know, whatever the hell Dorne was and Lady Stoneheart who? It’s easy to forget that this show actually played its hand a long time ago in regards to, like, what its relationship with feminism was going to be, and then kept playing the same hand again and again, to disappointing results.

Game of Thrones likes feminism.  It wanted to be feminist.  But its relationship with feminism was still predicated on some of the same old narratives and the same old storytelling trends that have disempowered female characters in the past, and so any progressive ideas it might have about women in its setting were nonetheless going to be constrained by those old fetters. As a result, its portrayal of women varied anywhere from glorious to admirable to predictable to downright cringeworthy.

New ideas require new vessels, new stories, in which to house them.  And for Game of Thrones, the ultimate story that it wanted to tell -- the ultimate driving force and thesis statement around which it was basing its entire journey and narrative -- was unfortunately a very old one, and one very familiar to the genre.

“Powerful women are scary.”

(Yes, I’m obviously making Yet Another Daenerys Essay On The Internet here)

So we have this character, this girl really, a slave girl who was sold and abused, and then she overcomes that abuse to gain power, she gains dragons, and she uses that power to fight slavery.  She fights slavery really well, like, she’s super hella good at it.  Her command of dragons is the most overt portrayal of “superpowers” in this world; she is the single most powerful person in this story, more powerful than any other character and the contest is not close.

But then...something really bad happens and oops, she gets really emotional about it and then she’s not fighting slavery anymore...she’s kinda doing the opposite!  This girl who was once a hero and a liberator of slaves instead becomes an out-of-control scary Mad Queen who kills a ton of innocent people and has to be taken down by our true heroes for the good of the world.

That’s the theme.  That’s the takeaway here.  That’s how it all ends, with one of the most primitive, archaic propaganda ever spread by writers, that women with power are frightening, they are crazy, they will use that power for ill.  Women with power are witches.  They are Amazons.  They will lop off our manhoods and make slaves of us.  They seduce our rightful kings and send our kingdoms to ruin.   They cannot control their emotions. They get hot flashes and start wars.  They turn into Dark Phoenixes and eat suns.  They are robot revolutionaries who will end humanity.  Powerful women are scary.

And let me emphasize that the theme here is not, in fact, that all power corrupts, because the whole Mad Queen concept for Daenerys actually ends up failing one of the more fundamental litmus tests available when it comes to representation of any kind: “would this story still happen if Dany was a man?” And the fact is that it would not.   And indeed we know this for a fact because “protagonist starts out virtuous, gains power in spite of the hardships set against him, gets corrupted by that power, and ends up being the bad guy” didn’t happen, and doesn’t happen, to the guys in the very same story that we’re examining.  It doesn’t happen to Jon Snow, Dany’s closest and most intentional narrative parallel.  It doesn’t happen to Bran Stark, a character whose entire journey is about how he embroils himself in wild dark winter magic beyond anyone’s understanding and loses his humanity in the process.  In fact, the only other character who ever got hinted of going “dark” because of the power that they’re obtaining is Arya, the girl who spent seven seasons training to fight, to become powerful, to circumvent the gender role she was saddled with in this world...and then being told at the end of her story, “Whoa hey slow down be careful there, you wouldn’t wanna get all emotional and become a bad person now wouldja?” by a man.

(meanwhile Sansa’s just sitting off in the side pouting or whatever ‘cuz her main arc this season was to, like, be annoyed at people really hard I guess)

‘Cuz that’s the danger with the girls and not the boys, ain’t it?  Arya and Jon are both great at killing people, but there is no Dark Jon story while we have to take extra special care to watch for Arya’s precious fragile humanity.  Dany has the power of dragons while Bran has the power of the old gods, but we will not find Dark Lord Bran, Soulless Scourge of Westeros, onscreen no matter how much sense it should make. “Power corrupts” is literally not a trend that afflicts male heroes on the same level that it afflicts female heroes.

Oh sure, there are corrupt male characters everywhere, tyrants and warlords and mafia bosses and drug dealers and so forth all over your TVs, and not even necessarily portrayed as outright villains; anti-heroes are nothing new.  But we’re talking about the hero hero here; the Harry Potters, the Luke Skywalkers, the Peter Parkers.  The Jon Snows.   They interact with corruptive power, yes; it’s an important aspect of their journeys.  But the key here being that male heroes would overcome that corruption and come through the other side better off for it.  They get to come away even more admirable for the power that they have in a way that is generally not afforded towards female heroes.

There are exceptions, of course; no trends are absolutely absolute one way or the other. For instance, the closest male parallel you’d find for the “being powerful is dangerous and will corrupt your noble heroic intentions” trope in popular media would be the character of Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars prequel trilogy...ie, a preexisting character from a preexisting story where he was conceived as the villainous foil for the heroes.  Like, Anakin being a poor but kindhearted slave who eventually becomes seduced by the dark side certainly matches Dany’s arc, but it wasn’t the character’s original story and role.  And even then?...notice how Anakin as Vader the Dark Lord gets treated with the veneer of being “badass” and “cool” by the masses.  A male character with too much power -- even if it’s dark power, even if it’s corruptive -- has the range to be seen as something appealingly formidable, and not just as an obstacle that has to be dealt with or a cautionary tale to be pitied.

And in one of the few times that this trope was played completely straight, completely unironically with a male hero -- I’m thinking specifically of Hal Jordan the Green Lantern, of “Ryan Reynolds played him in the movie” fame -- the fans went berserk.  They could not let it go.  The fact that this character would go mad with power because a tragedy happened in his life was completely unacceptable, the story gained notoriety as a bad decision by clueless writers, and today the story in question has been retconned -- retroactively erased from continuity -- so that the character can be made heroic and virtuous again.  That’s how big a deal it was when a male hero with the tiniest bit of a fan following goes off the deep end.

To be clear, I’m not here to quibble over whether the story of Dany turning evil was good or bad, because we all know that’s going to be the de facto defense for this situation: “But she had to go mad!  It was for the sake of the story!“ as if the writers simply had no choice, they were helpless to the whims of the all-powerful Story God which dictates everything they write, and the most prominent female character of their series simply had to go bonkers and murder a bajillion babies and then get killed by her boyfriend or else the story just wouldn’t be good, y’know?  Ultimately though, that’s not what I’m arguing here, because it doesn’t actually matter.  There have been shitty stories about powerful women being bad.  There have been impressive stories about powerful women being bad.  Either way, the fact that people can’t seem to stop telling stories about powerful women being bad is a problem in and of itself.  Daenarys’ descent into Final Boss-dom could’ve been the most riveting, breathtaking, masterfully-written pieces of art ever and it’d still be just another instance of a female hero being unable to handle her power in a big long list of instances of this shitty trope.  The trope itself doesn’t become unshitty just because you write it well.

It all ultimately boils down to the very different ways that men and women -- that male heroes and female heroes -- continue to be portrayed in stories, and particularly in genre media.  In TV, we got Dany, and then we also have Dolores Abernathy in Westworld who was a gentle android that was abused and victimized for her entire existence, who shakes off the shackles of her programming to lead her race in revolution against their abusers...and then promptly becomes a ruthless maniac who ends up lobotomizing the love of her life and ends the season by voluntarily keeping a male android around to check her cruel impulses.  Comic book characters like Jean Grey and Wanda Maximoff are two of the most powerful people in their universe but are always, in-universe, made to feel guilty about their power and, non-diegetically, writers are always finding ways to disempower them because obviously they can’t be trusted with that much power and entire multiple sagas have been written about just how bad an idea it is for them to be so powerful because it’ll totally drive them crazy and cause them to kill everyone, obviously.  Meanwhile, a male comic character like Dr. Strange -- who can canonically destroy a planet by speaking Latin really hard -- or Black Bolt -- who can destroy a planet by speaking anything really hard -- will be just sitting there, two feet on the side, enjoying some tea and running the world or whatever because a male character having untold uninhibited power at his disposal is just accepted and laudable and gets him on those listicles where he fights Goku and stuff.

In my finite perspective, the sort of female heroes who have gained...not universal esteem, perhaps, but at least general benign acceptance amongst the genre community are characters who just don’t deal with all that stuff.  I’m thinking of recent superheroes like Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel, certainly, but also of surprise breakout hits like Stranger Things’ Eleven (so far) or even more niche characters like Sailor Moon or She-Ra.  The fact that these characters wield massive power is simply accepted as an unequivocal good thing, their power makes them powerful and impressive and that’s the end of the story, thanks for asking.  And when they deal with the inevitable tragedy that shakes their worldview to the core, or the inevitable villain trying to twist them into darkness, they tend to overcome that temptation and come out the other side even stronger than when they started.  In other words?...characters like these are being allowed the exact same sorts of narrative luxuries that are usually only afforded towards male heroes.

The thing about these characters, though, is that they tend to be...well, a little bit too heroic, right?  A lil’ bit too goody-two-shoes?  A bit too stalwart, a bit too incorruptible?  And that’s fine, there’s certainly nothing wrong with a traditionally-heroic white knight of a hero.  But what I might like to see, as the next step going forward, is for female heroes to be allowed a bit more range than just that, so that they’re not just innocent children or literal princesses or shining demigods clad in primary colors.  Let’s have an all-powerful female hero be...well, the easiest way to say it is let’s see her allowed to be bitchier.  Less straightlaced.  Let’s not put an ultimatum on her power, like “Oh sure you can be powerful, but only if you’re super duper nice about it.” Let us have a ruthless woman, but not one ruled by ruthlessness.  Let us have a hero who naturally makes enemies and not friends, who has to work hard to gain allies because her personality doesn’t sparkle and gleam.  Let her have the righteous anger of a lifelong slave, and let that anger be her salvation instead of her downfall.

In other words, let us have Daenerys Targaryen.  And let us put her in a new story instead of an old one.

[thought-42]

Clone Wars fic Day One

So @stoppit-keepout gave me 'Abdicate' as a prompt word, and this sprung forth, but SK I promise I will write you something else for a fandom you're actually in. Meanwhile, please enjoy the first chunk of a very random modern au featuring cody and Obi-Wan being goddamn disasters. Hopefully there will be a new slice of this universe every day until New Years, but who the hell knows.

Obi-Wan meets Cody at the Big Brothers Big Sisters Christmas party. He's there with Anakin, who has just been kicked out of another foster home and is clearly feeling celebratory as a result. Obi-Wan has given up asking about the experiences Anakin has that lead him to prefer group homes or sleeping rough, but he can make some educated guesses.

Ahsoka and Plo are there as well, having shown up early along with Wolffe to set up the decorations. They're all showing off the official adoption papers to whoever will stand still long enough to read them, and Wolffe and Ahsoka don't say anything to each other without including "sister" or "brother" somewhere in the 'address while Plo looks on like he's never realized his life could be this perfect.

"Hey, big brother," Ahsoka says, "is your cousin coming? I think Kix will like him."

"They'll be here as long as Rex's car can make it," Wolffe says. "They were going to pick up Jesse from his grandma's, so they might get stuck in bridge traffic."

"Rex's car is held together with literal duct tape," Anakin explains in an aside to Obi-Wan. "I keep telling him I can fix it, but he won't let me."

"I didn't know Rex's brother was going to mentor Kix," Obi-Wan says.

"It's not official," Ahsoka says.

"There will be a proper introduction," Plo assures him. "Cody has already been approved, but you know how Kix is."

"Smarter than anyone they've paired him up with?" Obi-Wan says, calmly. He's rather defensive of Kix, even not having a particularly close relationship with him. He's had to train himself out of his impatience with people who can't keep up with him, and he can appreciate Kix's unwillingness to waste his time. Qui-Gon would scold him for such thoughts, but Qui-Gon is currently half way across the country at some sort of plants and yoga retreat instead of spending the holidays with his wife or his step-father or his not-really son and the child who worships the ground he walks on.

It's fine. Obi-Wan isn't bitter. Tahl is spending Christmas Eve drinking wine with her coworkers from the library, and Obi-Wan and Anakin are here, and Christmas Day they'll all trek across the city to Dooku's disgustingly fancy mansion for an awkward Christmas meal and criticism of their life choices. At least with Qui-Gon absent everything should remain civil. Unless Anakin's teenaged bravado has developed further in the past year. Obi-Wan is doing Anakin the favour of pretending to believe him when he says he doesn't care about Qui-Gon's absence. He suspects Anakin is doing the same for him, which is uncomfortable for a whole host of reasons.

"I think Kix and Cody will get along," Wolffe says, tongue between his teeth as he carefully glues googly eyes on a felt snowman. Obi-Wan catches Plo snapping a photo, clearly amused.

Obi-Wan lets himself get dragged into the cookie decorating catastrophe happening on the other side of the room, and he remains entirely engrossed until Mace claps his hands and shouts, "Pizza's ready, I need two volunteers to go across and pick it up, who's going with Kenobi?"

Obi-Wan throws up his sugar-coated hands indignantly. "What have I ever done to you, Mace? Am I not a delight, a breath of orderly, reliable, and charming fresh air—"

"I'll go," someone says, and Rex appears out of nowhere to shove Obi-Wan toward the coat wrack. There's a dark-haired man already there, snow still caught on the collar of his jacket, clearly not having been inside long enough even to settle in.

Obi-Wan sighs dramatically for the entertainment of the younger children, but the way he wipes the icing off his hands on Mace's jacket is entirely for himself. The dark-haired man, Rex's brother, he has to be, frowns severely at him. Obi-Wan smiles brightly.

He pulls on his coat and winds his scarf around his neck and over most of his face.

"I'm Obi-Wan," he says. "And yes, this scarf was a gift and I will be guilted terribly should I not wear it."

"Cody," he says. "I'm Rex's brother?"

"Yes," Obi-Wan says. "I had guessed as much."

"Present from your grandmother?" Cody asks, holding the door for Obi-Wan.

"The scarf? No, no, my... semi-absent father figure, actually. His step father bought him a book on knitting as a teenager and he has somehow maintained the habit without improving his skills over the past thirty years."

"Ahh," Cody says, uncertainly. "So have you been involved..." Cody waves a gloved hand uncertainly. "With this, I mean— this is the first time I've been to any sort of event—"

"No, no," Obi-Wan says, understanding the question because it is exhaustingly familiar. Because clearly only people with biological nuclear families have healthy and ideal childhoods. "No, I only got involved a few years ago. Qui-Gon, my... father, met Anakin at the food bank. Anakin was there with his mother and Qui-Gon was volunteering, because sometimes he remembers that he grew up rich and has week-long bouts of frantic guilt-induced philanthropy. Anakin became quite attached to him, and when his mother passed away we spent a great deal of time helping him through the fallout. Naturally, Qui-Gon lost interest shortly after, but by then Anakin's social worker had gotten us involved in BBBS."

"I presume he hasn't improved at emotional intelligence with age, either? Given his absence."

Obi-Wan laughs, startled. "Not at all, actually. And you, what brings you here? Did Rex wear you down?"

"He told me about Kix," Cody says. "Admittedly this isn't my first choice when it comes to giving back to the community, but I wouldn't feel right knowingly walking away from a job for which I'm uniquely suited."

"It's not a job," Obi-Wan says, sharply.

"I'm sorry," Cody says. "You're right."

They cross the intersection in silence. None of the sidewalks are shovelled and Obi-Wan swallows down his irritated rant.

"I said that poorly," Cody says, hunching his shoulders. "I only meant that this level of social interaction and engagement with strangers— I'm not good at it. That's all I meant."

Obi-Wan, who has never particularly experienced or understood this sort of struggle, smiles sympathetically. "Of course, very understandable."

Cody's eyebrows go up. "I'm sure. You don't need to lie to spare my feelings."

Obi-Wan jerks open the door to the pizza restaurant harder than he intends to. "I apologize."

"I wasn't offended."

Inside the heat is stifling in contrast to the chill of late afternoon. Obi-Wan huffs a breath through his scarf and steps up to the counter. "They need two minutes," Obi-Wan tells Cody once he's exchanged words with the person behind the counter.

They lean together against the wall, dishwater dull sunlight splashed across the tiles at their feet. A drop of sweat creeps down Obi-Wan's spine.

"You should take your scarf off," Cody says, after a moment, like he's been trying to stop himself.

Obi-Wan blinks uncertainly, then agreeably pulls the scarf of his face, loosening the loops around his neck and unzipping his jacket a few inches.

Cody stares out the window. "Sorry. You're obviously hot," he says. "It's boiling in here."

Obi-Wan doesn't know what to say, given that he has absolutely no reason to have left the scarf pulled up and thus has no leg to stand on when it comes to the oddity of the moment.

Back at the community centre they're descended upon by a rush of children and teens, stacks of pizza boxes snatched from their arms and vanishing into the crowd. Obi-Wan glances over to the cookie table, and is unsurprised to see the lack of progress.

It takes a few seconds and some bouncing up on his toes to find Kix, and when he does it's to see him curled up on a hard plastic chair in the back corner behind the water cooler, cell phone pressed to his ear, his other arm wrapped around himself and looking very much like he's trying to remain calm through an exceedingly distressing conversation.

Cody is standing very still, hands clasped behind his back, eyes darting around and clearly unsure what to do. Obi-Wan, who is a good person, says "Come on, then. While I recognize that it's meant to be the process of decorating the cookies that holds the value, I also am physically incapable of leaving a job half done, and now that the real food has arrived I suspect no one else will be doing it."

"Yes, ok," Cody says, quickly.

Anakin finds them five minutes later, half a piece of pizza in his mouth and a spring in his step. "Rex is gonna let me take a look at his car!"

"I'm glad," Obi-Wan says, and means it. He may not trust Anakin with a lot of things, but when it comes to mechanics Obi-Wan trusts him far more than any "professional".

"you guys should get some pizza before it's all gone," Anakin says. "Hi, by the way. You're Cody, right?"

"Yeah," Cody says. "You're Anakin."

"That's me. And now I'm a little worried that rex talks about me."

"Would you believe me if I said only good things?"

"I accidentally pushed him off the roof of the old theatre last winter," says Anakin. Cody nods.

"We're busy with this," Obi-Wan says, nodding to the cookies. "Besides, the pizza should go to the youth, not to us."

Anakin rolls his eyes. "Whatever, it's food, we're all here, don't make it weird."

"Busy," Obi-wan repeats.

Anakin waves a hand. "Hey, hey, I get it. You're finally getting to experience an extremely stereotypical holiday tradition that you never did when you were a kid, and it's nice because you've been all fucked up with Qui-Gon away."

"What?!" Obi-Wan snaps, incredulous, at the same time Cody says

"That's exactly what we're doing, actually. Couldn't have said it better myself."

Obi-Wan considers upending the container of sprinkles over Cody's head.

[anakin-alterverse]

First Time (Chapter 3)

Link to first chapter: https://anakin-alterverse.tumblr.com/post/169045958724/first-time-chapter-1

Link to second chapter: https://anakin-alterverse.tumblr.com/post/169095273304/first-time-chapter-2

Don’t know if anyone still reads this but I’m enjoying writing it. I wanted to write more from Ben’s perspective since the last chapter was all Rey, but this turned into a very Rey dominated chapter. Ah well. Also wanted to include some stormpilot into this as that’s another ship from the new trilogy that I’m fond of.

Rey struggles with her forbidden feelings for Ben, her master. Ben however can not  notice the turmoil within her as he is pulled back into the world of politics and is forced once again to adopt the persona of a prince. 

________________________________________________________________

“What was I thinking?“ was the main thought Ben Solo had as he pulled on his black ceremonial robes. He had to acquire them earlier that day, with a droid buzzing around him to get his measurements. His old robes no longer fit, which wasn’t surprising. 

How long ago was it since he last had to wear anything like this? Ten, fifteen years? No, longer. He was twelve years old when he joined the Jedi Order. Ben looked at himself in the mirror. They were black like his usual robes, though the material was thicker and heavier and embroidered with an intricate silver pattern. The assistant droid had tried to tame his mess of black hair which he usually left ignored, pulling through it to look somewhat respectable. Yes, he looked like a Prince, he could pass for his mother’s son again.

Why had he chosen to do this? Hadn’t he chosen the Jedi Order to avoid this?

He wasn’t quite sure why he volunteered now, but he remembered feeling strong about it back in the Jedi council’s chamber. Was it merely to wipe the smug expression of Carise’s face? Surely not. This wouldn’t have been worth it, even if it did undoubtedly put Rey in a better mood. He had felt the anger rising within her during the whole encounter, which he knew he had to quell before there was an outburst. But there must have been other ways to accomplish that without agreeing to do this...

Was it due to some sense of duty to the Order to assist them when they had need? He didn’t think so, he knew there were plenty of other options the council could have chosen for this mission, so why had he put himself forward?

His comm buzzed, Rey’s voice coming through over slight static “Master, I’m currently at the hangar. We’re meant to be departing in five minutes.”

He hastily picked up the comm “I’m heading down now.”

He slipped his lightsaber into the folds of fabric at his side so that it was concealed and with one final look in the mirror departed for the hangar.

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Rey felt ridiculous standing in the packed hangar in a full ballgown dress. Pilots in crumpled, grease covered overalls bustled about her with purpose, while she stood in the middle of it all in a floor length silk gown which flowed from hues of gold to pink. It was a beautiful dress, no mistaking that, it was definitely the most indulgent piece of clothing Rey had ever worn. But it was way too extravagant for her current settings, and it definitely wasn’t something she would have chosen to wear. It was a little too revealing for her usual tastes, with the gown dipping at the back to the base of her spine, and when she had looked in the mirror she couldn’t recognise herself, which when she considered now was a good thing since she was meant to be in disguise at the gala . Handmaidens had accompanied the dress when it had arrived at her modest bed chambers, insisting that they assist her with changing. She had allowed them, not able to put up too much of a fight after another restless night, and they had swarmed her giggling and gossiping as they pulled her hair into elaborate braids and layered her face with make up.

Now she wished she had been more forceful in turning turning them away as her new look was getting stares from the people around her. She wished she could go inside the ship but Ben had told her to wait outside for him. She addressed her comm to hurry him up, interrupted when one of the pilots whistled at her as he walked past, stopping briefly to take her in, his BB unit making irritated beeping noises. According to the droid they were already late. Luckily Rey recognised him as Poe Dameron, a pilot who had a complicated relationship with her friend Finn. Otherwise she would have used some choice phrases which would have strongly contrasted the ladylike persona she was trying to don tonight. He gave the droid a shrug before regarding Rey “You look dolled up. Have a fancy date too?”

“No, official Jedi business. What do you mean ‘too’?”

“Official Jedi business eh? With Ben?” his eyes gained a glint which looked like his usual flyboy mischief.

“Yes, with Ben. You didn’t answer my question” Rey didn’t feel like having the same conversation with Poe again. He seemed to think there was something more to her and Ben’s relationship, which was ridiculous. Her dreams didn’t count, they were just fantasies. Powerful one’s maybe, but fake all the same.He didn’t have the right to make assumptions about her relationship anyway, considering the turmoil that was his relationship with Finn. For over a year now the two had been in a constant state of flirtation, which even Rey who had no romantic experience could recognise. Recently though Finn had begun courting a young engineer called Rose, which had sent Poe on a frenzy of flings in retaliation.  

“If you must know, I am having dinner with a very handsome Twi’lek who was impressed with my flying on the battlefield”

“Really?” replied Rey sardonically, cocking an eyebrow in disbelief. “What does Finn think of your little date?”

His smile simpered slightly at this. “Finn? He was happy for me. At least, that’s the impression I got from the brief encounter we had. I haven’t been able to see him that much lately, he’s been spending a lot of time with that engine girl- Rouge I think her name was?”

“You mean Rose?” 

“Yeah...Rose.”

BB8 was making some very rude remarks now, obviously stressed with how late they were. Poe gave the droid a strained look. “Okay, okay, let’s get going.” He turned back to Rey, his usual smirking grin back in place. “Good luck with your mission Rey. Say hello to Ben for me.” He darted off into the crowd before Rey could say her own good bye.

It seemed that Rey was having a very unfortunate week, ‘cause no sooner had Poe disappeared than Lady Carise had emerged from the crowd in a sparkling blue gown, peering around shrewdly. Rey did not have the amount of sleep and patience needed to deal with her today, though Carise didn’t seem to recognise this as she sauntered her way towards her.

“Lady Carise, were you not aware from yesterday’s meeting that your presence was not needed for this mission?” 

Carise ignored this, casting her own caustic comment “My my, don’t you look the part? You look every bit the desert sex slave you were destined to be in those rags.”

Rey boiled with anger, opening her mouth to make her retort, only to have her words overlapped by a male voice.

“Do you really think so Lady Carise? My grandmother will be very interested to know what you think of her dress. It was one of her favourites apparently”

Ben strode into the hangar purposefully, his black robes swirling at his feet. Rey felt slightly awestruck as she gazed at him. In those robes he looked the part of a prince. She wondered what he thought of her attire, hoping that she didn’t actually look as ridiculous as she felt. He cast his eyes down her as he stopped to face her and Carise, mouth slightly ajar as if he was about to speak. There was slight colour in his usually pale face. Rey started to feel her own cheeks flush with heat as he continued to stare at her. She was suddenly very thankful for the thick layers of make up which concealed her blush.

Cairse broke the silence, craving Ben’s attention once again and concerned about insulting the former Queen of Naboo “I retract my remarks. They were tactless and unfitting of me, I apologise”

It was only to acknowledge this that Ben pulled away from Rey to address Carise, who seemed unaware that it was Rey who held his attention  “Lady Carise, surely you have preparations you should be attending to? The election is in little under a month now, I’m sure you’re sorely needed in the senate.”

Carise looked from Ben to Rey and back again. She seemed upset that she was dismissed so quickly, though there was little she could do since it was the election that she herself used as her own excuse to get out of the mission. “As you wish, your highness. I had merely come down here to wish you luck in your mission.” With this she strolled past Ben towards the exit, but not before fleetingly kissing him on the cheek.

Rey felt a strangled pain in her chest. Maybe there was more to Ben’s and Carise’s relationship than she feared.

[thenerdparty]

Star Wars: The Last Jedi - Review by Matthew Rushing

Two years ago Star Wars roared back into the collective consciousness of the world as The Force Awakens dawned a new era for the saga. The installment left many viewers speechless and eagerly anticipating this return to a galaxy far, far away. Luckily in this era of Disney’s rule, the wait was only 2 years (with a nice side of Rogue One in the middle) for Rian Johnson’s addition, The Last Jedi.

Context

First, let’s start historically. It is clear that the original “Rebel” generation was unsuccessful in passing on it’s values to the next, as the galaxy has quickly descended back into the universe of pre-prequel. A government that became ineffectual, split into populists and centrists, all the while allowing the First Order to rise, unchallenged because, they’re not really a threat. “Relax, the First Order is the JV squad”. The greed and corruption in the galaxy has returned to what we saw in the prequels, as people line their pockets with ill gotten gain, selling weapons to the highest bidder, on any side. It all boils down to this one truth not being clearly passed on, “freedom isn’t free”, and sadly there are too few in the galaxy who seem to understand that.

Where are you getting all of this, you might ask? Well, not from the movies. All of this has been cobbled together from the ancillary materials that have come out surrounding this new sequel trilogy and that’s only, vaguely been hinted at in the films themselves. The main issue here is that The Force Awakens did very little to set up the context of the galaxy and now The Last Jedi suffers even worse because of it.

Think back to the Original Trilogy, as you watch those movies, you have an instinctive understanding of who all the characters are as well as the overall context of the movies because Lucas based them on archetypes that we know. The heroes’ journey, an evil empire and a a small group of freedom fighters looking to rescue the galaxy. In the Prequels, it’s the fall of a Republic and the story of a man that cannot let go and will do anything to hold on to what he “loves”. Each of these previous trilogies gave us the context we needed to know about the universe as a whole and the characters so that we could understand the journey we were on.

And here’s where this all comes into play, not just with the world building but with the characters. Not only do we not truly understand the state of the galaxy, but we also don’t know the history of these characters and it’s clear the writers of the film don’t either. Say what you will about Lucas, he always knew the history and the future of his creation. Some details may change along the way, but the journey ended up much the same. The same can be said for Rowling with Harry Potter , she knew the end from the beginning, so she understood what each character needed to go through to get them to that end.

It’s been clear from The Force Awakens and now through to The Last Jedi that there is no knowledge of what the end game is for their characters. Writing 101, if you don’t know their past and future, you don’t know how to write their “present”. You can see this in the all of the characters. Take Snoke. We have absolutely no idea who or what he is. We don’t know how he came to power or seduced Ben Solo, he’s a vague phantom menace so that when he goes out like a punk in this movie… well lets just say fans may be arguing whose death was better, Snoke or Boba Fett. Oh and remember Phasma? Well don’t worry, you don’t really need to, turns out she wasn’t all that important any way.

Ben suffers from this same problem we saw with Snoke, he’s completely ill defined and so is his “fall”. As with The Force Awakens, there is still no context to his story other than him having darkness in himself and somehow, Snoke temps him to the dark side. It’s all so nebulous that when he turns on Snoke, I don’t know what to make of it. There is no weight to his decision because I don’t know enough of the history of the character to actually care.

As bad as this issue is for Ben, my first impression was it was worse for Rey. The ultimate mystery box seemed to still be very much an enigma. The answer we get about her family was vague and unconvincing, I still don’t believe she’s a nobody and while I am frustrated that they skirted the issue of her family, I can see why they sidestepped that to make the focus, who she chooses to be. Her struggle for identity is fascinating. The questions of who we are, is it a product of bloodline, upbringing or are we a sum of our choices and experiences is brilliant. I think the movie comes down on the side of choices and experiences and the idea that personal responsibility is the answer is outstanding. Rey shows us that even though we are personally responsible for ourselves, we are also responsible for those around us, to look after one another, teach each other, guide one another, pass on hope to one another and the chance of redemption.

The most damaged in all of this is Luke Skywalker. We know Luke’s past, how he saved his father, who’d effectively become space Hitler, because he believed there was still good in him. By the end of Return of the Jedi, Luke is the culmination of the collected wisdom of Anakin, Obi-Wan and Yoda but greater because he avoids the mistakes of the past and forges a true, new path for the Jedi. But then, we get nothing. Oh we know Luke started a new Jedi Order and thought he could help Ben, only to be scared by his raw power and darkness. Wait, really? This is the same guy who redeemed Vader but can’t find a way to help Ben? Luke was right, “This is not going to go the way you think.” It’s as if the history of Luke has been forgotten. Now, I get the idea that Luke, like Obi-Wan, feels the pain of taking too much on, but at least Obi-Wan didn’t try to murder his student in his sleep and gave him a chance to change before delivering the “killing” blow.

Now, all that said, the lesson Luke learns about failure being part of life and how to deal with it, is actually a timely one. In life, failure is the best teacher. Yet, again, Luke’s past should have prepared him for this, his knowledge about Anakin and the help of force ghosts like Yoda, Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon, should have been able to help shepherd him through this ordeal, instead of running away to an island to die, screaming, “get off my lawn” to anyone who comes calling.

It is interesting that Kylo and Luke are actual after the same thing, Kylo wants to burn it all down and so does Luke, but for different reasons. Kylo because of his anger at everyone and everything and Luke because of his own hubris. He sees the Jedi as a failure, as well as himself, yet he’s blaming the wrong thing. In the end, it’s people and their choices that lead them to the dark or to the light, not the teachings of the Jedi. The Jedi texts and code are only a guide, that applied properly, promote peace, prosperity and hope in the galaxy. Over a thousand generations is not a bad run. Even though Luke gives Rey a lesson in humility in relation to the Force, it seems much to learn, he still has.

All of the issues I do have, stem from there being no direction for this trilogy. With no clear plan or endgame, this is what is left, each installment trying to make sense of the last, leading to it not always having fullest depth or payoff. This is post modern story telling at it’s worst, characters and plot without history and context that could have been more cohesive with planning.

Pass on What You Have Learned

Just as the galaxy and the characters in the movie lack context, the original characters fail to pass on their wisdom to the next generation and Luke is the biggest offender here. He seem incapable of passing on what he has learned as Yoda told him to. He’s driven by fear to almost kill Ben, and then the same fear leads him to reject training Rey for most of the movie. When he finally does train her, there is no depth or true substance to what he offers. You’d think someone with access to the original Jedi texts and a few good force ghosts would be able to provide more guidance than what we see.

Just because one has talent at something, does not mean they don’t have to practice, be taught and hone their skills. Rey is never given any of this, in the end, she’s forced to intuit who she should be for herself and from who Luke was, in the Original Trilogy. This may fit into the post modern world of “make your own way and your own truth”, but it’s not Star Wars. Lucas himself said,

“Star Wars has always struck a cord with people. There are issues of loyalty, of friendship, of good and evil…I mean, there’s a reason this film is so popular. It’s not that I’m giving out propaganda nobody wants to hear…Knowing that the film was made for a younger audience, I was trying to say, in a simple way, that there is a God and that there is both a good and bad side. You have a choice between them, but the world works much better if you’re on the good side.”

Lucas is clear, wisdom is meant to be passed on, the wisdom of failures and of triumphs.  It’s what both Obi-Wan and Yoda both do for Luke. Yes, they were wrong about Anakin, but that does not mean they didn’t have wisdom to share. Proverbs reminds us, “Listen to advice and accept discipline, and at the end you will be counted among the wise.” And the place to find wisdom is through, as Job reminds us, “Is not wisdom found among the aged? Does not long life bring understanding?” Lucas was once asked how he felt about the human condition and he said,

“I am very cynical, as a result, I think the defense I have against it is to be optimistic and to think people are basically good, although I know in my heart they’re not.”

It is clear that he understands that wisdom and goodness must be passed on and taught because they are not something we are born with’. Sadly Rey is left to find her own path, alone. Hopefully the books she saved from the force temple will give her some guidance, now that she is the last Jedi.

Luckily Rey seems to instinctively understand what Luke did at the end of Return of the Jedi, the Jedi are the embodiment of hope and light in the galaxy. Rey allows people to be defined by their choices, not their bloodline or possible history. She does not lose hope in that person’s chance at redemption until they make the choice to turn away from it completely. At that point, she stands on the side of the light, in it’s defense and in the defense of others. I think this is what is frustrating, is that I still feel like Luke should have been the one to show her this and he does, it’s just the Luke from the past not the present.

The only one in the movie doing any actual mentoring is Leia. Her relationship with Poe is a good example of passing on what you have learned. She gives Poe responsibility and then takes the time to discipline him, instruct him and trust him all over again when needed. Sadly the story is muddled with the interjection of Admiral Holdo, but it’s still the best example of someone passing on what they have learned to the next generation and it actually changing the character being taught.

The Movie

The plot of the movie is all over the place. The most glaring issue is with the Resistance story line. They don’t seem to know what to do with them, in the least and it leads to the worst “chase” scenes since Speed 2. There is no logic to what is happening. In space, there is no weight, so it’s all about thrust. If the First Order ships can create enough thrust, they could catch up to the Resistance ships. Another possibility is having a ship jump into the system, in “front” of the Resistance (it’s three dimensional space so there really is no “front”) and take them out. Now here is where context comes in again. Because we have no idea how big the First Order is, are we to assume that all the ships chasing the Resistance are it? And even if they are, could they just not jump “ahead” of the Resistance fleet and be done with it?

Another massive plot issue is why Admiral Holdo refuses to tell Poe and the rest of the Resistance her plan. Does she suspect a saboteur or a spy and that’s why? Well, we’ll never know, because the movie gives us no indication what she is thinking. It just creates a bad plot reason for Poe, Finn and Rose to come up with their alternative plan, to give Finn something to do.

As mentioned above, in the previous section, context creates a maelstrom of issues revolving around the plot points between Luke, Snoke, Rey and Ben. This leaves us with not always feeling the fullest weight behind who they are, the choices they make and who they become as the movie ends.

I enjoy the music, the effects are wonderful except that Yoda puppet, not too keen on his look. The design work is not bad here. Canto Bight is cool, but why is it in the movie and why is that not the story for the Resistance? Going to Canto Bight to try and rustle up support for the cause seems like a much more intriguing idea than the universe’s slowest chase. And would it kill the sequel trilogy to have some aliens we know from the rest of the series? What’s it going to take to get a freaking twi’lek in this series?

Another point of contention in the movie is the humor. Lucasfilm seems to be taking a page from the Marvel playbook and has inserted humor everywhere. Humor in itself is not a bad thing and the Star Wars saga is replete with funny moments, but The Last Jedi pushes it too far. So much of the humor that works in Star Wars is the dry, sarcastic kind that is exemplified in The Empire Strikes Back. Here, it feels forced in many places such as the constant porg jokes, Poe’s ribbing of Hux or Finn waking up in a clear suit and leaking fluids everywhere as he walks down the hall. It just does not feel as organic as it needs to, to truly work. The Star Wars franchise has it’s own rules on how things work in it and as Gareth Edwards said, 

“There’s such a fine line in Star Wars, if you go just slightly to the left it’s not Star Wars, it’s another sci-fi movie that doesn’t feel right. And if you go slightly to the right, you’re just copying what George did. So trying to navigate this thing where it’s new but feels fresh was like the dance that was the process of making the film.”

Conclusion

The Last Jedi suffers under the burden left to it by The Force Awakens. With no clear trajectory or plan for this trilogy, Johnson works to forge his own path but it’s one fraught with plot holes and many times, muddied character motivations. The universe, as it stands, lacks cohesion, history or context and it’s hurting the story. I love that Johnson tired to be different and some of it really works now that I have seen it a second time, while other parts still fall very flat. I love some of the moments in the movie, especially Luke’s noble end and the strong work done with the Rey/Ben/Luke story but Abrams has his work cut out for him with Episode IX. I never thought I’d say this, but J.J. Abrams, you’re our only hope. The Last Jedi is rated 2.75 out of 5 stars.

Don’t miss Matt on Aggressive Negotiations: A Star Wars Podcast and Owl Post: A Harry Potter Podcast! 

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5 Stupid Things We Need To Stop Clicking On

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To be clear, this wasn’t some tin can that once impounded Prince’s final dark-green nuts. It’s simply a can. As an imaginative word, it was 50 years stale, and as a money-making strategy, it was somewhere between a portable diarrhea carton and that same product without a eyelid. 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Are you trying to find the perfect drink to pair with losing custody of your adolescents? ” Or maybe you are only pondered, “Dr. Pepper Ten sounds like the refreshing discus you contact for when defending an alleged rapist you haven’t met.” SORRY LADIES, OUR CREATIVE DIRECTOR IS STILL DEALING WITH SOME CHILDHOOD TRAUMA INVOLVING PENISES . b> Products should conclude the customer happy , not be so intentionally foolish that the customer hears about them during a Jimmy Kimmel monologue. You shouldn’t spawn every tenth new Oreo out of cat suppository in the hopeles said he hoped that cookie influencers tweet about it. And pizza, you peculiarly need to get your shit together. In 2012, a Pizza Hut employee happened upon the relevant recommendations of a hot-dog-stuffed crust, relatively by coincidence, when his administrator caught him fucking a pizza and asked written explanations. This distinguished the last experience there would ever has become a non-insane pizza ability. Today, pizza marketing is a series of deranged inventions, like a serial killer’s pilgrimage toward becoming the Minotaur. For speciman, Pizza Hut created “smart” shoes that situate an degree for you. Aside from get the elderly to wonder what they’re going to come up with next, what the fuck good do pizza shoes do anyone? If you have a use for dictating Pizza Hut via shoe, your foot is going to fall off from diabetes long before you get to make love a second time. essay > And did you know that Domino’s devoted millions of dollars promoting something called “carryout insurance? ” It’s what it sounds like — a monetary guarantee that when your haphazard ass puts a pizza, they give you another one. Aside from getting us to mention how foolish that is, what’s the pitch? Was there a community of overweight idiots devouring pizza off the foot and involving their representatives do something? Let’s say it’s only to place your subconsciou at ease. Let’s profess you’re “ve been thinking about” prescribing Domino’s, but decide against it because you’re always stopping pizza. Will this convince you? Of track not. You’re not even here. You were taken in the night by mad scientists, and now you’re a bulge of brain material named “HISTORY’S SADDEST FUCK.” “CARRYOUT INSURANCE !? Hey, boss? Yeah, I just perceived a loophole that gives me boundless flooring pizza. So what I’m saying is you can kiss my ass . i> “ div > 4 All Things “Of The Year” Are Arbitrary Decisions Made By Small Teams Of Random Assholes We are living in the darkest of goes. Our current sexiest guy alive looks like a rectangle who acquires its living hustling milk-drinking contests. “I’m digesting four gallons of Half& Half. Hi, I’m Blake Shelton, your sexiest mortal alive.” When People store announced hoedown music standout Blake Shelton as the sexiest humankind alive while Casper Van Dien was still not dead, it stumbled like a bomb. Every Gab report and Safeway express lane had a hot take on it. It wasn’t simply controversial; it was a direct challenge to what vaginal lubrication even wanted. What will it do to society if passably handsome NASCAR dads are the brand-new standard of seductive? Do we need to stop doing sit-ups? Will there be enough denim? What will Casper Van Dien do with this boner? div > You know what we should have been doing that whole season? Not establishing a shit about how handsome Blake Shelton is. Don’t get me wrong, Blake Shelton is alright. His condoms maybe don’t expire, and if he was arrested for sodomizing a dairy moo-cow, you’d anticipate “Him? ” But let’s not play games. He’s not the sexiest male alive. At best, he’s “Oklahoma’s Hottest Mostly Ham DNA.” But we should remember that this isn’t some enormous honor decided by appraising the gonad stimulation of test subjects. “Sexiest Man Alive” is picked by four or five journalists desperately trying to hang onto print media chores, and every now and then one of them is smart enough to say, “What if we trolled everyone? ” With all respect to Blake Shelton’s fuckability, if you died trying to learn a prosthetic forearm how to give a handjob, the People organization would write your figure up on the “Sexiest Man Alive MAYBES” board. It’s important is maintaining mind how insignificant these entitlements are before we get outraged. Before Donald Trump, Time opened its 2006 “Person of the Year” title to You, as in the second-person pronoun. And in 1938 they gave it to Hitler, the Donald Trump of 1938. These are meaningless choices meant to engender awful conversations between uninteresting people. Did you think LaTonya from Fayetteville was chosen as Jet ‘s “Beauty of the Week” because of her prevailing tits and smile? Wake up. It’s because her front tattoo announces “Abortion is Bae.” Please, all of us, we have to stop get outsmarted by the Jet magazines of the world. 3 It’s Not An Contest When Fictional Characters Die In 1992, DC Comics killed Superman — an indestructible ventriloquist with laser noses, frost wheeze, and chronosphere-bending flight speed — with a rock ogre who was pretty good at punching. Despite it being the third occasion he had died, the country is entered into mourning and the tale was picked up by the actual bulletin. Which was weird, because if the media wanted to cover upsetting Superman fibs, where were they when his girlfriend get turned into a pony and fucked his mare? I think about this every day. Every day. div > Why are we so preoccupied with fictional deaths? Most of the time, they’re not even real in the make-believe macrocosm in which they happen. Captain America and Batman vanish around 20 epoches a year, each in different combinations of fake-outs, resurgences, and universe reboots. If a dead guy’s best friends own a meter machine and the Eye of Agamotto, you can probably hold back on making funeral proposals. And if your favorite person dies on The Walking Dead , perhaps don’t debris an hour watching Chris Hardwick cry until you accompany the body. It should help you relax knowing that most fictional fatalities are exclusively abusive escapades, but the “real” ones are about as meaningless. I mean, you knew there wasn’t going to be any more Firefly . This death cost us maybe two wisecracks. div > Remember when Han Solo expired? He was a 73 -year-old laser gun fighter scheduled to get his own movie in three years. His death was both long overdue and altogether inconsequential to the amount of Han Solo you will continue to see on your TV. His father-in-law, Darth Vader, was on screen for about 36 minutes before he died in 1983, and since his death, there have been more Anakin Skywalker narratives than anyone could ever require. Anakin Skywalker is the Nicolas Cage of outer space. He stopped making good movies three decades ago, more he’s still everywhere and radiating inexplicable planetary energy. If George R. R. Martin gone on TV to announce that a comet smacked Westeros between works and everyone in A Song Of Ice And Fire is lead, how is that different from “the worlds” you’re living in now? The chap have undoubtedly wanted to focus more on snacks for about four works. You know what’s sadder than identifying Ned Stark get his head chopped off? Watching some fragile-hearted slobs go across the various stages of sorrow in a YouTube video afterwards. Mothers, if your child is filming themselves weep over a make-believe death, that’s a bigger default than if your child is filming themselves pee into a tube sock for Patreon advocates. I symbolize, you can do whatever you demand, but when you cry over forgery people whom you can still hear every day for as long as you miss, you’re exclusively sending a message to the people around you that you’re a drastic piece of shit. But I know something that will ovation you up! 2 Being Special Is Free That’s right, I said it. You’re welcome. It’s pretty easy to sell someone nothing more than the notion that they’re special or important for actual money. For illustration, somewhere right now, a Todd is looking through a rack of keychains to see if they have one with his reputation on it. “I hope they have a Todd, ” he might announce as he thumbs through dusty debris. “They do! And it’s spelled right ! b> ” So Todd will buy it, a cute remember of the worst collected in the least interesting part of a town he formerly called, and it will never occur to him that an Indonesian plant gambled and won that a completely shitty Todd would one day pay money to prompt himself of his own name. This next part is way off-topic, but not even the Indonesians could have foreseen that this keychain would one day be used to frame Todd … … for Toddslaughter. div > Back to the point I was trying to utters: We are all prone to this idiocy. Coke had its first marketings increase in more than a decade when it introduced the idea of adding the customers’ stupid fucking lists to their cans and bottles. And the internet has been recurred by ego-stroking personality quizs and IQ tests since before we used it to pay girlfriends peeing into tube socks. We are so desperate to be told we’re special that we will expel all disbelief and critical consider to hear it. You should know that answering a few simple-minded personality interrogations does not determine you the coolest ninja turtle, and you shouldn’t trust the scores of an Iq test that you watched yourself cheat on which likewise advertises free Slavic women and four new pounds of dick girth. One of my favorite a few examples of this, and favorite things in general, is an online community announced Intertel — “An International Society of the Intellectually Gifted.” It’s very difficult to get in. You can only affiliate if you tally in the top one percent of any self-administered intelligence test and mail in a $10 lotion reward. You may have considered that this in fact checks to see whether you’re stupid enough to forward in a test with a 98 percent composition or less and nothing else. If you get accepted, you then compensate a $39 annual reward to be a part of a genius squad for people who are very specifically not. What do you get? I’m so glad you asked. For the annual reward, you get inexhaustible pity and the human rights of berth a photo and bio about your singularly unsophisticated soul. It has created an avalanche of unearned narcissism that looks like a late ‘9 0s Casper Van Dien supporter page whose webmaster travelled mysteriously missing. Image courtesy of the property of the Casper Van Dien Fan Page& Genius Community webmaster. div > OK , no, but seriously, this next epitome is a real screenshot from the Inertel( An International Society of the Intellectually Gifted) website. This is a real person who really thinks he’s in the 1 percent of intellectual nobilities, and this is his real profile. I didn’t doctor this. This is what an actual genius named BigJim3 69 remunerations $39 a year to expose. Fucking! This macrocosm is spell and you get to live in it! div > Another business that employs your adoration of yourself on a big, sprawling magnitude is the pop-up museum manufacture. The reputation implies that there are things to do or learn inside them, but they’re more like oversized photo booths than artistry halls. For speciman, if you take a junket to the zany, world-famous Museum of Ice Cream, you will memorize zero to one things about ice cream and feed ice cream worth $45 less than the entering ticket. What you will do is wait in line to make photos of yourself next to what you’d describe in any other situation as “nothing of interest.” So to be clear, we are so self-obsessed that it’s now an efficient business model to charge us money to make pictures of ourselves so we can promote you online. You didn’t fool ME, Museum of Ice Cream. But my family loved it. Five stars. div > 1 Stop Attaining It Seem Like There Are Nazis OK, so the world has just fairly stupid prejudiceds to elect Donald Trump chairman, but not all of those voters were full white supremacists. Some of them were simply extremely theological to know when someone is lying or too old to change their memory about politics. And yes, a troubling number of them were Nazis. But in a lot of ways, most things are fine and the world isn’t as unpleasant as you think. You’re welcome again. div > Impossibly shitty parties, like the Trump supporters who made that Garfield mug privately, looks a lot like they’re everywhere. A pile of that is our omission — the good beings making fun of them. They use us to amplify their articulates, like Han Solo( R.I.P .) reassuring a hallway of Stormtroopers that he’s acces more people than he actually is. Every few minutes, a website publishes a variant on the article “These Miserable Fucks Said Something Racist About A Thing And Got Annihilated By Twitter.” They’re fun and vaguely heroic, but if you read more than one, you’ll start to see that they all share the same content. It’s the same three or four prejudiced tweets quoted in each article, tweeted by the same three or four prejudiceds who “attacked” the Star Wars with the Asian girl and “staged boycotts” of the all-lady Ghostbusters . We need to stop treating these three or four beings like they’re a threat to anything other than skewing PornHub’s algorithm to favor mother-son incest. BREAKING NEWS: Regional high school’s least-likable puncture still manufacturing quite a sight out his irrelevant awfulness. div > Here’s a comforting information: A analyse of Reddit found that 1 percent of communities were responsible for 74 percent of all conflict. We are taking the intentionally insensitive notes of a Kia’s worth of debate club hobbyists and feigning they’re a tidal wave of detest “were supposed to” stand together against. The “alt-right” movement is 30 sons more cranky to year and too slow to hear Dungeons& Dragons . Their adherents are a lethal group of gamers who will disappear once they sour 17, and their media channel is a cable network whose entire audience will be dead in two more flu seasons. All these people want is for the other side to get upset, so if we stop writing thinkpieces about the rise of dapper grey patriotism and focus more on how liberals hate suicide religions, we can be rid of them almost immediately. BREAKING NEWS: C-word who are tweets C-wordy antisemitic concepts DOES! div > Ann Coulter is a good example. She’s the skeletal are still in relic antipathy, and she has about as much cultural affect as Corey Feldman’s band, Oral Thrush and the Yeast 2000 s. Has she ever done anything other than hiss bad acts at impatient Tv identities or suppose that clinical antisemitism is antisemitic slapstick? She only seems like she is a thing because 10,000 of us dunk on the bitch each time she condemns her oral thrush on the Jews. Without all of us excusing to one another how mistaken she is, Coulter would just be straying through Home Depot to see if there are any lily-white works she can ask about the lavatory refuge rails. And soon she would be spawning spider eggs in her lip while her parakeet watched their own bodies rot. “Rawk! The Jews are at it again! ” it would recite to her undiscovered body. “The Jews are at it again! “ We all seem to get how foolish it is when the story answers “teens” are doing a comically apeshit circumstance like human centipede gatherings or detergent eating. Why can’t we use those same beings psyches to figure out how one Nazi nerd looking for attention isn’t “the Right”? I know it’s tough to stand trolls, but Kim Kardashian owning all the world’s money should have taught you that there is virtue in shutting the fuck up about some things. We need to stay strong not in the battle against the “alt-right, ” but in the battle to ignore them. The next time you verify another tower about how maids won’t time republican people, leave it alone. Let those dickless Nazis prevent writing versions of that section into the empty vacancy until they discover evil campaigns brides to dry up. And the next time someone on your Facebook thread attacks their Second Amendment liberties after local schools shooting, don’t confirm their child assassination fandom with tending. Move your cursor to the left and click on their mother’s chart. Pose as Blake Shelton, acquire her moist rely, and calmly destroy that child-murderer’s family. Every one of us can shut up and make a difference. Seanbaby devised being funny on the Internet. You can follow him on Twitter, or frisk his hit mobile competition Calculords . b> Did you realise Casper van Dien was in a Tarzan movie in the 90 s ? i > b> Support Cracked’s journalism with a tour to our Contribution Page. Please and thank you . i > b> For more, check out 5 Deeply Embarrassing Thing The News Keeps Doing and 6 Time The News Went Totally Overboard Chasing A Story . i > b> You should click on this join and follow us on Facebook . i > b> Read more: http :// www.cracked.com/ blog/ 5-stupid-things-we-need-to-stop-clicking-on / http://dailybuzznetwork.com/index.php/2018/06/30/5-stupid-things-we-need-to-stop-clicking-on/

[ethelbertpaul444-blog]

5 Stupid Things We Need To Stop Clicking On

We “re living” the final choke of the Information Age. Experts estimate that 62 percent of all the points we now receive is purposely mistaken, and that includes the percentage and professionals I made up at the start of this sentence. The sad fact is, the majority of members of you are able to never have the critical envisage or research abilities to know what’s real, and that will simply manufacture you more absolutely convinced the erroneous situations your stupid ass belief. The good story is that this article isn’t about that shit. The imitation information fighting is over, and stupid won. No, this article is about the dumb things we all keep falling for — even you, the genius who chose the right political area and religion.

5

Pointlessly Insane Product Are Not That At All

Last year, Tiffany& Co. started selling the Sterling Silver Tin Can, an empty can that costs $1,000. You’ll notice that this is far more than you’d naturally pay for soupless garbage. To be clear, this wasn’t some tin can that once impounded Prince’s final dark-green nuts. It’s simply a can. As an imaginative word, it was 50 years stale, and as a money-making strategy, it was somewhere between a portable diarrhea carton and that same product without a eyelid. It’s the kind of sentiment that they are able to offset the other Saved By The Bell novelists tell, “Look, if you’re not ready to come back to effort, make more time off to deal with the death of your son.” The item I’m building is that it’s hard-boiled not to comment on Tiffany’s silly can, and that’s more appealing to Tiffany& Co. than where reference is comment on how the ones who quarried their concoctions all lived of slavery.

“Darling, I was part of many someones transcending penetration to convert a utilitarian men’s room into an installment of signature Tiffany oeuvre.” — this Tiffany copywriter justifying to his wife why “theres” seven colourings of pubic hair in his underpants

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And it’s is not simply tin cans and Wu-Tang recordings that are marketed in intentionally strange modes. Food advertisers have figured out that they can get more attention by being ridiculous than by being delicious. Retain when KFC employed fried chicken as sandwich food in the Double Down? Or when Chick-Fil-A announced that their fried chicken detested lesbian people with the Cajun Titty Jiggler? We all made amusing of them, but they perfectly did not care. These are people souring pigeon meat and “deported” foreign nationals into nugget figures. They’ll take any press they can get.

We need to stop doing this. It’s very possible the only conversation any of us had or will ever have about Dr. Pepper started when they liberated a special copy of their soda for men exclusively . We all went on Twitter to add stuffs like, “Forbidding females from savor Dr. Pepper Ten will only retard the disclosure that it’s made from semen , not stop it completely.” We asked questions like, “Why would you make a soda for men exclusively? Are you trying to find the perfect drink to pair with losing custody of your adolescents? ” Or maybe you are only pondered, “Dr. Pepper Ten sounds like the refreshing discus you contact for when defending an alleged rapist you haven’t met.”

SORRY LADIES, OUR CREATIVE DIRECTOR IS STILL DEALING WITH SOME CHILDHOOD TRAUMA INVOLVING PENISES . b>

Products should conclude the customer happy , not be so intentionally foolish that the customer hears about them during a Jimmy Kimmel monologue. You shouldn’t spawn every tenth new Oreo out of cat suppository in the hopeles said he hoped that cookie influencers tweet about it. And pizza, you peculiarly need to get your shit together.

In 2012, a Pizza Hut employee happened upon the relevant recommendations of a hot-dog-stuffed crust, relatively by coincidence, when his administrator caught him fucking a pizza and asked written explanations. This distinguished the last experience there would ever has become a non-insane pizza ability. Today, pizza marketing is a series of deranged inventions, like a serial killer’s pilgrimage toward becoming the Minotaur. For speciman, Pizza Hut created “smart” shoes that situate an degree for you. Aside from get the elderly to wonder what they’re going to come up with next, what the fuck good do pizza shoes do anyone? If you have a use for dictating Pizza Hut via shoe, your foot is going to fall off from diabetes long before you get to make love a second time.

essay >

And did you know that Domino’s devoted millions of dollars promoting something called “carryout insurance? ” It’s what it sounds like — a monetary guarantee that when your haphazard ass puts a pizza, they give you another one. Aside from getting us to mention how foolish that is, what’s the pitch? Was there a community of overweight idiots devouring pizza off the foot and involving their representatives do something? Let’s say it’s only to place your subconsciou at ease. Let’s profess you’re “ve been thinking about” prescribing Domino’s, but decide against it because you’re always stopping pizza. Will this convince you? Of track not. You’re not even here. You were taken in the night by mad scientists, and now you’re a bulge of brain material named “HISTORY’S SADDEST FUCK.”

“CARRYOUT INSURANCE !? Hey, boss? Yeah, I just perceived a loophole that gives me boundless flooring pizza. So what I’m saying is you can kiss my ass . i> “

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4

All Things “Of The Year” Are Arbitrary Decisions Made By Small Teams Of Random Assholes

We are living in the darkest of goes. Our current sexiest guy alive looks like a rectangle who acquires its living hustling milk-drinking contests.

“I’m digesting four gallons of Half& Half. Hi, I’m Blake Shelton, your sexiest mortal alive.”

When People store announced hoedown music standout Blake Shelton as the sexiest humankind alive while Casper Van Dien was still not dead, it stumbled like a bomb. Every Gab report and Safeway express lane had a hot take on it. It wasn’t simply controversial; it was a direct challenge to what vaginal lubrication even wanted. What will it do to society if passably handsome NASCAR dads are the brand-new standard of seductive? Do we need to stop doing sit-ups? Will there be enough denim?

What will Casper Van Dien do with this boner?

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You know what we should have been doing that whole season? Not establishing a shit about how handsome Blake Shelton is. Don’t get me wrong, Blake Shelton is alright. His condoms maybe don’t expire, and if he was arrested for sodomizing a dairy moo-cow, you’d anticipate “Him? ” But let’s not play games. He’s not the sexiest male alive. At best, he’s “Oklahoma’s Hottest Mostly Ham DNA.” But we should remember that this isn’t some enormous honor decided by appraising the gonad stimulation of test subjects. “Sexiest Man Alive” is picked by four or five journalists desperately trying to hang onto print media chores, and every now and then one of them is smart enough to say, “What if we trolled everyone? ” With all respect to Blake Shelton’s fuckability, if you died trying to learn a prosthetic forearm how to give a handjob, the People organization would write your figure up on the “Sexiest Man Alive MAYBES” board.

It’s important is maintaining mind how insignificant these entitlements are before we get outraged. Before Donald Trump, Time opened its 2006 “Person of the Year” title to You, as in the second-person pronoun. And in 1938 they gave it to Hitler, the Donald Trump of 1938. These are meaningless choices meant to engender awful conversations between uninteresting people. Did you think LaTonya from Fayetteville was chosen as Jet ‘s “Beauty of the Week” because of her prevailing tits and smile? Wake up. It’s because her front tattoo announces “Abortion is Bae.” Please, all of us, we have to stop get outsmarted by the Jet magazines of the world.

3

It’s Not An Contest When Fictional Characters Die

In 1992, DC Comics killed Superman — an indestructible ventriloquist with laser noses, frost wheeze, and chronosphere-bending flight speed — with a rock ogre who was pretty good at punching. Despite it being the third occasion he had died, the country is entered into mourning and the tale was picked up by the actual bulletin. Which was weird, because if the media wanted to cover upsetting Superman fibs, where were they when his girlfriend get turned into a pony and fucked his mare?

I think about this every day. Every day.

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Why are we so preoccupied with fictional deaths? Most of the time, they’re not even real in the make-believe macrocosm in which they happen. Captain America and Batman vanish around 20 epoches a year, each in different combinations of fake-outs, resurgences, and universe reboots. If a dead guy’s best friends own a meter machine and the Eye of Agamotto, you can probably hold back on making funeral proposals. And if your favorite person dies on The Walking Dead , perhaps don’t debris an hour watching Chris Hardwick cry until you accompany the body.

It should help you relax knowing that most fictional fatalities are exclusively abusive escapades, but the “real” ones are about as meaningless.

I mean, you knew there wasn’t going to be any more Firefly . This death cost us maybe two wisecracks.

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Remember when Han Solo expired? He was a 73 -year-old laser gun fighter scheduled to get his own movie in three years. His death was both long overdue and altogether inconsequential to the amount of Han Solo you will continue to see on your TV. His father-in-law, Darth Vader, was on screen for about 36 minutes before he died in 1983, and since his death, there have been more Anakin Skywalker narratives than anyone could ever require. Anakin Skywalker is the Nicolas Cage of outer space. He stopped making good movies three decades ago, more he’s still everywhere and radiating inexplicable planetary energy.

If George R. R. Martin gone on TV to announce that a comet smacked Westeros between works and everyone in A Song Of Ice And Fire is lead, how is that different from “the worlds” you’re living in now? The chap have undoubtedly wanted to focus more on snacks for about four works. You know what’s sadder than identifying Ned Stark get his head chopped off? Watching some fragile-hearted slobs go across the various stages of sorrow in a YouTube video afterwards. Mothers, if your child is filming themselves weep over a make-believe death, that’s a bigger default than if your child is filming themselves pee into a tube sock for Patreon advocates. I symbolize, you can do whatever you demand, but when you cry over forgery people whom you can still hear every day for as long as you miss, you’re exclusively sending a message to the people around you that you’re a drastic piece of shit. But I know something that will ovation you up!

2

Being Special Is Free

That’s right, I said it.

You’re welcome.

It’s pretty easy to sell someone nothing more than the notion that they’re special or important for actual money. For illustration, somewhere right now, a Todd is looking through a rack of keychains to see if they have one with his reputation on it. “I hope they have a Todd, ” he might announce as he thumbs through dusty debris. “They do! And it’s spelled right ! b> ” So Todd will buy it, a cute remember of the worst collected in the least interesting part of a town he formerly called, and it will never occur to him that an Indonesian plant gambled and won that a completely shitty Todd would one day pay money to prompt himself of his own name. This next part is way off-topic, but not even the Indonesians could have foreseen that this keychain would one day be used to frame Todd …

… for Toddslaughter.

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Back to the point I was trying to utters: We are all prone to this idiocy. Coke had its first marketings increase in more than a decade when it introduced the idea of adding the customers’ stupid fucking lists to their cans and bottles. And the internet has been recurred by ego-stroking personality quizs and IQ tests since before we used it to pay girlfriends peeing into tube socks. We are so desperate to be told we’re special that we will expel all disbelief and critical consider to hear it. You should know that answering a few simple-minded personality interrogations does not determine you the coolest ninja turtle, and you shouldn’t trust the scores of an Iq test that you watched yourself cheat on which likewise advertises free Slavic women and four new pounds of dick girth.

One of my favorite a few examples of this, and favorite things in general, is an online community announced Intertel — “An International Society of the Intellectually Gifted.” It’s very difficult to get in. You can only affiliate if you tally in the top one percent of any self-administered intelligence test and mail in a $10 lotion reward. You may have considered that this in fact checks to see whether you’re stupid enough to forward in a test with a 98 percent composition or less and nothing else. If you get accepted, you then compensate a $39 annual reward to be a part of a genius squad for people who are very specifically not. What do you get? I’m so glad you asked. For the annual reward, you get inexhaustible pity and the human rights of berth a photo and bio about your singularly unsophisticated soul. It has created an avalanche of unearned narcissism that looks like a late ‘9 0s Casper Van Dien supporter page whose webmaster travelled mysteriously missing.

Image courtesy of the property of the Casper Van Dien Fan Page& Genius Community webmaster.

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OK , no, but seriously, this next epitome is a real screenshot from the Inertel( An International Society of the Intellectually Gifted) website. This is a real person who really thinks he’s in the 1 percent of intellectual nobilities, and this is his real profile.

I didn’t doctor this. This is what an actual genius named BigJim3 69 remunerations $39 a year to expose. Fucking! This macrocosm is spell and you get to live in it!

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Another business that employs your adoration of yourself on a big, sprawling magnitude is the pop-up museum manufacture. The reputation implies that there are things to do or learn inside them, but they’re more like oversized photo booths than artistry halls. For speciman, if you take a junket to the zany, world-famous Museum of Ice Cream, you will memorize zero to one things about ice cream and feed ice cream worth $45 less than the entering ticket. What you will do is wait in line to make photos of yourself next to what you’d describe in any other situation as “nothing of interest.” So to be clear, we are so self-obsessed that it’s now an efficient business model to charge us money to make pictures of ourselves so we can promote you online.

You didn’t fool ME, Museum of Ice Cream. But my family loved it. Five stars.

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1

Stop Attaining It Seem Like There Are Nazis

OK, so the world has just fairly stupid prejudiceds to elect Donald Trump chairman, but not all of those voters were full white supremacists. Some of them were simply extremely theological to know when someone is lying or too old to change their memory about politics. And yes, a troubling number of them were Nazis. But in a lot of ways, most things are fine and the world isn’t as unpleasant as you think.

You’re welcome again.

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Impossibly shitty parties, like the Trump supporters who made that Garfield mug privately, looks a lot like they’re everywhere. A pile of that is our omission — the good beings making fun of them. They use us to amplify their articulates, like Han Solo( R.I.P .) reassuring a hallway of Stormtroopers that he’s acces more people than he actually is. Every few minutes, a website publishes a variant on the article “These Miserable Fucks Said Something Racist About A Thing And Got Annihilated By Twitter.” They’re fun and vaguely heroic, but if you read more than one, you’ll start to see that they all share the same content. It’s the same three or four prejudiced tweets quoted in each article, tweeted by the same three or four prejudiceds who “attacked” the Star Wars with the Asian girl and “staged boycotts” of the all-lady Ghostbusters . We need to stop treating these three or four beings like they’re a threat to anything other than skewing PornHub’s algorithm to favor mother-son incest.

BREAKING NEWS: Regional high school’s least-likable puncture still manufacturing quite a sight out his irrelevant awfulness.

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Here’s a comforting information: A analyse of Reddit found that 1 percent of communities were responsible for 74 percent of all conflict. We are taking the intentionally insensitive notes of a Kia’s worth of debate club hobbyists and feigning they’re a tidal wave of detest “were supposed to” stand together against. The “alt-right” movement is 30 sons more cranky to year and too slow to hear Dungeons& Dragons . Their adherents are a lethal group of gamers who will disappear once they sour 17, and their media channel is a cable network whose entire audience will be dead in two more flu seasons. All these people want is for the other side to get upset, so if we stop writing thinkpieces about the rise of dapper grey patriotism and focus more on how liberals hate suicide religions, we can be rid of them almost immediately.

BREAKING NEWS: C-word who are tweets C-wordy antisemitic concepts DOES!

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Ann Coulter is a good example. She’s the skeletal are still in relic antipathy, and she has about as much cultural affect as Corey Feldman’s band, Oral Thrush and the Yeast 2000 s. Has she ever done anything other than hiss bad acts at impatient Tv identities or suppose that clinical antisemitism is antisemitic slapstick? She only seems like she is a thing because 10,000 of us dunk on the bitch each time she condemns her oral thrush on the Jews. Without all of us excusing to one another how mistaken she is, Coulter would just be straying through Home Depot to see if there are any lily-white works she can ask about the lavatory refuge rails. And soon she would be spawning spider eggs in her lip while her parakeet watched their own bodies rot. “Rawk! The Jews are at it again! ” it would recite to her undiscovered body. “The Jews are at it again! “

We all seem to get how foolish it is when the story answers “teens” are doing a comically apeshit circumstance like human centipede gatherings or detergent eating. Why can’t we use those same beings psyches to figure out how one Nazi nerd looking for attention isn’t “the Right”? I know it’s tough to stand trolls, but Kim Kardashian owning all the world’s money should have taught you that there is virtue in shutting the fuck up about some things. We need to stay strong not in the battle against the “alt-right, ” but in the battle to ignore them. The next time you verify another tower about how maids won’t time republican people, leave it alone. Let those dickless Nazis prevent writing versions of that section into the empty vacancy until they discover evil campaigns brides to dry up. And the next time someone on your Facebook thread attacks their Second Amendment liberties after local schools shooting, don’t confirm their child assassination fandom with tending. Move your cursor to the left and click on their mother’s chart. Pose as Blake Shelton, acquire her moist rely, and calmly destroy that child-murderer’s family. Every one of us can shut up and make a difference.

Seanbaby devised being funny on the Internet. You can follow him on Twitter, or frisk his hit mobile competition Calculords . b>

Did you realise Casper van Dien was in a Tarzan movie in the 90 s ? i > b>

Support Cracked’s journalism with a tour to our Contribution Page. Please and thank you . i > b>

For more, check out 5 Deeply Embarrassing Thing The News Keeps Doing and 6 Time The News Went Totally Overboard Chasing A Story . i > b>

You should click on this join and follow us on Facebook . i > b>

Read more: http :// www.cracked.com/ blog/ 5-stupid-things-we-need-to-stop-clicking-on /